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Jolly hockey sticks and broken hearts
Crush
Coventry Belgrade
**** WHAT response should we have to Crush? Do we weep? Empathise? Gnash our teeth? Chortle uncontrollably? Or just settle back in our seats and . . . enjoy? Crush is
the spanking new musical
with a heart-warming story from Maureen Chadwick (remember Earl’s Park
FC and ITV’s Footballers’ Wives - or the BBC’s Waterloo Road (all ten
series))? The lyrics - that’s the texts
of the enchantingly off the wall songs - come
from Kath Gotts, who also provided, or sometimes cobbled together, the
music. Kath wrote the music and lyrics for
Bad Girls the Musical
which played for a spell at London’s Garrick Theatre after a terrific
spell at Leeds’ West Yorkshire Playhouse. Bad
Girls - and there are few here, though our sympathies are always with
them - need careful controlling. Enter
Crush’s super director, Anna Linstrum
(Spend Spend,
Spend
picked up Evening Standard
and Critics’ Circle awards), who has teamed
with choreographer Richard Roe to produce, visually, a wild swelter of
delight. Why
crush?
Well, it’s set largely in a girls’ school, from which two of the gals
elope to Piccadilly Circus and glitzy London when a ghastly new
headmistress jetted in by the governors (the amazingly competent, ably
controlling Rosemary Ashe) decides to roll back a liberal regime at a
ludicrously named college (Dame Dorothea
Besides, this was 1963 or 64, and even in StephenWard’s day teen pashes
simply officially weren’t on.
What
is it that makes Crush
at the Belgrade so crackingly good? Musically
it’s the jaunty, positive delivery, arguably, more than the enjoyable
enough but occasionally corny numbers (we get 20, a good haul, and with
nods to West Side Story etc.
they zip along like a wild Ronnie Scott’s
soirée):
Helen Ireland oversees, and her pacing is pretty much spot-on; several
of the numbers are beautifully managed scherzos, really gutsy, and they
impact admirably. Steven Edis’s arrangements are limited by the size and
instrumentation of the ensemble: one would have died for a touch of
woodwind (though saxes and clarinet are there), or more varied colouring. Yet
it works: with sequences like the hockey stick-brandishing
Navy Knicks
(you get the idea), I Know It’s Asking
a Lot and
Do Your Bit
(a bit like Vera Lynn’s hit There’ll
Always Be An England), not to mention
the Head’s well-intended diatribe The
future mothers of the future sons of England
(‘the breeders of our breeders yet to come...’.,. ‘We strive to educate
so you may better procreate’: she could have fought World War II
single-handed, but on which side is not clear) there was a Belgrade
houseful of very satisfied punters.
Ashe’s heavy-spectacled, tight twin-setted head (oh-so-predictable
bottle green) is of course pure pastiche, like the Head in
The History Boys.
So are the scenes where the two lovers abscond to the metropolis, only
to have their mutual yearnings dissolved by the entry of a (seemingly)
older man (James Meunier, funny and quite effective in several roles: ‘I
tried Buddhism last year; discovered that orange just isn’t my colour’)
- even in a deliberately ropy (though possibly of its time) - Marlene
Dietrich spoof. So
the delightful, more confident than she seems Susan (Stephanie Clift)
and feisty, can’t-pronounce her Rs Camilla (Charlotte Miranda-Smith) -
the two darkened Art Room luvvies - hot news whenever they were on, and
breathtakingly gorgeous in Gotts’s love duet
Totally, Utterly, Truly
(‘Truly-Madly-Deeply?’) - fall apart, and tentative Susan falls back on
the lovely, neglected Daimler (Brianna Ogunbawo), who touchingly yearned
for love, but didn’t dare ask for it. It’s all scrumptiously honest; and
surely all the more, still relevant.
While passion for, or at least bonding with, each other, and loathing
for their ghastly tormentress (Ashe) forges an all-girls-onboard
coalition, there’s one rotten apple who (of course) threatens to steal
the show: Brenda (Georgia Oldman), a nasty little sneak - measly little
shit, in fact (‘I’ve never been behind the bike sheds’ - top in
science, but ‘I’m rubbish on the hockey pitch’ (presumably netball and
lacrosse too) hence she - accurately - feels outcast) - who sucks up to
Miss Bleacher (the cold shower-favouring head, who pounds out her own
wondrously delivered, rather poignant penult
Brenda is
on permanent extra adrenaline (and Chadwick’s script allots her
delicious fast-flowing venom to spew out, a kind of patter at which she
positively glistens). Mostly Charlotte Miranda-Smith (‘When my mother
was an art student she was probably hallucinating on absinthe’) carries
the show, but Oldman runs her close. Sara
Crowe’s empathetic, red-stockinged P. E. Teacher, Miss Austin, I think
an Old Girl who knows how things work (‘Isn’t it the hallowed function
of the Art Room to provide outlet for self-expression?’), and who was
attached to the old regime (Dame Dorothea, the old/founding head, sounds
like a cross between Miss Marple and Miss Froth in the
Girl comic)
- and is duly sacked - has an important
role in helping these fifth/sixth formers through their
Angsts and
agues. Perhaps
her character could be beefed up a bit. But then there is - I submit - a
wee, or not so wee, problem with the show; the time taken up at the
start of Part 2 (in London) gradually becomes gratuitous, and arguably
irrelevant. It’s fun, because we run through a series of events and
accidents (starting from the superbly moved ‘Hello London’) that even
suggest the frenetic world of Expressionism - Brecht or Kaiser - but it
adds too little, and meanwhile the time it takes up leaves the remaining
school characters undeveloped. It’s one of those good ideas that is
delightfully colourful yet doesn’t really help. But you
can’t help but marvel at the teamwork - these brilliantly cast girls
really know how to move, pinpoint-slick, and their early numbers not
least are wonderfully tuneful and cutting - and for that the credit goes
totally to director and (especially) choreographer. Crush
(added credit to Big Broad Productions for its inception
along with co-producers Coventry Belgrade)
is a show with a huge tender heart that should clearly embark on a long,
triumphant UK tour. The set (David Farley) is appealing too - it might
be sharpened (a hint of the amateur in school facade and interior:
rolled-out pegs and cubicles, desk used a bit statically - but that too
may be wry and intended). It was helped massively by Johanna Town’s
lighting (Daniel Street is the Lighting’s programmer), which looked
painstakingly worked out - especially picking out Susan above the River
Thames as, jilted, she contemplates suicide - and cleverly varied (just
one spot, curiously enough as it moved across Camilla, missed its mark).
Especial fun is the dénouement,
, like an Agatha Christie finale, in which everyone seems to be
outwitting and outmanoeuvring everyone else, until - yes - spying Brenda
at last comes up with the goods. Crush
runs at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry till Sat 19 Sept; then Theatre
Royal, Brighton Tues 22-Sat 26 Sept; and the Richmond Theatre Tues 29
Sept-Sat 3 Oct.
www.bigbroad.co.uk/productions/crush-the-musical Roderic Dunnett
08-09-15
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Dosserdale School) for toff young ladies, and sets off to sniff out any
necking behind the bike sheds (yes, it can befall schoolgirls, and these
particular 
imate
number,