Austerity Britain, a royal wedding, the rich disgruntled over supporting the poor; producer Cameron Mackintosh could not have known how relevant his new musical would be when he first decided to bring it to the London stage.
The story is based on the 1984 Alan Bennett film A Private Function, which starred Maggie Smith and Michael Palin as the newcomers looked down upon by their fellow townsfolk. When they discover members of the town council are illegally fattening a pig for slaughter – to provide extra rations for a banquet in honour of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding – they set out to steal it for themselves.
The musical version brings together many of the team from another quintessentially British musical, Mary Poppins. Director Richard Eyre, choreographer Stephen Mear and composers George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have created an equally quaint and quirky world for Betty Blue Eyes, conjuring from the off a post-war atmosphere of wistful sadness, tightened purse strings and brusque survival. Comedy is offset beautifully with poignancy in both the music and the performances, as we are shown the bittersweet relationship between Joyce and Gilbert Chilvers (now played by Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith) as they attempt to find their place in Shepardsford, a small town in Northern England.
Both leads bear more than a little resemblance to their celluloid predecessors. Shrill, domineering yet charming, Lancashire’s Joyce is an ardent social climber for whom life is turning out to be a bit of a disappointment. Part of that is down to the lack of achievement she perceives in her husband, Shearsmith’s meek, sensitive chiropodist Gilbert, who turns out to have a heart of gold. A ballroom scene taking us back to the time the couple met adds extra pathos.
Strong support is on offer from Adrian Scarborough as Wormold, a meat inspector from the Ministry of Food, a purposely Gestapo-esque villain who brings a touch of Sweeney Todd to proceedings. Jack Edwards also shines as Henry Allardyce, one of the trio of ‘fatteners’ who begins to take quite a shine to Betty. This sentiment is expressed in the title song – performed to hilarious effect by Edwards and Shearsmith – one of a few memorable numbers in the score.
Mear’s inventive choreography frequently takes the characters out of their humdrum surroundings, with Joyce’s high society dreams conjured by a beautifully performed fantasy sequence, and, more bizarrely, a number in which Wormold expresses his love of art. Tim Hatley’s clever designs segue easily from present to flashback, reality to fantasy.
But what of the pig? Much hype has surrounded Betty, the animatronic porker who stands in for the real swine in the film. Though she is indeed a thing of beauty, her facial expressions, ear-flicking and grunts endearing her to the audience, I admit to a mild sense of disappointment that, rather than trotting round the stage as I imagined, Betty spends all her scenes languishing in a crate/bathtub/trough like the queen of the sty. But maybe I expected too much.
One advantage of this is that Betty – delightful as she is – does not hog the limelight (sorry), leaving the audience’s attention to fall as it should, on a talented cast who flesh out (ahem) this new musical which, rather than being a pig’s ear, is hot to trot.
CB