the times | Friday May 27 2022 13
first night
PAMELA RAITHWe Started
to Sing
Arcola, E8
{{{((
theatre
Six alumna Courtney Bowman was
wrong for the role of Elle Woods,
the Californian party girl who, after
being dumped by her ambitious,
well-connected boyfriend, reinvents
herself as a student at Harvard
Law School.
Bowman lays those doubts to rest
almost instantly. Underneath her
blonde hairpiece she’s irrepressibly
sparky and sensuous, her voice is
strong and she delivers some soulful,
Beyoncé-like touches in Ellen Kane’s
vivacious choreography. Sixty-odd
years ago the great jazz and blues
singer Dinah Washington raised
eyebrows by wearing a blonde wig;
Bowman lives in an era when barriers
are much more fluid. There’s a mix of
they/she/he pronouns in the list of
cast members. The more important
point here is that, even allowing for
a few rough edges, the performances
do justice to the material.
Admittedly Laura Hopkins’s set
isn’t easy on the eye. What I take to
be an attempt to evoke a backdrop
of strawlike tresses ends up looking
like a beach hut after a night of hard
partying by the Downing Street posse.
Still, Michael Ahomka-Lindsay
makes a winningly chivalrous Emmett.
As Brooke, the fitness queen on trial
for murder, Lauren Drew opens the
second act with a potent display of
skipping and singing on Whipped into
Shape. The overall vocal honours go
to Nadine Higgin as the lovelorn
beautician Paulette; she turns Ireland
into an even more outrageously over-
the-top anthem.
Jean Chan’s costumes are a
comfortable mix of glam and brassy.
The snappy courtroom banter on
Gay or European? is a delight —
and, in this all-inclusive context, not
remotely offensive. Oh, and there are
two very camp, very human dogs
bouncing around the stage all
evening too. Woof, woof.
To July 2, openairtheatre.comgrace, keeping the funk flowing
through extended jams that ran
into each other. The guitarist
DeWayne “Blackbyrd” McKnight
frequently stole the spotlight. A
trio on brass sometimes shimmied
alongside the singers and, after an
underwhelming opening featuring
more synchronised arm-waving than
discernible songs, finally got the
crowd grooving.
By half an hour in the party had
begun to feel less forced. Clinton was
up and down several times during
several songs, notably a fabulous Flash
Light, a celebratory Put Your Hands
Together, a slinky, sax-soaked One
Nation Under a Groove and a raucous,
guitar solo-strewn Maggot Brain.
The well-drilled singers had hit
their stride too, some shedding clothes
as they took the lead, others creating
a crowd around a seated Clinton to
bring him back into the fold.
Should the veteran showman still
be touring? He certainly seemed to be
having a blast, albeit more as a special
guest than the centre of attention.
Only once did it briefly appear as
though he had nodded off before he
suddenly swivelled round in his seat.
Clinton hopes that his P-Funk
clan will continue to tour when he
retires. On this evidence they probably
could, although the shows will surely
get smaller.
Lisa Verrico
Albert Hall, Manchester, tonight;
Dreamland, Margate, tomorrowG
eorge Clinton should have
had his feet up by now. In
2019 the flamboyant funk
pioneer began this farewell
tour at the age of 78. Twice
delayed by Covid, its UK leg hit
London with a clearly struggling
Clinton often confined to a swivel seat.
He was, at least, engaged and
animated, conducting the suitably
chaotic show clad in colourful
leggings, a captain’s cap and a silver
shawl to which two tiny handbags
were attached. And, unlike James
Brown in his latter days, he didn’t
disappear from the stage to recover
from bouts of exertion, insteadCourtney Bowman is sparky and sensuous as the party girl who reinvents herself as a Harvard law studentBrash blonde in the pink
This musical update takes risks but is a camp delight, says Clive Davis
I
s there enough all-round pinkness
for the hardcore fans? If watching
the Reese Witherspoon comedy,
now more than two decades old,
was one of your coming-of-age
rituals, you may be thrown — at first,
anyway — by this audacious musical
revival directed by Lucy Moss,
co-creator of that all-conquering
Tudor history show, Six.
