Victor/Victoria isn’t a great musical. Henry Mancini’s score, boosted by Frank Wildhorn, contains only a couple of good songs. Leslie Bricusse’s lyrics are occasionally smart, but most of the time they’re on the level of ‘When I see the Eiffel Tower, I have to go and take a shower’. And the book by Blake Edwards, all about fluctuating sexual identities, is less interesting than that makes it sound.
But director Thom Southerland, who has had hits at Southwark Playhouse with the musicals Parade and Mack & Mabel, works his magic again. He makes neat use of the by no means easy space in the venue’s vault, and creates a cabaret atmosphere that’s much more decadent than that of Edwards’s rather straight 1982 film (on which the 1995 Broadway version was based). There is also crisp, appealing choreography by Lee Proud.
The star of the production is Anna Francolini. She plays Victoria Grant, an English singer in Thirties Paris who impersonates a female impersonator.
Yes, she’s a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, which is a challenge instead of a source of passionate excitement. However, Francolini makes it seem moving and absorbing, in a vivid and technically superb performance that’s a mix of pained innocence, tenderness and defiance.
Richard Dempsey also excels as Victoria’s sublimely camp friend Toddy.
There’s robust support from Matthew Cutts as the romantic interest and Michael Cotton as his confused bodyguard, while Mark Curry, whom I mainly remember from kids’ TV shows in the Eighties, is a genial presence as impresario André Cassell.
The production is further evidence – as if any were needed — that Southwark Playhouse is one of London’s best fringe theatres and Southerland a young director of real promise. I’m not sure the choice of material is right on this occasion; the four stars are for what’s been done with it.
Until December 15 (020 740 70234, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk)
