Comedian Victoria Wood brought her revised production of her 1978 comedy hit Talent to the Menier Chocolate Factory last week (23 September 2009, previews from 17 September), following a run at the Old Laundry Theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere.
Talent, which was filmed for TV in 1979 starring Wood alongside her regular collaborator Julie Walters, centres around two friends – Julie and Maureen (played this time round by Leanne Rowe and Suzie Toase) – as they attend a talent content at fictional Manchester niteclub Bunter’s.
The critical response can best be described as lukewarm. Some of the kinder comments came from the Telegraph‘s Charles Spencer, who highlighted the script’s “succession of mordant observations Alan Bennett would be proud of”. However, at the other end of the spectrum most critics pointed to structural flaws in an “inconsequential” plotline as the play’s primary failing. Despite this, the cast came in for praise – particularly Suzie Toase’s “delightful bovine attractiveness” as Maureen and Mark Hadfield’s cross-dressing support.
Theo Bosanquet on Whatsonstage.com (two stars) – “The ‘play with songs’, here revised and revived in Wood’s own production, undoubtedly provides an interesting slice of comic history. But as an experience it’s rather like watching a repeat of a sitcom from the same era (it was first performed in 1978), and not just because the cast features Jeffrey Holland. One can revel in the nostalgia, but to put it bluntly it’s just not as funny as it once was … Structurally, despite Wood’s best efforts to spruce it up with an era-establishing prologue and some additional musical numbers, the play is weak … As Julie and Maureen, Leanne Rowe and Suzie Toase do well to make the parts their own, despite the fact they’re wearing custom-fit suits. Rowe makes for a sweet and sexy Julie and Toase captures the virginal gormlessness of Maureen whilst managing to wear a thick coat and hat nearly throughout without breaking sweat.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent (three stars) – “Now an out-and-out period piece, Talent makes for a peculiar evening in this attractively performed revival. It’s directed by the author who has stretched the running time to 95 minutes with a prologue, some new songs, beefed-up roles for the men and a closing anthem that is pure Lancastrian Sondheim … It’s more a series of routines, inner-monologue ditties that put the perkiness in pathos and one-liners full of Wood’s trademark Northern non sequiturs … Suzie Toase is a delight as Maureen, but the whole love-starved frump/secretly unhappy glamour-girl shtick never moves beyond cliché. Nothing is properly developed – and not just emotionally. Early on, Julie has a pee in a plastic boater, the loo situation at Bunter’s being dire. You wait for a drenching slapstick pay-off – but in vain. Given the play’s nightclub-restaurant setting and given the foodie Menier venue, it’s ironic that, dramatically, Talent is all gong and no dinner.”
Fiona Mountford in the Evening Standard (two stars) – “Dispiritingly, the bewilderingly few laughs Wood squeezes from her slightly reworked script come when we take it on trust that the decade of the Seventies itself – the Lurex, the sideburns, the Babycham – was funny … The tone, not to mention send-ups of Larry Grayson-style campness, lurches between laboured and desperate as Maureen, looking discomfitingly like a 1940s evacuee, helps Julie get ready backstage. Rowe has a tough night of it but Toase is, mercifully, better value. A range of lively expressions draw our attention to her round face while she sits in the corner, letting the pretty one hog the limelight. Even so, this is no talent show winner.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (three stars) – “Structurally it’s bit of a mess, and at the final preview I attended a stodgy audience didn’t laugh as much as they might have done. But for all its faults – a particularly glaring example being a comic routine involving a wee-filled plastic boater which cries out for a comic denouement that never comes – the piece is blessed with both heart and humour … It’s the comedy that really pays dividends, with a succession of mordant observations Alan Bennett would be proud of, and the hilarious entrance of a no-hope magician and his harassed assistant beautifully played Jeffrey Holland and Mark Hadfield. Leanne Rowe is both tough and poignant as the ambitious Julie, desperate for fame and fortune despite her negligible talent, while Suzie Toase is superbly funny and touching as the virginal fat friend who wishes she was 14 again in one of Wood’s finest songs.”
Lyn Gardner in the Guardian (two stars) – “Let us be kind. Victoria Wood is a national treasure, her currency is not gold but something far more precious: an ability to poke fun without cruelty … But what she doesn’t understand is that Talent should have stayed a glow in the memory along with flared trousers, raspberry Mivvis, prawn cocktails and cherries jubilee … Wood’s revival gets the period detail right, and this celebration of naff offers a chance to snigger at bell-bottom catsuits and ruffled shirts. It is also nicely acted, particularly by Suzie Toase, who invests Maureen with a delightful bovine attractiveness, and Mark Hadfield who does a fine cross-dressing turn as the club housekeeper. But it’s so scrappy and inconsequential that it outstays its welcome even at 90 minutes.”