Go with an open mind and you’ll
be blown away. True, the show by
Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and
the bookwriter Heather Hach —
which first reached Broadway in 2007— has a head start on the movie. It’s
far wittier, with insidious melodies and
lyrics that are cheeky enough to
rhyme “snobs” with “Thomas Hobbes”.
But Moss has repackaged the show in
a way that brings it bang up to date
without sacrificing its joie de vivre.
Blondeness takes on a very
different meaning here. Moss’s
diverse casting reinvents conventional
ideas of beauty, in line with the idea
that character trumps superficialities.
On social media there’d been some
pre-opening-night grumbling that,
as a mixed-race, plus-size actress, theA
ll sorts of playwrights
filch ideas from their
family history. Barney
Norris is taking things
further this year. After
sharing a stage on tour with his father,
the pianist and composer David Owen
Norris, in the two-man show The
Wellspring, Norris is now putting
his father on stage as a character
alongside his mother, Fiona, and his
paternal grandparents, Peggy and
Bert. The result is an unabashedly
backward-looking play about how
you can’t go back: about his parents’
marriage dissolving when he was
six years old and the family moving
unsteadily forwards.
Norris’s best plays (Eventide,
Visitors, While We’re Here) make
something richly resonant from
intimate exchanges. He also teaches
creative writing at Oxford University.
He will know the risks of a memory
play about these real or imagined
family events; he will know how close
the divide is between being piercingly
personal and subjecting his audience
to family snapshots.
I can’t pretend that We Started to
Sing, decorated as it is with blurred
video footage of the real Norrises in
Frankie Bradshaw’s neat design,
altogether avoids indulgence. It’s
too fractured, advertises its ideas
(about the need to feel you are
at the start of something; about
the men in the family needing to
be the centre of attention) without
quite biffing you in the body with
them. Yet scene by scene Norris’s
artfully stilted family occasions hold
the attention, sometimes move,
sometimes amuse.
It starts with David (David
Ricardo-Pearce) and Fiona (Naomi
Petersen) visiting Bert (Robin Soans)
and Peggy (Barbara Flynn) for Bert’s
70th birthday celebration. David
resents having to sit through his
lively, handy dad telling his war
stories, but his aversion to conflict
and playing second fiddle is a
trait that is touched on more than
it is explored.
Pierce, who also plays the piano
here, gives a good performance
that, by the design of Norris the
writer-director, never gets past the
tentative for long. Petersen sings
beautifully between scenes, and
can be stiff when the emotional
temperature is low, but then she’s
supposed to be — especially when
her second husband, Rob (George
Taylor, ageing adroitly from boyish
to middle-aged as the decades
advance), enters the scene.
The evening is at its most accessible
when the grandparents are centre
stage. Partly that’s because they
are less curtailed characters, partly
because Flynn and Soans are
sensationally good actors, partly
because — and this is only my
guess — it’s easier to take liberties
with your dead grandparents than
your living parents. The mood
is freer, even if not always happier,
when they are on stage in a tender,
intelligent, not quite fully realised
family drama.
Dominic Maxwell
To June 18, arcolatheatre.com
MARILYN KINGWILLLegally Blonde
Regent’s Park Open
Air Theatre, NW1
{{{{(George Clinton
& Parliament-
Funkadelic
O2 Forum, NW5
{{{((theatre
pop
George Clinton bids an energetic farewell aged 78; he hopes his band will go onretreating to his chair from where he
stamped his feet, gave the occasional
yelp and urged the crowd to “make
some noise”.
To compensate, eight vocalists
lined the front of the stage in varying
states of party attire — wigs, sequins,
shorts, fake fur and psychedelic
sweats — like the cast from Fame
engaged in a twerk-off. Some were
reportedly Clinton’s grandchildren.
Not all were competent enough to
take over on vocals, yet most of them
gave it a go. Occasionally someone
would shine before slipping back into
the chorus line.
A tight band was the gig’s saving