Sondheim Society – Rachael Louise Miller

Rachael Louise Miller launched the series of early-evening cabaret at the Leicester Square Theatre Lounge

The Stephen Sondheim Society presents… Rachael Louise Miller, Leicester Square Theatre, London.

It’s very hard not to warm to Rachael Louise Miller, the actress/singer who launched the Sondheim Society series of early-evening cabaret in the Leicester Square Theatre Lounge to rapturous applause and an almost-full house.

She’s tiny, very pretty, has a typical Lancashire lass rapport with her audience, and can sing quiet songs like a bird, and funny ones with a great feel for their humour, excellent timing and plenty of punch.

Some may not have heard of her (although she’s performed in Les Miserables and Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat) but that’s a key ingredient of this series put together by the Society’s vice-chairman Peter Auker, who accompanied Miller superbly at the piano. As he explained: “We want to develop new talent and also show more established ones, and the only stipulation is that they do at least one Sondheim song. I want to show members there is life beyond Steve.”

In fact, the Sondheim Society was seriously outnumbered by Miller’s friends and well-wishers, many of them from her Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts days, and the clapping, cheering and standing ovations gave the evening a terrific atmosphere.

The family feel was increased when Miller introduced her husband, Christopher Ragland, as her special guest, and his thrilling version of ‘She Cries’ (from Jason Robert Brown’s Songs For a New World) nearly stole the show. This powerful American, seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Road Show two years ago, is a serious talent and now heads off to Korea to do Avenue Q.

Ragland also gave us a fine ‘Finishing The Hat’ from Sunday in the Park with George and duetted with Miller on ‘Suddenly Seymour’ from Little Shop of Horrrors. Miller followed with a wickedly funny version of ‘In Short’ from a controversial 2005 song cycle called Edges written by two Michigan University students, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

This song, which London audiences may have heard during the show’s short run at the Landor Theatre in 2011, tells, in no unceratin terms, of a jilted girl’s bitterness towards her old boyfriend and shows that, when it comes to outrageous, The Book of Mormon has no monopoly. Certainly some of the older faces in the audience were seen to drop as Miller sang these words (and they are not the worst by any means!):

‘Maybe it’s wrong to wish death on

Someone you had so much love for

But since we shared so much

It makes me want to kill you more

I wanna stick pins in your eyes

I pray you get a rectal rash

I hope your Visa’s declined

Your children are blind

Get broke and have to porn for cash

Become epileptic and violently shake

Find out that you were conceived by mistake

Fall out of a rollercoaster

Take a warm bath with a plugged-in toaster

In short

I really hope you die’

It was this mixture of the tried-and-trusted (‘Over The Rainbow’, ‘On My Own’ – Miller understudied Eponine in Les Miserables in London, played the part many times, and sang this song with great assurance – and the Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock classic ‘Vanilla Ice Cream’ (from the 1963 show She Loves Me) and the exciting newer stuff that underscored Miller’s far-ranging talent.

She is particularly keen to showcase new British writing, saying: “I’m not knocking what I call the jukebox musicals because they give work to people like me, but they don’t take us anywhere and the theatre needs exciting new material if it is progress.” An old head on young shoulders.

Rounding off her set with a song from Smash, that much-missed Sky Atlantic series about a Marilyn Monroe Broadway musical, Miller by then had given us more of the newer catalogue including ‘Still Hurting’ (another from Jason Robert Brown, “the man who is the nearest modern equivalent to Sondheim”, as she put it), ‘Quiet’ by Jonathan Reid Gealt, and ‘Autumn’ by Paolo Nutini and Jim Duguid.

Not forgetting the one obligatory Sondheim, which turned out to be the sweet ‘Green Finch and Linnet Bird’ from her favourite, Sweeney Todd.

If it gets the right support, this series will give young up-and-comers the chance to hone a cabaret act in a demanding West End enviroment. What better place to make your cabaret debut, as Miller did, than under a star, because the great Patti LuPone was doing her stuff in the main auditorium upstairs at the same time.

This hour, which was gone all too quickly, showed us that today’s youngsters waiting in the wings need only the right breaks to make it to the big league. Fingers crossed they both get there.

Jeremy Chapman