Wise Children continues at Richmond Theatre, London until 30 March 2019, then on tour until 6 April.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Is it a musical, this exhilarating, wild, often naughty, almost uncategorisable Emma Rice adaptation of Angela Carter’s final 1991 novel Wise Children?
Probably not, although there is plenty of music in this complex celebration of showbusiness as seen through the eyes of twins Dora and Nora Chance, two one-time chorus girls from “the wrong side of the river” living in a South London caravan.
It’s their 75th birthday and they have been invited to the vain and pompous Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard’s 100th birthday party.
He is the natural father who has abandoned them at birth, leaving his nice brother Peregrine to be their legal father and putting their upbringing in the hands of Grandma Chance, a foul-mouthed exhibitionist who likes nothing better than getting her kit off in a stunning, show-stealing performance by Katy Owen.
The audience must forever be on their toes to keep up with the outrageous race and gender changes, the time switches and the multiple side stories of a huge showbiz family and the children they have produced.
This is the first show from Emma Rice since she left the Globe and formed her new company, also called Wise Children, and she is as adventurous as ever, not only adapting this colourful story to the stage but also directing it and, in the latter stages of the tour, even playing Nora with the original Etta Murfitt, from its run at the Old Vic, unavailable.
Before our very eyes, Nora changes sex and size into a female impersonator, the long-legged Omari Douglas, when flashing back to the twins’ song-and-dance days. The fearless Rice goes for everything.
The part of Dora and the task of narrating this spicy slice of life fall to the very capable hands of West End veteran Gareth Snook who does most of the singing while Douglas and Melissa James are wonderfully watchable as the exotic showgirls Nora and Dora.
Great popular songs of that era are re-created to make a point. ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby’, the Louis Jordan hit of 1943, perfectly reflects the double paternity issue. The other evergreen standards ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby’ (Jimmy McHugh/Dorothy Fields, 1928), ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’ (Dorothy Fields/Jerome Kern, 1936), ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ (Irving Berlin, 1936) and ‘Yes, My Darling Daughters’ (Jack Lawrence, 1940) cleverly weave into the rich tapestry of this lewd and lurid plot about illegitimacy and dark family secrets.
Coming more up to date (the story takes us through to 1989) the 1982 Eddy Grant hit ‘Electric Avenue’ pins the action down to Brixton Market with its multiple ethnicities and patois, all conveying the show’s oft-repeated theme ‘What a joy it is to sing and dance’.
Paul Hunter does double duty as nasty old Melchior Hazard (Chance and Hazard, geddit?) and Gorgeous George, the stand-up comic delivering a stream of old jokes with glee and perfect timing.
Mike Shepherd is excellent as Peregrine and there are telling contributions from Mirabelle Gremaud and Bettrys Jones as Young Nora and Dora, Patrycja Kujawska as Lady Atalanta, crippled in a fall downstairs (was she pushed?) and Sam Archer and Ankur Bahl as the young Peregrine and Melchior.
The revolving caravan is a work of art created by Vicki Mortimer who is also responsible for the costumes while musical director Ian Ross has composed the new material and arranged the old, helped by two cohorts Stu Barker and Alex Heane.
It’s a refreshingly different, full-on evening of breakneck bawd, bonk and bad language that the audience clearly took to their hearts judging from the prolonged standing ovation.
It would, in my view, benefit by being ten minutes shorter. But one thing is for sure, it’s a genuine one-off and you’ll never see anything like it again.
Jeremy Chapman
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