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Scenes from a marriage: Jab @parktheatre

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Jab takes us back to five years ago when no theatres were open. Instead, it was staying at home watching endless television, clapping for the NHS, mask-wearing and hand washing. Against this backdrop, isolation from a married couple of 29 years slowly drives them apart and to the brink. But while it captures the period well, you want to know more about this couple on the edge. It's currently playing at Park Theatre after its premiere run at the Finborough Theatre last year.  James McDermott's play is loosely based on his parent's lives during the pandemic. It opens with Ann (Kacey Ainsworth) and Don (Liam Tobin) watching the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson inform the nation they need to stay at home. She is an NHS worker, and he runs a vintage shop. As she is an essential worker, she has work to do, but he is forced to stay at home while his shop is closed. There's also another source of tension in that Anne brings in all the income in the household. And so we watch ...

Oughta be in pictures: The Biograph Girl @Finborough

Musicals are usually about a love story. In The Biograph Girl, the love story is about the love of going to the flickers and the people who made them. The flickers were what people called the short silent movies. Before they started treating the medium as a form of art. And a source of serious money making. The show is having its first professional production in nearly forty years at the Finborough Theatre.

While thereā€™s much love for the subject, a musical covering the early years of film is a tad ambitious. Covering the stories of Lilian Gish, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith doesnā€™t allow much time to explore them in any detail. Or any of the peripheral characters that surround them. People come and go. Only by reading the programme notes do you get a sense of who they were. And while the musical numbers are fun, they also tend to slow down rather than advance their stories. 

Itā€™s a minimalist production too with its plain white walls, a few chairs and an electric piano. Itā€™s a pity the production didnā€™t attempt to evoke techniques of filming that the work describes. Youā€™re left to your own imagination to know what an iris shot is. Some old black and white films projected on the bare walls might have given a greater sense of the time and place.

But the performances in the piece are a delight and the cast injects the piece with endless energy. Particularly during the dance sequences choreographed by Holly Hughes. Sophie Linder-Lee as Mary Pickford is terrific as the movie star and canny businesswoman. She steals the show with her tap dancing and steely determination. And Matthew Cavendish is a one-man slapstick powerhouse with his depiction of funny man Mack Sennet. 

As part of the series of rediscovering British Musicals it is a fascinating piece for musical theatre aficionados. But others may be less intrigued. Directed by Jenny Eastop with musical direction by Harry Haden-Brown, The Biograph Girl runs through to June 9.

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Photos by Lidia Crisafulli

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