What’s the sign of a good musical? You leave the theatre humming the songs. And a great one? You’re also humming them in the interval, the next morning and on and on for days. That’s what happened when I first saw a rollicking production of Something Rotten! at Canada’s Stratford festival at the start of summer. Now, the day after its first London performance in a different concert version, it’s happening again.
But if this is one of the catchiest musicals I’ve ever seen, it’s also one of the funniest as it recounts downtrodden and jealous Renaissance playwright Nick Bottom’s attempts to outsmart the cocksure William Shakespeare. Gripped by the green-eyed monster, Nick visits a soothsayer, Thomas Nostradamus (nephew of the other one), to foresee the Bard’s future masterpiece and put it on himself. To say much more about his wonky vision of Hamlet would spoil a surreal second half which had audiences cracking up in Stratford and in London.
While I can’t stop singing the songs, I also can’t believe it’s taken more than nine years for Something Rotten! to arrive in London after a feted Broadway premiere (10 Tony award nominations including best musical, score and book). Many a West End producer would fancy a soothsayer on their payroll and some of theatre’s biggest hits and misses have been hard to prophesy, which is one of the show’s recurring jokes. As Nostradamus tells Nick of future audiences’ insatiable appetite for musicals, he is repeatedly bamboozled by visions of cats on stage. But, even in a risky climate for new musicals, the ovation at the first night of Something Rotten! at Theatre Royal Drury Lane (it ends with a second concert on Tuesday evening) augurs well for a full future production.
Jason Manford has been trying to get the show on for years after seeing it on Broadway. He dons what Upstart Crow memorably called “puffling pants” to play Nick Bottom with evident relish. As the Bard himself, Richard Fleeshman is a preening rock star with an Elvis pelvis and a codpiece, first taking the stage flanked by bodyguards. Why does he get to be the Bard rather than just a bard, carps Nick. “Don’t be a penis, the man is a genius!” retort a chorus of Shakespeare-lovers whose idolatry also fuels Fleeshman’s brilliantly boastful rendition of Will Power. Each time he leaves the stage, he haughtily announces his own stage direction: “Exit Shakespeare!”
Gary Wilmot is a hoot as Thomas Nostradamus, the ever-sensational Marisha Wallace (who appeared in Something Rotten! on Broadway) plays Nick’s quick-witted wife Bea and Steve Furst makes every line matter in his supporting role as Shylock (his character’s name is borrowed by Shakespeare, pinching freely as ever) whose speeches often give satirical bite to the comedy. There’s also Nick’s sensitive poet brother, Nigel (Cassius Hackforth), who falls for Portia (Evelyn Hoskins), daughter of Brother Jeremiah (Cameron Blakely), a puritan with carnal impulses given away by recurring double entendres.
As Manford has noted, there’s a whiff of Blackadder to all this. But Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick’s musical, with a book co-written by longtime Guardian columnist John O’Farrell, is also a warm tale of brotherly love, affection nestling alongside the jesting. The lyrics are ridiculously witty yet also borrow from Polonius’s speech to Laertes – “to thine own self be true” – with moving results. Above all the show manages to both celebrate and lampoon Shakespeare and the musical genre at the same time. The song A Musical, in which Nostradamus outlines the more curious ingredients of song-and-dance numbers, has an irresistible undulation, while there are dozens of clever references and cues from Theatreland hits, including some of Wallace’s own (Dreamgirls, Guys and Dolls). Funk and gospel are added to the mix, and although the second half dips a bit in pace there are clever reprises of a joyous opening number, delightfully performed by a yellow-stockinged, lute-strumming troubadour (Ashley Samuels).
Tourists to London have already proved hungry for English “histo-remixes” such as the musical Six. Something Rotten! – which has a feminist streak in the vein of the Shakespearean riff Emilia, another West End smash – would provide a neat counterpoint to a visit to Shakespeare’s Globe. The stage version of Upstart Crow, Ben Elton’s adaptation of his TV series, found success with a similarly irreverent blend of gags about Shakespeare’s times and plays. Something Rotten! also weaves its story from recognisable elements of the Bard’s plots: prophecies, banishments, disguises and star-crossed love. There are some good gags about the notion of seeing Romeo and Juliet, which is his new hit, and not yet knowing its ending.
I’m still longing to see a stage version of one of Manford’s other musical projects – Vikki Stone’s concept album #zoologicalsociety, in which he played a miserable monkey. But in the meantime, Something Rotten! is something special – and after triumphant outings in North America it deserves a longer life in our own scepter’d isle.
Something Rotten! In Concert is at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London, on 6 August. Something Rotten is at the Stratford festival, Ontario, until 17 November.
Chris Wiegand is the Guardian’s Stage editor
