With the first proper winter frost this week, what better show to see than White Christmas to get you in the wintery festive spirit?
With dance numbers, sets and costumes reminiscent of an MGM movie musical from the Golden Age of Hollywood, this production is fabulous to watch. Everything is in glorious technicolour and a visual spectacular. The Dominion Theatre is ideal for such large numbers, although I did find that the sheer scale sometimes made it a little difficult to take in the number as a whole - I found myself focussing on various performers rather than watching the entire stage. That didn’t detract from how wonderful the numbers were though - they don’t make shows with dance numbers like this anymore! - and just thinking about them now brings a smile to my face.
It’s been a while since I watched the movie, so perhaps it is just the plot, but the relationships between the characters felt very unnatural and stilted. One minute Bob and Betty are frosty, then they are in love, then fighting and then back to being in love again. There wasn’t really any chemistry or relationship development between Danny Mac’s Bob Wallace and Danielle Hope’s Betty Haynes. As I say, one minute they were one thing, then something else the next, without there really being anything in between. The relationships, both theirs and that of Dan Burton’s Phil Davis and Clare Halse’s Judy Haynes, felt artificial and like they were just going through the motions; hitting one stage of the relationship after another without there being anything in between. This was a real shame, because their performances otherwise were wonderful.
That said, I found Halse’s facial expressions and mouth a little distracting, and they became a bit grating, during the big numbers; and Danny Mac didn’t seem to be quite the right casting for the curmudgeonly Wallace as the ‘bah humbug’ nature of Bob Wallace didn’t seem to suit him. Also, his voice was a little weak in the numbers at the beginning of the first act. I would also have loved Mac and Burton to have had a little more fun with one of my favourite moments in the show: Wallace and Davis’s version of ‘Sisters’.
Brenda Edwards was incredible as Martha Watson - her voice is amazing - but I feel that she could slow her pace down ever so slightly as some of her scene and lines felt rushed and got lost, which is a shame because she has some of the most pointed and funniest lines in the show. Michael Brandon as General Henry Waverly was less dynamic and energetic than I was expecting. For example, in his two ‘speeches to the troops’, it took me a few moments to work out that the audience were the troops and that he was addressing them, rather than it just being a soliloquy. A little bit more energy at these key points would just lift the performance, as would potentially a background fly to assist in setting the scene.
As this production was still in previews when I saw it, changes may be made before opening night. However, other than the lack of character/relationship development, there is very little that needs to be changed: it is a glorious technicolour production that gets you in the festive spirit. It brought a smile to my face and, despite it being absolutely freezing outside, I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. This is a perfect production for the festive period.