Sparkling Jodie shoots from the lip!

Reporter: Paul Genty
Date published: 25 March 2015


CALAMITY JANE

(Palace Theatre, Manchester, to Saturday)

This isn’t by any stretch of the imagination one of the classic musicals, teased as it was not totally comfortably out of the Doris Day-Howard Keel film musical of the Fifties rather than being written specifically for the stage.

As such the storyline is a little laboured, a fact that comes more clearly into view when the show gets, as here, the “Watermill” treatment, where the actors are also the band.

The Watermill Theatre’s production style was strongly developed by the Berkshire theatre’s director John Doyle and musical director Sarah Travis, and reached its peak with their “Sweeney Todd”, which went to Broadway and won Tony awards.

This production, in a similar style, isn’t by the pair but by director Nikolai Foster, and displays less of the uncanny mix of instrumentation and performance evident before.

But it does have one big hit feature: the TV-discovered leading actress Jodie Prenger, here vibrant and funny as the title character.

The story, based on several tales of real-life Wild West cowgirl Jane Cannery, has Jane helping out the Deadwood hotel by bringing a famous singer from Chicago to perform. Not the most ladylike of women, Jane returns with the entertainer’s maid Katie (Phoebe Street), who manages to get the audience on her side when she assumes the real singer’s name.

Jane and Katie fall for the same soldier, Danny (Alex Hammond), who in turn fancies Katie (despite famously being Jane’s “Secret Love” of the famous song). This attraction between Danny and Katie annoys Jane’s friend and one-time beau Bill Hickock (Tom Lister), who wants Katie for himself.

Everything is of course sorted out in the end, with couples pairing up as the audience expects.

The show is lively and has plenty of songs. but only a handful are well-known, the rest fillers.

The first half is a disappointing rush of mediocre plot and not much character, not helped by the meagre chemistry between the two leads.

But the second half picks up remarkably well: from Lister’s lovely guitar-accompanied performance of “Higher than a Hawk” onwards, the storyline settles down, Prenger plays things more for comic effect, Lister finally starts to perform opposite her and the whole show notches up a gear to provide a rousing finale.

The show isn’t the must-see event of a major “Oklahoma” revival, but eventually natural enthusiasm wins over production style.