Where's Charley?

Synopsis

Where's Charley?, a musical version of the perennial favourite Charley's Aunt, is a Broadway take on a quintessentially English comedy-farce of mistaken identities. Charley and Jack are two Victorian college boys desperate to court their beaus Kitty and Amy but can't without a chaperone. Enter Charley's aunt...who is not all she seems. Based on Charley's Aunt. Original production in 1958 starred Norman Wisdom.

Our Review:

27 July 2001

You can forgive a lot on a beautiful summer's evening in Regent's Park's Open Air Theatre, unquestionably the capital's most magical venue. And, I'm afraid, you'll have to forgive a lot with this year's new musical, Where's Charley.

When I use the word new in the context of the Open Air, I mean of course new-old. First seen on Broadway in 1948 and last seen in London in 1958 (with Norman Wisdom in the lead), Where's Charley reaches back to 1892 for its source, Brandon Thomas' quintessentially English farce, Charley's Aunt.

This is a tale of students with servants, women with chaperones and young men harmonising about their salad days at Ivy-covered, sepia-toned Oxford. It's twittishness times twenty, and somehow it just hasn't dated as well or as sympathetically as, say, a really rollicking Gilbert and Sullivan revival. But, while George Abbot's book detailing marriage contracts and finagled fortunes is hard to digest according to 21st...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 8 August 2001:

While 'factually' correct in some of the production's shortcomings, I thought the WOS review was hard on the overall level of entertainment. Without a good Charley, the show would certainly flounder. However, Cameron Blakely is terrific and, once you relax into the old fashioned style of the setting, it is a thoroughly enjoyable evening....

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