Sweet Charity

Synopsis

Charity Hope Valentine - with her heart not only on her sleeve but tattooed on her arm - is a New York dance hostess at the Fandango Ballroom. She's a disaster zone when it comes to relationships - first she gets involved with an Italian movie star, quickly followed by the charming Oscar Lindquist who asks Charity to be his wife. But things are not quite as straight forward as they many seem.... Includes "Hey Big Spender", "If My Friends Could See Me Now" and "Rhythm of Life".

Our Review:

21 December 2002

Over a decade before Stephen Sondheim's penchant for art-house films led him to find inspiration for A Little Night Music in the work of Ingmar Bergman, Bob Fosse saw Federico Fellini's The Nights of Cabiria - about an Italian prostitute who longs for romance and respectability - and saw in it the potential for a stage musical that would be a star vehicle for his wife, Gwen Verdon.

Broadway, the thinking went, would never accept a prostitute-as-heroine, so by the time Neil Simon had joined the team as librettist and Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields came in to take care of the music and lyrics, Charity Hope Valentine had been toned down to be a dance hall hostess who sold only her time and indulged in "no other business". The fact that this rather makes a nonsense of her ultimate rejection by the beau she eventually finds apparently escaped them - but then, Simon always was a one-liner rather than a plot-liner specialist, and anyone ...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (80.4.72.78) - 26 January 2003:

Yesterday afternoon we took a group of almost 130 to the Crucible for Sweet Charity and had the most fantastic afternoon. The entire cast was superb but the performance of Anna-Jane Casey was just outstanding. She has made Charity her very own and was at her very best in 'If my friends could see me now' which must rank as one of the funniest scenes in a musical I have ever seen. I laughed until I cried. Then in 'I'm a brass band' her vitality and what seemed spontaneous enjoyment was infectious to the audience. In Sheffield she has made Charity Hope Valentine her very own and surely the show cannot be put to bed for ever now the run has ended. We went to the last matinee and I could have stayed and seen it all again yesterday evening! Anna-Jane I hope will be given the chance to recreate Sweet Charity somewhere again. DJR...

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