Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate – until 31st March 2019
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
It’s a 1927 musical about cheese. And war, big business and love. It’s crackers, but strangely irresistible too.
So what has George and Ira Gershwin’s comedy (based on George S. Kaufman’s book) got to say to us today? Just imagine: the USA has slapped high tariffs on foreign imports. A ruthless American cheese manufacturer leans on the government to go to war to protect his sales. Citizens are whipped into a patriotic fervour by meaningless manipulative speeches. The President doesn’t know what’s going on. And then the US army finds itself in difficult mountain terrain, fighting an enemy it doesn’t understand. Well, thank goodness times have changed, eh?
At times this show seems eerily prophetic, but it’s all told in a very jaunty way, with a bright seven-piece band (directed from the keyboard by Bobby Goulder) keeping things moving along briskly. There is no stage, just a rectangular performance space with the audience on three sides. (Tip: the short sides don’t give a good view – it’s really a forward-facing show.) Set and props are minimal, and are carried on and off by the cast. Orley Quick’s choreography and Giulia Scrimieri’s costumes are beautifully stylish and effective. All the performances fizz. Richard Emerson has terrific suppressed energy as the wily cheese tycoon Horace J. Fletcher; Paul Biggin hits the right note of seriousness in the general daftness, playing Jim Townsend, the one person to oppose the war. Adam Scott Pringle and Charlotte Christensen give us a couple of charming little dances as thwarted lovers. Beth Burrows sings sweetly, Sammy Graham gives us a jolly tap routine. It’s bonkers and captivating.
All that said, it is an odd show. Some of the comedy doesn’t quite work. A lighthearted satire on war feels strange. At moments it has flashes of Gilbert and Sullivan, pantomime and the Marx Brothers. At others it feels like an uncertain prototype for Oh! What a Lovely War, which is a much darker and more focused satire on warfare. But it’s intriguing that it was written at all, when America was enjoying the boom years of the 1920s, and World War I still seemed like ‘the war to end all wars’. Amid the general, em, cheesiness, there’s enough truth and foresight to give it a bite. And you can’t help being swept up in the music, the songs, the stylishness and the fun. Mark Giesser directs.