Mrs Green is a new musical from a promising young cast with the potential to be both touching and charming. Unfortunately however, it fails to fully engage its audience due to its all-too-brief look at the community it presents.
Sheep Soup Theatre Company has assembled a cast of incredibly talented singers. Ben Welch (Mrs Green) carried the whole show with an impressive tenor and was a standout performer in every song due to his clear tone and excellent projection, totally captivating his audience every time he opened his mouth. It is worth seeing this show simply to witness his great talent. Sabrina Sandhu was also vocally strong, her sweet, bright tone providing relief from otherwise constant belting in Home-Made Love and Different Drum. However it quickly became apparent that this was not a cast of actors; performances are generally acceptable but not exceptional. An abundance of unfocused eyes and the occasional moment of corpsing made the acting less than impressive.
The community that builds around Mrs Green is charming and likeable and her equal treatment of every character truly endears us to her personality. Unfortunately we aren’t given a chance to engage with these character as their appearances are far too brief. The show feels more like a cabaret than a musical, presenting a series of songs which bring out the main character’s nostalgia but not telling much about her present day, making the plot seem almost arbitrary. It was a particular shame that the two most beautiful songs in the show, Hanging Down and Heart On My Sleeve, were totally undermined by other characters. Heart On My Sleeve actually became another song entirely and we were almost able to forget the poignant, pensive lyrics that had come before which were the essence of the show. It seems that too often in this show the writer, Nic Harvey, misses opportunities to make this show something really special. He makes no attempt to render a real meditation on the shortness of life.
A lot of the music felt as if it were in the show just for the sake of it, rather than having any purpose as part of the story line. Cutting some of these songs in favour of further developing secondary characters would have massively increased audience engagement with the story, as well as reducing the feeling that each song was very similar to the last. Another criticism would be the characters blocking, their pace in marching to the front of the stage and executing their uniform choreography makes the show less organic and familiar than it has the potential to be.
This show is a great showcase for its young singing talent and well worth a watch. However the missed opportunities for heartfelt sincerity mean that, whilst enjoyable, the show’s potential is largely untapped.
