Reviews

Jerry Herman has written some blockbuster musicals (Hello Dolly!, Mame, La Cage Aux Folles), but Mack And Mabel has had a checkered career. It failed on Broadway in 1974 partly because it did not have a romantic ending as Mabel died and the leading man, Robert Preston, was way too old for the leading lady, Bernadette Peters. However, the ending where Mabel died was changed: the score found favour as an award-winning Torvill and Dean routine, and it eventually made the West End in 1995 with David Soul.

David Walker started shakily as the film director Mack Sennett, missing a few notes in his first song, Movies Were Movies, but he warmed to the role and became more confident as the play continued. Sennett is a selfish, self-obsessed character and although he recognises this in one of the songs, (“I’d be the first one to agree/ I’m preoccupied with me”), he does nothing about it and it drives away his protégé, Mabel Normand. I found it hard to sympathise with Mack but it is in the way the character is written: when you’re David Soul, you can ride above that and get audience sympathy, simply because you are David Soul. As it stood, Mack just seemed a fool for not telling Mabel he loved her and more could have been of his final gesture: he couldn’t send her roses but he would finance a loss-making, artistic film simply because he loved her.

Passion

Deborah Bloom was highly impressive as Mabel, the shop assistant who blossoms into a film star, although, again, I wasn’t convinced by her passion for Mack. The songs are far more emotional than the dialogue and she scored heavily with the cleverly written Time Heals Everything and her coda to I Won’t Send Roses, Who Wants Roses.

Many of the other roles are merely ciphers and could have been better written. Nicky Williams is very competent but her role as the pianist Lottie is a thankless role as I couldn’t work out whether she really longed for Mack or not? I presumed that the Fatty character was meant to be Fatty Arbuckle, who worked for Sennett, but if so, he needed to be far fatter and much more objectionable.

The best staged of the production numbers was the lively When Mabel Comes Into The Room but it was a rewritten Mame in both melody and sentiment. Hundreds Of Girls wasn’t as vibrant as it should have been but one of the chorus girls (Corinna Davies) had a thousand watt smile that would rival Tommy Steele’s. At first her eagerness seemed ingratiating but then I realised it was the way chorus girls were back then: they were desperate to get leading roles. The knockabout, runaround Keystone Cops routine was very entertaining but this kind of thing is just not funny anymore.

The shortcomings of the evening come down to weaknesses in the script itself and this was a very commendable effort, well up to professional standards, by an amateur company.