This production of musical WILD PARTY is an extraordinary achievement by Paul Taylor Mills, an ambitious young producer and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s choice to Artistic Direct The Other Palace (formally the St James Theatre) which is to become a home for new and recent musicals.I’d never have imagined it possible to attract such a glittering cast to the venue. The company is stuffed full of exceptional musical theatre talent. I guess everyone hopes to catch ALW’s eye!
The musical, set in the roaring 1920’s, charts the course of a decadent, booze, drug and sex fuelled party for Broadway decadents and is based on a notorious 1927 poem by Joseph McClure.
Frances Ruffelle (the original Eponine in LES MISERABLES) looks amazing and sings on top form as Queenie, the fading, masochistic, out-of control hostess. John Owen-Jones (An award winning Jean Valjean and Phantom) plays her psychotic, abusive husband Burrs and prowls around the stage oozing dangerous sexual charisma. Donna McKechnie (who’s legendary Broadway career includes originating the role of Cassie in A CHORUS LINE) appears as an aging former star who’ll stoop to anything to be back in the spotlight. Victoria Hamilton-Barritt (who was Cassie in the recent production at the London Palladium and who I directed in FAME) takes the role of Queenie’s acid tongued best friend who makes a play for Burrs and loses her handsome gigolo (Simon Thomas) to the hostess during the party. Tiffany Graves (A notable Velma in CHICAGO) is a lovelorn and bitter striptease artists bewildered by her new lesbian lover and Eddie Mitchell (So impressive recently as Coal House Walker in RAGTIME) is a boxer doubting his future and his relationship. The show allows every one of them to take centre stage with powerful solo numbers and there’s many other, equally impressive, if lesser known performers who also get a chance to shine.
Director and Choreographer Drew McOnie marshals this extraordinary cast to create a pulsating, thrusting sexually charged production that drips delicious depravity not least in his exceptional, high energy dance routines which alternate slinkiness with out of control abandon.
The score, a gritty pastiche of 20’s jazz and Vaudeville by Michael John LaChiusa does feel a little relentless in Act One but it’s nicely balanced by poignancy and a quieter, simmering undercurrent of violence in Act Two.
Honestly, if you love contemporary musical theatre and it’s stars, you’d be a fool to miss this.
After you spend a lot of time in the theatre, be it watching or making it, sooner or later you begin to yearn for a surprise. You want to see work that will stop your breath, stay with you for a long while and make you question the status-quo in a creative and non patronising way. After missing THIS IS NOT CULTURALLY SIGNIFICANT last summer at Edinburgh Fringe I finally managed to see the piece at this year's The Vault Festival, and I can't express how mind blown I was by Adam Scott- Rowley's absurdist and hypnotising one man show.