On Stage
SAUVAGE, LEO
On Stage COCKNEY ARISTOCRATS BY LEO SAUVAGE Albeit unfairly, critics arriving on the opening night of Me and My Girl may understandably have felt some resentment toward the first production to be...
...There is, for instance, the one where Snibson-Hareford is grappling with the family chronicle in the library, as imposing portraits of some of his more illustrious ancestors look on...
...The only prostitution of sorts that we actually see in Me andMyGirl, though, does not take place in this proletarian borough ofLondon...
...They have no idea what the newly-discovered Earl of Hareford will look like...
...No, there is not much of a book to Me and My Girl, and Noel Gay's lively, rousing music merits better lyrics than Rose and Furber provided...
...Throughout these beautifully articulated antics, Lindsay demonstrates the amount of sheer fun that can be distilled upon the stage when theater intelligently leans on the circus...
...One suspects, for instance, a street-smart and swaggeringly self-confident boy from Lambeth could manage to descend the staircase of an aristocratic mansion in Hampshire without twisting his feet and contorting his legs...
...Together they turned the 1937 Noel Gay musical into a j oyously irresistible 1986 entertainment that augurs well, at least one hopes, for the coming season...
...Where George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's My Fair Lady have a single Galatea character, Me and My Girl distributes the idea between a pair of characters, although with a certain asymmetry: Bill Snibson somehow manages to acquire enough aristocratic gimmicks to placate the Duchess of Dene on his own, without the assistance of a Pygmalion, while Sally Smith's transformation is the quick and artful doing of a certain Professor Higgins-figure who works behind the scenes...
...With so much going for it, Me and My Girt will doubtless have people whistling "The Lambeth Walk" on the sidewalks of Broadway for some time to come...
...If he appears above pimping, it is only because of his steadfast and profound love for Sally Smith (Maryann Plunkett), an honest working-class type who would not put up with it...
...When his lineage and its implications are revealed to him, he falls into a faint, retaining just enough wit to request whisky instead of water...
...The spoken lines—particularly the witty retorts and puns that lilt off Lindsay's tongue— are considerably more diverting...
...I suspect this is partly due to what the Playbill delicately referred to as director Ockrent's "contributions to revisions...
...Snibson, it seems, has been identified as the natural, long-lost son of the late Lord Hareford, making him heir to the title to Hareford Hall and to the rich estate that surrounds it...
...The witty sets by Martin Johns and costumes by Ann Curtis contribute significantly to the musical's success, too...
...It occurs in aristocratic Hareford Hall, Hampshire, where the not too believable love story of the shady Cockney guy and his deeply hooked Cockney doll takes an utterly unbelievable turn that nevertheless enthralls us...
...We have heard nothing of the rain in Spain, but the idea is plain, and Sir John Tremayne is moved to exclaim: "She's got it, she's got it...
...When she addresses him, her diction is flawlessly genteel...
...At first blush this formula might seem unpromising as a source of fresh humor, and in fact part of the evening's fascination is watching how, under Ockrent's direction, the incidents unfold hilariously...
...Any such prejudices were quickly swept away, however, by Mike Ockrent's direction and Robert Lindsay's brilliant acting...
...Lindsay plays Bill Snibson, a London lowlife whose least ambiguous occupation is picking pockets...
...As he prepares to quit the manor, suitcase in hand, his Cockney girl appears at the top of the grand staircase in a dazzling, uncustomary evening dress...
...What follows is a series of comical incidents resulting from the collision of the brazen, not to say insolent, ways of the bad boy from Lambeth with the snobbish niceties he is expected to adopt —indeed, must adopt, for the approval of his aunt, the Duchess, is necessary before he may take possession of his inheritance...
...Deprived of his love, the lonely Earl gratifies his romantic impulses in a spectacularly presented dream sequence where he dances with Sally above the clouds...
...Barely avoiding asphyxiation, he finally pokes his head out to find himself ina face-to-face confrontation with a tiger...
...Minor flaws like these do not really detract from the light, sparkling mood of Me and My Girl—indeed, the pleasure never falters...
...Notwithstanding the sharp sense of technical nuance the two men possess, their effort does afford a few reasons for quibbling, if not for kippling...
...But the highest praise has to be reserved for Lindsay, an extraordinary Shakespearean actor who is also an expert clown...
...It is quite easy to catch yourself laughing aloud at some of Lindsay's scenes after you have left the theater...
...But when the new Earl of Hareford responds to "Do you like Kipling...
...And as superb as Ockrent's direction may be overall, I was disappointed by his handling of the seduction scene, in which the opportunistic Lady Jacqueline Carstone (Jane Summerhays) nearly rapes the future owner of the Hare-ford fortune...
...Granted, the wordplay is not of the most sophisticated caliber...
...After all, the single character who is not a faint stereotype is Snibson-Hareford, and that is due not to any semblance of realism but rather to his being a sheer fantasy...
...Even the stage manager and hands deserve kudos for their virtuoso maneuvers, obviously the result of a lot of hard work...
...Snibson, for his part, has been kept in the dark about the reason for his being summoned...
...Sally, you see, had sequestered herself away early on for fear of proving an obstacle to Bill's new career...
...Lindsay's premature exaggeration of his gait might have weakened—happily it doesn't—the impact of his amusingly stiff attempts to walk after his first riding lesson...
...There are, to be sure, plenty of streetwalkers trying to drum up business under the lamppost in front of the house in Lambeth where Sally lives...
...Among those awaiting him at the manor are the Duchess of Dene (Jane Connell) and Sir John Tremayne(George S. Irving), as well as solicitor Herbert Parchester (Timothy Jerome) and butler Charles Heathersett (Thomas Toner...
...Without the abundant laughs the production delivers, Me and My Girl would suffer seriously from the weakness of its dramatic conception...
...Try as he might, he cannot escape this terror, for it is actually part of a tigerskin rug in which he unknowingly ensnarled himself while struggling with the robe...
...Ultimately, the Cockney boy resolves to abandon the trappings of lordship and recover his old life...
...Such is Snibson's excitement that he hopelessly loses himself in the overample lordly robe he has donned for the occasion...
...On Stage COCKNEY ARISTOCRATS BY LEO SAUVAGE Albeit unfairly, critics arriving on the opening night of Me and My Girl may understandably have felt some resentment toward the first production to be staged at the Marquis Theater in the new Marriott Marquis Hotel, a glass-and-concrete tower whose erection required the razing of three of Broadway's most beloved playhouses—the Moros-co, the Helen Hayes, and a small jewel called the Bij ou where Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten had its New York premiere...
...with "I don't know, I never kippled," nobody resisted...
...Lindsay's best lines, it should be stressed, are delivered in body language, and Ockrent knows how to exploit that vocabulary...
...The book, by L. Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber, with contemporary revisions by Steven Fry, does incorporate one novel wrinkle...
...Ockrent and Lindsay are supported by a fine American cast, and excellent dancers animated by Gillian Gregory...
...What might have been an amusingly acrobatic burlesque between Lindsay and Summerhays is spoiled by the lady's affectations of Hollywood eroticism...
...The abrupt realization that he, Bill Snibson of Lambeth, can claim so distinguished a pedigree sends him off on a flight of fancy: Through a clever bit of staging we are treated to the spectacle of his noble forebears, decked out in the habiliments of their times (including a suit of armor), singing and dancing within the picture frames...
...I have no complaint about her legs, but the attack lacks finesse...
Vol. 69 • September 1986 • No. 12
