AMATEUR THEATRE REVIEW: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - St. George's Hall, Bradford.

Another new-to-me venue awaited this evening as I stepped into the Grade 2 listed Victorian splendour of Bradford's St. George's Hall. It's a beautiful building, but does have its drawbacks when being used as a prosc.arch theatre. 

The show I had gone to see was a musical based on the 1988 film (which starred Steve Martin and Michael Caine), 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'. The film, as indeed the book for this musical, follows the exploits of a master con-man working out of the resort town on the Southern French coast of Beauville-Sur-Mer. His antics are brought to a halt as he encounters a newbie on his patch and decides to take him under his wing. Together they get up to all sorts of mischief, as they have made a bet with each other to see who can be the first to charm a beautiful Colgate heiress out of $50,000. All the while being wary that yet another con-artist, much better and smarter than they are, called The Jackal, is also treading on their toes..! 

The story is slick and fast-paced. The comedy, at least in the musical version, coming mostly from the situations, although there are a select few pearls of one-liners. However, the songs and dance routines seem to get in the way. Rather than aid, develop, and ameliorate the story - in the way say that they do in shows like, 'The Producers' - they are not intrinsic to the plot, nor do they develop the plot or characters, and the show is written in the style of the old 'book musical', and so they lessen the punches of the comedy sadly. The music is catchy, upbeat, and definitely fun, but is incidental and inconsequential to the plot, thus obfuscating it. 

The set was a single one-piece affair stretching the entire rear of the stage, a set of colonnades giving the impression of luxury - be that a hotel, a mansion house, or other locations throughout the show. Larger set items were brought in as necessary by the cast in costume and character which worked well. Overall however, we never once were given the impression that we were on the south coast of France, and the lighting never accurately created that wonderful Mediterranean yellow that we so automatically recognise as their sunshine. We could have been anywhere in the world. 

The cast this evening were having a ball. It was obvious much work and consideration had gone into creating these characters and the actors / actresses were giving their alls. Darren Smith worked well, and was comfortable in his role of aging smoothie, Lawrence Jameson. He was suave and debonair when required to be so, but was also good when ruffled and undone, working well with his peers and carrying the show well.  Ayden Rizvi as Freddy Benson was the young upstart who ruffled Lawrence's fathers thus kickstarting the chain reaction to ruin. Again a talented actor who worked hard to inject life and comedy into his role. Bringing about a sense of decorum, at least in the first half, was the town's police chief, Andre Thibault, played rather a la Rene Artois (Allo-Allo), by Phil Jowett. Jowett impressed with his unassuming but secure stage presence and his unwavering, albeit deliberately cod, French accent. 

The females in the story, all of whom are the victims (unwitting or otherwise) of the con-men's faux-charm, were Jolene (Alison Smith), who was something like Annie Oakley on Speed, and her OTT antics earned her one of the largest rounds of applause from the audience of family and friends this evening. Muriel (Cathryn Riley) was much more grounded, but just as wilfully ignorant of the masculine advances. Finally, the spurious Christine Colgate, the object of the men's bet, is played with ease by Amy Jagger, who manages that lovely balance between naive culpability and being the driving force behind the action. Can she really be taken at face value..?!

An entertaining production which bears the fruit of much study and hard work. 

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 25.1.23