REVIEW: Between Us, Jermyn Street Theatre ✭✭

Between Us

Jermyn Street Theatre

11th March 2018

3 Stars

This theatre has done a great deal to discover new musical theatre talent and bring it before the eyes and ears of the public.  Every visit here to a new work, or to a rediscovery or relaunch of a work from the past, is an exciting prospect, filled with the potential for finding something wonderful.  Last year, we were amazed by the one-woman musical, 'Cautionary Tales For Daughters', by and starring Tanya Holt, who set the bar for such works very high.  This season, artistic director Penny Horner is programming another work, another short solo piece written by the actress and singer, Elizabeth Carter, with songs by Josef Pitura-Riley, for whom Rhonda Carlson and Kevan Patriquin act as directors and creative consultants.

And there are moments when the show comes to life magnificently.  Carter is at her best when immersing herself in entirely new roles: two of the 'girls' she includes stand out as being particularly convincing and engaging, and we could have happily spent the whole of the hour or so of the performance in their company, so well realised and interesting are they.  The same, however, cannot quite be said for the central persona, which is arguably a bit too close to her playing herself, something that very few actors are particularly good at.  Small wonder, then, that Carter finds it a bit of a struggle to discover in the part the necessary definition, drama, conflict, feeling to articulate in the spine of this show.  There is clearly some sincerity in her journey to discover religion, but it is somewhat debatable whether a venue as dependent on artifice as the theatre is really lends itself to such soul-searching and heart-baring.  Well, at least in this format.

It might be nice to say that the songs, of which there are many, helped.  Initially, it seems that they do offer some extra expression of inner feeling and sentiment to enliven the woes of a young and artistically neglected beginner in showbiz, who is finding the vacuity of doing bums-on-seats fodder (Carter has had some success in this field - success that others might envy) a bit too much to bear.  But, the more one hears of Pitura-Riley's work, the more similar it sounds; we soon gets to the point that we cannot distinguish between one song and the next; they're all rather pleasant, mellifluous, genial, paced rather similarly, harmonically rather alike.

In a way, it might be nice if this were a first reading, an early sharing, of a work in development.  I think Carter could score some considerable success by relying on her instincts as an actress and really giving herself to her well conceived and well written characters: she has definite talent in that department, and - yes - it does lift the work into a thoughtful and sensitive level.  By comparison, the central story of her doubts and eventual revelation doesn't have the same theatrical weight.  Skewed in the direction of a story that doesn't quite seem to merit the attention given to it, the whole production doesn't yet seem to have found its feet.

That's a pity.  The staging by Robert Carter is quite terrific, full of the detail of theatre and an actor's life.  Carlson and Patriquin don't quite seem to know what to do with it all, but you spend the time in the theatre sitting there thinking of all the ways that the show could be made into something so much more fascinating.