See Rock City and Other Destinations, Union Theatre - theatre review

This charming new piece is a musical journey across America, and made up of six short stories it's appealing but a touch wispy
Lost souls: Richard Dawes and Barney Glover in one of six short stories (Picture: Alastair Muir)
Alastair Muir
Fiona Mountford21 August 2014

The lure of the open road in the United States, whether we’ve experienced it first-hand or through countless representations in popular culture, is well known. This new American musical taps gently into that sense of boundless possibility, via a series of six short narratives centred on lost souls in familiar destinations.

The piece is certainly not without charm, although overall it is a little under-energised. Occasionally, we worry that it might run out of gas just before it reaches Rock City.

Inevitably some segments of the work by Brad Alexander (music) and Adam Mathias (book and lyrics) are stronger than others.

I was unconvinced by the linking strand featuring a young man looking for alien life forms in Roswell and disappointed by the nastiness bubbling through as two sexually confused schoolboys play hooky in Coney Island.

Yet there’s far more to enjoy when endearing waitress Dodi (Nancy Sullivan) takes an unscheduled ride, her first ever out of her home state, to the titular attraction. Diners, road trips, strangers arriving in the night: that’s what we like in our American stories. The chapter about the bride (Sinéad Wall, accomplished) having a wedding-day crisis in Niagara Falls also bears fruit and offers the stylishly Sondheim-esque number What am I Afraid of?

The 100-minute straight-through running time is a shrewd decision; any longer and director Graham Hubbard would have struggled. The design, of moveable blue blocks painted with a cloud motif, could usefully have been bolstered by the odd marker suggesting each new location. Like the rest of the show, it’s appealing but a touch wispy.

Until August 30 (020 7261 9876, uniontheatre.biz)

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