FringeReview UK 2026
Glorious!
Thomas Hopkins Productions
Genre: Biographical Drama, Comedy, Drama, Historical, LGBTQ, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, Theatre
Venue: Eastbourne Devonshire Park
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Wendi Peters sends you out singing: with all the right notes in the wrong order. Solidly recommended.
Review
“Sometimes a man gets what he doesn’t want and enjoys it!” So says the new accompanist to a famous, or perhaps infamous soprano. Will we though? Peter Quilter’s writing is often full of such double-entendres and the soprano never gets that subtext. You might say Florence Foster Jenkins never gets the text or notes either. Glorious! arrives at Eastbourne Devonshire Park directed by Kirk Jameson till February 21 when it continues touring.
Originally starring Maureen Lipman on its debut in 2005, Wendi Peters (best known on Coronation Street) reprises her role as amateur coloratura soprano (Narcissa) Florence Foster Jenkins she first played to acclaim at Hope Mill Theatre last year. She’s joined by Matthew James Morrison as Cosmé McMoon (Eastenders), and Sioned Jones as Foster Jenkins’ constant bestie Dorothy; with Caroline Gruber doubling as un-coperative maid Maria who doesn’t understand dismissal, and the outraged Mrs Verrinder Gedge.
It’s 1944. Jenkins is hiring a new pianist, Cosmé McMoon, who doesn’t quite know what soprano he’s getting till Peters lets rip vocally. He’s out of work though and has his own brand of wit. “Can you stand farther off… like Canada?” he quips. Or “No, there’s no one note I’d single out.” These as McMoon knows sail over Foster Jenkins’ head, yet this discreetly camp pianist has a heart, and it’s not just for the money he stays to aid the off-key soprano in her great attempt to conquer Carnegie Hall. After all Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Gian Carlo Menotti, Lily Pons and Sir Thomas Beecham and others would be there. Caruso respected her. It’s just that the voice they know will never be repeated is admired for rather different reasons to those Foster Jenkins fancies. Like a broken foghorn heard from Brooklyn Bridge. Yet Foster Jenkins thinks she can best the great Galli-Curci. And in a way she can. Porter never missed a performance.
Peters proves Foster Jenkins has a voice: and in a final apotheosis we’re treated to how Foster Jenkins might have heard herself. Peters is obliged to begin loudly and high, which leaves her less places to go later on. Though this just-shy-of two-hour piece picks up latterly as if the director slyly swapped Red Bull for Prosecco (there’s much bourbon and champagne sipping). The comedy with songs format does takes a while to kick in and lacks the depth and touching qualities it might have if Foster Jenkins’ companion St Clair Bayfield were there. This means we’re denied those moments of vulnerability Quilter’s always good at providing: particularly backstage drama, as in The Actress. Or in a recent Brighton revival of 4000 Days where again intimacy and tortured triangles resolve with some laughter though traverse a lot of ground.
It’s a curious loss not wholly compensated for by broad comedy. There’s some streamlining logic in focusing on McMoon instead of Bayfield, not least his introduction to Foster Jenkins’ world (which was much earlier, but this certainly doesn’t matter). The play really starts soaring in Act Two, which at around 40 minutes is much the most entertaining half. It features the uproarious devastation of Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night’ aria from The Magic Flute, with its wayward dotted notes. Though the Carmen aria “love is like a bird” runs it to the teeth. With a rose between them.
Morrison has warmth, presence and panache as the pianist: nearly all the touching moments come from his interactions with Peters. And why do we inwardly wish this non-smoker to light up? There’s slight clarity of diction issues which will adjust. Jones as Dorothy also brings an equivalent warmth when onstage, and displays those anxieties Foster Jenkins might have had, as if taking them on herself. Gruber’s Maria has only one thing to do, and that’s not to understand, loudly. And in a way snobby socialite Mrs Verrinder Gedge is as uncomprehending; played to the hilt (in the back) by Gruber with some gusto. Quilter enjoys sketching in the women’s committees the three women haunt, the approval world they all depend on.
Everyone raises their voices and game in Act Two. Peters in the first half slightly constrained by being set up as a joke, lets rip and allows Foster Jenkins’ character and essential sweetness to shine through. It’s here she inhabits the role and sets the audience at a roar.
Ingrid Hu’s set brings the genteelly lurid to a drawing room and some delicacy elsewhere with faux-oriental white screens bijou stages and what looks like a miniature florists, as well as a recording studio. Hu’s costumes are as you’d expect like the volume or spectrum being turned up on one of Foster Jenkins’ performances; but also with natty 1940s period detail amidst a prospect of flowers. Mike Robertson’s lighting is – as it needs to be – a little merciless. Nick Barstow’s musical supervisions go beyond the usual synching tone-deaf with a good piano; only at the end does Mark Goggins’ sound design need to flourish to the full, though it’s been deployed with the piano at intervals.
Glorious! is a play that despite its pedigree takes a while to really fly; and displays (for Quilter) a slight thinness of characterisation. Peters and her company overcome this, and judging by last year’s acclaim we’re just warming up. A really successful production seems to intuit what to make up for, and the play’s historical raw material – songs, blank incomprehension – are strong enough to bounce off. Peters too enjoys a peroration to send you out singing: with all the right notes in the wrong order. Solidly recommended.
Casting Director J J Bee, Production Manager Lewis Moore, General Management Thomas Hopkins Productions, Producers Thomas Hopkins, Haffner Wright Theatricals, Sams Entertainment, Melissa & Bradford Coolidge, No Guarantees, PR Kevin Wilson PR.
