Kings Theatre, Edinburgh
3 stars
Despite all appearances to the contrary, Jim Cartwright's 1992 play,
written for actress Jane Horrocks, is not a showbiz spectacular. Nor
was it ever meant to be, not even with a cast drawn from cabaret,
comedy and popular TV and theatre circuits as they are in Cartwright's
own touring revival. Rather, this close-up of a shy young girl finding
salvation through song is more of a feel-good flip-side to Road,
Cartwright's debut, which arrived six years earlier like a template for
Shameless.in the thick of Thatcherism
Little Voice may be set among the same northern English housing estate
underclass, but where Road was unflinchingly brutal, Little Voice is a
Viz comic picture post-card with a drunken punchline at the end of
every scene. Nowhere is this best encapsulated than in the figure of
Mari, LV's brittle good-time girl mother who falls in with would-be
agent Ray Say before watching her shaky life go up in flames. Meanwhile
upstairs, LV loses herself in her dad's old records, terrified of the
spotlight.
While the scene is set by a faux cabaret led by compere Duggie Brown
and an interval game of bingo for the audience, there's something
uneven in Cartwright's production that's nothing to do with understudy
Philip Andrew taking over from an indisposed Joe McGann as Ray. It
seems more to do with a company playing for laughs almost too much,
from Jess Robinson's star turn as LV downwards. The singing may be
electric, but the only time the pathos of Cartwright's baroque speech
patterns are captured fully is in Beverley Callard's big monologue as
she sits in the burnt-out shell she used to call home.
The Herald, October 18th 2012
ends
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