Yvette Robinson and Alex Bourne in Midsummer Songs at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. Picture: Mike Kwasniak
Midsummer Songs continues at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich until 27 September.
For this brand new production the New Wolsey tweaks its deserved reputation for musical theatre to present, instead, a play with music. While the theme of a 25-year university reunion and the setting in a remote cottage in the middle of Wales augers well for dramatic fireworks, a bunch of new songs examining mid-life crisis offers less cause for optimism.
It is to their immense credit then, that through the deftest of creative touches and some stellar actor/musician casting, Peter Rowe and Ben Goddard have concocted one of the most heartwarming theatrical hits of 2014.
Five middle-aged former university pals meet back at the place where a quarter of a century earlier they recorded some music and musings on a C90 tape and buried it in a biscuit tin. Grown up life has presented challenges and baggage to them all and some are coping rather better than others.
We have Bob (Alex Bourne), adrift in the tedium of marriage; Maddy (Yvette Robinson), spirited and single and an old flame of Bob’s just waiting to be reignited; Steven (Glenn Carter), a laid-back novel writer who knows what he wants in life but seems jaded by the knowledge; Spider (Peter Peverley), as sprightly and Tiggerish as he was 25 years ago, and Stuart (Adam Keast), the driving force behind the reunion, gratingly sentimental and sadly lacking in the grace with which the others have grown older.
An unexpected visitor is Lucy (Hannah Jarrett-Scott), whose mother is too frail to make the gathering and who, it transpires, has always held a candle for Steven.
Thus the scene is set for two hours of emotional outpouring about stolen moments, missed opportunities and rushes of blood, summarised in song. If that sounds like Friends on Prozac, well, it is, a little. But somehow it works brilliantly. The tunes crafted by Goddard are splendidly catchy, the beauty of the melodies cancelling out some of the more worthy and self-pitying lyrics. And those vocal harmonies – goosebumps doesn’t come close!
There are no great twists in the plot. Bob does get it on with Maddy in spite of a failed plea from his wife Heather (hard-hitting cameo by Jane Milligan) for a reconciliation; Steven is flattered but calmly realistic about Lucy’s mother’s infatuation with him, while Stuart consistently gets on everyone’s nerves. Instead of twists we get searing relationship observation through words and song. It’s mainly down to Peverley’s devilish tone and physical comedy to lift the play from an overdose of naval-gazing, plus some rib-tickling input from cottage owner Dafydd (Phylip Harries), a highly accomplished deliverer of the deadpan. Dawn Allsopp’s set plays its part too; what ex-student wouldn’t want to go to a reunion in such cosy surroundings?
Midsummer Songs may not appeal to those who prefer their musical theatre more starry. But for those who appreciate musicianship, harmony and a dash of salt in their syrupy sentimentality, Rowe and Goddard have dished up a minor miracle.
Ben Sharratt
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