Rooms - A Rock Romance, Finborough Theatre - theatre review

Neither the hero nor the entire show ever recovers from Monica P. Miller, played by lively Cassidy Janson, who whirls, tornado-style, into the thick of the action
ROOMS – A ROCK ROMANCE at the Finborough Theatre
1 May 2013

It's hard to ignore the differences between this and another current piece of musical theatre.

In West End offering Once, an anguished Irish singer-songwriter is galvanised by the ambitions of a feisty musical woman. In this two-hander from Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon, it’s the turn of an anguished Scottish singer-songwriter. But whereas Once opens out and lives and breathes, there’s an overwhelming sense that neither this hero nor the entire show ever recovers from the female force of nature who whirls, tornado-style, into the thick of the action.

Monica P. Miller (lively Cassidy Janson, whose amp is turned up way beyond 11) is 'Glasgow's answer to Barbra Streisand'. She involves reclusive Ian (Alexis Gerred) in helping her write a risqué song for a Bat Mitzvah, whirls him off to London, discovers punk (it’s 1977) and then whirls him to New York. He, understandably, looks perpetually startled, perhaps in part at the errant Scottish accents that he and Janson produce.

Andrew Keates’s production, staged around three rusting metal doorframes, certainly pitches the actors up close and personal with the audience and there’s strong work from the four-piece band. Yet despite a spine-tinglingly poignant closing number, Happiness, from the at-last toned-down Janson, everything is too neatly packaged up in just 80 minutes. Ian and Monica may keep telling us that he has a serious drinking problem and she an eating one, but we never really believe them, about this or indeed anything else.

Until May 18 (0844 847 1652, finboroughtheatre.co.uk)

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