There’s much excitement out at the Queens Theatre in Hornchurch, where they could have a future West End hit on their hands.

Artistic Director Bob Carlton has turned the venue into one of the busiest theatres in the country with his policy of populist plays and musicals performed by a resident company of actor musicians. The current production is It's a Fine Life, a musical about Lionel Bart, best known for writing Oliver!

Bart squandered a massive song writing fortune on coke, rent boys and unfortunate friends and business dealings, ending up dead from alcohol poisoning in a grotty flat in Acton.

It’s a rags to riches to rags tale told using Bart’s best songs – and, my God, those sixties songs can still knock your socks off! The script is by Chris Bond who’s also wrote the basis of Sondhiem’s musical Sweeny Todd.

At present it’s too long and a more sophisticated audience won’t accept the cringey conceit that Bart had life long friends called Bill, Nancy, Charley Bates and a business advisor called Fagin – allowing Bond to shoehorn in numbers from Oliver!

Such a device is crude but also completely unnecessary when there’s a wealth of other great songs to illustrate this amazing story, populated with some of the giants of sixties show biz.

The set, which is currently an impressive though, uneasy mixture of cartoon and stark symbolism also needs to be calmed down before a central London run.

Bart’s homosexuality is glossed over, pretty much encapsulated in one character, a non-threatening, transsexual, personal assistant.

Considering that Bart’s hunger for love motivated so much of his downfall I think the audience could take a little more sordid detail from the bedroom.

But Bob Carlton keeps the piece cracking along, avoiding all the sentimental pit falls of the current protracted, multi-climax ending and the performers are just sensational. Matt Devitt as Lionel Bart can break your heart whilst he makes you laugh at loud at this talented, tragic, lonely man-child.

And Diana Croft is show stealing as tough talking East End Theatre director Joan Littlewood (despite being currently saddled with having to sing “Consider Yourself at Home” to Bart when he joins her company)

The wonderful score also includes instantly memorable songs from Bart shows like Blitz and Fings Aint Wot They Used to be, as well as pop songs written for artists like Cliff and Tommy Steel and films like From Russia with Love.

They’re the kind of songs that you only need to hear once and they’ll stick in your mind for life. This could polish up into something really special.

It’s A Fine Life
Until 16th September 2007
The Queens Theatre, Millet Lane, Hornchurch, Essex, RM11 1QT
Box Office: 01708 443 333

Phil Willmott

Gay.com UK - 14th September 2006

2002 - 2007 http://www.return-to-the-forbidden-planet.co.uk