Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Savoy Theatre ***

 

 Katherine Kingsley as Christine Colgate and the Ensemble of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels have been on an extensive advertising campaign advertising with Robert Lindsay and Rufus Hound at the helm. So when I turned up to the Savoy, it was to my surprise that there was a tiny notice by the entrance to the dress circle saying that neither one of them would be performing. Whilst I had absolutely no problem with this, on the contrary, I love seeing understudies perform as, more often than not, they are vastly superior to the celebrities originally intended for the role. However, I expected for there to be at least a note in the programme or a notice at the start of the show. The general effort the Savoy Theatre put into giving the audience notice of this was appalling. On top of this, throughout the show, stewards were constantly moving in and out of the auditorium completely removing the escapist nature of theatre. Therefore, expectations for the performance were set very low indeed.

The show itself, however, vastly exceeded my expectations.The understudies seemed so natural in their roles and seemed to have a natural rapport with each other. Samantha Bond has been portrayed in the advert as if she is tone deaf but the truth is quite the opposite. She has firm control and can keep a tune quite nicely. Marquez's French accent is amusing but the person who stole the show was Katherine Kingsley. She is a natural at musical theatre. Her songs have elegance and grace and she has charm and style to match. However, it was not all perfect. In the first act, there is a scene with a lady from the ensemble who plays a girl from Oklahoma. Her song seemed like it should have been extremely witty and fun. However, Lizzy Connolly's American accent meant that I could not hear a single word she said. The same was true with some of the other numbers where lack of pronunciation meant that jokes were lost. Another aspect that troubled me was some of the lousy attitudes towards women. Again, in the first act in particular, many of the women were wearing skimpy outfits which was particularly prevalent in 'Great Big Stuff' where the women lifted their legs up to let their already short skirts fall down. The character of Freddy Benson in particular uses a bit of casual sexism which unnerved me. I would not advise taking elderly relatives with you either as some of the innuendos in the show makes quite awkward viewing.

This production was a lot of fun. However, I felt that there was too many concerns with the production and with the theatre itself for me to have a thoroughly pleasant experience.