What Adam, Eve and Steve offers is, in essence, a Spring-time panto. If you approach it in that vein you will not be disappointed, but if you look for more you will find it comes up short despite a lot of hard work by the cast. This piece aims to be the sort of wry, knowing fluffy musical that Above the Stag has made its own in recent years; but to reach that standard needs a bit more self-mockery than is on display here, and a lot more inventive flair.
This show was praised highly at the last Edinburgh Festival, winning several awards. It now comes to London with largely the same cast and creative team for a five week run at the King’s Head Theatre, Islington. The press night audience received it warmly, but to this reviewer the rewards of the material were sadly sparse despite determined efforts by the players to make their best and most charming case.
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Neither in comic invention nor musical memorability nor verbal wit did this musical break new or interesting ground, though the set, costumes and lighting were excellent, and the stage movement was well choreographed especially given the limitations of space involved.
The plot takes the Creation story from the Book of Genesis as its starting point and then makes some tweaks to it. The Garden of Eden is suggested by a dense green fibrous fringe hanging down from above like the edging of a giant old-fashioned standard lamp. A tree and various stumps are scattered around, and bank of flowers conceals the piano to one side. The russet apples of the Tree of Knowledge are threaded through the forest tendrils, which neatly double as night club or disco decoration.
God’s plan for mankind is disrupted by the intervention of Fallen Angel Beelzebub who retains some sublunary magical powers. He uses these to ensure that God’s second act of human creation has a chromosome tweaked: he appears as St Yves rather than Eve, quickly renamed as Steve. Adam and Steve find friendship swiftly.
Irritated at the thwarting of his plans God presses on to create Eve, and trouble predictably comes to Paradise as Eve and Steve vie for the attentions of Adam, especially after both of them at Beelzebub’s urging take a nibble from the apples around them and discover their sexuality for the first time. Eventually all are required by God to leave Paradise and He and Beelzebub join forces to ensure that Adam and Eve stay together to ensure the procreation of the human race. Steve embraces his own identity in a final defiant Torch Song.
From Medieval Mystery Plays to Milton to Bernard Shaw and beyond this source material has provided rich dramatic pickings, both comic and metaphysical. There is no reason in principle why this could not be true of this show too, but sadly what we have here is mostly a set of tired and banal stereotypes.
There is a numbing predictability about the exploration of identity, friendship, love and jealousy and marriage that finds no new angle of attack. Jokes are crude and obvious and without much verbal facility. Adam is a complacent and colourless innocent who never seems to learn through experience; Eve is portrayed as simply jealous and shrewish; and Steve is a vapid twink only concerned to buy furniture at IKEA. Is this all God could come up with?
There is an obsession with low-grade sexual humour that is devoid of real wit and never rises much above the level of Benny Hill or naughty seaside postcards. It is the art of the single-entendre extended beyond what is reasonable.
Nor is there much to be found in the music and lyrics by Warren Chandler and Wayne Moore. There is very little reason for the protagonists to shift from dialogue to song – the material or the dramatic setting provides little explanation or impetus. There are few melodies that linger in the memory and the texts are wordy but without felicity.
As often happens in musical theatre where things are out of kilter, the texts offer more verbiage than the musical frame can easily accommodate thus bending everything out of shape. Things do get a bit better in the later sections after the expulsion from Eden, when the dramatic situation provides more of a grip and characterisation becomes a little less two-dimensional. But for the greater part this is a long seventy five minutes.
While the writing is mostly banal, that is no real reflection on the actors all of whom do what they can with the material, and it is a great pity that they are not stretched further. Joseph Robinson projects a very musical Welsh accent as Adam which is well matched by Hayley Hampson portrayal of Eve as a knowing Scouser.
All three players in the central relationship sing adequately, and in the case of Dale Adams, as Steve, rather more than that, particularly in the higher register. Director and choreographer Francesca Goodridge has made excellent use of the small stage to generate a lot of plausible movement sequences and balletic moments.
God (Michael Christopher) and Beelzebub (Stephen McGlynn) form the other odd couple in the evening. Christopher has the right kind of booming omniscient voice for God’s invisible if authoritarian interventions, but his soft-shoe shuffle with the devil later in the show added little. As so often, it is difficult to make omnipotence accessible or interesting and McGlynn has a much easier time in getting his sceptical devilish points across as a kind of camp game show host, dressed in trademark red and black. He genuinely engaged with the audience as the panto villain has to do, and sang his numbers with verve and commitment. His was the best performance in the best crafted role of the evening.
As often happens at the King’s Head the discipline that comes with the restrictions of space brings out the best in the creative team. On a small stage designer Maeve Black had done a great job in suggesting the enticing lineaments of Eden while leaving as much room for manoeuvre as possible.
Lighting designer Richard Williamson produced a shimmering dappled palette of colours for Paradise and a brash nightclub feel for Hell, complemented by Django Holder’s evocative soundscapes. Dean Austin, dressed in angelic white and tinsel, laboured manfully through the thickly written piano score.
What this show offers is in essence a Spring-time panto. If you approach it in that vein you will not be disappointed, but if you look for more you will find it comes up short despite a lot of hard work by the cast. This piece aims to be the sort of wry, knowing fluffy musical that Above the Stag has made its own in recent years; but to reach that standard needs a bit more self-mockery than is on display here, and a lot more inventive flair.