The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

Synopsis

Quiet, private Little Voice sings as sweetly as the divas in her father's record collection - Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey, Billie Holiday...Little Voice can do them all. When her mother's flash new man Ray Say hears her sing he can't believe his luck thinking that he has finally found the meal ticket he has been looking for..but will Little Voice give in to his schemes? A poignant and funny love story The Rise and Fall of Little Voice was a huge hit in the West End and on Broadway and as a movie achieved worldwide acclaim and a number of Oscar nominations.

Our Review:

Sophie Bush - 29 November 2012

You can garner most of the information you need about this production of Little Voice from the image used on the publicity. Mari (Beverley Callard) and Billy (Ray Quinn) stare incredulously at a transformed Little Voice (Jess Robinson), mouths agape and eyebrows raised. Here, they are doing 'surprise'. Over the course of the evening, we will see 'shy', 'lairy', 'angry', even 'distraught', all approached with the same attitude, but there is no emotional connection, either between characters, or with the audience. The exception is Quinn, whose quiet, understated portrayal of Billy is a breath of fresh air, but his truthfulness is lost amongst the others' posturings.

The empty, brittle performances lose all the warmth and poignancy of Jim Cartwright's script, which is robbed of all its moments of significance. Its humour is reduced to the formula that Northern people are funny and fat Northern people funnier; admittedly an assumption that the Sheffield audience seem on...

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