Showgirl Queenie and vaudevillian clown Burrs live together. They hate each other. He can’t live without her. Their life is a toxic blur of faded stars and hangers-on, with sex and violence surging at the edges. It’s the 1920s. They throw a final, blowout party.
Adapted from Joseph McClure March’s narrative verse poem of 1927, this show – book by Michael John LaChiusa and George Wolfe, with LaChiusa also providing the cynicism-dipped songs – originally premiered off-Broadway in 2000, with Toni Collette as Queenie. Here, musical theatre legend Frances Ruffelle takes the role.
'The Wild Party' is making its UK debut in a production heralding the launch of the re-branded St James Theatre as The Other Palace – a home for musical theatre in all of its forms, backed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and under Paul Taylor-Mills’ artistic directorship.
As a statement of intent, 'The Wild Party' is an intriguing one. It's fiercely, viciously dark and lacks any real plot. This is not a mainstream musical; it's not an easy sell to your casual punter hankering after a catchy tune. It's the kind of show you stage when you want to say: 'we're going to be mixing things up’.
Like the live jazz throbbing away in the background, the show works like an extended riff – on a theme of doom-laden debauchery. Director Drew McOnie keeps things breathless from the start. His choreography never lets up, as a parade of characters who are busily ruining their lives spin across the stage like broken puppets. They’re archetypes of an age. It's a rush of sound and high-impact lighting, heavily indebted to 'Chicago'. A makeup-caked Ruffelle is a woman fleeing her fading youth in gin and drugs. Her boozy, bawdy duets with best frenemy, Kate (a scene-stealing Victoria Hamilton-Barritt) are a highlight. There’s also strong work from Gloria Obianyo and Genesis Lynea as ‘brothers’ Oscar and Phil. This is a show full of people with secrets.
But ‘The Wild Party’ is also a strange, uncomfortable thing. Its scenes of domestic violence and attempted assault sit uneasily with the ‘big-number’ approach to the songs and staging. The flicks into broad humour are often whiplashing. There’s a ton of energy pouring out of this production, but somehow it never feels as feverishly grotesque as the world of this show demands.