WHY revive Nativity! The Musical only two years after Pick Me Up Theatre first staged Debbie Issit’s cheery, nicely cheesy family show at the Grand Opera House?
“It was such a success last time that I secured the rights the day after we closed in 2022! I just love the show so much,” reasons producer Robert Readman.
This time he hands the directorial reins to Lesley Lettin, from the Attitude Dance Club, who handles the choreography too (as she did in 2022 under the name Lesley Hill).
All but two of the adult cast are new, Alison Taylor serving another term as enervated St Bernadette’s Roman Catholic School head teacher Mrs Bevan and Jonny Holbek switching from flouncing local theatre critic Patrick Burns to supercilious Gordon Shakespeare, the pretentious theatre director from posh rival school Oakmoor Prep.
Every one of the 48 children is a debutant too, divided into St Bernadette’s Team Maddens and Team Poppy and Oakmoor Prep’s Team Shake and Team Speare. Adam Tomlinson is on musical director duty (Sam Johnson in 2022).
‘Tis the Nativity! season, the climax to the Michaelmas term, in Debbie Isitt and Nicky Ager’s musical adaptation of their hit 2009 British comedy, the first in a frantic franchise of four festive films.
Producer Readman sums up this comforting show’s appeal as a combination of “British humour, children being themselves, pathos and daftness, and a romantic, happy end”. Lettin promised “more lights and more sparkle” for 2024, and shining performances duly abound.
BAFTA Award-winning Isitt’s musical takes the form of a Nativity play within a play, framing her stage adaptation around her original story of flustered, by-the-book teacher Mr Maddens (Alex Hogg) and his unconventional, idiot savant new assistant Mr Poppy (Adam Sowter) struggling with unpredictable children, unruly animals and an underwhelmed head mistress, Taylor’s Mrs Bevan, when striving to stage St Bernadette’s musical version of the Nativity in Coventry.
As ever seeking to outdo the cutting-edge, arty, costly show mounted at the neighbouring Oakmoor Prep by his scornful, ex-childhood friend, Holbek’s smug Gordon Shakespeare, Maddens ups the ante by boasting that Jennifer Lore (Alexandra Mather), his still-missed ex-girlfriend, now working as a Hollywood producer, will be coming to the show with a view to turning it into a film.
Unfortunately, Maddens is lying: he and Jennifer don’t talk any more (and so might she be lying too?!). Doubly unfortunately, Mr Poppy, Mrs Bevan and the local media’s enthusiasm only makes matters worse.
Hogg’s hangdog Mr Maddens is weary, self-destructively driven, to the point of being harsh on the children, but beneath the cold front, he is caring too, and a romantic at heart, although a deflated one. In Holbek’s hands, beastly bête noir Gordon Shakespeare has become even more priggish, self-satisfied, preening and dangerously obsessive. You will love his loathsome air, and his clash of personality and theatre styles with Hogg’s more prosaic Mr Maddens is the stuff of theatrical civil wars across the land.
Adam Sowter, one half of York musical duo Fladam with Flo Poskitt, is the very definition of irrepressible as Mr Poppy with his Midlands accent, spiky hair and daft lad enthusiasm. His Mr Poppy snaps, crackles and pops, and he plays keyboards flamboyantly to boot.
You would not be surprised to see him turn up as the silly-billy cheeky-chappie in a pantomime, such is his bond with younger and older audience members alike.
Crucially too, the exuberance of Sowter’s Mr Poppy rubs off on St Bernadette’s suddenly excited and motivated pupils, stirring their imaginations with his own inner child, while playing puppy to Cracker the dog (Branwell) too.
Just as the new Wicked film calls for an acknowledgement of the right to be different, individual and expressive, so Mr Poppy’s positivity makes the case for why the arts, forever undervalued, should matter more in schools, championing the unconventional among the conventional, as much among teachers as pupils. Taylor’s Mrs Bevan comes around to that way of thinking at the very last, just as retirement beckons.
Hot on the heels of appearing in York Stage’s Company earlier this month, Alexandra Mather is a spot-on choice to play Jennifer Lore, who foregoes love to pursue the Hollywood dream, only for that dream, spoiler alert, to be dashed by endless compromise in the one darker side to Isitt’s story.
Possessor of an operatic mezzo-soprano voice often in demand from York Opera, Mather sings splendidly and dramatically in a show that revels in such film favourites as One Night One Moment and She’s The Brightest Star, bolstered by extra Christmas-spirited Isitt-Nicky Ager compositions for the stage version.
Lettin’s direction is assured, strong on humour and pathos too, while her choreography is exemplified by the ensemble setpiece Sparkle And Shine, the dancing always full of character with plenty of scope for individual highlights as well as teamwork in Nativity play tradition.
The teams of children throw themselves wholeheartedly into Isitt’s theatrical fun and games, school tropes and the climactic bonkers Nativity play in the Coventry cathedral ruin Look out for the Stars (Eliza Clarke and Ellen Dickson) , Ollies (Taylor Carlyle and Hughie Clelland) and Angel Gabriels (Finlay Walter and Dan Tomlin, flying high above the stage).
Adam Tomlinson leads his band with customary flair, precision and Weetabix energy through George Dyer’s orchestrations, and although your reviewer may be biased, who could not delight in James Willstrop’s acerbic local paper theatre critic, Coventry’s answer to Frank Rich, one of a series of scene-stealing cameos from the former squash champ in an ultimately superior show to 2022.
Pick Me Up Theatre in Nativity! The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Performances: 7.30pm nightly plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
