Tweet

Review Round-up: Pop Star Young Enters Vortex

Pop Idol winner Will Young made his stage acting debut in a much-anticipated Manchester revival of Noel Coward’s 1924 play The Vortex, which opened last night (Monday 22 January 2007, previews from 17 January) at the Royal Exchange as part of the theatre’s 30th anniversary season (See News, 22 Jun 2006).

In Coward’s savage portrayal of 1920s cocktail society, Young plays musician Nicky Lancaster, who loses his fiancée to his sophisticated mother Florence’s toyboy lover. The Vortex (the title refers to the "youth vortex of beastliness") launched the then 25-year-old Coward’s career as a playwright and leading man.

Overnight critics were divided about the success of Young’s performance. While some praised the pop star for creating a touching character and bringing out the repressed homosexuality other actors in the role have “glossed over”, most agreed Young did not invest enough rage in Coward’s own “angry young man”. Some also noted that, while Young was brave to tackle such a complex role, he is simply too inexperienced to rise to the challenge. However, they were all impressed by the performances of Diana Hardcastle as his mother and the supporting cast in director Jo Combes’ production.

Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (4 stars) – “It has taken more than 80 years and the performance of Will Young, the gay pop idol who has never acted on stage before, to bring out the full truth about Nicky Lancaster, Noel Coward's angry young man in The Vortex… Jo Combes' ingenious in-the-round production… generates frissons of surprise…. For once Coward did much more than make his languid sophisticates figures of witty fun. Yet those audiences and those critics turned blind eyes to one crucial fact, at which Coward, in an age of strict stage censorship, could only hint, and of which Will Young now makes us provocatively aware…. Young is surprisingly weak-voiced at times and he delivers his tirades with insufficient emotion or fury, but this brave, remarkable performance is charged with the right impotent despair. In an absolutely brilliant directorial stroke, Combes implies that Nicky's addiction is not risky cocaine but life-threatening heroin. The Vortex therefore acquires a fresh, stinging, contemporary relevance. Miss Hardcastle, the best Florence I have seen, floats sexily around in a haze of self-adoration and a shimmering dress…. This Vortex, with its delectable period songs and style, ought to be London-bound.”

- by Caroline Ansdell

Related Content

Booking Tickets & Show Listings
	The Vortex Listing Page

Internal Links
	The Vortex (Manchester) - 23rd Jan 2007 reviews