Sweet Smell of Success

Synopsis

It's New York, 1952. Welcome to Broadway, the glamour capital of the universe. JJ Hunsecker rules it all with his daily gossip column in the New York Globe, syndicated to 60 million readers across America. JJ has the goods on everyone, from the President to the latest starlet. And everyone feeds JJ scandal, from FBI boss J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy down to a battalion of hungry press agents who attach their news to a client that JJ might plug. You're no one if you're not in JJ. You can become no one if JJ turns on you. But things take a highly personal turn when JJ uses his connections to ruin his own sister Susan's relationship with a man he thinks is inappropriate.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 15 November 2012

The Arcola has launched its reconfigured new premises – less cramped foyer, new bar, re-located studio theatre and better access to loos – with a smouldering British premiere of this sour and savage Broadway musical by Marvin Hamlisch and John Guare based on the 1957 movie starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.

Their roles are re-moulded by David Bamber as JJ Hunsecker, a vicious and powerful newspaper columnist with a 60 million-strong readership (the character was based on the legendary Walter Winchell) and Adrian der Gregorian as the ambitious PR man Sidney Falcone.

Falcone’s push to the top involves gaining publicity for his clients at the low dive Voodoo Club, while Hunsecker exploits his new protégé’s busy enthusiasm to try and break up the relationship between his half-sister, Susan (the lustrous Caroline Keiff) and her piano player boyfriend Dallas (fair and fresh-faced Stuart Matthew Price).