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Our House follows the trend
of Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You but is in another league from
these compilation shows. Our House may be based on the songs
of Madness, but it is no tribute show. It is a stylish, classy
evening of intelligent story telling performed by the most energetic
cast currently on the West-End stage. It is, in short, a great
new British musical.
Our House follows Joe Casey
through two versions of his life - the result of making a crucial
decision ala Sliding Doors. As we switch between two versions
of the same story, illusionist Paul Kieve has designed remarkable
quick changes which sees Joe switch costumes in seconds behind
umbrellas and other set pieces. While the Madness songs never
hold up the action, without them Tim Firth's script is still
a great story. With the possible exception of the opening to
Act Two (Night Boat To Cairo/Wings of a Dove), the songs never
feel like they have been crowbarred into the book, and could
have been written specially.
It is true that at times things
get complicated, but this is no bad thing. There's no time to
sit back and relax, expect to engage your brain, be moved to
tears, sometimes through empathy for the characters, but often
with sheer uncontrollable laughter.
From the opening, which plays
House of Fun and Our House in tandem, we know we're in for something
special. Peter Darling's (Billy Elliot, Merrily We Roll Along)
ingenious choreography is breathtaking, and at its most innovative
in the schoolroom "Baggy Trousers" scene, in which
bad guy Matt Cross (Reecey) displays his stunning dancing skills.
In the lead role of Joe, Michael
Jibson displays accomplished talent and an intelligence as an
actor that belies his years. Fellow graduate from Guildford School
of Acting, Julia Gay plays Joe's girlfriend Sarah and is perfectly
cast with a beautiful voice. Together they share one of the most
moving moments in the show It Must Be Love.
As Joe's parents, both Ian
Reddington and Lesley Nicol give excellent performances, but
are not well cast against each other with an unconvincing age
gap, which meant that Margate was far less moving than it should
have been.
Also impressive in the cast
are the Tameka Empson as Billie and Oliver Jackson as Lewis who
are both hilarious and somewhat overshadow their respective sidekicks.
Rob Howell's smart design is
great fun, resembling a cartoonish Madness video. Director Matthew
Warchus' direction is tight and subtly accurate. The pace never
sags, and the complicated narrative is well signposted.
The show also pokes fun at
other musicals (I Am Driving In My Car pokes fun at Grease and
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang while Camden Market becomes an Oliver
parody). This show is London's answer to Rent. It's hip, trendy
and could be what the West-End needs to attract a new younger
audience, without alienating the existing theatregoers. It may
not be from the Donmar or the National - but Olivier panel sit
up and see the Best New Musical this year.
MARK BARLOW
- MUSICAL STAGES ONLINE
There is a corner of Covent
Garden that could be forever Camden Town if the feelgood fun
that is this Madness-based musical runs as long as its near neighbour
The Mousetrap. The newly trimmed and pacier version that has
just opened certainly deserves to last as many years as its theatrical
soulmate, Blood Brothers.
Indeed, the presence of Madness
frontman Suggs for a 10 week stint now puts the Nutty icing on
a rather terrific cake. He might mot be the greatest actor as
the narrating dead father of central character Joe, but with
him on stage, it is as if all is right with the world and this
show.
He watches as the Sliding-Doors-type
story unfolds, that of 16-year-old lad Joe who, trying to impress
his girlfriend, is caught committing a minor crime. Should he
run or stay? Tim Firth's likeable book follows two simultaneous
different paths of good and bad - though events are not black
and white as Rob Howell's cleverly changing monochrome sets imply.
Matthew Warchus's production
quickly grabs the audience with those Madness classics, opening
with the larky condoms odyssey of House of Fun, leading into
the title song as Camden terrace opens up into an explosion of
balloons and revellers and Baggy trousers with anarchic schoolkids
hurtling desks across the stage. Peter Darling's choreoraphy
is just joyous, and given boundless fizz by a young cast.
And talking of energy, Michael
Jibson's lightning costume changes from one Joe to another still
defy belief; his performance, too, is supremely assured yet,
with the face of a teenage Bisto kid, he retains the necessary
vulnerability when required.
For this is not just all cheeky,
laddish humour, it is about adolescent angst, friendship and
loyalty, the importance of family and home - notions that chime
well with the more plaintive and touching side of the Madness
oeuvre.
In another incarnation I described
Our House as a welcome rival to Abbafest Mamma Mis! I think NW1
is now giving Sweden a real run for its money, money, money.
It would be utter madness to miss it.
THE EVENING
STANDARD
Too chirpy by half: that was
the faintly damning verdict meted out on the Madness musical
Our House when it opened last October, and the show has struggled
at the box office ever since. Relaunched now after scooping the
Best Musical award at the Oliviers, and with the band's beloved
frontman Suggs making his West End debut for one week only in
a minor but pivotal role, this time fate seems to be conspiring
against its survival: the triple whammy of war, heightened fears
about terrorism and a next-to-useless tube system threaten to
make stay-at-homes of all of us.
Well, it would be a crying
shame if this brilliant, boisterous entertainment were to fall
by the wayside. There can be no musical in town more likely to
lift depressed spirits, calm nerves and restore a sense of joy
in London life than Tim Firth's treatment of Madness's mighty
back catalogue. Together with director Matthew Warchus and choreographer
Peter Darling, Firth scales the songs' nutty heights of fun and
oft-overlooked depths of feeling with patriotically rousing elan.
Despite murmurings that Our
House has been rejigged in response to detractors' comments,
a second viewing confirms that, barring a brisker pace, very
little has changed, which is precisely as it should be, because
there was very little amiss in the first place.
The main drawback is that,
without any prior knowledge of or affection for the tunes, a
full appreciation of the show's abundant craftmanship and subtler
hunour inevitably suffers. But, in centring the story on the
coming-of-age dilemmas of a Camden lad called Joe, niftily cutting
between versions of the life that awaits him, Firth appeals to
anyone who's ever gone through the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence
or pondered the price of getting ahead.
The cast - fronted by Michael
Jibson as Joe, Julia Gay as his girlfriend - bristle with energy,
carrying the action forward on a great surging wave of teenage
hormones. To the showstopping delight of Baggy Trousers, in which
school desks whiz around the stage like dodgem cars, and the
quiet rapture of It Must Be Love must be added another highlight
this week - the singular treat of hearing the yearning-filled
ballad One Better Day delivered anew by its originator, Suggs,
as Joe's dad. Standing alone on a heavy overcoat, Madness's main
man lets loose soaring hopes for better times. With or without
his claasy presence, this show deserves them.
THE TELEGRAPH
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Written by Tim
Firth
