Southwark Playhouse
Date: 21 May (Tuesday ), 7:30pm
Seats: The Large, Row C 11
Notes: When listening to the Theatre Club podcast, they recommended the show Ain't Misbehavin'. When the tickets became discounted, I picked one up for just £15 for Tuesday night. It was kind of a whim, and I am very grateful for that.
This production was at the Southwark Playhouse, a new theatre to me. It has a full bar out front and many people were bringing drinks into the show as well. There are two theatres in the Playhouse: the Little and the Large. We were in the Large, although it was still quite small, with what must have been 100 people max in the whole space. It had a real community feel and was a really intimate feeling performance.
I was seated next to a group of older people (although it was a much older audience overall) and the man next to me kept interrupting the show. I realise that he was probably just overexcited but he kept saying "wonderful", "well done" and other things during the numbers. He also clicked/clapped along when no one else did, and even got told off for tapping his wine glass on his metal chair by the people in front. It did ruin the experience a bit for me as it kept bringing me out of the show and back into the real world, but I was able to (mostly) ignore it. Other than that I didn’t mind going to the theatre alone, and that’s probably good because I’ve booked a couple more solo shows over the next few months!
The music for this show is all the music of Fats Waller, who wrote most of his music in the 1930s and 40s. Jazz is not a musical style which I am familiar with but it was bouncy and bouyant and just so full of life. I only recognised one song, which I had sung in my school choir days, and that was ‘Handful of Keys’ but we had sung it in a very different style and so I barely recognised it.
The show had a cast of only 5 and they were all referred to only by their real names - Adrian Hansel, Renee Lamb, Carly Mercedes Dyer, Landi Oshinowo, and Wayne Robinson. And they were fantastic! On for pretty much every minute of the show, there was very little dialogue so it was all singing, all dancing all the time. I think my favourite performer was Renee Lamb, who was so physical and extremely sassy throughout! Her voice was familiar to me as I have been listening to the cast recording of Six on repeat and she was the original Catherine of Aragon in that. All the perfomers were fantastic but I think for me tonally and in terms of the timbre of her voice Renee was my highlight.
Because of the physicality of this and because there are so many songs, the runtime of this show was quite short. Each act was 45 minutes with a 20 minute interval in between and actually that was the perfect length. I didn’t look at my watch once which is always a good sign! A fantastic way to spend a Tuesday evening and a brilliant way to spend 15 pounds. You couldn’t get a more different experience from my last 15 pound show (American Idiot) if you tried!
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