The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice is a play written by  Jim Cartwright  and was first performed at the  Royal National Theatre in 1992 directed by Sam Mendes, which then transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End, it also opened on Broadway in April 1993.  
The play tells the story of the relationship between a shy, quiet teenage girl named Little Voice(LV) and her over the top talkative mother Mari. LV desperately misses her dead father and has retreated into her own private world, spending most of her time in her bedroom listening to his old records and taking refuge in the personalities of her musical heroines such as Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland by perfecting impersonations of these famous singers. When Mari meets Ray Say a small-time night club agent, she thinks he is her last chance of a better life, but unfortunately for Mari, Ray is not really interested in an in depth long relationship. However, when he hears LV sing, he schemes and persuades her to perform in the local club hoping that LV will be his ticket to the big time. Needing Mari’s support, he carries on the relationship, but LV does not really want fame and just wants a normal quiet life and to be loved.
Directed by Robert Walsh, this production of “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice” from CADOS had lots of laugh out loud comedy as well as a great deal of pathos and poignancy, as we see two strong characters striving to improve their lot in life though another’s success and importantly using each other.
There were seven actors in this play who were very well cast with no weak links, all getting to the heart of what makes their character tick, producing excellent strong performances. The very demanding pivotal role of LV’s manic self-interested mother Mari Hoff, was played by Steph Threlfall, who gave us a wonderful garrulous and energetic performance. The shy introvert LV with the big talent and big voice was played by the talented Eleanor Anderton, who I first saw perform as a member of Chorley Youth Theatre, her portrayal was sensitive, poignant and vocally good, Eleanor clearly understood LV’s character very well. Steve Unsworth was excellent as Mari’s male friend Ray Say the night club act manager, who exploits and bullies LV into performing, but in the end, he crashes down to earth, with his show business dreams in tatters. LV’s friend and main support was telephone engineer Billy, played with love and sincerity by Matthew Rimmer. Billy takes every opportunity to get to know the shy LV even appearing at her bedroom window with a large ladder. One of the highlights of this play was a very funny understated performance from Sharon Holstead as dowdy neighbour Sadie, who wore bright green leggings, Sadie like Billy cares and understands what LV wants and Sharon’s understated comedic drunken dance to the music of the Jackson 5, had the audience laughing out loud. Bob Hopkinson was also very comedic as a typical northern nightclub host called Mr Boo, who wore an awful wig when on stage, and told cringe worthy jokes, while introducing acts or trying to keep his audience interested during delays. The seventh member of the cast George Howard gave a nice cameo performance in the role of the phone man. The pace of the play was good, generally diction was adequate and there was clarity of words for most of the performance, however, just a constructive point, on a very few occasions there was a tendency to rush the dialogue resulting in some difficulty hearing the words at these times, but this did not affect my overall enjoyment of the play.
The superb very well-dressed set was on two levels, making excellent use of the stage area,  a living room and kitchen on the lower level and L V’s bedroom on the second level, which along with very good technical input, that included exploding electric plugs, and with some well thought out, applicable, sometimes comedic costumes added to the success of this enjoyable entertaining production. Well done to all set builders, props, costumes stage and technical crew for all their hard work
Congratulations to Director Robert Walsh, Producer Rachel Offord and all involved in bringing this production to the stage and producing a great evening’s entertainment, we had a lovely evening.

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