REVIEW: Miss Littlewood at the RSC

Miss is a hit finds Gill Sutherland. Miss Littlewood runs until 4th August

There’s been some weird subjects made into musicals – Carrie, The Rocky Horror Show, Book of Mormon, Urinetown (look it up) – even Evita! and Hamilton are oddly random if you think about it. Certainly Joan Littlewood, maverick and truculent doyenne of modern theatre, seems an unlikely candidate for a biodrama told with a show of jazz hands, wobble of boobs and toothsome grins.

But after seeing the RSC’s Miss Littlewood, it’s not so much ‘why would you make a musical about her life?’, and not even ‘why wouldn’t you?’ but in fact ‘her life story surely couldn’t be anything BUT a musical’!

Sam Kenyon has written the whole thing — book, music and lyrics; it’s his first play, and absolutely brilliant, a clever poignant show with guts and glorious songs. He’s gone for the Sondheim dictum of form following content, and so as Joan’s life was about the stage, it opens with her on it, directing/interfering with the scenes as seven actresses play her at different stages of her life. It’s metatheatre of course, darlings — and pretty mega too; it’s so convincingly done and clearly lovingly directed by Erica Whyman, who is, naturally, a fan.

The seven Joans are old and young, skinny and plump, white and black. Each signals their ‘Joanness’ by taking it in turns to wear a peaked black cap, a trademark of the director in the real world. They do not impersonate her but take on facets of her at the various stages of her life. The device is a nod and a cheeky wink to Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, which gives the story a profound universality, a feminist tilt, and handily boosts the chorus for the big numbers.

Clare Burt is the main Joan — the one who meddles and comments throughout — and she is entirely ace; she sings splendidly, gets the audience onside and lends gravitas. Elsewhere all the other Joans are simply marvellous too. A couple of stand outs include: Sophia Nomvete, who proved her comic worth in the RSC’s Roman romp Vice Versa, she has such presence and can wither with a mere wrinkle of a brow; fabulous singer Emily Johnstone plays teen Joan with a touch of Matilda-like naivety, and later becomes Barbara Windsor to deliver perhaps the best song of the show, A Little Bit of Business; Aretha Ayeh, who plays the younger, precocious and passionately political Joan who visits Paris, and belts out another showstopper, Paris is a Woman, is gritty and engaging; in the hands of Sandy Foster and Amanda Hadingue the older, wiser and increasingly despairing Joans are lent real depths and humanness; and Dawn Hope plays the older ‘Joan 6’ with a slower but no less soulful vigour. Hang on, I’ve named all seven! That’s because they are all fabulous, an A-team ensemble in perfect synchronicity.

Oh and there’s six more in the cast too (again sterling work all). Greg Barnett smoulders as the fiery Jimmie Miller, Joan’s first husband who later became famous as the singer Ewan MacColl; and Solomon Israel charms as Gerry Raffles, a driving force behind Joan’s Theatre Workshop company and her long-term lover.

I mentioned the jazz hands, but musical theatre clichés are only used knowingly or joyously, with a nuance of irony, here. This is a serious homage but the cracking songs and humour render a life story jauntily told.

By the close of Miss Littlewood you feel as though you have had warm hug, been tickled by some happy hoofing and cheered by the solace of song, but you also experience the crushing emptiness of Joan’s loss when Gerry dies unexpectedly (he died aged 53 in 1975, after which Joan barely worked). With mortality hanging heavily in the auditorium air we also think of the loss of the unique Miss Littlewood.

But hey, this is a musical, so there’s a reprise and the resounding emotion one departs the Swan Theatre with is love, accompanied by hope, and perhaps a cheeky flurry of jazz hands.