Peter Viney's Blog

This Is My Family
A musical by Tim Firth

Directed by Daniel Evans
Designed by Richard Kent

Minerva Theatre at
Chichester Festival Theatre

Monday 10th June 2019, 19.45

The play was first directed by Daniel Evans in Sheffield in 2013, and he has revived it with some of the same cast for Chichester 2019.

CAST:

James Nesbitt – Steve, the father
Sheila Hancock – May, the grandmother
Clare Burt – Yvonne, the mother
Kirsty McLaren – Nicky. The girl. Age 13.
Rachel Lumberg – Sian, the sister-in-law
Scott Folan – Matt, the son, age 16-17

MUSIC:
Caroline Humphris- MD, keyboards
Kathryn James, violin, viola
Jess Cox – cello
Nigel Davenport- double bass
Gerry Berkley- percussion
Mike Davis – flute, clarinet, bass clarinet
Fiona Clifton-Walker- harp

Tim Firth is the writer of Neville’s Island and Calendar Girls, and This is My Family was first produced by Daniel Evans in Sheffield in 2013 to great acclaim. As the Artistic Director at Chichester, he has revived it for 2019. It is described as a “musical play” rather than a musical. Chichester’s success rolls on … where else do you get a completely full house on a wet Monday night?

The family: L to R James Nesbitt (Steve), Scott Folan (Matt), Nicky (Kirsty MacLaren), Yvonne (Clare Burt)

The central character and narrator is 13 year old Nicky (Kirsty MacLaren). She has won a competition prize of the holiday of her dreams and spends much of Act One deciding where to go. Her family consists of her father, Steve (James Nesbitt) and mother, Yvonne (Clare Burt). Her brother, Matt, is a Goth. He thinks he has married his Goth girlfriend, Rachel, in a Druidic ceremony (we never meet her). Her aunt, Yvonne’s sister Sian (Rachel Lumberg), is a cheerful, blowsy occasional presence. Finally we have her grandma, May (Sheila Hancock) who is slowly slipping into dementia. During Act One, she has to move in with them after putting a lighted candle in a paper lampshade. Steve (Dad) is a bit of a DIY prat, trying to construct a hot tub from an old bath among other projects. He is fifty. Matt and Nicky are at war.

The house: L to R: Matt (Scott Folan), Steve (James Nesbitt), Nicky (Kirsty MacLaren)

The first half set is a cutaway of her house, like a doll’s house, with every “room square” completely filled with artefacts. There are steps, a platform, and an attic. Tables can be slid out, as can a bathtub. The Minerva has introduced a low stage … it’s normally flat on the same level as the front row.

For the dream holiday, after many suggestions, Nicky decides to take them all to Black Rock Pond, deep in the woods. It’s where Steve and Yvonne first met, aged 16. (I did think – so Steve’s fifty. Their oldest child, Matt is 16. It took them 18 years to have a baby? That’s quite a long time! It might have worked better with Steve as 40, but maybe they were being realistic after casting James Nesbitt.) Anyway May had taken Steve there on holiday, and it’s where May had met Steve’s father before that. The massive set revolves at the end of Act One to present a realistic forest.

Dad (James Nesbitt) and Mum (Clare Burt)

After the interval, we realize why they’ve created a raised stage. The floorboard panels have been removed and it’s now filled with black chippings. Ah, the dreaded theatrical black chippings! They were used in Calixto Bieto’s Forests at The Barbican, without question the worst theatrical production I ever saw. Then they were used much more successfully at the Young Vic for A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2017. They become sticky stage mud very effectively with the application of water, and Act 2 opens with full sprinkler systems on the go, though the actors are clad in waterproofs for a change. May is slipping further- she fails to recognize Nicky.

May (Sheila Hancock) fails to remember her own granddaughter, Nicky (Kirsty MacLaren)

Matt has lost his girlfriend and is distraught – then he loses his coat too. The tent is impossible.  They call it the Bastard Tent. The rain it rains … for the rain it raineth every day. Finally they find a buried time capsule under the tree where Steve and Yvonne met. Actually, one of the big laughs was the emergence of artefacts, including a C&A carrier bag. Later we saw several carrier bags from lost stores. It’s all resolved. The family bond.

Scott Folan as Matt

The first thing is the sets and the lighting plot are as good as you can get. Both brilliant. The couldn’t have cast six better actors for the roles, and with three generations on stage, it’s impressive that Kirsty MacLaren and Scott Folan held their own with the more famous older cast members. Kirsty MacLaren has a powerful stage presence, and is able to act that young convincingly. Matt’s Goth is wonderfully incoherent, muttering so much Nicky has to translate. Rachel Lumberg’s jolly sister-in-law is always a strong arrival in scenes. Sheila Hancock is so poignant and so real, while James Nesbitt and Clare Burt ring so many bells as the parents sandwiched in the middle. Poor Steve (James) has dreams of emigrating to Abu Dhabi and tries to keep up to date with his roller blades and inventions.

So everything runs at five star … characters, casting, actors, set design, movement, dialogue, particularly brilliant lighting and sound design. BUT … and there has to be a “but.” It’s the music. There are no songs, with the exception of the old hymn that May returns to and keeps singing. The nearest to a song is Sian’s song comparing making love to being in cars of various vintages, and that’s very funny in lyrics, but no one is going to recall the tune.

Sian (Rachel Lumberg) is the disreputable but jolly aunt, with Nicky (Kirsty MacLaren)

Mainly it’s lines to musical backing, meandering up and down the scales as if a song is about to start. They can all sing well.  The playing is lovely, but I can’t see that the basic string-oriented backing relates to the period of the play, but then none of the music does. We have a Goth obsessed Matt, shouting into his phone, but no Goth music to accompany him. The artefacts in the time capsule biscuit tin lovingly evoke 34 years ago … so now, that would be 1985. But nothing in the music references 1985 at all. In a play partly about nostalgia, I would have to reference with music May’s era, then Steve and Yvonne’s era in the 1980s, Sian’s somewhat “Benidorm” orientation in suggesting holidays … then for Kirsty at thirteen, “now.”

I’m unconvinced about the “musical play” concept and wonder if having the lines sung to vague melodies helps at all. At times I thought it obscured the very funny dialogue writing. I’d rather draw a hard line between dialogue and songs. I suspect they really needed to employ a composer to set Tim Firth’s words to stronger tunes. Or use some found music. My thoughts ran to Jon Boden’s setting of The Wind and The Rain for Twelfth Night at the RSC. Not any of the music here stuck in my head.

The concept stuck. The story stuck. The characters stuck. Many of the lines did. I related to the finale when they drop Matt off at University … I can remember vividly the three times we did that. Fabulous performances.

So overall, (I’m feeling guiltily mean, but sorry, the music wasn’t for me) so a five star play with two star music.

***

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
5 star
Mark Lawson, The Guardian *****
Libby Purves, Theatre Cat, *****
Vicky Edwards, Encore Musical Theatre, *****

4 star
Domenic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph ****
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage, ****
Tim Bano, The Stage ****
Anne Treneman, The Times, ****
Anne Cox, Stage Review Co ****

3 star
Fiona Mountford, The Standard, ***

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

DANIEL EVANS
Me and My Girl, Chichester 2018
Quiz, by James Graham, Chichester 2017
Forty Years On by Alan Bennett, Chichester 2017
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London

KIRSTY McLAREN
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, National, 2016

CLARE BURT
Miss Littlewood, RSC, 2018