Review: THIS IS MY FAMILY, Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Tim Firth’s 2013 musical This Is My Family, directed by Daniel Evans, first found success at Sheffield’s Crucible Studio, even winning a UK Theatre Award for Best Musical. Although garnering a UK tour and Chichester Festival revival starring James Nesbitt and Sheila Hancock, the show had never made its way to London - until now. Vicky Featherstone directs a brand new production at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.

This Is My Family follows 13 year-old Nicky who wins a holiday of her choice after writing an essay on her picture perfect family - with some embellishments. With them more preoccupied with buying candles in supermarkets, learning Arabic and shirts in washers, she decides to forgo a glamorous getaway for a humble holiday to the campsite where her parents first met to bring the family together.

In the vein of his classic Calendar Girls and recent hit Greatest Days, Tim Firth's knack for taking stereotypical situations and characters and finding the humanity beneath them is on full display in This Is My Family. Best described as a sitcom with a difference. Firth’s book balances the humour and chaos of a dysfunctional family going on the holiday from disaster with real tenderness and poignancy as they learn to bond. Vicky Featherstone’s direction aids this by carrying every scene with a hilarious yet bittersweet relatability. Not everything is fixed by the end but the family still comes out stronger.

Less of a full-blown musical, Firth himself calls This Is My Family a ‘musical play’. Writing the songs and lyrics himself, this unfortunately ends up being the main drawback. Although beautifully arranged by Caroline Humphris, the songs themselves don't leave much impact nor are given the time to sit with you. Not helping this are moments the music drowns the actors or they overpower each other to the point lyrics are indecipherable.

Carrying the production’s ordinary charm is Chloe Lamford’s set. Starting off with a DIY playhouse that reveals a cramped kitchen evoking the claustrophobic feeling of the family suffocating each other, an end of act one reveal of a vast green forest with branches feels like a breath of fresh air, figuratively and literally.

Complementing Firth’s writing is its small yet spectacular cast. Fresh from her Broadway debut in The Hills of California, Nancy Allsop brings charm and spark as Adrian Mole-esque lead Nicky. Gemma Whelan (Game of Thrones) offers a vulnerable and emotionally raw performance as exhausted busybody mother Yvonne. Michael Jibson brings more to the bumbling dad going through a midlife crisis as he desperately tries to find a purpose now hitting 41. 

Victoria Elliott offers levity as wild auntie Sian with a sense of arrested development. Luke Lambert offers a confident professional debut as sullen brother Matt who goes through one of the show’s bigger transformations - and I don’t just mean walking around in goth makeup wearing goat horns.

Among them all, it's Gay Soper's grandma May who offers the show’s real heart and tragedy. A retired nurse succumbing to dementia, she has some of the funniest lines; "Give me a man who can follow a diagram, and give me a man who can give me a good time",  yet her moments stumbling into forgetfulness and her younger self are treated with the care and seriousness they deserve.

Like Tim Firth’s other works, This Is My Family makes the ordinary extraordinary while carrying a raw truthfulness. It may not one hundred percent work as a musical in my opinion, but it’s still a funny, relatable yet bittersweet show with a stellar cast. Will this production finally garner a West End run? Who knows, but the winding journey it’s gone through (like Nicky's family) would be worth it.

This Is My Family runs at Southwark Playhouse Elephant until 12 July