Luca Catena as pianist Cosme McMoon and the
magnificent Rayner Wilson as Florence
Pictures: Richard Smith
Glorious!
The Loft Theatre, Leamington
*****
This play's
named Glorious.
It could just as well be called
Hilarious.
Especially with a riveting performance like this.
This extraordinary
play, written by Peter Quilter (End
of the Rainbow) - described as "a
West End and Broadway playwright" nominated for several Tony and Olivier
awards - evokes the career of the utterly bizarre soprano Florence
Foster Jenkins - the hooty female
warbler who can't sing, 'the lady of the sliding scale', arguably 'the
worst singer in the world'.
Before London, Glorious! actually
premiered (with an equal blow-you-away fantastic Maureen Lipman) at The
Birmingham Rep. Here at the Loft it was just as spellbinding.
And what fun. Yet not just fun. This was - as
usual with the Loft - an exhibition of truly polished acting.
Professional? Most certainly. And not just from Florence herself (spoken
and sung with unending brilliance by the amazing Rayner Wilson - an
actress (actor) of staggering talent whom I don't think I've seen
before, but I really hope I do again soon. But also spectacular
performances from the cast, skillfully chosen by Director James
Suckling.
The set, by Richard Moore, served very nicely for
the star's home. In its way it's sumptuous, yet an adequately, not
excessively, elaborate parlour. Two sort of wall sculptures suggested a
bit of self indulgence. When a ludicrous large silver (or
silver-painted) bird was delivered, it seemed joyously crazy, and the
expansive flower array for Carnegie Hall was comic in itself. The Sound
(Oliver Rowles) was exceptionally cleverly managed - the
gramophone playing, for instance - every entry spot on. Helen Brady and
Maya Mansfield's costumes were quite brilliant, especially the insane
final one where Florence is dressed with huge white wings as an
outrageously dotty angel ("I am the angel of inspiration").
Rayner Wilson as Florence, Lucinda
Toomey as Mrs Verrinder-Gedge and Jeremy Heynes
as St Clair
In Rayner Wilson's
hands, this was a magnificent - a glorious - tour-de-force. ""Jenkins
was exquisitely bad, so bad that it added up to quite a good evening of
theater ... " observed one knowledgeable commentator. "Her singing at
its finest suggests the untrammeled swoop of some great bird" said
another. We are in New York, mid-1940s, but she claims her (appalling)
voice was first heard by her father in 1912. She is getting on. Her
entry in Spanish outfit (she used to design her own) was unforgettable,
prancing and swirling and preening - intoning Joaquin Valverde's
ever-popular Spanish waltz "Clavelitos" ("Little Carnations");
and Carmen's famous habanera solo ("L'amour
est un oiseau rebelle...") - or
something not entirely like it - were two of her favourite set pieces.
She keeps coming out with momentous one-liners: "I don't want to spend
the rest of the evening looking like Don Quixote's mother in law". "I am
a lot of woman." "[They'll] really wrap me in their arms." What keeps
Suckling's incessantly arresting Loft production so marvelously on the
move is that Wilson's OTT speaking voice is just as funny as her
singing. A phenomenal feat - and treat.
Her coloratura, even though laughable and
deliberately hopelessly - though not always - out of tune (how
astoundingly clever), is strangely expressive, even when she deploys her
gift for bellowing midway. She handles the audience confidentially, and
superbly. Her shifting faces are stupendous. Her eyes are one of her
many masterpieces of acting: she has a way of fixing her listeners -
mainly us, the audience - with glowering stares that shift in every
direction: left and right, up and down. sideways and inescapably
wide-eyed. My feeling is Quilter might - perhaps should - have included
more actual songs and arias; but when the wonderful Rayner Wilson hoots
the ones she does attempt, it's a hit every time: a laugh a minute, top
of the arias is certainly Mozart's Queen of the Night from
The Magic Flute. It's a riveting one for disaster, and Wilson
parodies it unforgettably.
Her chief admirer (and boyfriend) is out of work
actor St. Clair Bayfield, which furnishes Jeremy Heynes with a welcome
extensive role. He likes his tipple (bourbon): and a smoke. "You're
resting." "No - drinking." Always smartly attired, he enchantingly
cares for her; and when needed consistently props her up. He's "seen
reviews that would kill anybody." "Your voice would be an act of
charity" (she plans to issue numerous free tickets to ex-soldiers).
Florence needs a prop; indeed rather more props.
Luca Catena as Cosme and Rebecca Clarke
as Dorothy
One such is her friend Dorothy, who has almost a
comparable voice, and is all over Florence with reassuring, bolstering,
buttressing, encouraging, championing. Humorously clad in her "creation"
it's an entrancing showing by Rebecca Clarke, and she provides one of
the most side-splitting scenes when her invariably dead-looking dog
expires ("goodnight, sweet pooch" St. Clair calls it. We think St. Clair
is dead of a heart attack but he miraculously reappears, right as rain,
to improvise the funeral speech). Dorothy was a second star, and St.
Clair too.
And yet another stellar performance: Becky Young
as the frumpy Spanish maid Maria. Utterly rude and insolent, she stamps
and shouts, snubs and insults; and speaks only Spanish (a lot here). Why
she is kept on is a mystery. But her grouchiness is a hoot. When she
spectacularly appears in full Spanish gear, it's a giggle. She is that
every time she emerges from an imaginary kitchen. The audience loved
her.
The second main character is the hapless pianist
Cosme McMoon (Luca Catena ("I grew up in Chicago"). Having heard
Florence once he is about to scarper, but swallows his pride and yields
to a fee ("I shall pay you an extortionate amount"). He falls back on
wry, ironic encouragement: "You need not worry about a single note". He
copes ably with appearing to play the grand piano and becomes the victim
of suggestive comedy:
Dorothy: "Have
you ever done any Spanish?"
Cosme: "No, but I've done the odd
Cuban."
Or
"Go find yourself a nice queen" (she
means wife).
Catena fits the role; another splendid
performance.
Lucinda Toomey as the disgustingly critical (yet
right) Mrs. Verrinder-Gedge, representing some august body, has a set-to
with Jenkins "You, madam Jenkins, are a disgrace" which is cruel and
unpleasant. Someone else has said "The hall will never hear anything
like it again". Florence, upset but ever-buoyant, gets over it later
with the relieving remark, "Thank goodness I have my talent to fall back
on." Her sense of rhythm, underlain by quite impossible rubato,
and almost as impossible as her missed high notes or descending
semiquavers, is something of whose awfulness she has no conception of.
And her descending coloratura is almost grotesque, but she survives
every time.
Florence Foster Jenkins was indeed a legend.
"People say I can't sing", she averred, "but people can't say I didn't
sing." Despite all, she was a definite hit. Her appearance aged 76 at
New York's famous 2,800 seater Carnegie Hall took place in October 1944.
Poor thing, she died a month later. It's a true story. And despite the
Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant movie it couldn't have been better reenacted
than here at the Loft. Full marks.
Roderic Dunnett
30-11-24
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