Our House

“Welcome to the house of fun” - The music from nutty 80s rebellious pop band; Madness, is the perfect ingredient for a modern (jukebox) musical, their songs - at first - give the impression of being simple knockabout comedy to a knees-up beat though if not exposed before, the deceptively poignant and witty lyrics certainly prove themselves worthy of musical theatre repute.
This is not just a romp through their obvious hits either, with lesser-known tracks amongst the score but as with jukebox shows, part of the enjoyment is hearing those familiar songs presented in unfamiliar contexts with novel arrangements. In this boldly coloured and intricately textured show, the Madness songs provide their own exhilarating, witty and tuneful commentary.

The book by Tim Firth (of Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots fame) impresses too with the clever storyline. Who said that modern pop shows have almost non-existent plots!? This story is a relatively tricky one to follow as far as musicals go with its parallel storyline, even with colour coding so Good Joe is always in white and Bad Joe in black, you still need to stay gripped to fully appreciate and keep up with where things are up to. Firth had undoubtedly found his inspiration in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers as the twin narrative with interweaving plot lines strongly echoes a resemblance which, for this setting, perfectly complements the streetwise London working class mood of the music. 

Matt Concannon as the two versions of Joe Casey is superb, he excels and exceptionally suits this style of production and character, lending both vulnerability and cockiness as required and executing some nifty quick changes - one of which received a spontaneous burst of applause.
Peter McClafferty plays Reecey - the ‘bad influence’ - with grit and combined with his physical presence this character is well-placed. The role of Joe’s Dad is taken by Rob Haslam whose ‘invisible’ moral figure is delivered with sincerity and care. Tori Green is Sarah who differentiates the two parallels of ‘sweet and kind’ and ‘woman scorned’ very well, but the highlight was her admirable vocal delivery.

Great support also came from the two gangs; Sarah’s mates and Joe’s mates who all provided terrific humour, absolute energy and general ‘fun’.
The ensemble deserves a special mention who also worked tirelessly in this piece and they didn’t fail to deliver the infectious feel-good factor.

This production was directed by Ian Bennett, we were given a static set with the use of projection to tell us where we were which contributed to keeping the production flowing at an unbroken pace, instantly eliminating messy and timely changes. The projection played a major part of Ian’s vision with the clever use of both still images and video.
At occasional points, some of the dialogue was gabbled and got lost which does cause a slight panic with a plot that bounces all over the place as much as this.
I was slightly unsure why this piece had been given a decade switch – the theme and nature of the story and (of course) the music strongly suggests we’re in the 80’s, however, I felt the team missed a trick here to go to town with 80’s fashion statements and props (large mobile phones instead of modern ones) which would have added an extra layer to the humour. The dress/costumes and the odd prop for the majority did feel out of place which left me questioning the intention of the time shift as it didn’t translate particularly well – mainly because of the iconic music associated with the time as well as the nature of the book being so obviously themed in Thatcher’s Britain.

Choreography by Hannah Davis was simple, which is not in any way a negative statement as the moves don’t need to be intricate, technical or over complicated for this show - fun, energy and celebration was the concept and that is what we got – the simplicity kept things clean and punchy and was nothing short of a visual treat!   
Simon Murray was the man in charge of the music and we were given a very accomplished level of experience, the sound from on and under the stage was magnificent - we could have afforded for the volume to be up a couple of notches to really feel the punch, it is a pop score after all - but I appreciate that could be down to personal taste.

Undoubtedly, coming out on top is the energy from the entire cast which was terrific against a superb soundtrack!

Congratulations All Sainters!

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