THE PRICE ★★★✩✩ Theatre Royal, Bath (Run ended; theatreroyal.org.uk)
SWEET CHARITY ★★★★✩ Watermill, Newbury (Tickets 01635 46044/watermill.org.uk; £19-£33)
Solomon is an 89-year-old acrobat turned furniture dealer who is called in by New York detective Victor Franz to value the goods stored in the attic of a soon-to-be-demolished brownstone.
As played by David Suchet in a richly inventive performance, which even stretches to the flamboyant way he peels off banknotes, he is by turns dignified and wheedling, assertive and wily, dispensing homespun wisdom like a cut-rate version of his biblical namesake.
It is no criticism of the performances of Brendan Coyle as Victor, Adrian Lukis as his estranged brother Walter and Sara Stewart as his disillusioned wife Esther, to say that interest flags the moment Suchet leaves the stage. They have to bring to life reams of often turgid dialogue about the family’s fortunes during and after the Great Depression.
Familiar Miller themes abound: guilt and retribution, failure and success and the painful pull of family loyalties. But Miller is no Ibsen, able to animate the past so that it feels as vital as the present, and the relentless mining of ancient motives grows wearing.
For all the precision of Jonathan Church’s production, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that the material matters more to the author than to his audience.
From Ado Annie in Oklahoma to Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls, subsidiary characters regularly steal the show in musicals. But despite the attraction of Vittorio Vidal, a suave Italian film star, Daddy, a transcendental spiritual leader, and Oscar, a diffident therapy groupie, Paul Hart’s production of Sweet Charity rightly belongs to its heroine, as winningly played by Gemma Sutton. Sutton is both touching and feisty as Charity Hope Valentine, a Manhattan dance hall hostess who lives up to all three of her names.
First seen making excuses for the boyfriend who pushes her into Central Park lake before absconding with her life’s savings, she never loses faith that someone better will come along. In the words of one of her co-workers: “You run your heart like a hotel. You got guys checking in and out all the time.”
Sutton is expertly supported by Vivien Carter as her hard-bitten colleague, Nickie, Elliot Harper as Vittorio and Alex Cardall in a remarkably assured professional debut as Oscar. But the entire cast deserve plaudits. Musical performers who can sing, dance and act are known as “triple threats”. At the Watermill, they are quadruple threats since they also make up an on-stage orchestra.
While unable to reproduce the excitement of Bob Fosse’s original choreography on the postage-stamp stage, Tom Jackson Greaves offers a vibrant alternative as trumpets, trombones, flutes and clarinets sashay and shimmy before us.
Charity’s exultant I’m A Brass Band has never been so pertinent. Add to that Neil Simon’s witty dialogue and it’s clear why Hart’s production is such a stylish and entertaining summer treat.