Made in Dagenham

Made in Dagenham, for those of you who have never seen the film or a live production, is based on the real events of the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968 and made its West End and World premiere at the Adelphi Theatre London in 2014.  It is centred on Rita O’Grady, a working woman who tries to balance suddenly becoming a leader of the women workers at the Ford Dagenham plant and being a mother with two children and a husband laid off because of the strike for equal pay she started.

Although very much an ensemble production with the Dagenham Girls (and Boys) in full effect a production of this musical stands or falls on the strength of the central character of Rita and put simply, Hannah Chamberlain delivered the best interpretation of Rita I have seen in any of the many productions I have watched.  Hannah was completely believable from her very first entrance, as Rita grew in confidence and also vulnerability, Hannah brought this out without any overacting, with naturalistic characterisation throughout and immaculate vocal delivery.  Danny De Martino therefore had quite the challenge of playing Eddie O’Grady next to Hannah and again brought off a very strong performance bringing out the fun, frustration and love for his wife.  His acting was again naturalistic and believable and hit the hights vocally with his delivery of The Letter in Act 2.  Ashton Knight and Ines Green were on great form as Graham and Sharon bringing out their confusion and loss during the potential breakup of Rita and Eddie.

Moving to “The Girls” then it is invidious to single out any performance as they all worked so well together so congratulations to Laura Collins, Charlotte Lee, Nicole Horsley and Kelly and the female chorus of Alison, Evelyn, Elaine, Carole, Jacs, Jorja, Suzanne, Jane, Angel, Julie, Lucy, Helen, Abi, Chelsea, Chloe, Ellie, Mel and Amy .  I must however congratulate Tom Atkins and Charlotte Lee for the delivery of Wossname.  In every other production I have seen, although this is a fun number, the humour is often lost due to an overly fast pacing.  The choice to slow this number down slightly by Tom, to give Charlotte the opportunity to telegraph to the audience the various throughs she was trying to communicate was inspired, as was the delivery by Charlotte.

Dagenham needs a strong cast in depth. Kathy Taylor was a very sympathetic Connie and worked well with Richard Harvey as Monty who also brought a great deal of warmth to his performance. Suzie Green brought out every facet of the “She-Lion” Barbarah Castle both in dialogue and vocal delivery.  Haydn Taylor was nicely understated as Harold Wilson giving Harold a better acting treatment than I have seen, in any previous production, where often the role is overplayed so much that it becomes a caricature and loses the funny in the writing.  Returning to the stage after some time, Steve Clarke was perfect as Mr Hopkins and Lis Hipkiss delivered a very impressive Lisa Hopkins with sarcasm dripping from every line in the Fondu scene as she rebelled against the 60’s constraints of having to just be a manager’s wife rather than being able to use her considerable intellect.  Ryan Burnett was the suitably unsympathetic teacher Mr Buxton, Mick Windmill-Jones clearly was enjoying his dual roles as Sid and Cortina Man and Jack Keddall, who the audience were clearly used to seeing in pantomime, judging by the boos at some points, gave Mr Ford US Tooley just the right level of contempt for his striking workers and misogyny towards women without making Tooley unbelievable.

Finally, the Boys were also in fine form from their explosive entrance in the title number Made in Dagenham to the final curtain call they provided great harmonies in all the numbers they were involved in and balance the extremely powerful female vocals to provide a very impressive wall of sound throughout the production and I particularly enjoyed Viva Eastbourne which some productions have cut for no reason I can understand

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