You can tell its January. So starved are theatre critics of things to review that there are no fewer than four prominent overnight reviews today for a tiny little show that opened last night at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre. London’s latest nun musical, Postcards from God, that re-tells the biographical tale of Sister Wendy Beckett’s rise to 80s television fame to a musical theatre soundtrack, is the sort of thing you might see late night in Edinburgh somewhere, but feels awfully exposed in the full glare of the London first string critical brigade. But while Jermyn Street might welcome being on the critical map again in such force, it doesn’t actually do them too many favours to be shown in such a mediocre light.
A couple of these reviews are cheats in the overnight stakes – both the Independent’s Paul Taylor and The Times’ Benedict Nightingale crept in a night earlier, to the last preview on Tuesday, but The Guardian’s Michael Billington was sat behind me last night (and whom I ran into in the drama section of the nearby Waterstone’s before the show, trying as I was to salve our dramatic consciences and appease our theatrical palettes before going to have them less than sated just along Jermyn Street), and Fiona Mountford was on the other side of the aisle.
But even if I resisted the show, I’ve long loved Jermyn Street and its indefatigable administrator Penny Horner. Lots of theatres are run on the passions of the people in charge, but now that Dan Crawford is no more at the King’s Head, Penny might well take the prize for London’s most industrious (and individual) manager. Like Dan, she doesn’t take a specifically artistic role, but is the guv’nor in every sense. (I tend to call her Dame Penelope). She answers the phone when you call, is often manning the box office or the bar (the two cubby-holes that function as such on either side of the entrance door), and is generally always to be found in evidence here.
She calls on a loyal band of supporters, too: London cabaret performer (and regular TheatreRadio presenter) Tim McArthur is often to be found manning the box office, and indeed was doing so last night. Of course, some are more familiar with him as another nun – his drag alter-ego, Sister Mary. Last night, however, it was another Sister Act onstage, namely Sister Wendy.
And talking of Sister Act – that’s heading for the stage, too. It opens in Atlanta next week, ahead of a planned Broadway opening.
