This summer’s musical treat

Chichester Festival Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Lucy St Louis & Phillip Attmore in Top Hat. Photo: Johan Persson

Every year I look forward to the Chichester Festival Theatre musical. Among the first class revivals of recent years have been Oliver!, South Pacific, Crazy For You with the incomparable Charlie Stemp, and Gypsy with Imelda Staunton. This year, they have chosen Top Hat, and, while it may not reach the heights of the aforementioned hits, it does not disappoint. There’s already an extensive UK tour booked for it, so you will have the chance to see for yourself.

Once again, Chichester have put together a mouth watering feast. Top Hat is primarily a tap dance show- it was written for Fred Astaire- and the dancing here is creme de la creme. Choreographed, as well as directed, by the great Kathleen Marshall, who was responsible for the London hit Anything Goes, the solo dances, the what you might call Fred and Ginger numbers and the chorus line work are all masterclasses in how it should be done. The sound of the tap is music in itself and 16 dancers or thereabouts combining to stamp the floor at the same time is explosive. The discipline, especially of the chorus lines, is genuinely awesome, as arm-in-arm they make a circular movement, all the while high kicking. Ms Marshall’s choreography is exuberant, uplifting and joyous.

A brief word about the story. A superstar tap dancer called Jerry falls in love with a woman called Dale but, owing to a misunderstanding, she thinks he’s his friend Horace, husband of her friend Madge. Spoiler alert- it all works out in the end.

Then there’s the music. Irving Berlin wrote 1500 songs throughout a long career but the five he wrote for the original film represent him at his peak and extending his ability to write songs that serve the story: No Strings establishes the carefree character of Jerry, as well as his prowess as a tap dancer; Isn’t This A Lovely Day starts with Jerry and Dale in a standoff but reveals her increasing attachment to him as the song progresses; Cheek To Cheek, the centrepiece of the musical, shows Jerry seducing Dale through the power of dance- a true representation of the saying ‘dance is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, with climactic moments as he swings her through the air; and then there are the two big chorus line numbers Top Hat, White Tie And Tails and The Piccolino, which end the first act and begin the second in the stage version. All praise to Stephen Ridley and the 10 piece orchestra for their swinging sound.

Top Hat, released in cinemas in 1935, only became a stage musical in 2011 when it was adapted by Matthew White and Howard Jacques. There are many more Berlin tunes added, quite a few plundered from other Fred and Ginger movies, including Puttin’ On The Ritz, I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, Let Yourself Go and Let’s Face The Music And Dance.

Top Hat at Chichester Festival Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson

The six principals are superb, and the ensemble is wonderful. The hardest task goes to Phillip Attmore. How to step into the shoes of Fred Astaire? Not to mention that the show itself refers to him as a world-class dancer. And, unlike the legendary star, he has to perform live. He may not quite be Fred Astaire (who is?) but he is a likeable lead and an accomplished dancer.

Lucy St Louis as Dale is the full package. She has a powerful singing voice, acts well and dances beautifully. For me she was a revelation, although I shouldn’t be surprised, because she’s already played Glinda in Wicked and Christine in The Phantom Of The Opera (you may have seen her perform at the Platinum Party At The Palace).

Clive Carter and Sally Ann Triplett as Horace and Madge provide a weight of experience and a huge dose of comedy. James Clyde as Horace’s servant Bates in various disguises, and Alex Gibson-Giorgio as Alberto, a comical Italian fashion designer and Dale’s would-be lover also keep the laughs coming. I know it’s no longer acceptable to make fun of foreigners who don’t speak English as well as us- ‘I am very displeased to meet you!’- but such lines were written a long time ago.

There is a great deal of funny lines, or perhaps corny jokes would be a better description. Here are a couple of examples: Horace is afraid of flying because the first word you see on signs at the airport is ‘Terminal’. He also explains that a man is incomplete until he’s married- ‘Then he’s finished.’ But that’s very much in the mood of this light comedy which, as I said, is about dance first, then music, and only then comedy to fill the gaps.

Peter McIntosh‘s luminous art deco set is very clever. The thrust stage is kept clear for dancing, although there are semi-circular rises. At the back there is a revolve that swiftly takes us from one bedroom to another bedroom to a bar. He along with Yvonne Milnes also designed the costumes which have the loose, easy-going feel of the 1940s rather than slavishly copying the 1930s style of the film.

I left the auditorium on a high. Top Hat on stage may not have the wow factor of Crazy For You or Anything Goes. But then again there were no equivalent films to compare them with, so it is disadvantaged by not being able to match the perfection of the film. On the other hand, the fact that it is performed live, and you can see a group of supremely talented people right there in front of you creating beautiful, athletic, complex dance together to some of the greatest songs ever written, makes Top Hat at Chichester Festival Theatre, despite any imperfections, a joy better than any flickering screen.

