Valley of the Trolley Dollies

So what, exactly, does the term ‘musical’ even mean anymore? Flying cars? Flying Nannies? Flying Witches? Reality-TV-Hyped revivals? Crashing chandeliers? It didn’t used to be like that. But, in London, as the cost of production has skyrocketed, the producers want lots of full-fare-paying bums on seats. That means group bookings, families, kids parties, and that means, ultimately, spectacle over story telling, sets (sometimes) over songs, and more work being spent on the bar than on the book.

There are some notable exceptions: Billy Elliot has tried hard to keep itself as removed from the “stunts and setpieces” mentality as it can. The stunts and setpieces are there (it’s called theatrical, so they’d better be there), but they’re not the selling point: You go to see the show and only then find out it features giant inflatables and cross-dressing chorus boys. But, by and large, it seems that anything that tries to be purely musical theatre had better be doable on a budget of fifty quid. Love him or hate him, ALW’s last ‘The Woman in White’ was the closest thing to a musical I’d seen in a big West End house for some time. It was as much character as plot driven (even if the characters were a little, shall we say, Victorian Melodrama. But that’s what you get when you adapt an, erm, Victorian Melodrama). It had songs that were distinct from each other, yet tied together with a style and a set of orchestrations, to create something that felt like a unified whole as opposed to a series of Big Rock Hits strung together with a feeble book.

It had a huge cast, and cost a fortune to put on in a huge theatre. It, needless to say, went down like Paris Hilton in a Frat House. Opening night to closing night in, I think a little over two years. Not a flop, but not likely to have made it’s backers huge amounts of moolah.

And so, last night, we went to see ‘The Last Five Years’ at the Menier Chocolate Factory London. Was it any good? See it. It’s wonderful.

TL5Y is the story of two people - Cathy (Lara Pulver) and Jamie (Damien Humbley). It’s the story of their courtship and marriage. But here’s the twist: Its told, in her case, backwards, and in his, forwards. So, we first see Cathy lying almost catatonic on a slowly revolving bed. Next to her is the typical ‘Dear John’ letter. Jamie has left her. The marriage is over. And over the course of the next 80 minutes, we trace slowly backwards from this terrible scene of devastation to the final scene, where Cathy has just met the man she is going to marry. The ending, her sparkling, bubbling joy at being so much in love, while on the same stage, but in another world, Jamie sits brooding at his failed marriage, is even more devastating than the opening, or it was for me. Because we know, as we see her sigh happily, and stare soppily into the middle distance, how it ends up.

Lara Pulver was fantastic. Cathy is not the most likeable heroine in a musical. In fact (and I know I’m going to be slaughtered by certain people for saying this), she’s a neurotic and, at times, rather selfish young woman. An actress who’s trying and trying to get a start, but who can’t get the first break. Married to a man who writes one book and sees his star shoot to the heavens. And guess what? She doesn’t like it. ‘It’s all bout you,’ she complains, ‘Miles and miles of you.’ As opposed, perhaps to “Miles and miles of me?” As Jamie says when the marriage begins to collapse, “I won’t lose just ‘cos you can’t win”.

Quite. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Cathy is a bad person - she’s human. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, self-centred, and which one of us hasn’t found ourself looking enviously at the successes of friends and loved ones, and thinking ‘That should be me’?

But it’s a tribute to Ms Pulver that, with a character as self-centred and jealous as Cathy, she still keeps our sympathy. It’s a tribute to Damien Humbley that, with a character as lightly sketched as Jamie (apart from the fact that his grandfather will roll in his grave at the thought of his grandson marrying a gentile, we get nothing of his personal life or makeup outside of the slowly crumbling marriage), we still care enough to watch him, and actually share a little of his sadness when he, inevitably, commits adultery.

The show has great orchestrations, some clever points on an otherwise relatively bland set (the budget was clearly closer to the magical Fifty Quid than The Woman in White’s), and some truly wonderful songs. And it touches you emotionally as well as intellectually. And that’s something that no amount of Flying cars / Nannies / Witches, Reality-TV-Hyped revivals or Crashing chandeliers can do quite so easily.

It’s running to the end of September, so see it now, while you can.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.