Blazing a trail… a freewheeling new take on War and Peace

Spend Spend Spend (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester)

Verdict: Cautionary fiscal tale

Before you get any deeper into the buyers’ remorse of the January sales, you may like to check out the musical cautionary tale Spend Spend Spend at Manchester’s Royal Exchange.

It’s the story of Yorkshire lᴀss Viv Nicholson, who won the football pools in 1961 (Gen Z readers: think the National Lottery). 

Asked what she was going to do with her winnings of £152,319 (about £4million today), our Viv’s reply was: ‘Spend, spend, spend!’

And as lottery winners go, Viv’s life was a textbook car crash.

By the time she hit the jackpot at the tender of age of 25, she had divorced the father of her first child, married Keith next door and had three more kids. 

She did indeed spend spend spend — on cars, furs and jewels — becoming a pariah in the upmarket town of Garforth, before the love of her life was killed in a car accident.

Her winnings exhausted, Viv opened a boutique, went bust, married three more (bad) men, and was finally saved from alcoholism by Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

That’s quite a lot of plot; but our Viv wasn’t exactly Eva Perón and I’m not sure we need two hours and 40 minutes covering her life in forensic detail.

Rose Galbraith as the lead character of Viv Nicholson in Spend Spend Spend

With her Sixties blonde bob, Galbraith (left) brings atтιтude and innocence to the libidinous young Viv, writes PATRICK MARMION

Alex James-Hatton is a fit, affectionate Keith, who is Viv’s second husband (pictured together)

The genial music and lyrics from Steve Brown and Justin Greene’s 1998 show could also use some bigger, brᴀssier numbers to break the bank. The only really memorable tune among them is Who’s Gonna Love Me?, in the second half, when Viv is abruptly bereaved.

Having said that, Josh Seymour’s production, set on a silver disc (which ought to be stamped as a giant shilling), does keep you distracted — thanks largely to Rose Galbraith as the younger Viv.

With her Sixties blonde bob, Galbraith brings atтιтude and innocence to the libidinous young Viv. And in a neat twist, Rachel Leskovac — who played that role in the original production — looks back ruefully as the older Viv.

Joe Alessi pays glorious tribute to the post-war unreconstructed male, sporting a ginger Teddy-boy wig as Viv’s alcoholically intemperate father. Alex James-Hatton is a fit, affectionate Keith, who helps us feel the sadness in Viv’s wayward life.

Otherwise, the song-and-dance numbers need dialling up, with more choreographic fizz.

Every now and then I wonder why I’ve never won the lottery — but this made me feel better that I haven’t.

 

Little Shop Of Horrors (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield)

Verdict: A terrific triffid

How to explain the abiding success of the 1960 schlock-horror, low-budget, B-movie Little Shop Of Horrors (featuring a then-unknown Jack Nicholson in a minor role)?

It’s now best known as a musical, after becoming an off-Broadway hit in 1982 and enjoying a West End run in 2007, starring Sheridan Smith. A black comedy featuring domestic violence, a sadistic dentist and a flesh-eating potted plant, it isn’t obvious hit musical material.

And yet it holds a morbid fascination, as our unlikely hero — goofy flower shop ᴀssistant Seymour — saves his beloved colleague Audrey by feeding her abusive dentist boyfriend to an overgrown Venus flytrap.

Part of what drives our interest is Seymour’s desire to cover up his enslavement to the plant, which he dubs Audrey II.

But Alan Menken’s score also delights as a twinkle-toed homage to Motown; while Howard Ashman’s lyrics let us have a good chuckle in songs like Skid Row, Somewhere That’s Green, and the big cheesy romantic number Suddenly, Seymour.

Little Shop of Horrors is irresistibly cheery and driven by Jewish humour, but in Sheffield they’ve ditched the American accents

The infamous dentist scene in Little Shop of Horrors (Wilf Scolding as the dentist)

Colin Ryan during a scene from the Little Shop of Horrors at the Crucible Theatre

Not only is it irresistibly cheery, it’s driven by Jewish humour — nowhere more sardonic than in the klezmer number when Seymour’s boss, Mr Mushnik, adopts him as his son.

In Sheffield they’ve had the good sense to ditch the American accents, leaving Seymour to be played by Colin Ryan as a bashful Brummie.

Georgina Onuorah could be snappier as the object of his affection, Audrey; but her voice combines both vulnerability and heft.

Wilf Scolding is hilariously sinister as the fiendish dentist, while Sam ʙuттery turns the monstrous Audrey II into a vengeful drag queen.

Georgia Lowe’s set design combines wheelie bins (with human cargo), dancing molars, and boxes full of enormous tentacles.

And Amy Hodge’s production packs a glorious finale for the man (and woman) eating plant. Three cheers as guilt and death triumph over love and life.

Spend Spend Spend until January 11; Little Shop Of Horrors until January 18. 

Blazing a trail… a freewheeling new take on War and Peace

Natasha, Pierre And The Great Comet Of 1812 (Donmar Warehouse, London)

Verdict: From Russia with love

By Georgina Brown 

Dave Malloy’s blazing, breathless, sung-through musical, inspired by a luscious tragicomic chunk from War And Peace, is more original and eclectic than anything else playing in the West End.

Woven into its indie-folk fabric are searing Slavic strings, a carnivalesque accordion, heart-rending Les Mis-like ballads, drinking songs, torch songs — and more.

Worry not if you’ve forgotten what’s what in Tolstoy’s epic. All is revealed in the first number — with the playful repeтιтion of a children’s memory game: ‘There’s a war going on out there somewhere and Andrey isn’t here.’ 

It’s followed by a tuneful introduction to the key characters: Natasha is ‘young’, Pierre is ‘unhappy’, Anatole is ‘H๏τ’, Hélène, Anatole’s sister and also Pierre’s wife, ‘a slut’.

The cast of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet Of 1812. The sung-through musical is more original and eclectic than anything else playing in the West End

And so it begins, with Declan Bennett’s tired and emotional Pierre our guide: ‘They say we are asleep until we fall in love.’ Pierre cares as little for Hélène as she for him. Perhaps it’s the effect of the impending comet, but love is in the air.

Natasha (a giggling, girlish Chumisa Dornford-May) is in the city for the first time, out at the opera and discovering that everyone’s torch-like binoculars are focused on her instead of the stage. Especially those of Anatole, Jamie Muscato’s preening, kohl-eyed bad-boy, wearing Hugh Grant’s toothy grin and a New Romantic blouse.

Tim Sheader’s fabulous, freewheeling production has the feel and flair of a cabaret, the mood moving from mischief and merriment to misery and melancholy.

Cat Simmons’s scowling Hélène, spilling out of her corset, prowls the stage like a, er, cat; a soulful Sonya (Maimuna Memon), Natasha’s bestie, breaks our hearts with her sad song.

The show ends on a note of high drama, as a sphere of bright light — the comet — descends, and Pierre falls in love, whetting our appeтιтes for the next juicy chapter. Bring it on!

Until February 8.