Our House, Union Theatre ****

Our House does fall into the traps of the Jukebox musical. It occasionally includes songs and sequences that are irrelevant to the narrative arc (eg. an inconsequential drive in a car which happens not to be a jaguar) and, in order to make each line of Madness' songs make sense, it occasionally shoehorns in things and characters into the action who shouldn't be there like a priest in the opening number. However, Tim Firth's fist class book makes this musical stand out. The sliding doors style narrative explores the possibilities of what happens if Joe Casey, who has taken his girlfriend Sarah into an unowned house to look over his street, takes account for his actions when police come to arrest them for breaking and entering. Through clever directorial choices by Michael Burgen, Bad Joe and Good Joe are easily separated and it is an interesting take on the effect that crime, however small, has on our lives. The experience of this intimate 50 seat venue is wonderfully intimate and Eleanor Wdowski's design is great in setting the scene of this road whilst providing a thrust stage that means that the audience feel engulfed into Madness' 'banging tunes'. The cast is admirably brilliant with energy and charisma and are professional enough to carry on through a song when the keyboard died halfway through a song leaving the cast to keep it together with only a drum and bass guitarist backing them up. Considering when a similar problem occurred at American Idiot, the performer stormed off stage and the show was stopped for a few minutes, here they can muddle through which is something I admire greatly. Steven France is a great Joe Casey and is supported well by Alisa Davidson as Sarah. An ensemble cast have fantastic precision as well as comedy and most importantly, fun. The curtain call shows you how great the music of Madness is and how well the Union Theatre has produced one of the few good jukebox musicals.