Review: Crazy For You is Non-Stop Pleasure
Gershwin show is a dream of swooning romance, choreographic genius and megawatt performances
Review by BY SAM MARLOWE for The Stage
Gliding into the West End after an acclaimed run at Chichester last year, director-choreographer Susan Stroman’s production of this confection of breathtaking dance, giddy romance and Gershwin tunes is the stuff of musical theatre dreams. It’s pure escapism: a scintilla of featherlight hokum, consummately delivered – yet what extraordinary power it has to make the heart soar. I defy anyone to sit through it without a goofy grin on their face and tears pricking at their awe-widened eyes.
In fact, I defy anyone to sit still at all; this is the sort of show to awaken Fred and Ginger fantasies in even the most flat-footed. In a story that airily skips from New York to Deadrock, Nevada, its lissome Broadway chorines and capering cowpokes and farmhands never put a foot or, indeed, so much as a fingernail wrong. As for the two leads, they are simply delectable. Carly Anderson is a gorgeous warm, tender and tough Polly Baker, daughter of the owner of Deadrock’s ailing theatre. And Charlie Stemp as Bobby Child, the stage-struck Big Apple rich kid set on saving the theatre and winning Polly’s heart, is phenomenal – an electrifying triple-threat talent with megawatt charisma.
This 1992 musical is, of course, assembled from top-of-the-range parts: derived from the Gershwins’ 1930 show Girl Crazy, but with a complete crackerjack rewrite by Ken Ludwig, and with a score made up of classics from the composer-lyricist duo’s songbook – I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You and But Not for Me among them. Stroman whisks us instantly into a high-colour fantasy land, the statuesque showgirls of Zangler’s Follies a shimmying vision of ostrich plumes, glitter and gauze. Then it’s non-stop pleasure, as Beowulf Boritt’s sets and William Ivey Long’s costumes transport us from backstage Broadway, where Stemp’s Bobby tries to win over Tom Edden’s badger-coiffed impresario Bela Zangler amid a cloud of dancers in pink tulle, to the wide-open skies and tumbleweed of flyblown Deadrock, where denim-clad townsfolk are roused from slumbrous inactivity into staggering song-and-dance spectacles.
Stroman delivers surprise after surprise, intertwining expertly executed pratfalls with choreographic virtuosity. There are elegantly acrobatic shoot-outs, flying bullets and whisky bottles; pickaxes and ropes are wittily employed as props in routines that zing with invention, and in which every surface, from table tops to corrugated roofs, becomes an opportunity for dazzling tap dancing.
It’s all offset by swooning loveliness – Stemp and Anderson dancing themselves into love under the stars. Natalie Kassanga as Bobby’s irate fiancee Irene brings a fiery contrast, seducing her new love, Mathew Craig’s lugubrious innkeeper, in a red-hot rendition of Naughty Baby. In fact, there’s not a moment here that doesn’t delight. Who could ask for anything more? Perfection.