Robyn Rose-Li and Maddison Bulleyment and cast in Fly More Than You Fall at Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Photo Craig Fuller.FLY MORE THAN YOU FALL is a new musical created by the writing team of Eric Holmes and Nat Zagree and taps into Gen Z’s seemingly obsessive need for everyone to own and share traumas - whether real, perceived, or contrived for the purposes of feeling included and part of a wider club. In a twist, when Malia (Robyn Rose-Li) is told of her mother’s stage 4 cancer, she channels her emotional upset into her story’s characters - two damaged birds Willow and Flynn (Maddison Bulleyment and Edward Chitticks) who initially find mutual love and support as they attempt to overcome challenges together, but who begin to represent Malia’s own life experience of losing a loved one and feeling obliged to be strong and push onward alone. In facing down the unwanted sympathy she receives from everyone around her, Malia lashes-out, eventually realising that she needs the more substantial support, love and understanding of her equally devastated father Paul (Cavin Cornwall).
On Southwark Playhouse Elephant’s tricky stage, where a lack of depth to the playing area is a perpetual challenge to productions, designer Stewart J Charlesworth has plastered sheets of paper in varying sizes and pastel shades to act as a backdrop and (presumably) to denote the many pads and pages writers use when creating their works. Whilst undoubtedly thin, its success when assessed by any other metric (or aesthetic), is questionable at best.
The show’s tunes are generally pleasing, although some of the lyrics require attention, and in general everyone is appropriately playful/earnest, with the performers deploying their pipes strongly to floaty and belting effect whenever required, which is most enjoyable when the harmonies are allowed to shine without over amplification. The main issue is that very little actually happens to maintain narrative interest. The second half in particular starts with the funeral for Malia’s mother Jennifer (Keala Settle) thereby depriving the production of its most recognisable performer and leaving the narrative heavy lifting to texted conversations notably with writing soulmate Caleb (Max Gill) which relies, like so many musical scripts these days, on spoken-out-loud, emoji-laden exchanges which were an original device a decade ago, but now seem hackneyed and lazy.
Christian Durham directs the production, whilst Heather Douglas is credited as Movement Director which perhaps says something about the awkward playing area and the lack of any specific feel and style to the moments where dance choreography is deployed. With some studious further development to the plot, there is potential here, but on press night and in its current guise, the show definitely fell more than it flew.
Plays to 23rd November.
