[title of show] at Southwark Playhouse Borough Review
You won't have to guess the title of this one... correct!
Not every show opens with an opening number entitled “untitled”, and certainly not all shows feature actors playing themselves in a show all about actors creating a show - and a show that is all about writers creating a show for four actors (have an idea?), is what birthed the concept for [title of show], a musical first premiered at the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival, now revived for the UK stage.
As vague as the title sounds (pardon the pun), Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell's material is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, following their creative journey - the former as composer-lyricist and the latter as book writer - as musical theatre writers struggling to stage a new show with an ensemble of four, all named after the original creators themselves.
The piece's metatheatrical nature is reflected across its material and the room it allows for each company in a new production to make the show their own - it is one that suits a space like Southwark Playhouse Borough particularly well, a studio-like environment where devices such as direct address and a combination of movement and dialogue-based context prove effective, particularly for a story within a story. Bell's linear storyline quickly becomes self-explanatory, with Broadway references aplenty, a continuous game of name-catching for the more devoted musical theatre fans among the audience.
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In this production, whilst characters retain the names of the original creators, the company brings their own interpretations to each role: Jacob Fowler as the ambitious Hunter (after Bell), Abbie Bunden as the multifaceted Heidi (after original collaborator Heidi Blickenstaff), Mary Moore in the role of the Susan (after original collaborator Susan Blackwell), responsible for some deadpan one-liners and Thomas Oxley as a contrasting Jeff (after Bowen, covered at this performance by Cahir O'Neill) to Fowler's Hunter.
Each cast member generates enjoyable chemistry with one another using movement-dominated characterisations about Hazel McIntosh's theatre-coded set of bookshelves and four platform blocks; Tom Chippendale as musical director by the name of Larry enjoys deserving cameos alongside complementing the cast's gorgeous vocal harmonies on keys, too.
Within a journey about putting a show together, condensed in 90 minutes, director Christopher D. Clegg exerts plenty of playfulness into a concept by theatre kids for theatre kids - for those unfamiliar with the abundant musical theatre context throughout the plot (including a song with lyrics drawn from carefully choreographed Playbill titles), some later moments may feel ever-so-slightly tedious without significant signposting common in conventional musicals, yet for anyone with such context, for example artists and independent producers, the uphill climb in any creative endeavour could not resonate more in this story, even featuring segments all about theatre reviews!
Sitting comfortably between a musical about a writer writing about a musical in an aptly strange loop with a hint of the big fancy musical, [title of show] is a hilarious reminder that not all shows need nor ought to be fully commercial-minded, and that independent productions deserve to be embraced by the welcoming theatre community and given a future life… and lights, curtain.
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
[title of show] plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 30 Nov. For more information and to book tickets, visit the venue website.
Tickets and Accessibility
🎟️ Tickets were kindly gifted by the press representative for the show. All opinions are my own, without any input from the producers or venue. Standard tickets are priced at £26, with concessions available at £21.
♾️ As an intimate venue, some lights spill into the thrust seating banks during certain scenes from all three directions. Actors use the two voms between seating banks as entrances/exits and the aisles up to the third row. At around 42 mins on the line ‘Die vampire’, there is about 5 seconds of red flashing lights. At 72 mins, there are frequent camera flashes in the photoshoot number.