Looking Forward with Janie Dee at The Pheasantry, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
From the moment a beckoning finger parted the curtain on The Pheasantry balcony, followed by a tantalising arm and then the full Janie package clad in a shimmering crimson-red dress, the captivating Miss Dee had us under her spell and never let go.
The sensational entrance led straight into ‘Willkommen’ and then three more from Kander and Ebb, the title song from Cabaret where “Elsie rented it by the hour”, ‘There Goes the Ball Game’ and, on the authorisation of 94-year-old John Kander himself, a re-working of ‘Yes’ (“Don’t say why, say why not? Say yes”), a positive philosophy perfectly in keeping with the show’s title and the actress herself.
It was the 1986 revival of Cabaret that gave Dee her first West End chance, only a minor part but she understudied Kelly Hunter’s Sally Bowles. Since then the world of theatre, whether straight plays like A Month in the Country, an Alan Ayckbourn comedy or musicals such as Follies and Carousel, could never get enough of this force of nature or find enough awards to shower upon her.
These days she’s such a national treasure that Sunday Times critic David Jays asked: Is she the best actress in Britain? And answered it himself with “Could be”.
Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, Dee has always found it hard to say no to work, provided it is worthy of her, hence a list of worldwide theatre credits that’s so long it falls out of the bottom of the computer.
And hence her three-day cabaret residency at The Pheasantry on the back of playing Desiree in A Little Night Music at the Buxton International Festival.
Cue a stunning version of ‘Send in the Clowns’, a perfect vehicle for her acting skills. She must have sung it a thousand times yet somehow still makes it sound fresh and vibrant.
As with everything else, there was piano brilliance from MD Stephen Higgins, particularly with the jazzy ‘The Piano Player’s Mine’, and a classy guest spot from Sarah Ingram who worked with Dee in Buxton onstage and as stand-in director when Paul Kerryson fell ill. Her ‘Teach Me Tonight’ and ‘I Want More’ made me want more too.
There was more Sondheim from Dee, two challenging tongue-twisters ‘Another 100 People’ from Company and the wickedly funny Bossa Nova parody ‘The Boy from …’ that winds up with the 20-letter Welsh village that starts Llanfair.
Anyone who tackles that tricky Sondheim-Mary Rodgers number has to be brave but the fearless Dee managed to get her tongue around it twice without a stumble.
Game for (almost) anything, she would later dare the waspish ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’, another triumph, and one of her party pieces, the much-requested ‘Copy Typist’, the Ayckbourn ditty where Dee’s mastery of accents and perfect comic timing come into play.
In more serious vein ‘Move On’, a classic Sondheim very much in tune with the show’s theme of looking forward rather than back at the last life-wrecking 16 months.
Dee had alluded to the pandemic earlier in the eloquent Sting composition ‘Fragile’. How prescient its words “tomorrow’s rain will wash the stain away but something in our minds will always stay”. Written in 1987 as a tribute to an American civil engineer killed by the Contras while working on a project in Nicaragua, it resonates even more acutely today.
Behind all the fluff, the sexy wiggles, the joshing with the audience, the anecdotes, the glamour and the charisma there’s a very caring side to Dee, a great family person with a rare generosity of spirit who founded the London Climate Change Festival last year, one of many good causes she espouses.
Incidentally, that spectacular red dress was the same one that got the mother and father of a soaking when Dee sang ‘Clowns’ through a cloudburst at an open-air ‘Night Music’ in Holland Park last August. Dee swapped it for Act II with a less flamboyant one brought in for her by musical theatre legend Lorna Dallas, an outfit that had history as Dallas had worn it to meet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Not only is the lovable Dee a five-star performer, she’s a five-star human being and Dee-lightful, Dee-licious and Dee-lovely with it. A super trouper at the top of her game.
Jeremy Chapman
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