VENUE LISTING
Piccadilly Theatre |
| Address | Denman Street London W1D 7DY |
| Telephone | 0844 871 7618 |
| Station | Piccadilly Circus (LT) |
| Description | Opened 27 Apr 1928. Used as a cinema for a while, returned to theatre in 1929. 1232 seats. Member of the Society of London Theatre. New home of the Peter Hall Company from 1998. An [ATG] member. |
WHAT'S ON
Dates: Opens 11 December 2012. Mon-Thu 19:30. Fri 17:00, 20:30. Sat 15:00, 19:30 Prices: £20.00 to £67.50 Cast & Creative Team
Viva Forever!, the Spice Girls musical from Mamma Mia! supremo Judy Craymer, premiered last night at a celebrity-packed Piccadilly Theatre. The show is billed as a comedy musical about "family, friendship and trying to stay true to yourself in a world where everyone craves instant fame and will grab it at any price." It centres on Viva (Hannah John-Kamen), her mum (Sally Ann Triplett) and her friends whose lives are turned upside down by an X Factor-style talent show. Featuring Spice Girls hits including "Wannabe", "2 Become 1" and the title song, Viva Forever! has a book by comedy star Jennifer Saunders and is directed by Paul Garrington. Michael Coveney Jennifer Saunders’ confused narrative - totally un-theatrical, completely un-satirical… this is a damp, self-referential occasion, with Paul Garrington’s production – tremendous in the musical numbers... lacking the killer Mamma Mia! qualities of Catherine Johnson’s sly and witty book and Phyllida Lloyd’s ruthless direction… Lightning hasn’t struck twice. One or two of the songs are well-structured but most are anaemic… Sally Dexter has a couple of extravagant moments, otherwise this is a musical theatre desert… the story of Viva is a non-story: she loves her mum and at the moment of her greatest triumph throws off her shoes (and her hair-piece) and cosies up with the mates she ditched on the way to the top. The plot they threw out the window in the first act never comes back. Andrzej Lukowski Viva Forever! is not fun or refreshing, largely because instead of giving us the in-yer-face full arrangements of “Say You'll Be There”, “Who Do You Think You Are”, “2 Become 1” et al, it treats these enjoyable pop ditties as endlessly malleable Dylanesque narratives: chopped and changed and stopped and started, sung out of key and stripped of their bounce in order to further Saunders' rubbishy script... The odd good line reminds us of Ab Fab mastermind Saunders's past form, but for the most part the blandly cast, blandly sung Viva feels like it was knocked off in about five minutes... A dull, pointless exercise in not giving the people what they really, really want. Paul Taylor It has some moderately amusing moments (“2 Become 1”, say, reimagined as a duet for a couple of out-of-condition mid-lifers shyly getting it together in a Spanish hotel room) and an odd bit that almost twangs the heartstrings… Not only does her script rarely give you that necessary gleeful sense of expectancy about where the songs are going to be shoe-horned in, but it’s embarrassingly derivative of Mamma Mia! and looks way past its sell-by date in its utterly surprise-free satiric swipe at X Factor… Hannah John-Kamen is appealing and in above-average voice as the eponymous Viva… Paul Garrington’s strenuous production revolves smoothly between the houseboat where Viva lives with her feisty adoptive mother (Ms Triplett) and the studios where she comes under the baleful influence of Sally Dexter’s botoxed bitch-diva Simone. Charles Spencer This musical is tawdry, lazy and unedifying, and one could sense a miasma of disappointment emanating from an audience of up-for-it Spice Girls fans slowly realising that they had paid top whack to see a clunker… Jennifer Saunders’ script is almost insultingly banal… It is also hard to warm to the show’s heroine, Viva (the sweet-voiced but bland Hannah John-Kamen), who, when offered the chance to go solo, dumps her friends to become a star and “live the dream”… It’s sad to see that fine actress Sally Dexter playing the queen bitch on the talent show, a one-dimensional role… that finally becomes bogged down in a mire of lachrymose sentimentality. Sally Ann Triplett has a couple of touching moments as the adoptive mother and makes the most of the one song that is staged with a hint of wit, 2 Become 1, in which she rekindles an old romance… this is a fatuous show with nothing fresh to say about popular culture and our fixation with fame. If you love the Spice Girls stay at home and listen to their greatest hits. [W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/vivaforever360_pi_2012.jpg#360#240#Ben Cura & Hannah John-Kamen in Viva Forever![/W@S_IMG] Alexis Petridis The cast are largely great, particularly given that they have caricatures rather than characters to work with… And there's nothing really wrong with Jennifer Saunders' script, although there are moments where the plot fairly obviously exists solely to crowbar another 90s hit into proceedings… in fact, the show's best and funniest moment comes when it opts to mock the material it has to work with. Sung with a lot of mugging by a nervous middle-aged couple on the verge of consummating their relationship, the runny ballad "2 Become 1" becomes authentically hilarious… it