Crazy for you

Review by: Paul Towers, 04 June 2018

Crazy For You , music & lyrics by George & Ira Gershwin, book by Ken Ludwig

A Watermill Theatre production directed by Paul Hart

Curve – 4 – 9^th June 2018

“an evening of musical heaven”

From the moment the lights go down and a lone clarinet breathes out the opening bars of Rhapsody in Blue from behind the gauze you know you are in for an evening of musical heaven.

Crazy For You  is a show packed full of both familiar numbers and some new to the discerning musical theatre ear. The first half is a smorgasbord of Krazy For You, Shall We Dance, Someone To Watch Over Me, Embraceable You, Tonight’s The Night and I Got Rhythm. And that’s only the ones I recognised. There were just as many inbetween that were new to me.

The second half continued to spoil us with They Can’t Take That Away From Me, But Not For Me, Nice Work If You Can Get It and a fabulous finale. Again these were interspersed with a whole raft of unfamiliar numbers.

The Gershwins were a veritable song factory, far too many for anyone to know all of, so it is nice to get a sample of their less well know work alongside hummable standards.

This week at Curve is the last in a two year tour of this production and you can see the familiarity the cast have with each other, the little comic bits put in, the gymnastics they are comfortable with stretching almost to breaking point.

The story, such as it is, concerns Bobby Child, sent to the wilds of  Nevada to foreclose on a run down theatre mortgaged to his mother. There he meets a girl, Polly Baker and proceeds to fall in love. Of course, this is a romantic comedy musical so nothing goes right. But along way we get to see a whole load of dancing, singing and hilarity before the couple fall into each other’s arms just as the curtain comes down.

The company is lead by Tom Chambers, understandable winner of season 6 of Strictly, with Claire Sweeney as his pushy fiancée Irene. Claire of course is a familiar face at Curve having been in Hairspray. Bobby’s love interest, Polly, is played by Charlotte Wakefield, a powerhouse of a performer whether she is singing, dancing or playing instruments. In fact every single member of the cast plays an instrument. Even Tom Chambers carried a creditable tune on the trumpet.

The set, basically the run down theatre, is an ambitious one for a touring show with galleries, staircases and tatty balconies which the cast climb up and down at an alarming rate.. Tom Chambers even does a drunken abseil at one point which must have given Health & Safety nightmares!

As the entire musical accompaniment is live and on stage and often dancing as well, there is no recorded back up, no click track for the tap dancing. The incredible cast provide every single sound and effect in full view.

The Follies Dancers provide an effective chorus line as well as various characters and the redneck band provide the same service for the male characters.

This production, directed by Paul Hart and designed by Diego Pitarch is a credit to Watermill and the choreography by Nathan M Wright perfectly captures the essence of  1930’s backstage musicals.

I defy you to come out into the night not humming at least one number

Oh, and mention has to be made of the sumptuous programme. A huge A3 catalogue of high resolution production photographs with informative programme notes and background material.

Tickets for the rest of the week are available at www.curveonline.co.uk