BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1942. To 22 May.

Leeds

BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1943
by Alan Plater

West Yorkshire Playhouse (Quarry Theatre) To 22 May 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu 1.30pm & Sat 2pm
Audio-described 15 May 2pm, 18 May, 20 May 1.30pm
BSL Signed 12 May
Captioned 22 May 2pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS: 0113 213 7700
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 May

Amiably amusing, but despite musical strengths from wartime numbers, the fun never fizzes.The stage looks like a rubble-strewn bomb-site. But it's Americans, not the Luftwaffe, who have devastated Betty's all-woman swing band, cheerers-up in chief to northern England. In one way or another, half her girls' get lost to US forces whenever they play round a Yankee base.

So the scene's set for Alan Plater to build unashamedly on schmaltzy wartime plot-lines as a new girl-band mixes neophytes and hardened professionals. Auditions bring nervous schoolgirl Liz, posh Miranda and, delightfully showing what the war effort leads to, Lily the Nun sent to do her bit in the band, delightfully unaware of double-meanings in her George Formby audition piece.

Plater's other wild card unlikely as a singing nun - is Pat (plausibly cheerful Ralph Gassmann), a smart, feckless youth dragging up as blonde bombshell to evade conscription.

Events have a rosy-mist haze, being cast as reminiscences 50 years on in the memory of Liz (Dilys Laye, with apt smiling poignancy), who left the excitement of wartime music for teaching and nostalgia. As Pat's older self, John Woodvine provides practised conman smartness and a melodious voice.

Finding a cast to sing in harmony and play instruments is doubtless job enough. Expecting them also to act comedy seems too tall an order. The results vary from highly competent to borderland embarrassing. The basic problem, though, is Roxana Silbert's unsympathetic direction. Usually devastatingly good, here she weighs down Plater's slyly nonchalant humour in an over-deliberate style which misses his comic nudges.

Anyway, this isn't Plater on top comic form. Devastatingly, perceptively funny dialogue's his strength. But in this scenario, land of a thousand clichés, he's strangely muted despite the frisson of these English jewels praising Uncle Joe' Stalin as wartime ally. Plater's plays sidle up to you like old friends whose limits you want to forgive. Only, here the old friend's been kitted out so unstylishly.

It's possible, though, to forgive a lot when stage and band eventually swing into full action. By when, the slight story's virtually given up. Time to give the mind a rest and set the toes a-tapping.

Elizabeth: Dilys Laye
Betty: Elizabeth Marsh
Vera: Sarah Groarke
May: Ruth Alexander
Grace: Barbara Hockaday
Liz: Karen Paullada
Lily: Claire Storey
Miranda: Victoria Moseley
Pat: Ralph Gassmann
Patrick: John Woodvine
Voice-overs: Barrie Rutter, Andrew Scarborough, Sophie Ward

Director: Roxana Silbert
Designer: Michael Vale
Lighting: Nick Richings
Sound: Mic Pool
Musical director: Howard Gay
Choreographer: Lynne Page
Costume: Stephen Snell
Dialect coach: Jill McCullough
Assistant musical director: Ruth Alexander

2004-05-11 08:40:33