Once – New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich

Daniel Healy and Emma Lucia in Once at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. Picture: Mike Kwasniak

Once was reviewed at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. The show transfers to the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch from 3-20 October 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Once, a multi-Tony Award winner, clearly delighted its Ipswich audience. It is original too: declining the avenue of clichéd musical, it embraces music and lyrics (Glen Hansard and the Czech-born Markéta Irglová, with Ben Goddard nicely coordinating) that meshes splendidly – indeed cleverly – with the action.

The solo or duet numbers are affecting; and choreography (Francesca Jaynes) is, I take it, by its deliciously shambolic touches, meant to characterise this troupe of ungainly, well-meaning, down-on-your-luck characters.

All these engaging ingredients, with wry, thoughtful direction from the New Wolsey’s Peter Rowe, pitches us intermittently somewhere between West Side Story and the roving actors of The Good Companions, with a bit of Kurt Weill (Street Scene) thrown in.

The music is all performed onstage with glee by the players (too much glee in the deafening opening prelude, an attempted crowd-pleaser that desecrates traditional folk, a genre that appears throughout, most successfully).

It amazes me how actors nowadays, young and old, play solo instruments to such a high standard. For this entertaining, wacky score, set to Enda Walsh’s book based on the film Once by his fellow-Irishman John Carney, the cast serves up an often melting display of five-plus guitars, banjo and/or ukulele, violin and cello (mesmerising), fife (pipe) and much more. They play with quality, as if they are brilliant session artists poached from the London orchestras for pop or crossover discs.

You’ll gather I liked this show. Yet the Czech element (co-star Emma Lucia, splendid) is not that profoundly – or authentically – examined in the text, to give the story an undertow of deeper meaning, pathos or insight. Lucia and Daniel Healy fare nicely as the young lead duo (‘Guy’ and ‘Girl’: the neutral names recall again the expressionist tradition, or its descendants, like Harold Pinter).

Where is the top-drawer talent? Sean Kingsley as Billy, a sort of pub/football match brawler and bruiser, who because of his age is wiser to the world’s ways, and in effect the youngsters’ guru, comes up with such a knockout performance – funny, hearty, pouty, irritable, generous, self-parodying, comic, big-mouthing his way through some jaw-dropping insights and marvellously touching in his one (superbly-voiced) vocal solo number, all but steals the show. Yet he seems almost sensitive to not nicking the limelight. A fabulous performance. The real star.

Along with Lucia’s perfect forward-vowelled Czech accent, the girls (Kate Robson-Stuart, Rachel Dawson, Susannah van den Berg) each excel. I liked Peter Peverley’s busily inventive, dutiful Da (Dad). Caolan McCarthy’s Eamon leaps vividly to life. Samuel Martin’s Bank Manager scene is the hoot of the evening. James William-Pattison shines as Andrej, a commonsense, firmly loyal friend – and in a sense a second, younger, guru.

Is Rowe’s show total top-drawer? Not quite, but with wondrous capturing of the right characterisation and spirit it comes jolly near.

Roderic Dunnett