SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Writing for Us
A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewSister Act
|
Miss Van Cartier, people wish to kill you. (pause)
Anyone who has ever met you I should imagine!— Mother Superior |
Some of the nuns in Sister Act
(Photo: Catherine Ashmore) |
What is there to like about this cheap, vulgar and tawdry recreation of a hit movie using the worst elements of brash 1970s musicals? I suppose I should fess up and tell you that the movie isn't on my all time list of favourites but I mostly found Whoopi Goldberg charming and funny. It didn't help that with everyone miked up to the nines, the sound levels where I was sitting were uncomfortable and, like everything else, seemed overstated.
The film Sister Act has a large following and the advance box office for the new musical with music by Alan Menken, who wrote the delightful Little Shop of Horrors, was exceptionally buoyant, especially in these recession bitten days. It is billed as a World Premiere but a version of it opened in Los Angeles in 2006 and ran for less than two months. It has obviously been fairly extensively re-written, with some new numbers and others dropped, which you can see if you compare the song list at the end of this review with those in Laura Hitchcock's review for Curtain Up in 2006 (LA review).
The second act is more successful than the first but aesthetically the design is crass and ugly throughout. In the convent we see Christ on the cross, but only from mid thigh down to enormous feet nailed together. The Queen of Angels Church has an ugly overly large Madonna with huge hands, think an Easter Island interpretation of a Madonna, and the stained glass is like a thousand kaleidoscopes onstage but not in a good way. It makes Disney look like the Royal Academy. The costumes too are flesh cringingly extreme, with nuns in sequinned habits with the tabard apron bit in gold lurex with red sequined hearts. The effect isn't light and witty but painful. I did like the second act contrasting pulls on Deloris when she departs the nunnery for show business in the shape of orange spangled gogo dancers with huge Afro wigs but along the balcony at the rear, is the call of the sisters, a black and white, stately parade of nuns.
In the original, Sister Mary Clarence, the disguised mobster's girlfriend Deloris Van Cartier (Patina Miller) taught the nuns to sing gospel which would have been beautiful. In this version it's rock music she encourages aided by guitar wielding vicars. I loved "Rhythm of Life" from Sweet Charity but somehow the numbers in Sister Act largely fail to ignite. Patina Miller has huge energy and can sing tremendously well but the comedy seemed forced and unnatural. Sheila Hancock plays the Mother Superior with admirable contrasting restraint.
Eddie the nervous cop known as Sweaty Eddie at school is played by Ako Mitchell and manages to twice whip off his costume with the aid of Velcro, he turns from uniformed cop to white suited, red shirted member of The Jackson Five and in turn whips off the white suit to return to a policeman's uniform but looking several pounds lighter. No wonder he's sweaty if he's wearing three lots of clothes!
The number I liked best had was the gangsters singing as if they were courting nuns in a beautiful soul number, "Lady in the Long Black Dress" with the truly wonderful voice of Thomas Goodridge as TJ and joined in a falsetto by Ivan de Freitas as Dinero. The lyrics were fun too, written as if they were advertising themselves on a dating site like the song about what call to God each of nuns had received, "How I got the Calling" (one rotund nun had seen the face of Jesus in a Coconut Cream Pie).
The emotional highpoint of the show is the sacrificial nuns standing between the armed gangster Shank (Chris Jarman) and his intended victim, Doloris, who will testify against him to say she saw him commit a murder. The choreography is based on nuns pumping up their arms in the air, funny to some but not to those of us who saw Phil Wilmott's high kicking Sound of Music nuns at Battersea some years back. The finale of Sister Act sees the nuns in full glitter habits, the glister sisters maybe. Pity my colleague who has to review Sister Act for The Catholic Herald!
|
Sister Act
Music: Alan Menken Lyrics: Glenn Slater Book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner Directed by Peter Schneider Choreographer: Anthony Van Last Music director: Nicholas Skilbeck Starring: Sheila Hancock, Patina Miller, Ian Lavender With: Chris Jarman, Ako Mitchell, Katie Rowley Jones, Nicolas Colicos, Ivan de Freitas, Thomas Goodridge, Claire Greenaway, Julia Sutton, Amy Booth Steel, Debbie Kurup Ensemble: Vaness Barmby, Julian Cannonnier, Helen Colby, Jennie Dale, Jaymz Denning, Kerry Enright, Nia Fisher, Allison Harding, Paul Kemble, George Daniel Long, Hugh Maynard, Jo Napthine, Aysa O'Flaherty, Landi Oshinowo, Verity Quade, Philippa Stefani, Helen Walsh Swing: Ben Clare, Kate Coysten, Leigh Anne Stone, Michael Watson, Emma Woods Set Design: Klara Zieglerova Costume Design: Lez Brotherston Lighting Design: Natasha Katz Sound Design: Mick Potter Orchestrations: Doug Besterman Additional Arrangements: Simon Hale Musical Supervisor, Vocal and Incidental Musical Arrangements: Michael Kosarin Running time: Two hours 35 minutes including one interval Booking to 13th February 2010 Box Office: 0844 412 2704 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge on 3rd June 2009 performance at the London Palladium, Argyll Street, London W1 (Tube: Oxford Circus) |
|
Musical Numbers
| |
Act One
|
|
|
REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email. . .also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. |
|
London Theatre Tickets Lion King Tickets Billy Elliot Tickets Mighty Boosh Tickets Mamma Mia Tickets We Will Rock You Tickets Theatre Tickets |
