| |
Theatre listings >
Theatre Index >>
Pants
Writer and Composer- Forbes Masson
Songs - Forbes Masson and George Drennan apart from Get To Falkirk
by The Pants
Director - Forbes Masson
Musical Director & Arranger - George Drennan
Designer - Tom Piper
Assistant Designers - Phyllis Byrne, Alan Wild
Lighting Designer - Richard Moffat
Company - Dundee Rep Resident Company EdinburghGuide page on Rep
with lots of reviews
Venue - Dundee Rep www.dundeerep.co.uk
01382 223530 Tay Square
Dates - Previews 15 & 16 April at 7:45pm
17 April - 4 May not Suns at 7:45pm Matinees on 20 & 27 April
at 2:30pm returns for summer season 2002
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Pants you joyfully throw in the air!
Stiff!, Mince now Pants, Masson don't stop! I'm enjoying each one even
more than the last, very good to start with, I'm hoping you keep on thrilling
us with your words and rock and roll recklessness.
Set in the decades from 1972 leading up to the present, Pants is a sharply
observed, very witty musical which tracks back and forth the slight rise
and awful decline of Ricky Rintoul, singer songwriter the Scottish McChameleon,
you'll spot pop icons from the past galore.
Andrew Clark is just the right side of seedy, sluttishly sexy,
as the young Ricky, always trying to catch up with the latest musical
wave with his group The Pants. Old and still raising (just), a tired sensuality
is Alexander West's older Ricky staying in the loft apartment where
The Pants used to rehearse, now 3 dustbins overflow with bills, bottles
and weekly tributes from the one remaining, demented fan. Singing It
Has come to This West's Ricky reeks with all those lost opportunities
and the neglect of a man who has lost his way and the place. Emily
Winter is younger Ricky's girlfriend, Marcia l'Argent, singing her
heart out with Cliche, one of the many fine pastiche songs, Masson
and Drennan have created. Cliche's got a Carly Simon tinge, Winter's
joined by Marcia's older self played with a sure certainty by Anne
Louis Ross, both render the song and Marcia so you shiver at love's
acid pain. Masson's cross-the-years scenes where past and present happen
together are illuminatingly, skillfully handled.
The rest of band revolve round Ricky and Marcia, the most creative forces.
Frances Thorburn is the younger version, Irene Macdougall
the older get over it one both are excellent as Isla Blige, the fan turned
band member and f-----, aging to a business woman utilising her assets
as she sings rauchily, breathlessily seducingly, Try Me on For Size.
Hoop Scudder's the drummer, bit of a plonker, he's dressed as Bruce's
spider for Bannockburn, the Pants's Eurovision attempt with Abba
overtones, it could become a new Scottish anthem. When Hoop, Rodney
Matthew, gets in a strop its all legs akimbo and watch out bimbos
and Ricky in one of many very funny scenes in this duck and dive musical.
Hoops is almost kind to The Radge, Keith Fleming resplendent as
a Morningside Bowie with face paint and glitter. Radge comes to an electrifying
end, just before the cliff hanging interval, so Fleming can show
off his ability to sing a song with conviction as Pop God Garrellous Feech,
a modern "pop idol" yep he won a TV reality competition and
he sssstutters when he ssssings. That's not his only prob, Sylvie McLoag's
his chaperoned girlfriend, she's a cyber girl with her website has the
safest sex. Sylvie, a wonderfully flexible Susan Harrison, unfortunately
tangles with Tabloid hack, Scoop Hudder. Yep, Hoop has aged and named
reversed, Robert Paterson sings Hudder's song, Tabloid Journalist
with a George Melly-like twinkle and plays sleazy with a disturbing
attractiveness.
The script is laced with Falkirk detail, Scottish gallousness and the
universal humour and pain of being human and not quite making it. The
many, many musical songs have Masson's titillating twisting lyrics, not
quite B A Roberston or They Might Be Giants but satisfyingly, hilariously
close. And the Dundee Rep's Resident Company are Pants you joyfully throw
in the air!
© Thelma Good 17 April 2002
Review of Forbes Masson's previous musical for Dundee Rep Mince
which they will be coming to the Kings Theatre in Edinburgh in May. His
first musical was Stiff!, loosely based on Faust, for the Royal Lyceum
in 1999. He is currently working on his pantomime Dick Mcwhittington for
the Tron Theatre in 2002.
Theatre listings >>
Theatre Index >>
|
|
