If you saw Upstart Crow on television or on stage in the West End, you’ll know the schtick of Sheldon Epps’ dazzling show Play On! Take a Shakespearean play’s underlying plot and characters and relocate them for wit and giggles. “Make it a musical“, you say? Okay, but who’s going to do the score, who’s going to dare to follow in the footsteps of Lenny and Steve, of Cole, of Elton (okay that one came a bit later)? “Duke Ellington!” Right. You’ve sold it.
And away we go, the opener suggesting Twelfth Night on 42nd Street as a kid full of moxie and talent pitches up at The Cotton Club in the 1940s, only to be told that women can’t write music. So she does a George Eliot - in this case a Viola/Cesario - and suddenly she’s an androgynous Grace Jones figure in a dark suit, passing as a man. Bandleader, The Duke, with no heart for his songs to be in any more, likes the lad’s tunes and employs this self-named Vyman to win back the love of the very divaish diva, Lady Liv, who soon takes a shine to this sharp-dressed mystery man. Meanwhile, Rev is winding up the club staff with his pompous self-regard and hard-driving management style, but they’re plotting to turn the tables on him.
Some 27 years on from its Broadway premiere and on the last lap of a nationwide tour, Michael Buffong’s production is as fresh as daisy - that’s what you get with timeless source material and a splendidly witty book by Cheryl L. West. So any thoughts of a sneer at the jukebox musical structure is kicked on to the carriage of the first number, “Take The A Train”, and we’re all aboard with the lives of a cabaret we see unfolding on stage.
Performances are critical to a show like this. The singing needs to be dialled up to 11 from the get-go, the emotions not far behind and the laughs big and frequent. We can, and we do, think later about how hard it is for women to break through in showbiz and the centrality of protecting one’s true self in a hostile world. It’s very much an ensemble work too, so there’s no room to carry a voice or two below top notch, a hoofer or two half a beat behind in the line (they’re alarmingly close to us!) or a halfhearted gag that falls flat. No such problems arise.
Koko Alexandra brings the belt as Lady Liv, but doesn’t hold back the pathos as a woman who has the scars of too many #MeToo stories of her own. Tanya Edwards, who does disdain very well, and Lifford Shillingford. who brings the house down with “Rocks In My Bed”, form two prongs of the trident that pokes Rev, with Llewellyn Jamal channelling the cool of Huggy Bear as the aptly named Jester, the third. For The Duke, Earl Gregory sings with a melancholy, but finds just a hint of camp desire in his interactions with Vyman that, of course, dissolves in a revealing reveal when ‘his’ true identity hits him between the eyes, a camisole top brooking no argument!
Tsemaye Bob-Egbe is wonderful as the girl-boy-girl, looking tremendous in either gender and belting with the best of them. Even she has to cede centre stage to Cameron Bernard Jones’s showstealing turn as Rev (pictured above), who swaps Malvolio’s infamous yellow cross-garters for a daffodil zoot suit that I totally would have worn in Soho in 1989, correspondent shoes and all. That’s the high watermark of Maybelle Laye’s splendid work on costuming - the footwear alone is worth the ticket price!
Roll in a highly satisfying ending that ameliorates Shakespeare’s all too frequent cruelty, and it’s a splendid night out. Your friend who likes MT can come with you because, like Guys and Dolls that recently closed in London, this show is unashamedly dedicated to the pursuit of entertainment. And your friend who is a little more highbrow, can tick off the quotes and allusions to Twelfth Night, always a favourite amongst Shakey’s fans, dropped skilfully into the book.
Oh, and your friend who’s always saying that the West End is too expensive (and they do have a point) can get their seat for the cost of a multiplex ticket and a bucket of popcorn. Play on indeed!
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