UK Edition
Review
Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe rise to the Rodgers and Hammerstein challenge - Carousel, London Coliseum, review
Well, was she any good? That’s bound to be the first question anyone asks about this revival of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s masterpiece, starring glamour girl Katherine Jenkins in what appears to be her first professional theatrical role.
The answer is yes. As the ingénue Julie Jordan, she looks lovely and acts sweetly in a June Allyson girl-next-door way that never becomes simpering. Her singing is good too – both her big numbers, “If I loved you” and “What’s the use of wondering?” are shaped with warmth and feeling, though a fast vibrato creeps in whenever she puts pressure on the voice.
But let’s not get too excited: this isn’t a taxing assignment and she’s succoured by a head mike. Her future may lie in musicals – The King and I would do nicely. But the popular notion that classifies her as an opera singer remains untenable, and I’m certainly not holding my breath for her Carmen.
Much more in Carousel hangs on the singer of Billy Bigelow, the fairground barker who makes such a pathetic mess of his life. Here this is Alfie Boe, whose respectable operatic career could have been taken further had he not heeded the siren call of more lucrative light music.
Looking like a greasy rocker dude – the sort of hopeless man that nice girls fall for – he gives an impressive performance, rising to the histrionic demands of his Act 1 soliloquy and making something genuinely poignant of his remorse beyond the grave. In this context, his voice and style sound almost too grandly expansive: he could dump the head mike and easily do it au naturel.
Alex Young and Gavin Spokes are a delight as Carrie and Mr Snow, and Nicholas Lyndhurst is piquantly understated as the supernatural Starkeeper. Brenda Edwards’s soul-inflected interpretations of Nettie’s “June is bustin’ out all over” and “You’ll never walk alone” were not to my personal taste. ENO’s chorus and orchestra are rousingly conducted by David Charles Abell – I imagine that by the end of the 41-performance run they’ll all be driven mad by earworms of Rodgers’s wonderful waltzes.
Lonnie Price has adequately directed what one might call a three-quarters production, updating the setting to the Thirties and using projections as scenery. The opening sequence is a mess, the dancing underwhelming and spectacle in short supply, but fans of Boe and Jenkins won’t come way feeling short-changed.
Carousel is playing at the London Coliseum until May 13. Book your tickets now to avoid disappointment at tickets.telegraph.co.uk or by calling: 0844 871 2118