Does Mack and Mabel strike a chord with critics?

Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage

★★★★

"the acting is so good."

"Rebecca LaChance, who played Carole King in Beautiful on Broadway, makes a winning UK debut as the conflicted Mabel, though she doesn't make her descent into cocaine-fuelled despair quite as alarming, or technically extraordinary, as Janie Dee did…nine years ago."

"The show, for the first time, very nearly works as a drama, while also exposing the slight shortage of songs. But what songs they are – Mack's beautiful, provisional love song, "I Won't Send Roses," impeccably executed by Ball"

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail

★★★

"Mr Ball has stage presence and he just about sees this patchy Jerry Herman musical through its problematic first half."

"Rebecca LaChance, as Sarsaparilla-sipping Mabel, is, well, a hit-and-miss. Her own charisma is initially less evident than that of the film natural she is meant to be playing."

"Things perk up further in the second half, Stephen Mear‘s choreography hitting the spot when Mabel returns to Mack after a flirtation with a rival director."

Mark Shenton, The Stage

★★★

"it delivers as a tuneful parade of great songs and as sheer spectacle in the punchy choreographic contributions of Stephen Mear."

"it fails once again the dramatic test of making a convincing journey of its true-life story of its two title characters: Mack Sennett — a silent movie director — and Mabel Normand, the star he makes but who is destroyed by a heroin habit"

"The cast, however, can't be faulted for their energy, and American import Rebecca LaChance — resembling a younger Sally Ann Triplett, but with not quite as much charisma — sings up a storm."

Michael Billington, The Guardian

★★★

"despite revisions to Michael Stewart‘s book and a bulldozing performance by Michael Ball, it remains a musical in which the tuneful parts are better than the dramatic whole."

"A flawed show is flawlessly done."

"Ball, looking oddly like a young Orson Welles, not only captures Sennett’s obsessive devotion to comedy but sings with magisterial power."

Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph

★★★★

"Often the ensemble, licked into shape by choreographer Stephen Mear, seem to be hoofing and goofing like it was going out of fashion."

"One should cherish the warmth of spirit then, reflected in Herman’s characteristically lush score and charming lyrics."

"As Mabel Rebecca LaChance is a beautiful fit for an accidental starlet who instinctively knows how to widen her eyes in exaggerated terror at moustachioed villains but refuses to play the part of obliging wall-flower in real-life."

Mack and Mabel runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until 5 September, after which it will tour across the UK and Ireland.