Blues in the Night (Leeds)
NOTE: The following review dates from December 2003 and this production’s earlier run at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Four singers and a four-piece band rip their way through 30 numbers, strung like undies on a flimsy storyline. But hey! Who needs dramatic structure when the West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Courtyard Theatre is bouncing to a high-energy musical?
‘Musical’ is the word. If you want jazz or blues, get to a club or dig out your albums: if you want a first-class approximation to the real thing – plus lights, costume and the excitement of four astoundingly good singers – get to the WYP and let the good times roll.
However, playing what is a crotchet from a concert on a traverse stage creates problems. Dramatically, the traverse is fine; but this show does not aspire to drama. The singers wear mics, and whilst they move, the sound doesn’t. Ace sound engineer, the great Mic Poole, does his best – and the voices and music are perfectly balanced and strikingly clear – but what we really need is for the singers to rip off their mics, face a unified audience and blow!
Melanie La Barrie is flirty, coy and subtle. Donna Odain plays the vulnerable vamp, and Hope Augustus digs deep into the earthy vulgarity which has had us smiling for near enough a century. Ray Shell plays the sleazy guy who done everyone wrong: at best he’s close to Joe Williams, though sometimes he teeters a little too close to South Pacific. And the band has yet to gel and loosen up: but when it does…
The show is directed by Geraldine Connor with the emphasis, quite rightly, on song, song, song – to which Geoffrey Garratt‘s choreography adds humour and an element of narrative. The songs are standards and terrific: you’ll wait a long time to catch anything quite as raunchy as Augustus’s invitation to “take me for a buggy ride”!
A couple more nights with rapturous audiences working wonders on this cornucopia of talent and Hey Presto! – a brilliant adult Christmas show. West Yorkshire Playhouse: happy days are here again!
– Ray Brown
