How many movies would
shrink to half the size if their
characters stopped putting
themselves, and each other,
on needless guilt trips?
“It’s time to let go,” says
Iceman (Val Kilmer), now a
fleet commander beset by bad
health, as Kilmer is in real life,
forcing out the words in a
breathy rasp, and touching in
ways that go far beyond the
scene as written.
“I don’t know how,” replies
Cruise, as well he might. He’s
just shy of 60 — the same age
Paul Newman was in The
Color of Money, the film where
Cruise played young pup to
Newman’s grizzled hustler.
Now it’s Cruise’s turn to
feel the heat of the next
generation. “The future is
coming,” Harris tells Cruise.
“And you’re not in it.”
Top Gun: Maverick is his
Color of Money: a summer
blockbuster of the old school,
with rust-bucket F-14s duking
it out with young pups in
F-18s, all shot on celluloid
rather than sketched in by
computers, at the behest of a
star who refuses to quit. The
old dog still has it. cWoollens on — the Regent’s
Park Open Air Theatre has
opened for summer and has
invited Lucy Moss, co-writer
of the Henry VIII spoof Six,
to direct Legally Blonde.
This cheesy musical about a
fashion-obsessed Californian
girl going to snooty Harvard
Law School is more than
20 years old. Does anyone
nowadays balk at an
unconventional young woman
studying law? With places such
as Cambridge University
trashing the old elite, citadels
of privilege have changed.
Moss, seeking new political
relevance, has cast fuller-
bodied, nonbinary actors and
turned the whole thing into a
relentlessly zingy assertion of
minority pride. Fellow fatties
of the world, first we take
Harvard, then we take Brenda
Hale’s old seat on the Supreme
Court. Such is the devotion to
diversity that even the story’s
two cute dogs (normally a
bankable crowd-pleaser) have
been turned into camped-up
humans. It lends new
meaning to “poodle-faker”.
With sound balances askew
at Tuesday’s press night, ears
were throbbing after a few
minutes of caterwauling from
Courtney Bowman, who plays
the central figure, Elle.
Bowman has a likeable grin,
but she is no Callas. The
opening song, Omigod You
Guys, is a horror of nasal
shrieking, “like” and
“omigod” being just about
discernible amid otherwise
indistinct words. Elle’s big
thing is pink. She and her
mates leap about like a flock
of flat-footed flamingos. The
stage’s superstructureThis Legally Blonde reboot is awed by what it should be teasing
wobbles under the weight of
the company’s loosely
choreographed gyrations.
A 13-piece band gives it
plenty of welly and there is
good drumming in the song
Harvard Variations. Not that
this Harvard offers much
variety. The film speared
Ivy League condescension.
Moss’s direction fails to create
a contrast. The Harvard
students seem as diverse as
Elle’s Californian chums. For
satire to work, cruelty is
needed. The only source of
that here is Eugene McCoy’s
Professor Callahan, the
school’s feared lecturer. His
song Blood in the Water urges
the students to be sharks. It
rhymes “Thomas Hobbes”
with “spineless snobs” and
the song Gay or European
reinforces the clever writing.
Legally Blonde can be salty, all
right, but this production is
too awed by the very fault
the musical should tease:
socio-political orthodoxy.
Thirty-eight years ago I was
in India during the general
election that followed the
assassination of Indira Gandhi.
Outside our bungalow one
night there was a violent
demonstration by Congress
Party supporters. I also
remember a dusty campaign
meeting in Delhi, crowds as
far as you could see. Anupama
Chandrasekhar’s newplay, The Father and
the Assassin, describes an
earlier assassination, that of
Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
Who was his killer, Nathuram
Godse? What motivated him?
Indhu Rubasingham’s
production moves at a stately
pace and there are moments,
orange-lit and with a part-
raised revolve, that catch the
earthy vastness of Indian
politics. The story takes us
from Colonel Dyer’s Amritsar
massacre in 1919 to partition in- We see the young lawyer
Gandhi develop his doctrine of
peaceful resistance to British
rule. Wake up at the back, this
is a history lesson. Godse had
a peculiar childhood, being
brought up as a girl. Initially
he revered Gandhi, but had
his head turned by thuggish
Hindu nationalists who
thought the Mahatma was too
soft on Muslims.
Paul Bazely delivers a rangy,
shrewd Gandhi and Shubham
Saraf imparts just about
enough craziness into
Godse to save the show from
becoming an apologia for
Islamophobia. That, though, is
a tight-run thing, imperilled by
cringe-making breaking of the
fourth wall when Godse rages
against Brexit and tells the
audience to “know who your
enemies are!” Today’s theatre
practitioners don’t half love
ramming it down our throats. c
For theatre tickets, visit
thetimes.co.uk/ticketsQUENTIN
LETTS
Legally Blonde
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre,
London NW1
HHThe Father and the Assassin
National Theatre (Olivier),
London SE1
HHH| THEATRE
Blonde ambition Courtney
Bowman as Elle WoodsNot so pretty in pink
a sort-of love story with
Connelly, who wears a robe
in bed, so you know it’s not
that kind of love interest; and
much scouring of consciences
over the death of Goose. Does
Rooster still blame Maverick
for his dad’s death? Can
Maverick forgive himself?HHHHH KO HHHH A-OK
HHH OK HH So-so H No-noThe Bob’s Burgers Movie
In cinemas
PG, 102min HHHIn this feature-length helping
of the animated sitcom Bob’s
Burgers, the plain visual style
and jabbering humour prove
a little exhausting, partly
because the storyline is
overstretched. Yet the jokes,
some satirical, some just silly,
are sharp enough for adults,
and will also do as half-term
entertainment for kids.Edward Porter
buster
Eighties original
Gunning it Tom Cruise’s
Maverick in actionPAMELA RAITH29 May 2022 15