Worth singing about

THAT DAY WE SANG: Opera House, Manchester International Festival
WELL she’s gone and done it again.

Victoria Wood’s sublime ear for language, nostalgic mickey-taking and unbridled sentiment score a direct hit inside the first 10 minutes of her sad, jolly, feelgood “almost a musical”.

Jimmy “Tubby” Baker (Vincent Franklin), who was one of the children who sang on the famous 1929 Manchester Schoolchildren’s Choir recording this show documents, pops on a set of headphones during a TV news piece 40 years later and fills up at the sound of his childhood flooding back.

Anyone with a heart is right there with him: after that, Wood and the cast can do little wrong.

Though the story is in theory about that famous recording of “Nymphs and Shepherds” — regularly played on radio until the Seventies — in truth it is really a little Manchester tale of two lonely, middle-aged people, full of joy during that childhood event, their lives since gone astray.

The play fleshes out the stories of Tubby, a diffident insurance salesman; and Enid, a bright child who grew into a lonely spinster, trapped in an affair with her married boss, as it also follows the parallel story of the recording.

Writer and director Wood contrasts this charming pair — there’s not a single audience member not willing them to get together — with two pompous comic characters also from the choir; a deathly couple (Gerard Horan and Lorraine Bruce) whose self-importance is deflated in a couple of minutes by Wood’s sharply ironic song in remembrance of the Berni Inn chain.

That’s another welcome feature: Wood is a superb lyricist, one of the funniest we have (as anyone who has heard her song “Let’s Do It” can attest), and in songs like that one and a wonderful act-two opener — which starts with Enid, (Jenna Russell) alone and lonely in her room and ends with her in full Liza Minelli, show-stopping mode, and is packed with hilarious ideas and wilder rhymes — the evening scores some of its biggest successes.

What’s wrong with it? Very little. It is unashamedly popular, has a warm and fuzzy ending, singing children and some fabulous jokes and dialogue, so what’s not to like?

It would probably work even better as a TV play, but let’s forgive one of our national treasures that much. Get a ticket, while you still can, for the big hit of the festival.