Review Roundup: West End's BETTY BLUE EYES

Everybody's been talking about the animatronic pig which cost a reported £100,000 and we've now got the first photos from Cameron Mackintosh's new musical comedy BETTY BLUE EYES, based on the Handmade Film "A PRIVATE FUNCTION" by Alan Bennett and Malcolm Mowbray. BETTY BLUE EYES is the first original musical Cameron Mackintosh has produced in ten years. It started previews at the Novello Theatre in the West End on 19 March and opened on 13 April.

BETTY BLUE EYES has a book by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman adapted from an original story and the Alan Bennett /Malcolm Mowbray/Handmade film "A Private Function". Music is by George Stiles and lyrics are by Anthony Drewe. It is directed by Richard Eyre with musical staging by Stephen Mear. Designed by Tim Hatley with lighting by Neil Austin and sound design by Mick Potter. The musical director is Richard Beadle, musical supervisor Stephen Brooker and orchestrations are by William David Brohn.

Charles Spencer, Telegraph: The show has two aces up its sleeve. The first is that its portrait of post-war austerity Britain, with the characters preparing to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip with a lavish pork supper, perfectly chimes with our own straitened times and another forthcoming royal wedding.

Michael Coveney, Independent: Composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe have written a series of charming songs, with nostalgic lilt and literate rhyming that explain the effect Betty Blue Eyes has on stout-hearted men. The Bennett screenplay has been adapted by two Americans, Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, with absolute fidelity, though there's a much happier ending involving another pig-nap and a spam scam.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: A portrait of Britain in an age of austerity and insidious inequalities isn't obvious material for a musical comedy. But it works, cheeringly and at times hilariously. True, it veers towards farce in the second half, which opens with schoolboy gags about foul odours. Some of the humour is clumsy, and some reminiscent of pantomime. Yet the silliness is endearing.

Michael Billington, Guardian: But the success of this show relies on the fact that the songs grow out of, and are always proportionate to, the situation. The opening chorus of Fair Shares For All instantly establishes the fragile optimism of austerity Britain. A seductive number, Magic Fingers, is a tribute to Gilbert's secret erotic power and a sly comment on the sexual frustration of many women in the 1940s. Best of all is the way the hidden aspirations of the Gestapo-like meat inspector are released in a song in which he reveals himself as a frustrated Picasso. My only quibble would be with the idea that inside Gilbert's vengeful wife there is a showbiz chanteuse longing to escape. But this is a rare show in several ways. It is a genuine "musical comedy" rather than a through-composed pseudo-opera.

Mark Shenton, The Stage: But it's sadly no Billy Elliot, either. While that show, also adapted from a hit British film, provides a proper emotional journey as it follows a young boy's progress from mining village to Royal Ballet School, here the stakes don't feel quite so high. A pig, being fattened up to be eaten at a private party being thrown by the local town dignitaries to celebrate the 1947 Royal Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, is stolen by Gilbert in revenge at their dismissal of him.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: You've never heard a love song with the words 'foetid fungal growth'? You have now. The real star of Sir Richard Eyre's cartoon-cheerful production is a mechanical pig. Betty the robotic porker waggles her hams, shudders with pleasure while having her chin stroked, wiggles her ears and generally steals the show.

Libby Purves, The Times: The 1940s cheer us up no end: no sooner have we warmed to the camaraderie of 1941 in Flare Path than we get this romping musical version of 1947: in which two American writers, Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, adapt Alan Bennett's tale of snobbery, skulduggery and illegal pig-raising for ‘a private function' to mark the wedding of Princess Elizabeth. From this unlikely pedigree, with George Stiles' music and Anthony Drewe's lyrics, a new smash musical is born: witty, rude, lovable, warm, dramatic, hilarious.

 

 

 

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