Wonderfully corny: Burlesque, at the Savoy, reviewed

Spectator

5 days ago

Inter Alia, a new play from the creators of Prima Facie, follows the hectic double life of Jess, a crown court judge, played by Rosamund Pike. As a high-flying lawyer with a family to care for, she knows that 'having it all' means 'doing it all'. When not in court, she skivvies non-stop for her indolent husband and her useless son, who telephones her at work to ask why his Hawaiian shirt isn't in the fridge where he left it. She races home, finds the shirt, irons it back and front, and then starts to prepare supper for eight guests. Husband and son pretend to help by Frisbeeing the dinner plates around the kitchen and tossing pots of taramasalata to each other. A spillage of gunk lands on the kitchen floor and Jess promptly kneels down and wipes it clean. Why does she slave for these hopeless spongers? Hard to say. The dinner party is a great success and Jess ends up dancing on the table in her scarlet frock and high heels. When the guests leave, her drunken husband tries to seduce her and she fakes an orgasm to make him stop. The perfect end to a perfect evening.
Next, we see her robed and wigged in court where she specialises in reprimanding uppity male barristers whose tone displeases her. 'Oh the power,' she giggles to the audience. She's assigned to a major drug case involving multiple lawyers one of whom, Rafferty, she dated briefly. Swept up in her romantic memories, she invents an excuse to over-rule a senior KC in the hope that Rafferty will find her manner exciting. What a strange moment. A female judge manipulating court procedure in order to pursue a personal sexual fantasy. Sometimes Jess seems like a caricature designed to defame female judges: she's touchy, vain and openly biased, and her ambition in court is to advance the interests of women rather than to discover the truth and administer justice. In other words, she's as corrupt and blinkered as the all-male cabal she hopes to replace.
After work, she likes to 'wash the judge out' by meeting her legal cronies at a karaoke bar in Chancery Lane. She twerks the night away singing feminist anthems by Shania Twain and Tina Turner. At home, she fantasises about life as a rock star and she poses in her legal finery like a pop goddess. This image is supposed to be amusingly human but it's also alarming. Are all judges power-crazed narcissists like Jess? As a parent, she tends to get too closely involved in her son's life. When he kisses a girl at a party, she convenes a family summit and interrogates him about the encounter while her husband asks supplementary questions from the sofa. What a nightmare for the poor lad.
At this point, the story finally starts and Jess has to deal with an allegation of sexual assault made against her son. The play develops into a gripping whodunnit and the evidence is neatly orchestrated to keep the truth hidden from view. The ending includes a couple of bombshells that turn the story on its head. Well worth the wait. Brilliant, in fact. A pity the play proper didn't start sooner.
Burlesque is a glamorously sexy musical based on the Christina Aguilera movie. The plot feels like a Cinderella replica. Ali is a smalltown girl with a big voice who moves to New York in search of fame. She lands a waitressing job at the Burlesque Lounge but she's prevented from singing by her female colleagues who don't want to be upstaged. Ali seeks help from the owner, Tess, who happens to be her biological mother. As you can tell, the plot is deeply corny and so are the characters. Everyone at the Burlesque Lounge is a frustrated wannabe who yearns for love and happiness. But so what? Musicals should be corny and this show has bundles of charm and humour.
Tess employs a camp manager, Sean (Todrick Hall), who improvises gags about adulterous couples at Coldplay concerts. He's also a brilliant comedian and dancer. Sean and Tess fear that the cocktail bar may be repossessed by her evil ex-husband Vince (George Maguire) who snoops around Tess's office looking for compromising material. When he finds it, he sings a song that celebrates his villainy. 'Who's the cat and who's the mouse now?/ Whose fire will I start to douse now?' These succinct, clever lyrics are also the work of Todrick Hall. At one point, he leans over complaining of a backache and brings the show to a halt. 'Sorry, ladies and gentleman, but I'm carrying the entire musical on my back.' A wonderful night. The principal actors are fantastic. The lights, the music and the stagecraft are masterful. And although the material is raunchy it's never explicit, let alone smutty. Sheer class.