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Gatehouse gang are no pretenders
GREAT PRETENDERS
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
UPSTAIRS at the Gatehouse clocks up its 3,000th performance this weekend, a marvellous achievement for what I’ve always considered the borough’s best fringe theatre. Its strengths are many but one is simple: it rarely allows a duff production to slip through. The Great Pretenders, a musical comedy about sparring tribute acts, isn’t the best ever to pass through but it’s not duff either. In fact, it’s pretty good, full of repartee and confident performances. You can tell there is experience here, so it’s no surprise it has been written by Neil Harrison, a founder of The Bootleg Beatles, the most enduring of the fab four’s mimics.
Some of the one-liners can be telegraphed from a mile off and I guessed the half-time twist, although I’ll let you see if you can do the same and won’t ruin the weaving sub-plots. Another grumble is the fantastical leaps in the story that could be sharpened up; for example, one quick look at a mobile phone picture of a toddler boy, and a woman with no knowledge of the broken family can identify the father. Pur-lease, next you will be telling me the Mayor of London rescues mugging victims while cycling through town. But the far-fetched bits are excused by lively, original songs.
I was left gawping at Jennifer Saayeng playing Joyce playing Beyonce after her melty stabs at gospel soul.
It wasn’t just the short gold dress and Afro, she’s got a heck of a voice. But the star of the show is Rebecca Bainbridge as a fraught Marilyn Monroe. As the tales of these singers unravel, she is the one you are rooting for the most. There’s surely more to come from her, and from Upstairs at the Gatehouse, even if this show falls short of a West End transfer.
Until November 15
020 8340 3488 |
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