This Is My Family review – cuddly comedy on a soggy camping holiday
Tim Firth's musical features a family meltdown on a soggy camping holiday. First premiering in 2013, its domestic fallouts might have been unconventional fare to set to song then. But it all seems rather soft and cuddly in its comedy now.
Family members are slightly too recognisable in their traits: a middle-aged father (Michael Jibson) who has taken up free-running and never reads the instructions for his wonky DIY; a put-upon mother (Gemma Whelan) who senses her marriage has hit an iceberg; a bossy grandmother (Gay Soper) showing signs of dementia and a wacky aunt decked out in animal-print (Victoria Elliott) undergoing a mid-life sexual awakening.
Also, most importantly, 13-year-old Nicky (Nancy Allsop), the youngest of the family and sister to stroppy teen Matt (Luke Lambert). She is our singing narrator, desperate to unite the parts of family life that are spinning out of control and away from each other. To that end, she writes a sort of wish-fulfilment essay on her 'perfect family' which wins her a holiday. She chooses camping, in the woods where her parents met as teenagers, to take them back to the beginning.
Directed by Vicky Featherstone, they emerge out of what seems like a giant doll's house, as if to send up Nicky's 'perfect family' premise. The woodland in which they camp – beautifully evoked by set designer Chloe Lamford – bears the enchanted quality of Shakespeare's forest of Arden. There is no magic but comic shenanigans and inner transformations which are sweet, if predictable. All family tension and sadness is conveniently smoothed and remedied by the end.
Song is what elevates the musical above a TV comedy. Characters confess inner turmoil or unhappiness in tune, set against a delicate harp and cellos. They also sing lines over and across each other, to mirror the crossed emotional wires between them. Whelan's numbers ooze wry humour, Allsop has a wonderful singing voice, and the few choral numbers soar. This family – a paragon of middle-English emotional repression – become open-hearted and vulnerable when they sing. It's twee, and a little slow in getting there, but the happy ending does melt your heart.
This Is My Family is at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London until 12 July
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