The Week on Stage: From Sister Act to 101 Dalmatians

Two classic films get the musical treatment this week, with varying degrees of success. Beverley Knight and Jennifer Saunders shine in Sister Act, while a new all-singing 101 Dalmatians doesn’t quite hit the spot. Elsewhere, we checked out Chasing Hares at the Young Vic, a new play from Sonali Bhattacharyya.

Join us next week for the verdict on South Pacific at Sadler’s Wells and All of Us at the National Theatre.

101 Dalmatians – Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre ★★★☆☆

Musical theatre is in a love affair with social media. Some shows, such as Dear Evan Hansen and Millennials at The Other Palace, have tackled it directly. In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s take on Cinderella, meanwhile, the classic tale was transposed into a world of Instagram-obsessed Love Island wannabes. The new production of 101 Dalmatians at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre takes the same tack. And – as with Cinderella – it’s safe to say that it doesn’t always work.

As in the recent production of Life of Pi, it’s no surprise that the puppets are the highlights of the show. Perdy and Pongo are each moved by a puppeteer and actor, the latter playing their back legs and singing voices. The puppies (who are, naturally, really stinking cute) are hand-controlled heads and wiggly wagging tails. The show’s score, by Douglas Hodge, is catchy enough, but it lacks any earworms.

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They may be our heroes, but Dominic and Danielle feel a bit wet in comparison to the other characters. Then again, so does basically everyone compared to Kate Fleetwood’s Cruella. She is a Louboutin-wearing, right-wing influencer, railing against migrants, welfare users and cancel culture to her 400,000 followers. She may be evil, but Cruella gets the bulk of the funniest lines in the script (“No one makes a mug of Cruella de Vil unless it’s official merchandise!”) and Fleetwood luxuriates in their delivery.

The problem with Cruella, however, goes to the heart of this adaptation. Social media references in musical theatre divide audiences, but they were eyeroll-worthy in Cinderella and are borderline unbearable here. It doesn’t matter how contemporary the nods to hashtags and incels feel now; they’ll be dated before this production can take on a new life. Call it the Evan Hansen effect – actively preventing the show from becoming the classic it so desperately wants to be. Isobel Lewis

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Chasing Hares – Young Vic ★★★☆☆

Who can afford to have morals? This is the question at the heart of Sonali Bhattacharyya’s political drama. Chasing Hares – directed by Milli Bhatia, previously behind the furious and funny Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner – is, at its core, a morality play. Prab (Irfan Shamji) is a machinist in early-2000s West Bengal whose factory has been shut for months. An opportunity arises to ingratiate himself with the boss’s son Devesh (a believably cruel Scott Karim) and build a better life for his wife Kajol (Zainab Hasan) and newborn daughter. Having lost his primary source of income, the lure is irresistible. But his past as a socialist activist casts a long shadow over this bout of personal good fortune. When the true extent of his company’s immorality is revealed, Prab has a decision to make.

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The play, which is largely enjoyable and unexpectedly funny, throws up a host of meaty themes for digestion. At times, though, the script can be clunky. The idealistic Prab and the more pragmatic Kajol are tasked with columns and columns of exhaustive exposition. Their dialogue plays out like a tennis match. It’s a pros and cons list drafted by someone who has made up their mind because, while Bhattacharyya does not shy away from the grey shades of Prab’s dilemma, the answer is clear from the outset. As with any morality play, the right choice never really seems in doubt.

Scenes of Prab’s daughter, grown-up and living in the UK, bookend the production. They draw direct parallels between her father’s thorny past and her present, in which she is working as a food delivery driver. There is a compelling through-line connecting the exploitation of factory workers in West Bengal and workers in the current gig economy. The overall message of Chasing Hares could be described as a grab bag of feel-good clichés. Art has the power to change. Teamwork makes the dream work. You know, adages of that sort. And yet, clichéd as they may be, they are right. The play glimmers with irresistible hope – and concludes with an emotional call to arms. Annabel Nugent

Sister Act – Eventim Apollo ★★★★★

Hallelujah! The wait hasn’t been in vain. It’s been a long road to get Sister Act: The Musical back on stage. Announced in 2019, the exuberant adaptation of the 1992 film should have made its West End return in the summer of 2020. As we know, the pandemic had other plans. The delay meant that Whoopi Goldberg was no longer available to reprise her starring role as planned – a concept that would have seen her character written 30 years older than usual, and one that plenty of fans were itching to see. Thankfully, even without its Oscar-winning star, this revival is heavenly.

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The undeniably talented Beverley Knight now plays our hero, Deloris Van Cartier. She’s a mildly successful lounge singer with big dreams, but she must go straight into witness protection when she sees her married gangster boyfriend shoot one of his own henchmen dead. “Where are you gonna hide this?” the wannabe superstar gestures towards herself as she asks old schoolmate turned police officer Eddie Souther (Clive Rowe). The answer: an ailing convent, led by the droll and stately Mother Superior (a wonderfully dry Jennifer Saunders). Knight and Saunders are, respectively, some of the UK’s best-loved musical and comedic talents; the combination of these skills is magical. Both are completely in their element as characters who don’t understand why the other lives as they do, and their chemistry makes it fun to watch their conflicting viewpoints play out.

Sister Act is primarily Deloris’s show, which is no bad thing when you have someone like Knight steering the ship. The rest of the cast are so good that sometimes you wish for a few more opportunities to allow everyone to shine even brighter. But in any case, the show’s an irresistibly great time – thank God it’s finally here. Nicole Vassell

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