FringeReview UK 2024
{Title of Show}
Taylor Jay Productions
Genre: American Theater, Contemporary, LGBT Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Large Studio, Borough
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Jeff Bowen’s and Hunter Bell’s {Title of Show} is a show about Jeff and Hunter writing a musical about Jeff and Hunter writing a musical which, following an acclaimed run at the Phoenix, is revived at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio on a short run directed by Christopher D Clegg till November 30th.
Delicious, certainly, truly witty and fast-moving, never indulgent about self-indulgence, this is a sure-fired soufflé.
Review
“A drag queen’s just stolen my shrimp” might be one of the tastier morsels in Jeff Bowen’s and Hunter Bell’s {Title of Show} which is a show about Jeff and Hunter writing a musical about Jeff and Hunter writing a musical which, following an acclaimed run at the Phoenix, is revived at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Large Studio on a short run directed by Christopher D Clegg till November 30th. Which is just what happens in the musical. Except it’s Broadway. They even imagine it Tony-nominated. It is.
It sounds like Flann Obrien’s At Swim-Two-Birds if you’re literary or simply a hall of mirrors. Talking of taste, Hunter notes the new producer’s cute. Jeff ripostes “He’s straight.” “So’s spaghetti till it’s hot and wet.” By now you’ll surely conclude if you’ve that kind of funny bone and want 90 minutes of this. It flies by. Which it has to, to start with. The New York Festival is in three weeks.
It just happens to be really smart, and comes with Bell’s lyrics neatly fitted to Bowen’s music. The lyrics are memorable; the music’s wittily sensitive to every nuance, and attractive. There’s one or two that truly stick. Musical director Tom Chippendale ensures the solos and ensemble fits the Large’s quite small space perfectly.
Hunter (an occasionally brooding Jacob Fowler) and Jeff (quietly upbeat Thomas Oxley) form a great double-act, often singing up their perceived strengths. To ‘Broadway’ they sing “our gay skills can tackle playbills” but of course they need a quartet. Cue a recruitment drive and uptown in-work uber-cute Heidi (Abbie Budden’s appealing soprano-soubrette voice) and downtown daytime-job-has-mortgage Susan (Mary Moore with her powerful soprano-mezzo). (Offstage swings Melisa McCabe, Cahir O’Neill didn’t feature but you might see them).
Though they’ve not written a musical yet, and the act of doing so is what it’s about. Heidi’s excited since for once she’s not cover to a long-established musical. Susan’s just grateful, How much are they collaborators really though? This pressure intensifies as first the women edge rivalry in the duet ‘What Kind of a Girl is she?’ but bond, as all do.
What’s particularly fresh is the way the numbers break the fourth wall both in the number and in how the narrative plays with it. There’s a great moment too when Susan orders turkey burgers and gives out a number 555555. “That’s just so if this gets produced I don’t give out my real number.” “But how will the burger man find us?’
Tensions don’t just mount, they hump. “Don’t be a procrastibater” Jess quips. And Susan’s “Don’t say of course these were meant to be your children.” And there’s silent Larry who gets just a few lines as a running joke. Which is as well as Larry’s Top Chippendale and he really is there to play keyboard and direct.
The dazzling backdrop to the set and lighting by Hazel McIntosh is new: it alternates – or rather makes a neon patchwork of – lit areas of colour and a dowdy apartment. Elsewhere there’s just one main platform and four others raised on which each performer hauls up a chair (all there was last time) or stand on one for some moving ensemble pieces. McIntosh’s costumes are preppy or slink. Altogether it seems at home here, another perfect Southwark Musical fit.
There are lyrically memorable numbers throughout, from ‘Monkeys and Playbills’ through to the point where the women create a song on their own but are rudely cut in on by the men. Gender roles are challenged, and the possibility of self-doubt and Hunter’s harrumphs and downs provide moments of tension as the play moves from production to off-Broadway to an ‘Awkward Photoshoot’ with a catchy bass hook as each character pops out with a face-ache of angst. Moore’s finest moment is about self-doubt: ‘Die, Vampire’. Budden’s a hushed onstage solo in ‘If I Knew a Way Back to Then’ which lends an inwardness to outwardly successful and objectified Heidi.
Perhaps the finest number is the ensemble ‘I’d rather Be Nine People’s’ Favourite Thing (to a hundred people’s ninth favourite thing)’ where Bowen’s musical strengths show hoe he can pile up a polyphonic aria of affirmation. So, after a ten-month hiatus, could this really reach Broadway just because the team get back and Instagram an announcement? Will reality check in or prove it’s a musical after all?
Delicious, certainly, truly witty and fast-moving, never indulgent about self-indulgence, this is a sure-fired soufflé where Hunter’s early “I have an image of us flying…” and proceeds to is forestalled as the others shoot him down. It knows quite brilliantly what it is, and that’s why you should see it.
Musical Supervisor Ben Ward, Production Manager Ieuan Watkins-Hyde, Producer Taylor Jay, Production Photography Danny Kaan, Photography, Samuel Seventeen Social, Press and PR Kevin Wilson PR
