On the Town

Synopsis

The story of three sailors who visit New York for the first time on a twenty-four hour pass and look for the girl of their dreams. Ozzie and Chip strike lucky but Gabey pursues 'Miss Turnstiles' around New York until all three pairs link up in a powerful musical finale.

Our Review:

25 April 2007

My first reaction to this vote-catching English National Opera revival of On the Town is that if the ENO is going to mess with great musicals, then they had better mess with them properly. After the shrinking disappointment of Martin Duncan’s production of The Gondoliers (much better when first seen at Chichester), Jude Kelly’s revival of the 1944 debut Broadway show of four major talents – composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricists and librettists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and choreographer Jerome Robbins – is competent, a little too dark, and appallingly microphoned.

I have nothing against microphones if they’re used effectively and fit with the live sound in the pit. Here, only Lucy Schaufer as the art gallery vamp Claire de Loone, and Graeme Danby (sharing the role with the last ENO Falstaff, Andrew Shore) as her too amenable fat fiancé, know how to throw their voices against both the nasty sound system and the marvellously manic ...

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