|
|
|
|
|
Requiem for a reluctant diva
Little Voice, Nancy Sullivan, dreaming somewhere over a rainbow The rise and fall of Little Voice
Birmingham Rep
***** WHEN theatre is good it has the power to
generate every emotion from tears of laughter to tears of sorrow, and
this Rep co-production is very good. This is the play which made Bolton born Jim Cartwright’s name and is as northern as donkey stones, dolly blue and hot pot. It is the tale of a young girl, mourning the loss
of her father and clinging on to his memory in her own, uncommunicative,insular world through his collection of records of female singers such
as Piaf, Garland and Bassey. Mari, her mother, in little more than the
biological sense, is a selfish, idle, good time girl, with the good
times, if they ever existed, long behind her. She is “something for after the boozer” as her
latest of many boyfriends tells her in a moment of cruel home truths. He is Ray Say, small time wannabe manager of the
stars, scratching a living in the seedier end of the club entertainment
circuit, strippers and thi
Vicky Entwistle, (Janice Lee in Coronation Street), is a wonderful Mari. Widowed, although her late husband probably would see it as an escape, she is gobby, blousy, common as muck, coarse, cruel, tactless and with all the parenting skills of a dolly tub . . . and gloriously funny and, Entwistle being from Accrington, she has an authentic Lanky accent. Incidentally she went to school in the wonderfully named village of Oswaldtwistle. Chris Gascoyne (Peter Barlow in Coronation
Street) is a fine foil. A modern day spiv, a wide boy, flush with cash
without any visible signs of support. He is a man always in the middle
of some dodgy deal and always looking for the main chance, the ride to
the top, and LV is it, even if he does have to tolerate her mother to
climb on board. Nancy Sullivan really does have star quality as
Little Voice. Infuriatingly withdrawn at home, hiding from the world, or
at least her mother, she comes alive on stage as she sings her way
brilliantly through her repertoire of stars from Piaf to Monroe, de Mother and daughter each have their special
friend, in Mari’s case it is Sadie, played by TV regular Joanna Brookes,
overweight, subservient and with a vocabulary pretty much limited to
“OK”. She is used by Mari as someone to lash out at, an emotional punch
bag, someone she seems to both despise and depend on in equal
measure. Their celebration at the fame and fortune LV
represents, dancing to The Jackson Five is a show comedy highlight.
For LV the friend is Billy, played by Tendayi Jembere, a shy telephone engineer who first saw LV while fitting Mari’s new phone at the start of the play. They both live in
separate worlds of their own, hers a world of divas, his amid his light
shows in an allotment shed. Mr Boo is the power in the entertainment world,
at least in that run-down, back-to-back, factory littered part of town, so has to be looked up to at least by Ray. Amid the laughs there is a hard story though. The
play, first performed in 1992 is set sometime in the 80s and early 90s
when Britain and especially the North, and Mari Hoff, Ray, LV and the
like, were looking for the light at the end of a tunnel of dark
recession. It was a hard time for the working classes and, despite the
fact Mari did as little work as she could, she suffered like the rest. What dreams she still has are faded and Ray is a
chance of escape to, if not better, then at least a different life. But
she is little more than a sexual diversion for Ray and he destroys her
with a cruel tirade of barbed home truths, so much so that we feel sorry
for Mari, p Perhaps it is that which makes her turn on LV in
a bitter monologue of cruelty after the dramatic climax of the play,
which in turn ends LV’s submissive silence in a hate filled monologue of
her own, piling even more home truth misery on Mari, whose only answer
is to call for Sadie.
Director James Brining
has managed to keep the play new and fresh more than 20 years on.
Cartwight's characters are real people and
Brining has kept them that way,
recognisable, believable. He is artistic director of co-producer
West Yorkshire Playhouse and he keeps
everything moving along helped by a stunning set from Colin Richmond
centred on a revolving, two-story,
skeletal house. The house, full of dodgy electrics, has the
stained concrete panel walls typical of run down immediate post war
municipal housing and sits and revolves in an arena of glitter strips
and junk, the back alleys of poor housing mixed with the faded glitter
of nightclubs - a wall of glitter descends to turn the set into Mr Boo’s
club. I won’t spoil the plot for those who do not know
the story, but the set also has some spectacular special effects. This is yet another exceptional co-production
from Birmingham Rep and one that deserves to be seen. To 30-05-15. Roger Clarke
19-05-15
|
|
|
|
rd
rate comedians, whose interest in Mari is purely transient and carnal,
until he hears her daughter, LV, Little Voice, sing, and not just sing,
but sing with the voices of her dead father’s favourite stars – all of
them. Ray can smell the aroma of fame and more important, the whiff of
fortune. 
manding
some wonderful vocal dexterity to sound like each one.
erhaps
the first time we have seen her as little more than a figure of fun.