Rose Galbraith and Alex James Hatton in Spend Spend Spend at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. Picture: Helen Murray
Spend Spend Spend continues at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester until 11 January 2025.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
An incredible 25 years since it opened in the West End following a triumphant premiere at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Spend Spend Spend is revived at Manchester’s Royal Exchange in a feisty, energetic and beautifully crafted production under the direction of Josh Seymour.
It would be easy to overthink the morality tale aspect of this work and expect too much in terms of social message. What writers Justin Greene and the late Steve Brown (to whose memory this production is dedicated) created is an immensely entertaining piece of storytelling with some fantastic music. As observed in journalist Andy Murray’s excellent programme essay, the show is not so much about the whys and wherefores of squandering a small fortune and more about what money can’t buy.
The tragedy of Viv Nicholson and her family lies in the other circumstances of her life that could easily be forgotten due to the media circus that charted the winning and subsequent losing of a life-changing sum of money. The show’s book deftly pieces together that life, beginning at the end with Viv working in a beauty salon, and plays out in a series of flashbacks.
Long before there is a sniff of a pools coupon, we see her toxic relationship with a tyrannical father (Joe Alessi) from whom she probably inherited her addictive personality and fraught relationship with men. Act I takes us from her humble beginnings, through her short-lived marriage to Matt, played by the utterly charming George Crawford, her second marriage to Keith in an equally beguiling performance from Alex James-Hatton, and up to that fateful Pools win.
Act II charts the whirlwind spending spree the pair embarked upon, the tragic loss of Matt, still in his twenties, and Viv’s downward spiral which took her through three more husbands and back to a simple life. Her own daughter’s Lottery win offers a framing device that shows the very different attitude to instant fortune that prevails today, and gives us a glimpse of how differently Viv’s story might have played out.
The sung-through score that owes more than a little to Sondheim in its angular style, contains a splendid variety of light and shade in its extensive collection of musical numbers. From the fantasy of ‘Salon Mystique’ and ‘Ice Cream Girl’ in the show’s opening, via romance in ‘I’ll Take Care of Thee’ and ‘The Boy Next Door’ to the powerful miners’ chorus ‘John Collier’, there is never a dull moment despite the lengthy plot-laying and character development of Act I, ending with the triumphant ‘Spend Spend Spend’.
Act II is equally rich in variety, with juxtapositions like the big company number ‘Drinking in America’ contrasting with Keith’s ballad ‘Canary’, and comedy in songs such as ‘A Brand New Husband’ offering relief from the sadness of ‘Who’s Gonna Love Me’.
This is a very strong cast, but the real miracle of casting is in the pair of performers who bring us the central character. A quarter of a decade after she played Young Viv opposite Barbara Dickson in the West End, Rachel Lescovac now plays the role of Viv, with Rose Galbraith stepping into Lescovac’s shoes as her younger self. In a stroke of genius the production has found a near perfect vocal match between the two. Not only do they mirror one another beautifully in physical movement, but as they hand the lines of various songs between each other you could be forgiven, if you close your eyes, for thinking that it was a single voice.
This is of course the Royal Exchange Christmas show – the venue frequently bucks the trend and programmes something not traditionally festive – but despite the work’s gritty and often tragic subject matter, the production, in an impressive piece of design from Grace Smart, has more bling than the average panto, with a mirror finish stage set beneath a glittering chandelier-like canopy from which a myriad surprises appear and disappear.
It takes a special skill to properly utilise a full in-the-round stage like this one, but Seymour’s direction and choreography from Lucy Hind ensures that the show faces front in every direction, including the entire audience in equal measure. The offstage band (in a separate enclosure outside the auditorium along with musical director Livi van Warmelo) enables the score to be finely balanced with the voices so that everything is audible and the show sounds as slick as it looks.
While the real life of Viv Nicholson is very much a Cinderella story that shifts rapidly into reverse after the fairy tale wedding, leaving its heroine back amongst the embers, there is real human warmth amidst the sadness, and the show helps us to see Viv in a very different light to that used by the press at the time to mock her. Who can blame a young woman who has experienced so little happiness for wanting to make hay while the sun is shining, and although she sees a reversal of monetary fortunes she certainly learns the value of love.
The surprisingly uplifting tale of Spend Spend Spend plays at the Royal Exchange until 11 January, with audio described, captioned, BSL interpreted and sensory adapted performances available during the run.
Nigel Smith
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