Peter Viney's Blog

Me and My Girl

Book & Lyrics by L Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber
Book revised by Stephen Fry with contributions by Mike Ockrent
Music by Noel Gay

Directed by Daniel Evans
Designed by Lez Brotherton
Gareth Valentine- Musical Director / Supervisor / Arranger
Alistair David- Choreographer

Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 11th July 2018, 19.30

CAST:
Ryan Pidgen – Bill Snibson, a costermonger
(replacing Matt Lucas)
Caroline Quentin – Duchess of Dene
Clive Rowe- Sir John Tremayne
Alex Young- Sally Smith

with:
Lydia Bannister – May Miles / Ensemble
Ronan Burns – Lord Damming / Ensemble
Jennie Dale- Parchester
Jacqui Dubois – Lady Battersby
Davide Fienauri – Lord French /  Ensemble
Lauren Hall – Maid / Ensemble
Siubhan Harrison – Lady Jacqueline Carstone
Matt Harrop – Lord Battersby
Victoria Hinde – Lady Diss / Ensemble
Melissa Lowe – Ensemble
Dominic Marsh – The Hon Gerald Bolingbroke
Natasha Mould – Mrs Worthington-Worthington / Ensemble
? – Bob Barking
Pippa Raine- Lady Brighton / Ensemble
Emile Ruddock- Constable  / Ensemble
Charlotte Scott – Mrs Brown / Ensemble
Jak Skelly- Charles  / Ensemble
Monica Swain – Mrs Stainsly-Atherton  / Ensemble
Oliver Tester – Chef  / Ensemble
Toyan Thomas Brown- Telegram Boy  / Ensemble

Chichester musicals have a high West End transfer rate (due to high quality). Classic musicals are not my thing, but Chichester has persuaded me to watch them. We missed last year’s big one, Fiddler On the Roof, not because we thought it would be less than fantastic, but because the songs in the original musical, along with Topol, are among my most loathed songs ever. I’d rather have a tooth drilled without anaesthetic than listen to If I were A Rich Man ever again.

This year it’s Me And My Girl. It dates from 1937, and was a film in 1939 named after one of its major songs The Lambeth Walk. The current revised version with Stephen Fry’s updating is from 1984 when it started an eight year West End run and hoovered up awards. Four of the songs are “Great English Songbook” – Me and My Girl, The Lambeth Walk, The Sun Has Got His Hat On and Leaning on A Lamp-post. The last was a Noel Gay song from the same year as the original musical, and was an addition to the 1980s production. I confused Me and My Girl with the song For Me & My Gal by George W. Meyer which is a different song, dating from a 1917 Broadway musical.

The essay in the programme The Entertainers by George Hall puts the play in context. Noel Gay wrote it as a vehicle for cockney music hall star Lupino Lane, and the melodies, plot and jokes are deliberately “music hall” in style. e.g

Duchess  This is Lady Brighton
Bill  I know your husband the pier … (peer)

Boom boom!

George Hall quotes the 1980s adaptor, Stephen Fry:

Almost uniquely among blockbusting stage musicals of the twentieth century, Me & My Girl owed absolutely nothing to Broadway- its debt is wholly to British music hall … as British as seaside piers, pie and mash and pints of mild.

The Musical Director, Gareth Valentine, adds an essay on Noel Gay’s melodic gift for writing extremely simple, catchy songs, such as Run Rabbit Run in World War II. The Lambeth Walk was so catchy and well-known a year after the play opened, that Chamberlain meeting Hitler in Munich in 1938 heard German street bands playing it in tribute (according to Robert Harris’ impeccably researched novel Munich.)

To Chichester 2018 …

Well, strike me down, love a duck,  there was a turn up for the books, and no mistake. (Apologies, cheerful loveable Cockney is the basis of so many English musicals, including this one).

Just as in the plot of a fantasy musical, the star was ill on Press Night on Monday and unable to perform.  Matt Lucas, in the lead role of Bill Snibson, had voice issues and was replaced by Ryan Pidgen (who normally plays Bob Barking) at very short notice who got a “frenzied” standing ovation at the end. Ryan Pidgen had not rehearsed in the role with the company, and his greater height was an issue:

 We were meant to start understudy calls today (Tuesday). Officially, I’d had no rehearsals, but I’ve been lucky enough to watch him from the wings for the last five weeks. We came into the theatre at about two for a run through, Matt came in as well and he was struggling with his voice. At about half-past four they sent him to the doctor. They had to make me (new) costumes; at five o’clock I was still in wardrobe getting fitted and trying to learn my lines.
Ryan Pidgeon, interview in The Telegraph 10 July 2018

We saw it on Wednesday, and Matt Lucas was expected to return. Having read the reviews we were in a quandary. Who would we rather see? Pidgen after all has an extensive career history in singing and dancing in stage musicals, and Lucas doesn’t. Matt Lucas was still indisposed so it was Ryan Pidgen – understandably on a two show matinee day (let alone the World Cup semi-final). Pidgen was brilliant, singing, dancing,  catching people mid-air, doing elaborate routines with his cloak. There was not a single hint that this was an understudy at work. No one is going to feel short-changed.

