"Showbusiness - the best possible therapy for remorse” (Anita Loos)

Blink! And You Missed It
Above the Stag Theatre

**

In the year since its conception as a dedicated fringe space for gay theatre, Above the Stag has hosted a number of fine productions. Plays such as Pride, The Choir and Minor Gods have largely lived up to their ambitious production values and provided moving and thought-provoking performances.

Discounting last week's horrendous and amateur Gay School Musical, (as if High School Musical wasn't gay enough already), which was thankfully only a filler for a few nights, Blink! is The Stag's first attempt at an in-house musical. It is a collaboration with Tim McArthur (better known of Trilby Productions and the inimitable drag nun [sic] Sister Mary).

The conceit of Blink! is to present a revue of musical numbers from shows which were flops when originally presented. A worthy aim, of course, if somewhat broadly defined, with little internal consistency. Some of the offerings such as Silence! (the Hannibal Lecter musical) never made it beyond fringe productions off-off-Broadway. Others, such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Bombay Dreams are labeled flops for this show because although they were successful in London, they were not warmly received on the other side of the Pond. Some, we are told, had disastrous openings (Anyone Can Whistle had only nine performances before its opening run closed) and others were initially greeted skeptically only to return successfully in the years to come (La Cage Aux Folles). And there’s also the inevitable quandary between shows which were successful with the critics and awards and yet closed prematurely (SideShow – a musical about Siamese twins – was met by critical acclaim and four Tony nominations and yet ran for only 91 shows, a similar fate being suffered recently in London by Drowsy Chaperone). I suppose there’s no real problem with this confused definition of a flop… except that under the heading Blink! And You Missed It, it feels a little uneasy to be presented with some numbers that have by no means been 'missed' such as I Am What I Am, from La Cage.

On Press Night earlier this week, the slightly grimy bar was unusually teeming – a good sign. Ascending to the above-pub studio space, the first thing to greet the audience member is a eclectic collection of flyers of the flop musicals were about to see extracts from. The remainder of the set comprises an upright piano, played competently (if not faultlessly) by Debbie Morris, with a backdrop of cardboard golden stars, giving a hint of the Broadway glamour to which the shows had aspired to but invariably failed to achieve. It is a shame that the designer was persuaded also to display yellow print outs of various flop show titles – these, alas, gave more the impression of a primary school teacher excited by a new laminator, than a star studded revue. The cast of five, was largely handsomely clad in plain costumes, with occasional touches of glamour and flair added including pink feather boas for the La Cage scenes, and, hilariously, two girls were tied together with a giant golden bow for the scene from Side Show.

In terms of musical execution, a grand shout-out must go to the girls: Julia Addison, performed a tenacious Everybody’s Girl; Elena Rossi and Nikki Gerard also provided professionalism and colour to their numbers and were a joy to watch. Tim McArthur is credited with devising and directing the show and also proved a competent, if unpolished, hoofer. Invidious as it may seem to single out a dud, Alexander Bradford’s contribution lacked confidence, rhythm and, for many of his numbers, adequate vocal range.

The whole show was narrated light heartedly with a book of facts and figures about the shows being performed, exactly in the manner of Side By Side By Sondheim, the very similar and well established review comprising Sondheim’s own hits and flops. Unfortunately on Wednesday, the cast stumbled throughout in the delivery of these nuggets of information and after initial amusement I was left wishing they had instead decided instead to narrate from a printed script.

A final niggle surrounds a slightly incongruous medley of “actor-muso” pieces (including Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sunset Boulevard). Why does this niggle? Firstly, whether any of these count as flops, I doubt, Sweeney marked the first West End transfer for 10 years of a Sondheim show then ran for over year on Broadway and won two of its six Tony nominations, Company ran for eight months and won the Tony for best revival, and Sunset, which attracted a host of awards first time round, recently ran for eight months in its reduced form. Secondly, the entire gag is swiped wholesale from a previous incarnation of Forbidden Broadway, which is currently providing a slicker (if somewhat more expensive) night out at the Menier Chocolate Factory fringe theatre in Southwark.

Back at the stag, two unfortunate heckles were enjoyed by the audience, if not the cast: singing I Am What I Am draped in five feather boas from his co-performers, Tim McArthur’s opening lines were interrupted by a wisecracking interjection “what are you then, a chicken?!”; in the closing moments, when audience members were invited to suggest other musical flops, another smartarse’s interjection that “Blink!” might be included was met by genuine perplexity before the penny dropped.

Overall I was left with the feeling that I’d had a pleasant evening of largely satisfactory performances of some interesting forgotten gems. I regretted that the show wasn’t as slick as some of the Stag’s recent work, and wondered if they’d be better off attempting to stage an entire show… Silence! or SideShow are surely begging for a London try-out and have the scope for cult appeal.

Whatsonstage gave the show ***** - I wonder if they accidentally wandered into Wicked by mistake.