Unlikely Lovers: A Cabaret at Above the Arts Theatre, London.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Unlikely Lovers brought together four graduates from the Royal Academy of Music who were making their debut at the venue in an ingeniously crafted revue drawing on songs, many of them from Broadway shows, ranging from the recently revived Falsettos to gems from yesteryear like Bells Are Ringing.
The show had the atmosphere of a party with an audience made up of friends and family. Having said that, there was nothing exclusive about it for Lawrence Smith, Elissa Churchill, Genevieve McCarthy and Oliver Williams are winning personalities who have the potential to wow audiences much further afield.
Their engaging repartee, easy manner, accomplished way with a lyric and prodigious feats of memory were demonstrated in Sondheim numbers like ‘Getting Married Today’ and ‘Country House’, cleverly recast for the four of them.
Above all, the sequencing of the musical numbers was an eye opener that renewed one’s faith in the art of songwriting for the stage.
The theme of unlikely lovers was developed from some unlikely sources, inanimate objects such as the telephone, (“I’m in love with a man/Plaza-O-Double-Four-Double-Three”), as well as outer space and reptiles in the opening ensemble piece.
In such a context who could have resisted ‘A Little Priest” (Smith and Churchill), ‘The Thrill of First Love’ (Smith and Williams) or the final song that lent the show its title, the pay-off line beginning: “Lovers come and lovers go/Lovers live and die fortissimo…”
Convention was turned on its head with Smith singing the Kern-Wodehouse ‘Bill’, a sublime solo spot in contrast to his ode to a hopelessly uncool character which was given a cute interpretation.
Churchill, as a modern day Carmen, interpreted Kander and Ebb’s ‘Everybody’s Girl’, latching on to every innuendo in the lyric with facial expressions that also had the audience in stitches during the saucy ‘Screw Loose’.
Williams relished the dark side of Tim Minchin’s ‘creepy’ love song ‘You Grew On Me’, and McCarthy made an endearing Ella Peterson, the telephone answering heroine of Bells Are Ringing.
As Fay to Churchill’s Cora in Anyone Can Whistle, roles originated by Angela Lansbury and Lee Remick, they were well matched in ‘There’s Always a Woman’, another Sondheim entry, whose musical influence was much in evidence in the funny ‘What Am I Doin’?’, sung by Williams.
Unlikely Lovers is a show with a lot of potential. Musically, it was in the capable hands of John Reddel on keyboards, an exemplary accompanist, always at the service of the song in hand and at one with his cast. Their interpretations of these character-led songs demonstrated a maturity beyond their years.
When a stage director is appointed to iron out an excess or two in the performances, Unlikely Lovers should find its way onto the Fringe for festival bookings.
Adrian Edwards
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.