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Telegraph
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Cry-Baby, The Musical: Bold and brash – though you pine for Johnny Depp
When the musical Hairspray (based on the John Waters film) became a smash hit on Broadway in 2002, its adapters clearly hoped to replicate that success by turning to another of the subversive filmmaker's works: the 1990 campy cult classic Cry-Baby. Waters's parody of the teen rebellion movies of the 50s starred a very fresh-faced and chiselled Johnny Depp, who deliciously spoofed his heartthrob image in his debut lead role by playing Cry-Baby, the rock'n'roll outsider with a heart of gold. Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan's 2007 theatrical adaptation wasn't a Broadway triumph and closed after 68 performances (despite four Tony nominations). Nearly two decades later, it's finally getting its UK premiere at the 200-seater Arcola. Director Mehmet Ergen does his best with the material and delivers a bold, brash and at times very funny production. The film is utterly ridiculous, and while the musical captures some of that energy, it doesn't go the whole hog in the way that you wish it would. There are forays into the absurd, with songs dedicated to kissing 'with tongues' and taking the polio vaccine ('if you value the use of your legs' is an actual lyric), yet it still comes out feeling like a weaker version of Waters's oddball vision. In this social satire of 1950s Baltimore, Allison is one of high society's preppy 'squares', but becomes infatuated with the titular James Dean-ish rebel and is drawn into the world of the denim-clad juvenile delinquents known as 'the drapes' (who are ostracised and blamed for society's ills but are really just misunderstood). Lulu-Mae Pears plays the Sandra Dee-type Allison with a compelling doe-eyed naivety while Elliot Allinson is perfectly cast as her snivelling, smug 'square' suitor Baldwin – who reveals a malicious side. As for Baldwin's boy band the Whiffles, kitted out in sweater vest and brogues, they bring a manic enthusiasm to their upbeat doo-wop songs and are so superficially clean-cut you can almost hear them squeak during their delightfully cringey dance routines. While the Whiffles lay on the smarminess with a supersized trowel, the gang of 'drapes' – comprising the disfigured Hatchet-Face, the sexy Wanda, the crooner Dupree and the knocked-up Pepper – should feel larger-than-life but are curiously underpowered by comparison. They may sing and brag about being 'bad', but you're never convinced of it. This is especially true of Cry-Baby himself. Depp, who leant into the kitschy vibe and managed to make the character edgy and sensitive, is an impossibly cool act to follow, but this musical seems determined to cast the high-school 'bad boy' (played by Adam Davidson) as overly sincere and puppyish, a portrayal which robs the character's Elvis-like rockabilly tunes of their sexiness. In the film, Cry-Baby's father was a terrorist; less edgily in this version, the wrongful execution of his pacifist parents becomes a plot point. Still, Ergen's production is lively enough that you're swept along and almost forget your reservations, leaving on a high with the gloriously superficial, satirically buoyant closing number Nothing Bad's Ever Gonna Happen Again. The Arcola's intimate space is judiciously used during the big dance sequences (which are slickly choreographed); the cast almost burst off the stage and carry that energy into the audience. Like Grease on speed, Cry-Baby the Musical is a fun if fluffy evening's entertainment.
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
As Long As We Are Breathing review – unblocking the horrors of the Holocaust
The term 'multimedia' often means speech, video, music and movement. Diane Samuels' theatrical refraction of the 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Miriam Freedman has these, but also incorporates superflex yoga and meditation, the former thankfully not subject to audience participation but the latter an important element of the show. An early section resembles a communal mindfulness exercise, as we close our eyes and focus on breathing in and out. Breath subsequently becomes the central metaphor – proof of survival but, in a sequence where Miriam hides in a flat in Slovakia while Nazi soldiers stamp the stairwell, respiration may be a fatal giveaway. Escaping to London, 'Eva' – the less-Jewish name Miriam used in her occupied homeland – attended classes given by Irina Tweedie, a Sufi teacher (hence the yoga and meditation), who intuited the young woman's deep trauma but never asked about it because Freedman, for many years, could not remember out loud. In this sense, the play structurally resembles Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which approaches blocked horrors – in that case, witnessing the firebombing of Dresden – through a circuit of diversions and apparent asides – in this case, about porridge, back pain and eye colour – that ultimately have appalling meaning. The deceptively loose form is kept taut by director Ben Caplan's well-paced staging on Isabella Van Braeckel's set where strands of mesh containing newsprint resemble fishing nets that have trawled the wartime archive and a bowl of red roses takes on a simple but terrible symbolism of life and death. A cast of three brings multitudinous talent to the multiplicity of forms. Caroline Gruber's older Miriam captures the improbable humour and forgiveness that Freedman – who took a reluctant curtain call with the actors on press night – brings to her reflections. Newcomer Zoe Goriely, between eye-watering yoga stretches, shows the accelerating terror of young Eva and the reasons for her long postwar silence. Matthew James Hinchliffe provides a live backing track with instruments including clarinet (effects ranging from breathing to sirens) and, with a bunch of keys, the ominous percussion of a Slovakian janitor. Samuels' Kindertransport (1993) is one of the strongest theatrical pieces of Holocaust education and remembrance and, in the week of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and at a time of alarmingly rising antisemitism, she has created a worthy companion piece. At Arcola theatre, London, until 1 March.
