Review Roundup: West End's LEND ME A TENOR

The brand-new West End production of LEND ME A TENOR is directed by Olivier award-winning director Ian Talbot (High Society, Anything Goes) and choreographed by Tony-nominated choreographer Randy Skinner (42nd Street, White Christmas). The production is designed by Paul Farnsworth, with lighting by Tim Mitchell, and sound by Terry Jardine and Nick Lidster. The Musical Supervisor is Tony Award Winner Paul Gemignani, the Musical Director is Colin Billing, and orchestrations are by Chris Walker.

It's 1934, and the world's greatest tenor Tito Merelli has come to Cleveland, Ohio, to save its Grand Opera Company by singing Verdi's Otello. When he is unexpectedly incapacitated, Max, the opera director's meek assistant, is given the daunting task of finding a last-minute replacement. Chaos ensues - including a scheming soprano, a tenor-struck ingénue, a jealous wife, shrimp gone bad and the Cleveland Police department. For more information, visit: www.tenorthemusical.co.uk 

Michael Billington, The Guardian: It's all passably jolly, but the show, with book and lyrics by Peter Sham and music by Brad Carroll, misses a trick in not doing more to satirise operatic conventions. There are occasional insider gags such as Morelli's refusal to rehearse on the grounds that: "I sing Otello fifty times - it's no big deal." But the high point comes when the company's Desdemona turns up in Morelli's bedroom to demonstrate her operatic wares. Sophie-Louise Dann seizes her moment and gives wonderfully over-the-top potted parodies of Tosca, Violetta and Carmen, while hugging the walls and clawing the furniture in the manner of an old-style soprano. It's very funny precisely because it has a grain of truth.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: It's all passably entertaining - if you're prepared to accept this light-hearted and sometimes laboured mix of high art, high jinks and hokum for the fluff and nonsense it is. The songs - with flip, throwaway lines - are barely memorable, the dance sequences fine but infrequent and emotions are brought to the boil with all the sophistication of four-minute pasta.

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard: It has farcical moments, but only Matthew Kelly, as the opera house manager, imbues them with the right sense of sweaty desperation. The romantic leads are melodic but insipid, and the comedy honours are stolen by Joanna Riding and Michael Matus as caricature fiery Italians with shaddap-you-face accents. The whole thing is slickly enough directed by Ian Talbot, who was in the original play, although he does tend to crowd his cast into corners. But it took a concerted act of will to remember anything more than the broadest details on the way home.

Paul Vale, The Stage: Some of the more sublime musical highlights include the glorious tenor duet Be Yourself, in which Michael Matus as Merelli coaches the insecure Max to leading man status, a role Damian Humbley steps into with aplomb. While there is much door-slamming and mistaken identity in Act Two, there's still plenty of room for Sophie-Louise Dann's May I Have A Moment? - an opera audition par excellence - to bring the house down.

Libby Purves, The Times: There are some fine set pieces: a duet between Max and his deceived girlfriend Maggie Cassidy Janson shows his operatic tenor behind the musical-theatre lightness and her lovely romantic voice and ability to handle big character numbers. But Sophie-Louise Dann as Diana, the local diva, has the comic gem of the night. A spoofy surtitled operatic row between the Merellis is fun too, and Kelly, looking unnervingly like Lord Howe of Aberavon, is the beleaguered manager and milks it like a man. My fourth star hovered for a while, uncertain: it was won by the unforced glee of the preview audience. For it's a good-hearted show with real laughs: not to be sniffed at.

Simon Edge, Whatsonstage: Ian Talbot's production is faultlessly cast, with a lumbering, bearish Matthew Kelly as the neurotic impresario Henry Saunders; Michael Matus as the heart-throb Italian tenor Tito Merelli; Joanna Riding as Merelli's jealous, vengeful wife Maria; Damian Humbley as Max, the geek with the voice of a god who ends up drugging and replacing Tito in Verdi's Otello; and Cassidy Janson as Saunders' daughter Maggie, who is adored by Max but has the hots for Tito.

 

 

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