Top Hat can be seen at Chichester Festival Theatre until 6 September 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

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Crown star Emma Corrin is mesmerising in comedy about gender freedom

★★★★

Emma Corrin as Orlando at the Garrick Theatre 2022 — Emma Corrin in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

It may be nearly a hundred years since Virginia Woolf wrote the novel Orlando, but it’s only todat that our society has caught up with its story about the fluidity of gender, desire and time. As the novel, quoted in the play, says: ‘If you can just live another century.’

Emma Corrin, probably best known as young Princess Diana in The Crown, plays the eponymous protagonist. When the play begins, Orlando is a young male aristocrat in the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

In our first encounter with him, we catch a glimpse of a penis. It’s a startling and funny moment that sets the scene for the rest of the evening. His trusty servant-come-dresser-come-tutor-come-guardian angel Mrs Grimsditch tries to get him to put his trousers on. Deborah Findlay is funny, warm and down-to-earth, providing a necessary foil for Emma Corrin who gives a mesmerising performance as the romantic, confused, freedom-loving hero. The symbolic trouser-wearing is a motif throughout the play.

Even if they prefer the non-binary pronoun ‘they’, Emma Corrin, of course, doesn’t have a penis. It’s a theatrical prop. Before long, Orlando has lost that organ and mysteriously become a woman, as well as moving on many years to the court of James I without getting much older. To confirm the sex change, we catch a glimpse of her breasts, which I think were real but this is theatre, a world of pretence, so who knows?

In fact, theatre is a theme of this play. It moves through many theatrical styles as Orlando navigates from Elizabethan (a hint of Shakespeare) to Jacobean to Regency to Victorian times to the gradual liberation of the modern era. This substitutes for the literary journey that Orlando undertakes in the original novel. Theatre is not as effective a barometer for the changing attitudes to women, but it works nicely as a metaphor for being whatever you want to be.

To support the theme, Michael Grandage and designer Peter McKintosh have created a set that looks like a bare stage with brickwork and a large metal door. It’s populated with the trappings of a theatre- ropes and counterweights, a large costumes basket, a clothes rail, a stepladder and more. The set frequently features a bed that starts large and becomes much smaller in Victorian times (the worst of all periods for women). Having set up the theme, I think Neil Bartlett could have put it across more strongly in the script. There seems to be no equivalent of the constantly changing book that Orlando is writing and that provides a unifying thread through the novel.

From the start, this dramatised version offers the kind of inventive freewheeling imagination found in the original novel, because no less than nine Virginia Woolfs appear, speaking together and separately, to tell us the multi-faceted story of Orlando.

View of Emma Corrin's naked back in Orlando at The Garrick Theatre London — Emma Corrin in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

Much as she liked being a man, Orlando likes being a woman more and that’s how they remain, as the play develops into a romp through three centuries of the history of women in our society. And just as there are many different Virginia Woolfs, Orlando discovers there are many different ways we can desire. They also realise that time is elastic rather than linear, and that (spoiler alert) life needs to be enjoyed go the full in the here and now. It is above all a story that lauds the freedom of poetic imagination above the prosaic.

Orlando finds out what it is to be a woman, an experience made more shocking by them having been a man. They experience the disturbing effect a bare leg can have on heterosexual men and the way misogynistic men subjugate women. They realise that women can love each other, that love and betrayal go hand in hand. They find that men and women can dress up as each other for practical as well as sexual purposes.

Emma Corrin and Deborah Findlay stand shoulder to shoulder in a scene form Orlando at the Garrick Theatre 2022 — Emma Corrin and DEborah Fidnlay in Orlando. Photo: Marc Brenner

Orlando is an everyperson rather than an intrepid hero or overpowering genius. Emma Corrin is tremendous at portraying the inarticulacy of the character, the frequent lack of understanding, but also the enthusiasm and optimism. They dominate the stage with their wide eyes, knotted features, hesitant speech, squirming body and sparkling smile. It’s a performance that is both funny and sad, and thoroughly engaging. As with the relationship between Orlando and Mrs Grimsditch, Emma Corrin’s youthful exuberance is balanced by the twinkly-eyed experience of Deborah Findlay.

In a play where gender is fluid, an entirely female cast bar one takes on all the roles, which of course leads to some mockery of men. Lucy Briers memorably plays a blustering naval officer who moves like a bantam cock. She also provides a haughty Queen Elizabeth.

Although writer Neil Bartlett couldn’t hope to convey the depth and complexity of Virginia Woolf’s novel, he does pick the important themes and moments, and by introducing the author onto the stage we get to hear direct quotes from the novel in her stream-of-consciousness way of writing.

Missing, in this fast moving 80 minute play, were the deeper relationships. Orlando’s first love Sasha whom they never forget, is played with verve by Millicent Wong, and their last Marmaduke is given a sensitive portrayal by Jodie McNee. But these lovers flash by as we skim across the surface of Orlando’s life. Their journey is not always pleasant, but it is ultimately optimistic.

Orlando is an entertaining evening thanks in no small part to Emma Corrin who displays all the signs of being a great star of the stage.

Orlando is playing at the Garrick Theatre in London until 25 February 2023.

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