Five stars for Crazy for You — a daft, dizzying musical that revels in the joy of theatre

Crazy for You

Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

On the opening night of Crazy for You in London, director and choreographer Susan Stroman stepped on to the stage to thank not just her cast — led by the sensational Charlie Stemp — but all the understudies and theatre crew who had brought the show to fruition. 

It was, of course, heartwarming. But it was also apt. For at the heart of this daft, dizzying musical, which wafts along on a score of Gershwin classics and a plot as frivolous as a feather boa, is a serious point about the transformative joy of theatre — of making it, delivering it, sharing it. And like 42nd Street, also set during the Great Depression, it slips in a shrewd economic argument for the arts. Here, young Bobby Child, a wannabe dancer trapped in the body of a New York banker, is dispatched to foreclose on a tiny theatre in a deadbeat former gold-rush town. Instead, he puts on a show, raising not just the spirits but the financial fortunes of the place.

Stroman’s superb staging (first seen in Chichester last year) sews that creative ingenuity into her choreography. The glorious “I Got Rhythm”, which closes the first half, is a triumph of resourcefulness, with the cast of local townspeople forming an impromptu skiffle band, pressing defunct mining tools into service as instruments and making gold-panning trays resound with their tapping feet. It’s an inspired bit of choreography that celebrates the inventiveness of live theatre.

All this comes cloaked in a narrative of the utmost absurdity. Bobby staggers into Deadrock, Nevada, only to bump instantly into beautiful tough cookie Polly. Intoxicated by love — and the potent local liquor — he dreams up a foolproof plan to win her heart: he will impersonate New York impresario Bela Zangler, put on a show and save the town’s theatre. Needless to say, this proves anything but foolproof — not least when Zangler himself (Tom Edden, very funny) rocks up.

Ken Ludwig’s script, developed in 1992 from the 1930 Girl Crazy, revels in corny one-liners. Stroman’s staging is peppered with nimble slapstick routines and fine performances from ensemble and soloists alike. Natalie Kassanga, as Bobby’s disgruntled fiancée, turns up the heat in her solo “Naughty Baby”; Carly Anderson’s Polly has a lovely, lilting dance style and reveals a wealth of longing in “Someone to Watch Over Me”. 

But the evening belongs to Stemp, who is simply terrific. He gives Bobby a winning combination of childlike enthusiasm, dazzling dance moves and sharp comic timing and, in one line, sums up the entire ethos of the show: “I’m dancing and I can’t be bothered now.”

★★★★★

To January 20 2024, crazyforyoumusical.com

Dr Semmelweis

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

There’s another headstrong maverick at the Harold Pinter Theatre, but this time he is based on a real and deeply troubled person. Dr Semmelweis, written by Stephen Brown and Mark Rylance, and starring the latter, unfolds the shocking story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a 19th-century Hungarian doctor. 

Taking up a post at Vienna’s general hospital in 1846, Semmelweis was horrified by the number of young women dying soon after childbirth and determined to find the cause. Eventually he realised that doctors coming straight from autopsies were bringing infection with them. He didn’t yet have the terminology — bacteria and sepsis — but he did have the remedy: disinfectant. By insisting on handwashing, he saved the lives of many women and babies, but would have saved thousands more had the arrogant hierarchical medical establishment not dismissed his views. He ended up in an asylum where, with horrible irony, he died of sepsis.

Directed by Tom Morris, the play is a cautionary tale about progress and myopia: doctors wrapped up in the pioneering possibilities of autopsy are unable to see any danger in the practice. But it’s also a personal tragedy: Semmelweis himself is likewise blinkered, a visionary but a truculent man who was unable to see that his prickly behaviour might alienate potential support. Here his story unfolds in flashback as, haunted by the ghosts of those he could not save, he becomes increasingly unhinged. Seeing and not seeing becomes a theme.

The flashback structure can feel unwieldy, but Morris skilfully pulls against that, finding the moments of comedy while drawing you into the doctor’s tormented mind. An ensemble of female dancers is ever present: silent witnesses who watch on from the shadows. Weaving through the action (choreography by Antonia Franceschi), these sad spectral creatures are driven by music from Adrian Sutton and from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, played by an all-female string quartet. 

It’s beautiful and sorrowful, and at its centre is Rylance, transfixing as a man hollowed out by grief and galvanised by guilt. His performance is mercurial — by turns gentle, diffident, impetuous and cruelly cold. There are deft interpretations from Daniel York Loh, Jude Owusu, Felix Hayes and Ewan Black as his exasperated associates, and from Pauline McLynn as an astute nurse who, as a woman, sees much but can say little.

To October 7, drsemmelweistheplay.com

Song From Far Away

Hampstead Theatre, London

Music also threads through Simon Stephens’ Song From Far Away and, again, blurs the overlap between the past and present, the physical and the unseen. In this compassionate, subtly composed monologue, we meet Willem (Will Young), another man suspended in a twilight zone by the shock of grief and an enforced reckoning with himself.

We join Willem, a wealthy New York banker, as he recalls the sudden death of his brother Pauli and his own return to his native Amsterdam and estranged family. To cope, he wrote letters to Pauli, which he now reads aloud — to us, to himself — meaning we see everything through the filter of his memory. 

In a great monologue, the speaker will always tell us far more than they think they are telling us, and so it is here: in Willem’s crisp, archly funny, judgmental account we see a man who has walled himself up against the pain of emotions. “They recognise a fellow nomad when they see one,” Willem says, of a group of strangers, but he seems to be talking about a deeper rootlessness.

Stephens writes very movingly about grief and about the meaning of home — think of Sea Wall, performed so brilliantly by Andrew Scott — and here we watch a man who seems profoundly deracinated. In Kirk Jameson’s production, Willem pads about a tastefully bland space (designed by Ingrid Hu), which could be an upmarket hotel room or his apartment, but which feels too like an extension of his mindset. He wears headphones, not to listen to music but to block out the world; yet a song (composed by Mark Eitzel) has snagged him and keeps coming to his lips unbidden. 

Young handles the slips from speech to song beautifully, as if patches of ice were melting. It’s a gentle, truthful, immensely touching portrait of a man facing himself and daring to feel his way towards recovery. 

★★★★☆

To July 22, hampsteadtheatre.com