FLAHOOLEY
Discover The Lost Musicals July
/August 1997
Barbican Cinema
Review
by Emma Shane
For the
third Lost Musical of this season
There is also an Arab Princess,
known as Princess Najla, who was played gracefully by Valda Avicks, and
you have to admire her operatic vocal talents in Najla’s Lament, Najla’s
song of Joy (amusingly subtitled Arabian for “Get Happy”) Najla’s
Birdsong/Enchantment; although personally I am not over fond of too much
highly classical singing in musicals.
James
Vaughan gave an unusually unemotional performance as an Arab emissary.
Delivering such classic lines as “We will have to send an ambassador to
The original production contained
several puppetry sequences, performed by Bill and Cora Baird’s troupe. Although the company sang a very good
rendition of You Too Can Be A Puppet, for this concert staging the
puppetry segments were dispensed with. The Lost Musicals resident
puppeteer was in the audience, rather than performing.
Sylvester was to have been played by
Dale Rapley. While it would have been delightful to have seen the latter
gentleman in the role, I have to say that his replacement, Alan Cox was
extremely good. He sang all the numbers very well and was pleasing to look at.
As Sylvester’s girlfriend Sandy, who
initially finds it very strange that Sylvester “talks to puppets”, Sian
Reeves proved to be an excellent romantic lead, exactly the kind of
performer suited to this sort of role. She sang her solos He’s only
Wonderful and Come Back Little Genie, sweetly. I doubt that her duet with Alan, Here’s To
Your Illusions could have been better handled either. I certainly hope we
see both of them in many more Lost Musicals.
Melvyn Hayes portrayed the
Genie, Abou Ben Atom’s mystification at capitalism, and human desires, well. He
also evoked much sympathy for his character with his tender handling of The
Springtime Cometh, sung to The Flahooley Doll herself, a sweet performance
from young Kirstie Wilde, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
Special mention must also be made of
two other outstanding performances: Mandy More, as always, made the most
of her part, B.G.Bigalow’s secretary K.T.Pettigrew. My only regret is that she
did not get to sing any solos. B.G.Bigalow, a company director, who had so
successfully out rivalled his competitors that he had to finance his own
competitor, in order to have any competion, was played brilliantly as ever by Matt
Zimmerman. A running joke throughout the show, is that he keeps discovering
enterprises that he did not know he owned.
The supporting company were: Stephen
McCarthy, Zoe Ann Brown George Fitzgerald, Jane Lancaster,
Gareth Owen, Steve Elias, Dominic Curtis, Josefina Gabrielle
and Jacqueline Harben. The Musical Director was Mark W. Dorrell, with Musical Reconstruction
work by Mark Warman. All acquitted themselves well, with such
interesting songs as: Who Says There Ain’t No Santa Claus, Flahooley,
Jump Little Chillun, The World is Your Balloon, Spirit of
Capsulanti, No More Flahooley’s and Christmas Song (Sing The
Merry).
My favourite number was Happy
Hunting, a song which could be a postrunner to this composer’s earlier hit Deadwood
Stage. This was a terrific piece of fun handled as only Myra Sands
possibly could!
I was also amused by the script,
which contained a lot of in joke references to other musicals, like: Wizard
Of Oz, ShowBoat, & South Pacific.
By the end of the Show: Sandy and
Sylvester are married, just before Christmas, the Genie is back in his lamp,
which has been restored to the Arabs, and Sandy is totally reconciled to
Sylvester talking to his puppets, she even does so herself.
Perhaps the 1951 Flahooley
got lost through being ahead of its time. Four years later NBC started
broadcasting Sam and Friends and both puppetry and peoples perception of
it was changed forever. Talking to puppets came to be viewed as something that
could be done “as if it was the most natural thing in the world” to
quote both Ethel Merman and Linda Lavin.
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