After the song writing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein had massive block buster hits with OKLAHOMA and CAROUSEL and before they went on to write the equally successful THE KING AND I, SOUTH PACIFIC and THE SOUND OF MUSIC there were also a couple of flops. Director Thom Southerland has given London audiences a chance to re-evaluate this lesser know repertoire in recent years with very persuasive revivals of ME AND JULIET and a stage version of a later TV show which the pair wrote, STATE FAIR. Now he turns his attention to ALLEGRO, perhaps the least easy to love of the repertoire.The show's concept clearly draws upon the same avant-garde theatre techniques which were central to OUR TOWN, Thornton Wilder's depiction of small town, Middle American, early 20th century life that was played out on a bare stage, with a few step ladders and which was a massive hit in 1938. Hammerstein's book similarly employs an empty stage full of town’s folk, speaking and singing in unison like a Greek chorus or breaking out to play individual characters in the life story of Joseph Taylor, a sweet and unremarkable country doctor.
Joe is born, grows up, moves away, goes to college, gets a job, a wife and a promotion but then opts to go right back home to where he started.
The nature of his character combines the major obstacles you face when trying to fall in love with ALLEGRO. He is sweet, as sickly sweet and wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting. And he is unremarkable, nothing terrible interesting happens to him apart from a brief taste of career success which he rejects. This is because what we're supposed to regard as truly remarkable is the American Dream that is mom's apple pie, pop's homespun wisdom and conventional married life. With the right gal of course, not our hero's first wife, who tries to lead him from the path of righteousness with her ambition and independence. It's a dream that so many writers, from Sondheim to Arthur Miller, have subsequently so thoroughly debunked that belief in it seems laughable.
Southerland beefs up the few moment of conflict as much as he can but inconveniences like family tensions, bereavement and the Great Depression are shrugged off with the same ease with which TV's DOWNTON ABBEY dispatched the First World War like an inconvenient weekend guest.
If you can swallow all that there's the songs to contend with, a collection of bland, rum-tee-tum obviousness that it's hard to believe came from the same guys who wrote CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, SOME ENCHANTED EVENING and SOMETHING WONDERFUL. The number THE GENTLEMEN IS A DOPE has endured as a stand-alone cabaret standard but it's not top draw. It's given to a feisty nurse character, shoe-horned into the plot three quarters of the way through as an alternative to Doc's treacherous wife.
Despite all this the stage craft on display in this revival is so glorious that awarding it any less than four stars is impossible. I simply cannot imagine a better production of this hooky show and indeed it’s one of the best productions of any musical on in London at the moment.
Fans, like me, of Southerland's work will recognise regular themes in his direction. The action doesn't just play out horizontally but vertically too as the performers constantly ascend high platforms, spun around to express the emotion of a scene. A technique he first used so effectively in his revival of MACK AND MABLE. Book a seat further up the raked banks of seats to see this at its best. Sit near the front and you'll be craning your neck to watch performers high above you. Southerland has also returned to staging his work along a narrow strip of stage with the audience sat on either side as in his recent glorious staging of GRAND HOTEL.
Another trait his productions regularly demonstrate and which is very much on display here is extremely high standards of acting, singing, musicianship, attention to period detail in props and costuming and the ever evolving and surprising choreography of Lee Proud who packs the runway stage with high energy, precision movement.
Every single member of the ensemble cast is superb and equally adept at acting singing and dancing. The show allows everyone a moment to shine but I particularly enjoyed the commanding gravitas of Steve Watts as Joe's father, Kate Bernstein as Nurse Emily (so good the character deserves her own musical) Gary Tushaw skilfully capturing the Everyman nature of our hero and amazingly Emily Bull manages to bring depth and dignity to the role of his errant wife.
There are snippets of at least two songs, JOHNNY ONE NOTE and MOUNTAIN GREENERY which Richard Rodgers wrote with an earlier collaborator, the acerbic, troubled lyricist Lorenz Hart. If only ALLEGRO had a little more of his wit and darkness amidst the sickly sweet Americana.
Simply knowing that this play is about a gang of underprivileged 16 year old convent girls on a choir trip, and a glance at the poster, which shows them scruffy and sprawled all over each other, and you have all you need to know about this show.