Review: FLOWERS FOR MRS HARRIS, Crucible, Sheffield, May 23 2016

As I left the theatre after seeing Flowers for Mrs Harris, everywhere around me were people in tears - and on the drive home, I found myself crying, too. It's hard to recall a piece of musical theatre - indeed, any theatre - where I've seen such a strong, visible, reaction in so many people (possibly Les Miserables, but that's the only thing that springs to mind).

It's perhaps a surprising response to what is, on the surface, a fairly simple story. This new musical (by Richard Taylor and Rachel Wagstaff) is an adaptation of Paul Gallico's novel about a middle-aged widow, Ada Harris (Clare Burt) who makes a living as a charlady in post-WW2 London and is one day captivated by the dream of owning a Dior dress. The musical follows her pursuit of this dream and touches upon the different characters she meets along the way, including her various clients, people working in the fashion industry and her best friend Violet (Anna Jane Casey).

The staging is clever and many of the costumes exquisite. The songs are well-written and funny, but the tunes aren't especially memorable - I can only bring a couple of them to mind now. In act one, there are so many lyrics, often sung by several characters at once, that it can be hard to follow them - although this improves as the production develops. There are very few big crowd-pleasing group numbers or dance routines - in some respects a far cry from the other musicals that have graced the Crucible stage in recent years (including Me and My Girl, My Fair Lady, Showboat, Oliver! and more). That's not to say the songs are bad - not at all, many of them are beautiful - just that they're not big, catchy numbers.

What this production does have, in spades, is heart. Our sympathies are always with Mrs Harris - Clare Burt (almost unrecognisable in her dowdy hair and make-up) giving a fantastic and emotional performance. We believe in this well-written and lovingly directed character. Her trials and triumphs mirror those we will all be familiar with, either in our own lives or those of people we know. The tenderness of her memories of her husband, the complexity of her emotions about dreaming for and striving for a designer dress instead of accepting her 'lot' in life or desiring something more practical, the excitement she feels when encountering a world she's never been part of - these are all very, very human and every emotion is evidenced in Burt's performance. The tears of the audience are all because Mrs Harris so accurately represents the things we feel and the experiences we've had - and also reminds those of us who are younger of the particular difficulties and experiences of the generations who lived through the war. So many of those same aspirations and tragedies were familiar to me from not only my own life but the lives of my family and communities. There's one moment in particular that was a big tearjerker (and I could hear people breaking down at that point) - but I won't spoil that for you!

Some of the other characters seem a little more caricatured and underdeveloped, but even then, there is often more revealed about them as the production unfolds and we're allowed glimpses into their dreams and fears. The cast all give spirited performances, though, even in small roles.

The storyline contains a whole host of fairy-tale like events coupled with very down-to earth ones. The mundane and the fantastical; the hilarious and the tragic rub against each other throughout, raising lots of questions about class, gender, aspiration and materialism that it never fully answers, and it's not always entirely clear if the ambiguity about these things is deliberate. On a similar note, the ending of the production will divide people - although it appears to replicate the ending of the novel from the summaries I've read. Some will find the ending uplifting - others devastating. In many ways, it is both (it's hard to say more without spoiling the plot!).

This production also marks Daniel Evans' last directorial act for Sheffield Theatres. He leaves his post as artistic director this summer to take up the reins at the Chichester Festival. (Evans' successor, Robert Hastie, arrives in July). His tenure at Sheffield Theatres has been a huge success, with the reinstatement of musicals at the Crucible, a diverse programme of well-known and brand new productions, and community-led initiatives like Sheffield People's Theatre. It's fitting that his final production is not only a musical, but a new one, and one that has an 'ordinary' woman at its heart. As flowers arrived on the stage for Mrs Harris and the audience erupted in a standing ovation, the crowd were saluting not only the incredible talents on the stage, but also the director who has helped reassert Sheffield Theatres as one of the country's most innovative and exciting cultural organisations. It's exciting to think about both what he'll bring to Chichester and how Hastie will take Sheffield Theatres forward from here.

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