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Blair on Broadway
By Iain Hollingshead & Timothy Muller
Director & Choreographer Jessica Dawes
Musical Director Timothy Muller
Lighting by Aruna Sicka
Third way Productions
Arts Theatre
6 – 7 Great Newport Street London WC2H 7JB
Call +44 0844 847 1608
Tues - Sat 9.30pm 28 Jan 7.30pm
Running time 90 mins no intermission
Through January
Not Even Off Off Broadway
When the writer/producer spends as much time in the programme revelling in his own show as this one has, and when the production itself is as ill prepared and clumsily presented as this one is, one is left embarrassed and trying not to condemn outright.
Contriving somehow to hitch a political satire of high potential (ten years of Blair) to an excellent, but unrelated title, offered up is a 25 minutes late start (unexplained and unapologised for) a cheap opening line ‘switch the f***ing lights on’ and the unamplified, unoriginal, ill-sung, badly danced, under rehearsed song and dance sequences, with an under strength band hidden behind the back cloth, out of touch with affairs on stage. There is little left after all this but a sophomore level end-of-term show.
This is all a pity because there are a couple of lovely characterisations in Joshua Martin’s multi-faceted Tony Blair and Chris Cambridge’s comedy grotesque, Gordon Brown. Tim McArthur weighed in with a very watchable John Prescott. There were times when the writing bared its teeth, occasionally even sinking its fangs into the protagonists, and the show spluttered into life with numbers such as Tony Blair’s ‘One More Chance’, the company’s ‘War’, ‘Spin It’ and Brown’s ‘My Turn’.
Given time this show might develop some of the quality needed to be flogging its wares in the West End of London, but for now the writer/producer’s final programme words say it all: ‘It is certainly difficult to envisage ever writing Brown on Broadway’.
Amen.
Somewhat Recommended
Saul Reichlin
London correspondent
Talk Theatre in Chicago Podcast
www.ChicagoCritic.com
Date reviewed 17 January 2008
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