Charlotte Scally and Alistair So in Nice Work If You Can Get It at Upstairs At The Gatehouse, London. Picture: Darren Bell
Nice Work If You Can Get It continues at Upstairs At The Gatehouse, London until 27 January 2019.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Gatehouse has done it again with the first-rate UK, and I think European, premiere production of the Gershwin jukebox musical as its 21st Christmas musical offering.
One must give credit to director John Plews for his impeccable taste and bold choice of bringing a not so well known property outside of the top five too often revived classic musicals which to me would be: Carousel, Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate, Cabaret and the Gershwins’ own Crazy For You. Although those are great and timeless, it is so refreshing to see something new, especially if it’s something old-fashioned as well, but in a good way.
Speaking of Gershwin, it’s interesting to point out that, even though this show has a lot of songs in common with the other two Gershwin catalogue musicals – My One and Only, Crazy For You (otherwise they would be the perfect trilogy), Nice Work only has one in common with the recent stage version of An American in Paris.
It is also the only one to have a completely original book, and a hysterically funny one at that, by Joe DiPietro. Whereas My One and Only is a reworking of Funny Face and Crazy For You is based on Girl Crazy, Nice Work If You Can Get It has a completely new storyline exploring the more risqué and less politically correct sides of the prohibition era, with strong relevance to today’s world.
Originally titled They All Laughed, the show had rough beginnings, opening to mixed reviews at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut in 2001 and then reworked as a vehicle for Harry Connick Jr who bowed out of the project for unknown reasons. It ultimately opened on Broadway at the Imperial theatre in 2012, running for over 500 performances, winning three Drama Desk and two Tony Awards and showcasing the talent of the great director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall as well as the odd pairing of Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara, with Judy Kaye stealing the show in the end.
The leading couple at the Gatehouse has much better chemistry and youthful charms: Alistair So is a more than capable song and dance man and is perfectly matched with triple threat Jessica-Elizabeth Nelson.
West End veterans Nova Skipp and David Pendlebury are equally excellent. Skipp’s Mrs Dulworth, the prohibition champion discovering the joys of alcohol, plays opposite Pendlebury as Cookie in the delicious ‘Looking for a Boy’.
Charlotte Scally as Eileen, Harry Cooper-Millar as Chief Berry and Fraser Fraser as the Duke are all hilarious as well in ‘Delishious’, ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ and ‘Do It Again’ respectively. But however great those Gershwin songs are, we must again give credits to DiPietro for having come up with a book for which they seem to have been written for.
As always at the Gatehouse, everything is highly professional: musical director Chris Poon conducts a great live band, the design is by Pollyanna Elston and lighting is by Sam Waddington – all West End calibre.
But the choreography, this time by Grant Murphy, assisted by dance captain Adam Crossley (also playing Elliott), is again the highest point of this not-to-be-missed gem of a show, working wonders in the comparatively limited space of the traverse stage.
How lucky we are in the end that the West End transfer never happened as this show, in the expert hands of John Plews, works just as fine in an intimate space.
Following this superb Ovation Productions show, other dates with Gershwin at the Gatehouse are set for the end of next March with Strike Up the Band, though that time it won’t be an in-house production.
Patrick Honoré
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