Sheridan Smith’s new show is more a mystery than a musical. Opening Night is based on a 1977 film by John Cassavetes that failed to attract a major US distributor. After opening briefly in LA, it vanished without trace. It’s a backstage drama about a tattooed drunk, Myrtle, who accepts the lead role in a new play which she starts to dislike. Realising her error, she tries to improve the script at the rehearsals and during preview performances ahead of the opening on Broadway. In real life, an actor who sabotaged a show like this would be fired and replaced. But never mind. This is make-believe.

Myrtle’s attempts to vandalise the script are opposed by the producer, the director and the writer, and they each moan to her in private about her behaviour. Myrtle is a tricky customer who seems to alienate everyone she meets and it’s hard to care about her squabbling over a few lines in a pretentious play. Romantically she’s torn between her leading man and her married director whom she bombards with late-night phone-calls, much to the annoyance of his wife.

Are we not all Harry Clarke, making it up as we go along, hanging on by a thread?

The strands of this cryptic story are further complicated by the arrival of a spiritual being who represents the unburied phantom of a 17-year-old theatre-goer recently killed by a car. Adding music to the ghost story makes it even harder to follow. Sometimes the characters sing their lines and sometimes they speak them normally. But are they speaking as part of the straight play or are they singing as part of the musical about the straight play? And how does the ghost fit in? Gosh it’s hard to unscramble. All the action is filmed live on stage and beamed to the audience over a number of TV screens dotted around the theatre.

QOSHE - Dazzling: Harry Clarke, at the Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed - Lloyd Evans
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Dazzling: Harry Clarke, at the Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed

8 0
21.03.2024

Sheridan Smith’s new show is more a mystery than a musical. Opening Night is based on a 1977 film by John Cassavetes that failed to attract a major US distributor. After opening briefly in LA, it vanished without trace. It’s a backstage drama about a tattooed drunk, Myrtle, who accepts the lead role in a new play which she starts to dislike. Realising her error, she tries to improve the script at the rehearsals and during preview........

© The Spectator


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