zips along cheerily enough, and compared with We Will Rock You, it's a work of untrammelled genius. Faint praise perhaps, but never mind: judging by the crowds of thirty-something ladies leaving the theatre singing "Stop" and "Say You'll Be There", Viva Forever! is critic-proof. Quentin Letts Saunders is a wiseacre ironist, so default-sneery that she will not stoop to admitting the heart (sentimentalism if you must) which can make a musical sing… some iffy performances, gloomy backdrops and a lamentably slow start, and you have the makings of a notable West End flop. It’s almost as if the thing has a death wish… Fans looking for a good bop may be frustrated by the brevity (and at times sparsity) of the musical interludes… Given that thousands of people have reportedly already bought tickets, I feel a cur for being so down on this show. Perhaps they should just relish it for what it is: a prize Christmas turkey. Henry Hitchings One of the main reasons for the Spice Girls’ success was their big and contrasting personalities. Those are absent here. What remains is their music: a couple of brilliantly effervescent tunes, a few other catchy numbers, and a lot that even their fans might struggle to hum... The first half is limp, the second better yet hardly electrifying... Jennifer Saunders’ script, which ought to carry us efficiently from one song to the next, is ponderous. Aspects of it are positively bizarre: for instance, Spain is depicted as a country of dazzling exoticism. There are a few half-decent jokes but many that fall flat... The buoyant cast make the most of a book where charm and wit are in short supply. Hannah John-Kamen is likeable as Viva... with Sally Ann Triplett the most big-hearted presence as Viva’s adoptive mum and Sally Dexter suitably grotesque as queen bitch Simone... As it is, it’s a wannabe, more "Tell me why" than "Say you’ll be there". Related Content
Date: 12 December 2012 In so many ways is this disappointing Spice Girls tribute show a pale echo of Mamma Mia!: mother and daughter bonding, middle-aged love renewed, escape to exotic location (Spain this time), back catalogue dance-along, but with much thinner music than Abba’s. Jennifer Saunders’ confused narrative - totally un-theatrical, completely un-satirical - lays down a girl group audition for a TV talent show, “Starmakers,” and suddenly lurches into something else: their sultry Posh lookalike, Viva (Hannah John-Kamen), is plucked for solo stardom and the rest fade into the background. Viva, who lives on a houseboat with her foster mother Lauren (Sally Ann Triplett) is egged on by a vicious diva (Sally Dexter) who’s one of the judges, the Sharon Osbourne figure; there are also weak carbon copies of Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole knocking about, but no chance of a proper send-up, let alone a timely critique. For this is a damp, self-referential occasion, with Paul Garrington’s production – tremendous in the musical numbers; sound by Bobby Aitken, lighting by Howard Harrison, choreography by Lynne Page, all first-class – lacking the killer Mamma Mia! qualities of Catherine Johnson’s sly and witty book and Phyllida Lloyd’s ruthless direction. Lightning hasn’t struck twice. One or two of the songs are well-structured but most are anaemic, until backroom boy Pablo whisks Viva to the vega and sings the title number with an acoustic guitar. But the Hispanic outburst, in overall dramatic terms, comes from nowhere. Like the Old Lady in Candide, we feel Spanish, suddenly Spanish. And there’s a cut-out black bull in a red silhouette. [W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/vivaforever360_pi_2012.jpg#360#240#Ben Cura & Hannah John-Kamen in Viva Forever![/W@S_IMG] Meanwhile, Mum is getting it on with Simon Slater’s tubby cab driver (“I had to get Joanna Lumley to Save an Elephant this morning”) to the music of “2 Become 1,” the closest Saunders comes to emulating Johnson’s trick of matching songs to the story. Sally Dexter has a couple of extravagant moments, otherwise this is a musical theatre desert. I can’t even bear to suggest how feebly the “biological mother” strand is resolved. I may have imagined this, but at one point there are a crowd of illuminated pogo sticks on the stage, and then a poor, unrelated pun about Downton Abbey. Several good issues are touched on and dropped like hot bricks: the sacking of “over-age” judges on television talent shows (Arlene Phillips was sitting in front of me), the grooming of talent for a homogenised culture, the need for friendship in a cut-throat career. And there’s no explanation of the Spice Girls phenomenon that started with five singers, unknown to each other, answering an advert in a trade newspaper and forming a pop group that sold 75 million records and achieved nine UK number one singles. Instead, the story of Viva is a non-story: she loves her mum and at the moment of her greatest triumph throws off her shoes (and her hair-piece) and cosies up with the mates she ditched on the way to the top. The plot they threw out the window in the first act never comes back. Instead, the hits roll out and the crowd goes crazy. Fair enough. Related Content
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