The set design by Lez Brotherton is state-of-the art, moving from London skyline to country house exterior to hall, to kitchen, to library, to bathroom, garden, back to the street with lamp-posts sliding into view. The bathroom with Bill in a sudsy bathtub, with Lady Jacqueline in lingerie trying to seduce him is a marvellous piece of set design (and acting). If you see it note the “risque” 18th century style nude painting on the bathroom wall.

Gerald Bolingbroke (Dominic Marsh) and Lady Jacqueline (Siubhan Harrison)

The plot is basic, and right on the British obsession with class. We open with the Hareford stately home. Lady Jacqueline (Siubhan Harrison) and Gerald (Dominic Marsh) are cousins, and engaged to be married. The 13th Earl has died and the sexy Lady Jacqueline has decided she might be better off with the new 14th earl. The family assemble, led by the formidable Duchess of Dene (Caroline Quentin) and Sir John Tremayne (Clive Rowe) her old friend. They are joint trustees of the Hareford estates. The family solicitor, Parchester (Jennie Dale) explains that the 13th Earl was married briefly, produced an heir and they have tracked him down to Lambeth. He will inherit, but unless the trustees approve of him and his future spouse, he will merely retire on an annuity.

The Kitchen scene: Earlier photo with Ryan Pidgen as Chef, centre rear – they did not replace him when he switched to Bill.

Enter the heir and 14th Earl, Bill Snibson (Ryan Pidgen / Matt Lucas), a raucous Cockney costermonger from Lambeth. There’s a nice line about nobody of quality living in Lambeth … except, it is pointed out, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Lambeth Palace). Even when the Duchess manages to “train him in etiquette” (well, a bit), she still disapproves of his girlfriend, Sally. Sally decides to go back to Lambeth to allow Bill to take his place as aristocrat. There are two fantasy sequences in Act II – first, preparing to speak in the House of Lords, Bill is confronted with his ancestors in armour. Second, when he follows Sally to Lambeth (Leaning on a Lampost) there is a parade of all the women in the ensemble dressed as Sally (must have cost a fortune in wigs, said my companion). Sir John Tremayne intervenes and takes Sally to elocution lessons … cheekily “with a chap I know in Upper Wimpole Street. He’s done it before” (a reference to Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady which the audience got instantly). All ends happily.

The musical arrangements are dazzlingly good. The main songs are indeed earworms, but Gareth Valentine has woven them into much more elaborate pieces. The Lambeth Walk is long, closing Act One and has all sorts of variations in it. I never thought I’d welcome a Pearly Kings & Queens Lambeth Walk as an earworm, but it was playing all night and has not ceased. I once did lights on a variety show with a Pearly Kings & Queen’s medley (Any Old Iron, The Lambeth Walk, Knees Up Mother Brown) and in a very good late 60s show, it became the only section I really disliked. Gareth Valentine’s arrangement put it in totally new light … it’s the final encore too.

The Sun Has Got His Hat On. Gerald (Dominic Marsh) centre. 

Then Act Two opens with The Sun Has Got His Hat On, equally rebuilt with a healthy transfusion of newer sounds and rhythms. That had – as throughout – great costumes, particularly the vintage bathing costumes.

There are bits that will stick. Somehow, Ryan Pidgen made every rather creaky joke work a dream. The text has a lot of jokes, and they worked, even classic seaside postcard ones like the butler asking Where are the two bags? (i.e. suitcases) and Bill indicates the Duchess and Lady Battersby (Jacqueline Dubois) and the expressions on the two older ladies’ faces had me roaring with laughter. Throughout, Caroline Quentin’s body language, facial expressions and delivery were superb.

Caroline Quentin as The Duchess of Dene; Clive Rowe as Sir John Tremayne

The strength of the cast is in depth. Clive Rowe as Sir John Tremayne is a sweetheart beneath an initially gruff (but perplexed) exterior.  Dominic Marsh, playing the upper class twit, Gerald, excelled in 2017 in both Tristan & Yseult and Romantics Anonymous. Alex Young was a perfect Sally. Siubhan Harrison as Lady Jacqueline Carstone was a delightful vamp, and the bathroom scene with Bill is unforgettable (and a great singer).  Jennie Dale as Parchester sings, taps and cracks us up with laughter throughout too. Jak Skelly, Charles, the very tall butler, exudes Jeeves style snooty disapproval at all times.

A classic Chichester musical. The dancing, singing and eleven-piece orchestra are as good as you get. The set design, costumes and more modern choreography pull this 1937 piece eighty years onward with great success.

It will go to the West End. Chichester’s stage (and facilities) beat any West End theatre so grab it now if you can.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
(Press night: with Ryan Pidgen replacing Matt Lucas)

5 star
Gary Shipton, The i *****
4 star
Ben Lawrence, The Telegraph ****
Natalie Haynes The Guardian ****
Gary Naylor, Broadway World ****
Steve Turner, Reviews Hub, **** 1/2

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

DANIEL EVANS
Quiz, by James Graham, Chichester 2017
Forty Years On by Alan Bennett, Chichester 2017
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London

CAROLINE QUENTIN
The Hypocrite by Richard Bean, RSC 2017
Relative Values by Noel Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2013

CLIVE ROWE
The Hot-House by Harold Pinter, Trafalgar Studios 2013
The Ladykillers, West End 2011

DOMINIC MARSH
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017 (Tristan)
Romantics Anonymous, by Emma Rice, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017(Jean-René)