To the petrified convention of Anglo-American musicals in which boy meets girl and finds true love in 14 numbers, Phil Wilmott's deft production of Victor/Victoria comes as an exhilarating exception. Here is that rare thing a funny, pleasure-rousing musical about gender-games from which you emerge savouring book and lyrics, not humming the songs. Wilmott's production, bolstered by a four-strong band, is not well cast, but its sharp sexual satire grips.
The attraction of Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria, originally a Julie Andrews movie and recently a Broadway musical, lies in its ingenious development of the true story of a Miss who became a myth. The "Miss" is Ria Jones's Victoria, an impoverished British soprano in 1930s Paris, who is taken up by gay cabaret singer Toddy and triumphantly marketed as Victor: a woman impersonates a man impersonating a woman. This is a gay Paris with a queer edge. "Is the girl I'm in love with a guy?" wonders Mark Halliday's oddly
meek, un-American Chicago gangster, King, who falls for Victoria, and she for him, when the girl performs.
The diminutive, too-mature Miss Jones is as androgynous as a brassiere, even when dressed in tails and with cropped hair. Victor needs a masculine aura. But Jones, despite a powerful voice, bizarrely clings to femininity as if it were a lifebuoy. The musical gathers momentum slowly, with Henry Mancini's score unmemorable even in accompaniment to Leslie Bricusse's clever lyrics, some of them new.
But Edwards's book becomes a witty, gay-related satirical meditation upon the importance of finding your true self by admitting your sexual identity, whatever people think. The gangster gets Victoria and Toddy wins an unexpected human prize, though Christopher Holt, demonstrating rather than playing the role, lays on gayness with a spade instead of a trowel. This lovely musical appeals to heart and mind.
Until 31 January: Information: 020 7936 3456.
Victor/Victoria
