It is fifteen years since the Madness musical, Our House, opened in the West End and, after it’s opening night in Hastings, it is easy to see why the West End run ended after just ten months. Fans of the original music are short changed by most of the vocal performances and lovers of West End musicals are left underwhelmed by the staging.
The theme of the show is very reminiscent of Blood Brothers but the difference is that, where Willy Russell has twin brothers, one given up at birth for adoption, Our House mixes together two alternative life stories of central character, Joe, which start from the moment he either does or doesn’t give himself up to police after breaking into
a brand new apartment on his sixteenth birthday – to impress his girlfriend Sarah.
One Joe becomes an honest loser, the other a shady wheeler-dealer and each is offered a final chance for redemption by saving the family’s terraced house from property developers.
Tim Firth is a clever writer who makes his unlucky Joe the one who gives himself up and serves his time in a young offenders’ institute who, on his release, sets upon a course of honesty, which gets him nowhere. It’s the cowardly runaway Joe who gets all of the lucky breaks, and finds that, for a while, money can even buy him love.
The show bursts, without an overture, straight into a huge all singing and nutty dancing version of the title song. For a moment it looks in serious danger of peaking too early but, as the song is reprised another two times during the production, there is little real danger of that.
There is no room for subtlety in this show as Firth’s dialogue is direct and straight from the heart which works well for the most part but, inserting a Las Vegas wedding simply to find a way to incorperate Night Boat To Cairo and Wings Of A Dove, at the start of Act Two, takes things a bit too far.
The difficulties with the show start with the singing, which proves, for the most part, to be a weakness with the noteable exception of Callum McArdle as Joe’s absent father but his powerful performance only helps to highlight the issues with some of the others.
Jason Kajdi takes on his first leading role as Joe and, although he acts well, he is one whose voice could be better. He does, however, pull off some breathtakingly quick costume changes as he flits between one version of Joe and the other.
Billy Roberts and Will Haswell as Joe’s best friends Emmo and Lewis work well together as do Jessica Niles and Etisyai Philip as the best friends of Joe’s girlfriend, Sarah. The four of them help to bring a little depth to what is a rather shallow storyline.
Sarah is played by Sophie Matthew, Joe’s Mum by Deena Payne and unscrupulous property developer Mr Pressman is played by Bobby Windebank. I put these three together as they all suffer from some serious sound issues. I’m not sure whether the four piece band, who sit to one side of the stage rather than in a pit, are too loud, or whether the microphones aren’t too good but any dialogue spoken while music is playing is completely drowned out.
One character who is heard well is a nasty piece of work called Reecey. The petty criminal and all-round troublemaker is played by Britain’s Got Talent winner, and superb dancer, George Sampson. He gets to show off some of his signature dance moves throughout the show and, when he sings with the rest of the cast, shows why he won BGT for his dancing ability.
With so many missed lighting cues, and scenery arriving either very late or indeed so early that one of the cast nearly sustains serious injury by walking, literally, straight into a brick wall, the technical and vocal issues detract from what could be a good show.
Some of the most ardent Madness fans do stand for the final reprise of Our House, as an encore, but the applause from the rest of the audience is polite rather than enthusiastic.
*** Three Stars