I can’t say I hadn’t been warned. For weeks now I’ve been hearing the rumours that Desperately Seeking Susan was lining up to be a disaster: someone I know had already dubbed it Desperately Seeking an Audience. And I’d had personal testimony from four separate friends who had been to previews that it was simply awful.
It’s difficult to shut your ears to this sort of clamour, but at the same time that’s what previews are for: they’re there for the producers and creative team to hear it, too, and try to fix what they’ve got. And I also gave the show the benefit of these doubts by meeting and profiling star Emma Williams for the Sunday Express last weekend who was, incidentally, absolutely delightful.
So I didn’t go into last night’s press night with exactly a clean slate of expectation, but then that can sometimes work in a show’s favour, too. I well remember that when the current West End revival of Cabaret arrived in town, it too got a barrage of negative opinion in advance of the opening – but when I saw it, I was blown away by it.
At least Desperately Seeking Susan last night wasn’t the stumbling mess that Quentin Letts saw when he snuck into the night before, according to his Daily Mail review today: “At the final preview there were various hitches: an accidental burst of hellishly loud sound, a set of swimming pool steps which seemed to take on a life of their own, knocked microphones and so on.” He concludes by questioning his own star rating: “Two stars? I’m being charitable. It’s harmless. But it’s pretty dire.”
It may be time to say “enough, already” to the recycled pop jukebox scores that are being attached to new musicals – certainly, Never Forget, which does the same for the back catalogue of Take That is provocatively taking another step to the dark side by announcing a West End opening for next summer, even though what I, and other critics, saw in Manchester in August shouldn’t reach West End Lane.
But there’s time for them to work on it, I suppose, and I’ll try to go with an open mind again. Musicals, as they always say, aren’t so much written as re-written, and it’s possible that they’ll finally unlock the key to it. Or maybe it’s just not my sort of thing and never will be: taste sometimes plays a big part in one’s reactions.
But one also hopes for a certain involvement and rapport with a piece, and no amount of rewriting can sometimes fix it. I discovered from Emma Williams that Desperately Seeking Susan had three full workshops before it reached the Novello stage. What we saw last night is the culmination of that process – but it was still not good enough.
Three workshops? Good grief!!!