Oh My, Nellie Bly was performed by students from the Musical Theatre Academy at the Bridewell Theatre, London.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Nellie Bly was a ground-breaking 19th-century American journalist, hardly known in the UK but better known in the States.
She posed as an inmate in order to research a searing exposé, ‘10 Days in Madhouse’, of the treatment of people incarcerated in asylums and later she circumvented the world in 72 days in order to beat Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg.
In the hands of composer/lyricist, Annemarie Lewis Thomas (founder principal of The MTA), book writer Nick Stimson and director Simon Kane, the story makes effective theatre because Nellie’s journey is episodic and the madhouse flashback scenes add raw depth.
This is serious, horrifying stuff and it’s, apparently, straight off the pages of Nellie Bly’s journal in which she recorded the appalling abuse of inmates by the unchecked bullies who staffed the institution.
It’s a pity though, that some of the dialogue is a bit clunkily obvious and didactic. The story and the facts have to be got across, of course, but in places the devices stick out.
By far the best thing in this show is the immaculately trained female ensemble (only one male in this company). Their choral singing is beautiful and their movement, choreographed by Chris Whittaker, is slickly imaginative. And where can I buy one of those cream dresses designed by Stewart J Charlesworth? They look lovely but also form a neat and unobtrusive visual basis for other things as ensemble members assume other roles, often with small solo singing parts.
Take, for example, the Ascot-like (cf to the big house party in Half a Sixpence) number called ‘Ladies of the Colony’ when Nelly reaches Hong Kong. A jolly tune, clipped vowel sounds – a lovely cameo from the talented Ella Rusbridger (who also stuns as an inmate) – and we’re firmly, for few moments, in a comedy of British social class. And that never fails.
Tatiana Chater Davies finds plenty of depth in Nellie. She has a wide singing range, an expressive face and is a convincing actor.
Eleanor Lewis is very strong too as Nellie’s alter-ego or voice in her head. She has a very appealing lightness of manner and sings splendidly.
And well done Jacob Swann who has to play a whole series of minor male roles after the style of Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Swann’s accent work is impressively studied. There are jokes (which fell a bit flat in the performance I saw) built into the show about his repeatedly looking similar wherever he pops up in the world.
Above stage left is a good five-piece band, led by Lewis Thomas and playing her folksy/music hall/American inspired melodies. The orchestrations are attractive, often with fiddle (Calyssa Davidson) doing a grand job at the top of the texture.
Susan Elkin
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