Theatre / Reviews
Review: Calamity Jane, Bristol Hippodrome
This is the rootin’ist, tootin’ist romantic comedy cowboy musical show you’re likely to see for a very long time – and we all know how many of those there are around competing for our attention.
Packed with great songs – The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away), I Just Blew in From The Windy City and more – it’s brilliantly staged, with a multi-talented cast who all act, sing, dance and play a multitude of musical instruments.
The set (mostly) is a highly stylised and ultra-kitsch, wild-west saloon stage within a stage where all the performances, action, and love affairs are played out.
Deadwood might not have many residents but they`re all characters with plenty to say, sing and do. The musical is based on the 1953 Doris Day movie which was only created by Warner Brothers in response to the huge financial success of MGM’s Anne Get Your Gun.
So even though Calamity Jane did apparently exist there’s no pretence of historical accuracy – this is pure Hollywood.
Throughout the movie, Day acts as though she’s been force-fed a sugar-only diet (to keep up her levels of hyperactivity not saccharine – though frankly that’s a close run thing) so here Jodie Prenger as Jane has to continuously give everything she’s got in order to keep up with the movie original.
That’s a big ask but she certainly does the business – belting out even the silliest couplets in My Secret Love: “Now I shout it from the highest hills, even told the golden daffodils”.
You’ve got to sell that lyric big time to make it work. But if Jodie is the undisputed star of the show then Tom Lister as Wild Bill Hickcock is a close second.
Lister played Carl King in Emmerdale for nine years (nine years so, boy, does he deserve a change) and here he performs a standout solo performance of a lesser known song My Heart Is Higher Than a Hawk and in the process makes it very special.
Calamity Jane is at Bristol Hippodrome until October 25. For tickets and more information, visit www.atgtickets.com/shows/calamity-jane/bristol-hippodrome/.
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