Mack and Mabel

If most people do not know much about this show, they will certainly know the music! Think Torvill and Dean dancing on ice and you have it in a nutshell! The show is set in the silent movies era and tells the tale of the love affair of movie director Mack Sennett and his female star, Mabel Normand. This Jerry Herman score contains many hit songs -  I Won’t Send Roses, Movies Were Movies, Tap Your Troubles Away, and Hundreds Of Girls. It requires two very good leads and both the company’s leading players’ stars shone bright throughout their performance with Paul Campbell extremely convincing as movie director Mack Sennett with a fondness for filming comedy. Seldom off the stage, this is a huge role to play and Paul carried it off with confidence and assuredness in his acting and singing. Leading lady, Ashley Gorman, had the wonderful personality to play Mabel Normand, and was totally immersed in her role as the delicatessen worker who finds fame and fortune in the silent film era, but sadly, comes to a tragic end. Her Time Heals Everything song number was full of poignance and came over with great sincerity. We met other stars of the silent movie era, among them Fatty Arbuckle – played by a suitably “bulked-up” Sandy Kennedy making a good impression of the famous film star. Gemma Sullivan’s Lottie Ames was perfect and her big number Tap Your Troubles Away was brilliantly staged as she was joined by the company’s females to make it all a big production number. James Wiggins was suave writer Frank Capra; Bruce Martin was smooth-talking movie director William Desmond Taylor; and experienced David Newton (Adam Kessel, Jr) and Jill Davidson (Charlotte O. Baumann) completed the talented cast. This show was really “something different and new” for the company, but they successfully pulled it off – complete with a mad-cap Keystone Cops chase and, of course, the obligatory custard pie scene! It was obvious that the production team had worked very hard to bring this show to the stage and great credit goes to them for it was all most enjoyable.

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