Sweet Charity – Nottingham Playhouse

Sweet Charity at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Star rating: five stars ★★★★★

Sweet Charity is back in vogue, if it was ever out. The Watermill, Newbury’s wildly popular production has just closed. Over the pond, Marriott Theater in Illinois is mounting an eight-week run through September and October. Long Island’s BroadHollow Theatre will stage it throughout January 2019. Manchester Royal Exchange ran it until early last year.

But I wouldn’t have missed Nottingham’s Sweet Charity for the world. No number of critical stars could do justice to its quality, ingenuity, versatility, choreography, hilarity – and social seriousness.

It is a triumph. This is Nottingham Playhouse’s first-ever musical in over a decade, and it is the apotheosis of the musical. Cry your eyes out, The King and I, The Sound of Music, Les Misérables; even Sondheim and  Bernstein.

The gripping book is by the late Neil Simon, the lyrics from Broadway’s Dorothy Fields, the music by five-time Tony Award winner Cy Coleman, and original choreography by Bob Fosse. Terrific ingredients and director Bill Buckhurst has fine-tuned it: glorious diction, virtually mic-free, thanks to the Playhouse’s impeccable sound engineers.

‘Beset by erratic energy levels and an overall sense of inertia’ (one young critic) completely misses the perfect calibration of this masterly work, as seen here. Buckhurst’s pacing is honed to perfection. The down-on-you-luck poignancy in Simon’s touching script comes over crisp and clear. And my, do they interact fabulously.

Charity may be claimed (by some) to be ‘gullible and guileless’, but Rebecca Trehearn – pure joy from start to finish – struck me as the brightest cookie of them all. Her sparkling charisma sets the tone for the whole thing: kaleidoscopic musical adroitness from Caroline Humphris’ ensemble (Humphris’ keyboards producing every beguiling, sometimes percussive, sound under the sun: Chris Walker orchestrates), to energise Alistair David’s infinitely alive, wholly fresh take on Fosse’s magical original – occasionally a tribute, but most newly, brilliantly reimagined.

Takis’ gripping designs are mind-boggling (or – goggling): but the work is always A*. Joshua Carr’s lights switches are a masterclass in themselves.

And what a cast. The variety and apt characterising Buckhurst instills in them is fabulously well worked out: miraculous direction, superlative everything. This is a seven or eight-star show, but we can only give it five.

Roderic Dunnett