COPACABANA
Stopsley High School, Luton - November 2002
I am not renowned for relating the plots of the productions I pick up on my reviewing travels. If you saw it or were involved, you probably know it better than I do.
And if you didn’t see it you are unlikely to care. But every rule has its glorious exceptions and Barry Manilow’s vacuous musical Copacabana fits the bill like no other.
Lola, a backwoods ingénue singer, desperate for recognition, is rescued from obscurity when Tony, a struggling New York songwriter, revamps her turgid audition piece.
Lola becomes the star of Sam’s Copacabana Club and, fiendishly drugged, is whisked to Havana by a nasty mafia-linked character, Rico. Tony and Sam rescue our heroine from the clutches of the dastardly villain and all ends happily. Stretching this farrago, lazily framed as a show within a show, into a two hour musical must have caused a few chuckles in the Manilow household and a lot more in local theatrical ones.
But Stuart Farrar is no mug and he astutely recognised that even this wobbly dramatic ship creates numerous opportunities for individual youthful flair and collective performance panache. Judged on the night I went, he was not too far wrong. Dale Stacey’s struggling songwriter was a richly etched sharp characterisation, and Elly Farrar’s ambitious and naïve Lola an absolute joy.
Not only can this young lady act, her beautifully controlled drunk scene with Carl Davidson’s scar-faced Rico gave ample proof of that, but her excellent Man Wanted was one of the musical highlights. And aided by David Houghton’s trademark evocative lighting, both Mr Stacey and Miss Farrar gave a moving touch to This Can’t Be Real.
We were also given a sensitive performance from Caroline Needham’s nicely vulnerable Conchita, a manically aggressive one from Lee Gauntlett’s nightclub owner Sam, and an absolute peach in portrayal from Katie Brennan’s wise-cracking waitress Gladys. Miss Brennan’s Copa Girl number was beautifully acted and excellently sung.
Given the pace that the central performers constantly injected, I could envisage some sharp local societies reaching for the amateurs’ equivalent of a contract.
The company splendidly topped the show with Copa Opening, and Just Arrived, and tailed it with the vigorous narrative driven Copacabana. In between, Simon Router’s brilliant band and Mr Houghton’s kaleidoscopic lighting blinded and deafened in dazzlingly equal proportions and grudgingly invoked the thought that Farrar flair, had, once again, coated the thinnest theatrical vehicle in a considerable piece of imaginative gloss.
I may have quibbled at the manner in which the open and barren stage exposed the young cast in a directorial wilderness and sniffed a little at some unimaginative and sloppy staging, but in all other aspects this latest presentation from the Colin Smith Youth Musical Theatre energetically fired. My sensitive ears and even finer cultural antennae vow never to go near this musical again but, if I have to, I fervently pray that it has at least half this company’s brassy style.
Roy Hall