Hayes Theatre, May 14
7/10
When, during the first half, Pepa, the protagonist, accidentally set fire to her bed (as in Pedro Almodovar’s film on which this is based), the fire blazed up so dramatically that I glanced at the emergency exits. Pepa duly put it out, but I doubt what happened next was intentional. The smoke became so thick on stage that you could barely see the still-bravely singing performers, and then it drifted into the audience. Luckily, the interval soon let us escape, and yet even when we returned, the smoke, while less visible, remained an acrid presence.
Presumably something or someone malfunctioned. Thankfully any sprinkler system wasn’t triggered, and hopefully the performers’ respiratory systems were in reasonable order for the next show.
Smoke aside, if you loved the film, you’ll like the musical. That mix of quirkiness and zaniness that defined Almodovar’s tale of five women stressing out – three of them over the same man – in Madrid in 1988, is intact, and sometimes Jeffrey Lane’s book and David Yazbek’s lyrics are even funnier than the screenplay. Anyone who rhymes “matador” with “metaphor” deserves a medal. In fact you giggle so much that you intermittently forget how samey, predictable and lame the mock-Spanish songs are – mainly when there’s no singing.
Alexander Berlage’s production maximises the humour, and is cast superlatively. Amy Hack is hilarious as Pepa, the c-grade actor who becomes desperate when her long-term lover Ivan (Andrew Cutcliffe) jilts her. Cutcliffe turns out to have the best voice in the cast: a beefy baritone, which, in a couple of Yazbek’s songs, can seem like it’s a co-conspirator in sending up Lloyd-Webber-style schlock.
The real problem comes when the show stops the steady stream of satire and comedy, and takes itself seriously. If a character presumes to sing of deeper feelings, it falls as flat as someone trampled in the running of the bulls.
Grace Driscoll is uproariously funny as Candela, Pepa’s ditsy model friend, and Nina Carcione all but matches her as Marisa, the fiancee of Ivan’s son, Carlos (a highly amusing Tomas Kantor), and the first victim of Pepa’s Valium-laced gazpacho. Marisa, caught in the dysfunction of Carlos’ family, tells him, “That’s why people marry orphans.”
Mel Russo, Aaron Robuck, Sean Sinclair and Tisha Kelemen complete the admirable cast, the latter playing Lucia, Ivan’s estranged and unstable wife, who stares at a Picasso painting as though it’s mirror, and says, “I look dreadful.”
Hailey Hunt’s set is a gem, that, like a dream, can have a phone-box in a bedroom, and thereby accommodates endless changes of location without any change of scenery. Dylan Pollard (music director), Chiara Assetta (choreography), Phoebe Pilcher (lighting) and especially Sam Hernandez (costumes) add their zing, and you walk out happy to have seen it, but probably only remembering it as “that Valium musical… with all the smoke”.
Until June 8.