Prostitution is hardly an original subject for drama or even musicals - think Mrs Warrens Profession, Camille, La Boheme and more recently Baz Lurmans Moulin Rouge. This piece, however, is based on a true story. As an exposition of how the cycle of abuse can lead people into unimaginably dark places it is interesting, but only if you keep reminding yourself it is based on fact. If it were a play I think it would seem almost impossibly far-fetched. Im giving nothing away if I tell you its about a brothel madam, Desdemona, played by Melanie La Barrie, who forces her own thirteen year old daughter to be one of her girls. Its a shame that this is stated in all the publicity surely the reveal that this kid is her daughter ought to be an electrifying moment. Impossibly there still seems to be a loving bond between the two, but when young Sugar (Nadia Di Mambro) is promoted to Level Two, Special Interest, I think it makes her mother almost unredeemable as a character. The big reveal at the end, which explains why this mother is like she is, though carried off musically, really doesnt condone her behaviour.
But that is the power of music! We do, sort of, forgive her, as does her thirteen year old daughter, who rides off into the sunset with her seventeen year old boyfriend (er okay, lets gloss over that). The band is excellent, and singing powerful. The score is good, if somewhat inconsistent in style. Everyone is doing good work on the show, and there are funny moments, particularly from Amanda Minihan as Latvian working girl Sonia. Though the first half is over long the production sustains, but the restrictions and geography of this space sometimes worked against the six-strong direction team.
To be fair, I saw the first preview, so any technical flaws or nervousness should be overlooked and it will get tighter as the run goes on. My reservations are not with the production, but the piece. As suggested above, dramatically we have to want mother and daughter to resolve their differences, but in the context its almost impossible to not just want the young girl never to see her mum again. Whereas most mums would row with their daughter about not wearing too much make up or not doing their homework, this mum argues in the same way with her kid about whether she should subject herself to utter degradation. A kind of Im your mum, and if I tell you to have anal sex with a middle aged man youll do as your told or Ill stop your pocket money scenario.
Perhaps thats the point this kind of life is normal to this mum and daughter. In which case the main problem is one of context. Although it begins with a choral number positing the action very definitely and with the precision of an on line route-finder in South London, there is nothing in the subsequent action that suggests it couldnt be happening anywhere else. Sugar yearns for the West End, but the only glimpses we get outside of the brothel are a shop and a non-descript no mans land inhabited by vagrants. All this may work better with a much hoped for transfer and larger budget, when more distinction could be made between the claustrophobic prison of the brothel and the outside world, but in this production the design, though quite clever, does little to give a sense of changing location or atmosphere. The dialogue doesnt help sometimes, and when Desdemona refers to meeting at the old burial ground it feels like we are in a western or Indiana Jones territory rather than the real, gritty, mean streets of South London.
That said, this is worth seeing for the singing alone, which is almost universally excellent. La Barrie is sensational, especially in wringing every ounce of passion from the lyrics, some of which arent conducive to such emotions (why such a huge, sustained high note for a lyric which went something like we accumulated a tidy sum?). Julian Forsyth as Cardboard, a kindly vagrant, is also heartbreaking in his rendition of My House Is Made Of Paper, but the most stunning musical moment is delivered by Di Mambro as she is brutalised on a table, her sweet, innocent, hopeful voice contrasting with the almost unbearable horror of the visuals. This is a truly original scene, and ironically the sort of moment that may be diluted if this piece transfers from the intimacy of this space.
