Reviews

Blondes (Edinburgh)

| London's West End |

13 August 2009

I was looking forward to Denise Van Outen’s solo show in praise of
peroxide, pulchritude, Mae West, Dolly Parton and, er, Olivia
Newton-John, among others, as much as anything. So was the Edinburgh
public: the show’s almost entirely sold out. But the end result is in
urgent need of an overhaul before it comes to London.

Blonde’s not a hair colour, it’s a vocation; and this lovely
“Basildon blonde” (the original, sadly abandoned title) is much
cleverer in her calling than she makes out in her depressing back chat
and sentimental ramblings about her ginger nan, her mum, and her best
friendsDenise sings and presents a song as well as anyone on the West End
stage, and she lays down superb versions of hits by Blondie, Dusty
Springfield, Madonna and Britney Spears. But she nearly ruins all this
with the family album nostalgia (and pictures) and a silly “I know how
she feels” rap about Britney’s heartbreak and how she couldn’t face any
more of that stuff herself.

Even with collaborators as distinguished as fellow Essex girl Jackie Clune onboard as writer and man-in-Wire Clarke Peters (who appeared with Denise in Chicago)
as director, the show looks bitty and ill-disciplined, uneasily poised
between chat show and a blonde song-fest. She should ditch the first
and work up the second.

Mike Moran’s magnificent piano accompaniment, though, has an
orchestral scale and grandeur about it, whether matching Denise’s
impressive assault on a Bonnie Tyler standard or disguising the thin
tawdriness of a Kylie Minogue hit.

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