Theatre
Food for thought
Mark Amory
Meetings (Hampstead) Song and Dance (Palace) • Boogie (May Fair) News Revue (Fortune) Beyond the Footlights (Lyric) In a light-hearted even frivolous week Meetings made a promising start. A black couple are in their gleaming white kit- chen in Trinidad and though Jean says, 'We ain't no stylish couple', they seem to be very rich indeed with a Mercedes, a swim- ming pool and a superfluous fur coat. She does not think much of the neighbours `who wash their little Japanese car and cut their little Japanese grass'. Soon Hugh points out that the kitchen contains everything but food and is longing for the simple meals of his youth, which his wife is too busy and successful a careerwoman to provide. So they engage a charming village girl. There was a time when Hollywood simply took tired plots and recast them with blacks, to produce Shaft for James Bond, Blacula and so forth. It did freshen them and it looked as if Hugh must have an affair with the new cook and we would have Women's Liberation goes West with a few engaging variations provided by the setting. But no, Mustapha Matura is intent on drama with more themes hung on his simple little tale than it has any chance of sustain- ing. Jean is arranging the sales campaign of an American cigarette which causes first coughing and then death, including, what irony, her own. Led by his stomach, Hugh becomes enthusiastic about all forms of simple country wisdom and declares solemnly, 'Those people have so much. Not in the home. In there.' tapping his head. He has, like Bertie Wooster in an occasional weak moment, seen through the hollow glit- ter of the metropolitan life. This simplicity manages to be utterly banal without being convincing — a truism but not really true. Luckily the actors continue to play with verve and charm. Rudolph Walker finds endless different ways to express greed, smacking his lips, clapping his hands, all but drumming his heels on the floor, Angela Wynter seems charmingly innocent and, as the level of ethnic sweetness and light rises to unacceptable heights, Corinne Skinner-Walker, reaching for another mar- tini as she rasps that she would rather have chicken and chips thanks all the same, is a great relief.
The art of revue is said to have curled up and died inside a television set but at Edin- burgh last year there were dozens of them, each with a jaded teenager explaining that of course one was bored with the conven- tional format but theirs really was something rather different . .. The big one
this week, Song and Dance, is indeed rather different in that all the song comes in the first half, almost, and all the dance comes in the second, absolutely. The songs tell the story of an 'ordinary British girl' from Muswell Hill who is let down by a series of men in America, and are for the most part hopeful, rueful or sad, though there are some sharp jokes. The singer has to stay in this rather drab character and hold the large Palace audience by herself for perhaps an hour, so what is required is an electrifying mouse. Marti Webb makes the mouse sym- pathetic, allowing no more than a justified dollop of self pity, and supplies the elec- tricity with her clear strong voice; but she cannot persuade us that this excellent per- formance had not found its happiest home when it was on television. The exhilarating Dance, by contrast, is in exactly the right place. The area between ballet and musical comedy has long been natural to Americans, Jerome Robbins for instance moving from one to the other without self- consciousness. Now little Wayne Sleep, with the Royal Ballet since he was 12, has provided the dancers for Anthony Van Laast to set skipping and twirling to varia- tions on A Minor Caprice No. 24 by Paganini (you know it even if you think you don't, the bouncy introduction to The South Bank Show). By the handiest defini- tion, 'the one you watch', Sleep is a star but he has surrounded himself with tough com- petition arid when he stops leaping and tap- ping to catch his breath there is no sense of let-down, no waiting for his return; in par- ticular Paul Tomkinson has an engaging knack of strolling along and then throwing his legs over his head. Most people, in- cluding me, would still prefer a musical with characters and a story but Dance is a triumph itself and promises more in the future.
Boogie, Woogie, Bubble 'n' Squeak, started in South Africa in 1977, is perform- ed by Skirted Issue and somewhere behind and between the pastiche/parody of female singing trios is a feminist critique; on the way to the West End it has drowned in taf- feta, tulle and feathers. Like most of the audience I knew the songs but not the stars from the Forties and Fifties (McGuire and Beverley as well as Andrews sisters) but would guess that the imitation was im- precise. What remains are the songs put over with verve and pace.
I left early to catch News Revue which was fast, amiable and often funny. The point is topicality and only the strongest items or targets could afford to have been out of the papers for a few weeks. Laker seemed old hat, Boycott was only saved by Paul Toothill doing a sexy dance which in- cluded suggestive gestures with a cricket bat. The Royal Family is always with us and provided material for several numbers (too many): the best, 'How do you solve a pro- blem like Diana?', sung by members of the household eclipsed by the new star. The on- ly touch of true venom was spat at Lloyd Webber, nightingale pecking nightingale.
Beyond the Footlights is also amiable,
even literary and whimsical, but there too was a welcome flash of contempt in a sent about Americans who fund the IRA. Revue is alive and well and touring the country.
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