It’s generally a bad sign when some of the audience are in fancy dress. The good people crammed into Wilton’s Music Hall for Wink the Other Eye are terribly, terribly jolly. And terribly middle-class. Which is probably just as well, as I can’t seriously imagine a less polite crowd sitting through this strange composite of a local history lecture and a cheerfully dreadful am-dram knees-up.
Wink the Other Eye attempts to give a potted history of music hall, as well as an introduction to the songs that made the halls great, all delivered through the melodrama of its artistes’ lives and loves. But the condescending waffle that masquerades as the show’s through-narrative sits uncomfortably with the integrity of Wilton’s faded grandeur. Hapless actors keep wandering onstage, announcing the year, and which piece of legislation’s just been passed. It’s funny for a while, and then embarrassing. In the end it feels a bit like playing charades on the grave of a grand-dame.
This is a shame, because the company tackle the old numbers themselves with presence, charm and some finesse. Mark Pearce gives a magnificent, effortless turn as Champagne Charlie, and a winning rendition of The Houses in Between. Lulu Alexandra is an utterly unconvincing little maiden from the country, but her ringing voice and roving eye make the most of the saucy lyrics that accompany her inevitable fall from innocence. The estimable Mike Sengelow even manages to provoke a few tears with the devastatingly mawkish Come Home, Father. And Suzie Chard is a fine figure of a woman: it would be a treat to hear her expend her considerable talents upon more than a verse and a chorus at a time.
Sadly, this talented crew keep getting dragged out of genuinely entertaining vintage songs to mug their way through various vaguely historical skits. The absence of a live band doesn’t help, with pre-recorded music seriously hampering the cast’s attempts to get the audience to sing along, and grating nastily against some of the show’s big emotional effects.
There’s almost a lovely moment at the end, with the audience singing away as the theatre slips into darkness. But the production’s unwillingness to leave it at that is symptomatic of its patronising mistrust of some wonderful period material. Unfortunately, the old songs are one of the few bits of this show that really don’t require any apology.
