Review: WILD ABOUT YOU, Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Photo credit: Mark Senior
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry”… echoed our feelings at the end of Wild About You last night at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a staged concert of the new musical by Chilina Kennedy with a book by Eric Holmes.
We say this because the final scene is one that stirs up all kinds of emotion about grief, loss, regret, and, luckily, some hope thrown in too. It takes a while to get to that pretty good ending though, that you might have lost investment by this point. Not because it’s a long musical (it clocks in at about two and a half hours including the interval), it’s just that it has a tendency to drag its heels. There’s so much filler content that seems completely unnecessary (we keep hearing about Michael’s religion when it comes to nothing, for example) and no matter how rousing the songs themselves might be, they barely do anything to anchor the story.
The cast are not to blame for this in the least as the concert is stacked with talent, and the story could be an interesting one. It revolves around a woman called Olivia (played beautifully by Rachel Tucker who, rather curiously, wears a silky nightdress all the way through) who’s in hospital for a reason that is never explained and she’s suffering from amnesia. From there, she has to remember all of the important people in her life and work out who she needs to call and, in fact, who she really is.
These important people are her ex-husband Michael (Eric McCormack), her ex-girlfriend Jess (Tori Allen-Martin), her ex-lover Thomas (Oliver Tompsett), and her son Billy (Jamie Muscato, who is criminally underused and only appears in the second act). Rounding out the cast is Todrick Hall who plays cliched male nurse Shea, and Robin - who is perhaps the office manager in Limbo?
If Act One is long and drawn out, telling us about unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things to one another, Act Two is a different beast altogether, and from a kitchen sink drama with music, we’re suddenly plonked in the middle of a ghost story whereby Olivia has to go back to earth to keep an eye on her son, and Robin takes her, tutting and muttering all the time about it.
The second act is something of a revelation for all its weirdness. It is tighter, more focused, and the songs are infinitely better than what we’d heard previously, which makes the potential for this musical clear.
There is some good here – notably the ending – but right now, it’s somewhat lost in the confusion of trying to do too much. It might be better to strip it back and turn it into a one-act 90-minute musical that could tell the story much more succinctly and keep the audience’s attention for a lot longer.
** Two stars
Reviewed by: Lisamarie Lamb