Hey, Mr West End producer - if you're after something offbeat to lift the lethargy that tends to settle over midsummer audiences, take a look at this outstanding new musical. A quirky tale of boy-meets-girland-then-meets-boy, it boasts some of the sharpest music and lyrics this side of Sondheim and four cracking performances from its leads. The highlight of this year's London Mardi Gras Arts Festival finds Barry, Harry, Spencer and Alice looking for love. Or companionship. Or even just a hug, they tell us from their Soho bar stools, in a structurally exquisite four-part number reminiscent of Now/Later/Soon from Sondheim's A Little Night Music. But they've reckoned without the matchmaking skills of Soho angel Betty Blue (Holly Penfield, hamming it up excessively for the evening's one
discordant component) and soon they're paired off and simultaneously wondering "What do you do?" at the end of their first dates.
Paul Emelion's music, book and lyrics ("So here we are, a funny pair/Round two of a strange affair") are a delight to the ears, and are well complemented by Chris Davidson's minimal design (four bar stools also serve as headrests for pillows) and Stuart Wood's unfussy direction. Wood rightly emphasises the work's humanity, a feature that musicals all too often tend to lack. Emelion has not simply reheated any old generic characters, but has taken trouble to create real people about whom we're made to care right from the start. When Alice (the excellent Nicola Dawn) has her worst suspicions of Barry's good dress sense and gym fixation confirmed, thus shattering any dreams of shopping in IKEA and wedded bliss, her hurt is painfully real.
Harry (Chris Thatcher) and Barry (Sam Board, boasting a fringe so exuberant it should have its own programme credit) turn in nicely understated performances, cementing the work's genuine crossover appeal. Lazy, big-budget musicals, naming no Notre Dames, have inexplicably flourished with a fraction of the creativity on offer here. All lovers of quality musical theatre should hightail it to Highgate for a real treat.
When Harry Met Barry
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