Chris Eldon Lee reviews “Our Gracie”, which is at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme until Saturday April 23rd
This is a show with plenty of style but precious little substance. It is driven forward by a sterling central performance, a bright vamping piano and all the cheeky chappie-ness of a classic Ealing comedy…but it doesn’t get very far.
It’s a lovely subject of course and fans of Gracie Fields will have their heartstrings plucked by Sue Devaney’s excellent recreation of the celebrated British film and singing star who was born in 1898 above a Rochdale chip shop – only to be wooed by Hollywood. Despite a great deal of gurning, she perfectly re-creates the character my father told me about and showed me on all those old Pathé newsreels.
Philip Goulding has created a cunning cross between a chronological bio-pic and an ‘End of the Pier’ revue. We witness Gracie’s inevitable rise to fame, her three marriages and the lashings of public adoration. But it’s an anodyne appreciation with no real nitty-gritty.
We see her plucked from obscurity by musical impresario Archie Pitt …played by the excellent Fine Time Fontayne. What we don’t see is the psychological abuse she must have suffered when he marries her and takes a mistress. We see her enter hospital with cervical cancer – but the pain and fear is brushed away with a music hall quip. “Tell me doctor, will I be able to ride a unicycle after the op? Because I couldn’t before”. And there’s no real sense of shock at the sudden death on the Orient Express of the husband who made her happy, film director Monty Banks. Again their relationship is encapsulated in a gag; “I can make you rich, Gracie.” “Don’t bother, I’m rich already”.
I learned more from the programme than the performance. Gracie appeared in the very first Royal Variety Performance before George the Fifth. Doing her war work for ENSA, she sang 60 songs a day to our boys in North Africa. She was the first actress to play Miss Marple. It’s all potentially interesting stuff – left unexplored.
But I take my straw boater off to the team who perform the show. From Matthew Ganley’s deft brush drumming to Liz Carney’s portrayal of Edith Piaf, it’s all very slick and sincere. There are magical little episodes such as the luggage confusion on Crewe Station when Gracie Fields meets George Formby (Fine Time Fontayne again) and haggles over whose trunk has the G F monogram. And the fey portrayal of Liberace is a hoot.
There are faithful reproductions of novelty turns involving clogs and cowboys and – as you might imagine – a succession of speciality songs; starting with “I Took My Harp to the Party But Nobody Asked Me to Play” through “The Thingummy Bob” to “The Biggest Aspidistra in the World”; all lovingly done.
And when Sue Devaney throws back her headscarf and says, “I fancy a sing-song, don’t you?”, it is physically impossible not to join in.
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Photo Joel Chester Fildes