Review by: Paul Towers, 27/8/19
Closer To Heaven book by Jonathan Harvey and music
&lyrics by Pet Shop Boys
Above The Stag, Vauxhall until 31st August
2019
“good but should have been better”
Closer To Heaven has been on my bucket list of shows I want
to see every since I heard Frances Barber ripping the heart out of Friendly
Fire on Elaine Paige on Sunday several years ago.
This collaboration between the Pet Shop Boys and Jonathan
Harvey first came to fruition in 2001. The Boys had been contemplating writing
a musical ever since being approached by the BBC in 1992. Nine years later and it
finally made it to the stage.
Closer To Heaven is set in an unspecified Soho nightclub at
the height of the hedonistic 90’s. Billie Trix is a world weary cabaret singer
who has entertained in palaces and clubs all over the world (she says) but, in
the arse end of her career, she is reduced to performing in seedy clubs for
little more than a few lines of drugs. Her tragic glamour is so very out of
place here but she hangs onto it determinedly. The characters that frequent the
club are no less down at heel and desperate for a little sparkle in a spotlight. Straight Dave is, as his names
signifies, supposedly straight until he gets sucked into the hedonistically
seedy world of drugs and anything goes to get by and succumbs to the
temptations placed, literally, under his nose.
In the central role of Billie Trix Adele Anderson, in her
opening number, My Night, should have grabbed the show by the throat and made
it her own. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and what should have been her
signature number limped forlornly into the first half. It took almost til the
end of the first half for the show to recover. It was a disappointment to see
that, despite decades as a successful cabaret performer, Anderson has very little
stage presence. However, in the second half she seemed to rally and we saw
something akin to the performance that should have opened the show.
Blake Patrick Anderson, Straight Dave the sexually confused
lead character, was completely unbelievable as not being gay and, for my money,
sang rather too ‘West End’ for the part. Mikulas Urbanek as Mile End Lee, a
sleazy drug dealer, didn’t come across as rough enough, despite the array of
shell suits.
The hardest working cast members were Billies Babes, Rhys
Harding, Billie Hardy, Matthew Ives and Hollie Smith-Nelson who did choreographer
Ashley Luke Lloyd proud.
Most people, I would suspect, go to see the show for the Pet
Shop Boys soundtrack, and they won’t be disappointed as the boys perfectly
capture the electro dance mood of the period. However what the casual theatre
goer will not be expecting is the unrelenting arrows of Jonathan Harvey’s wit.
The one-liners come thick and fast, especially from Billie Trix, and perfectly
counter point the descent into a drug fuelled K-Hole towards the end of the
second half.
The staging was ingenious with a ceiling hung with LED
screens that instantly change scenes.
All in all this production is good but should have been
better.
Above The Stag http://www.abovethestag.com
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