My One & Only
“How long has this been going on?” It’s actually taken nearly 20 years for
My One and Only, an extensive 1983 Broadway overhaul of a 1927
Gershwin musical Funny Face, to cross the Atlantic. It finally
arrived at Chichester Festival Theatre last summer in a production that has
now transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre.
But what might have passed muster as a heady but harmless summer cocktail in
rural Sussex has to face a bigger challenge on a wet West End night, made
wetter by the onstage antics that end the first act and threaten to drench
the front rows. If the latter reminds you of Singin’ in the Rain –
which made a similar journey from Leeds to London’s National two Christmases
ago – this production is also regrettably just as feeble, poorly executed
and generally lacklustre.
“Strike up the band?” No, please don’t; rather, I wanted to strike off the
band. From the deafeningly over-amplified moments it began to play, to its
final exhausting play-out, I have seldom heard such a beautiful score so
comprehensively ruined by being drowned in inappropriate volume and unsubtle
orchestration. These Gershwin songs are deliciously delicate, seriously
sophisticated and utterly enchanting; but you’d be hard pressed to guess it
in the fog of sound here. (Fergus O’Hare for Aura is credited with the
discreditable sound design).
“Nice work if you can get it?” For Tim Flavin and Janie Dee, it most
certainly would be, but the production offers them little support to prove
it. While Flavin has long been one of the most accomplished of dancers on
the London stage since he first arrived in the UK to star in the 1980s
Broadway import of On Your Toes, here director Loveday Ingram
merely allows him to project smug assurance.
Meanwhile Dee, one of our best
comic actresses, is strangely saddled with a role that has no comedy in it.
Jenny Galloway, as Flavin’s sidekick mechanic, has the show’s only truly
funny moments, though Hilton McRae and Richard Calkin also supposedly
play comic characters that are, however, as entirely unamusing as they are
tediously performed.
“He loves and she loves?” Flavin and Dee are 1920s wannabee celebrities – he
as an aviator who plans to make the first flight across the Atlantic, she as
a swimmer who swims the Channel – who fall in love. But there’s no charm,
grace or surprise in the relationship that develops between them.
“Kicking the clouds away?” Where the original Broadway production was light
and agile on its feet, as effervescent as it was exhilarating, this London
edition is merely enervating. Just when you thought that British theatre
practitioners and performers could hold their own against their savvy
Broadway counterparts, this production is a salutary reminder of the pizzazz
missing.
“‘S Wonderful?” ‘Sadly, ‘S Not.
Note: This review dates from July 2001 and the production’s original run in Chichester.
Before Anything Goes (rewritten with new numbers in 1987), and Crazy for You (a rehash of Girl Crazy), there was My One and Only, a reworking of a brainless musical, dating back to 1927, called Funny Face. As a vehicle for Fred and Adele Astaire, the show gave George and Ira Gershwin the opportunity to compose some of their most memorable material.
The current song and dance extravaganza was designed, in 1983, for the not inconsiderable charms and talent of Twiggy and Tommy Tune and as such had a respectable two-year run on Broadway.
I wish I could report that the UK premiere at Chichester was an unqualified success and, for a few brief moments, I thought it might be. Framed by Les Brotherston‘s magnificent art deco mock-cinema proscenium, the show’s credits roll as if in a monochrome 1930’s movie. Behind the screen, the ensemble dance in silhouette to the overture, stuffed full of Gershwin favourites. Few of the moments that follow live up to those high expectations, however.
The new book, by Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer, as if it mattered, tries to ape those delightfully dizzy musicals of the era where a penniless mister nobody falls for, dances with, loses and recaptures a high society celebrity. Tim Flavin plays Billy Buck Chandler, an aviator with aspirations. The usually wonderful Janie Dee is Edythe Herbert, a cross Channel swimmer trying to escape her fame and the devious machinations of her manager, an émigré Russian.
Add a collection of eccentrics who aren’t what they appear, spies and an FBI agent, and you can see all of this is but an excuse to roll out some wonderful songs (‘Funny Face’, ‘Nice Work if You Can Get it’, ‘Strike Up the Band’ et al) and some lavish routines.
But the formula just doesn’t hit the mark. The book is laugh deficient and the partnering of Dee and Flavin lacks charisma and fire. They sing and dance well enough and the waterlogged song and dance ‘S’wonderful’ is – well – wonderful. But aside from this and a few other moments, the production and the performances seem forced and mechanical. The precision tap routines (choreographed by Craig Revel Horewood) are fussy and not quite precise enough and the direction (by Loveday Ingram) lacks focus.
Richard Lloyd King displays panache in his two tap numbers, duetting with Flavin, and Anna-Jane Casey lifts the show with a high-kicking ‘Funny Face’. But, for this reviewer, My One and Only is only one of many others. Disappointing.
– Stephen Gilchrist
