Theatre
Divorce Me Darling (Chichester) Chimps (Hampstead)
A dazzling delight
Sheridan Morley
For those of us who still believe in the heritage as well as the sheer survival of the British stage musical against all the finan- cial and other odds, something just won- derful is happening this week on the main stage at Chichester. Back in 1965, Divorce Me Darling was the ten-years-later sequel to Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, one which died a rapid death in the West End not least because that winter of Julie Christie in Darling and the Rolling Stones declaring their 'Satisfaction' was scarcely the one in which to arouse much nostalgic interest in the long-lost world of the 1930s Riviera.
But now Paul Kerryson, whose work at Leicester on neglected Sondheim has been one of the regular delights of this last musi- cal decade, moves south with the first revival of what I guess Hollywood might have called Boy Friend II. All the charac- ters from the original are back in Nice, only this time to get divorced or bombed or bankrupted; the innocence of the Twenties, that yearning for a room in Bloomsbury, has given way to a darker and more com- plex world of the Thirties in which people are now frantically dancing away from something horrible rather than towards something magical.
Sandy Wilson exists and operates on the very borderlines of memory and mockery, slyly commentating on this pre-war period even while he is ostensibly celebrating it. In that sense, his songs are far more subver- sive than they first appear, elegant little musical time-bombs which explode just when you least expect them.
What remains so utterly, joyously daz- zling about Divorce Me Darling is not a patchy score but the vast range of its refer- ences; within a two-hour dance marathon we get allusions to the balcony scene in Pri- vate Lives, the 'list' songs written by Cole Porter for Ethel Merman, dance routines originally created on battleship decks for Ann Miller, a Gene Kelly routine from On the Town, a plot out of 42nd Street about an understudy suddenly having to cover for a star, and far more subtle reminders of Jack Buchanan, Gertrude Lawrence, Bobby Howes and Binnie Hale.
Without ever falling back on anything so obvious or weary as direct parody or imita- tion, Wilson gathers up all this diverse musical material and rewrites it into a coherent (well, nearly) whole which can today be enjoyed by anyone who hasn't the faintest idea of or interest in any of these people; yet for those of us who do happen to know and love them or at least their memories, then Divorce Me Darling also works as a critical history of the period and its long-lost brilliance.
Kerryson has gathered around him the greatest musical cast I have ever seen in nearly 40 years of Chichester; led by the ageless, timeless Liliane Montevecchi, who now looks and sounds like Dietrich on speed, the company also includes Rose- mary Ford, Tim Flavin, Ruthie Henshall and Andrew Halliday as the would-be divorcees, the veteran Jack Tripp and Joan Savage as the loony aristocrats leading a `Come on, Julia — its just a passport photo.' troop of keep-fit tap dancers for reasons never explained, Marti Webb as the requi- site American heiress and Linzi Hately as the maid made for all occasions.
And that's just the start of it: the cast runs to another 15, and when they finally get into line behind Rosemary Ford for a tap-danced finale we get a breathtaking reminder that the British musical theatre has bred a generation of show singers and dancers who could have taken on Holly- wood at its Busby Berkeley best.
At Hampstead, Simon Block's Chimps is the suburban English answer to David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, where once again the salesmen meet the suckers only to indulge in an orgy of mutual self- destruction.
This time the suckers are a nerdish young book illustrator (Darren Tighe) and his altogether more together, achieving, tougher girlfriend (Ashley Jensen); as they set out on what is clearly an already unequal, uneasy and uneven domestic part- nership brought on by her pregnancy, their new home is invaded by Nicholas Woodes- on and Fraser James as a couple of door- to-door paint salesmen obsessed with closing the deal, whatever deal they can actually make in the circumstances.
Block is a young and scabrously funny writer who made his name at the Royal Court a couple of years ago with an equally black comedy about obsessive table-tennis partners; this time he is happy to watch two unsteady partnerships (that of the hopeful sellers and the prospective buyers) disinte- grate under the weight of their own in- fighting as each of the quartet struggles unsuccessfully to achieve some hopeless supremacy over the other three.
There is, admittedly, only just about enough plot here to keep the drama alive at all, as for much of the time we just watch four bleakly funny character sketches; and in the end there can be no real winners or losers just four total misfits trying to work out how to escape each other if not also themselves. The death of the salesman and his clients, at least spiritually and morally, is what gives Chimps its boundless energy and resourcefulness.
Finally, and all too briefly, the launch of a new Shakespeare Festival with the most spectacular Henry V I have ever seen on stage. Up and indeed over the 12th-century battlements of Barnwell Castle near Oun- dle, the former home of the Dukes of Gloucester, Geoffrey Davies put together a company of actors and archers (led by Robert Hardy as a definitive Chorus and Nigel Wrightson as a sturdy King) who, as the cannons roared and the arrows soared through the evening sky, brought this play about the disciplines of war into a whole new arena of pageant, parade and firework display. In its debut season, Barnwell has already given Shakespeare's Globe and Regent's Park severe open-air competition: if you missed it this summer, book early for next.
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