Stalled. Book by Liesl Wilke, Music by Andy Marsh, King's Head Theatre, 116 Upper Street, Islington, London N1 until 23 March 2025, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Johan Persson.

Stalled. Book by Liesl Wilke, Music by Andy Marsh, King's Head Theatre, 116 Upper Street, Islington, London N1 until 23 March 2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Ladies in the loo. See it for Ward.”

Lauren Ward gives a power house performance in this rock musical about women who visit the ladies' loo in a Seattle corporate building all of whom have troubles of one kind or another. Ward plays Maggie, whose daughter has died, She has taken refuge in the ladies as the resident cleaner involved in the lives of all who come to use the facilities offering comfort, advice and loo paper when there is none in the cubicles – stalls? - while in the process exorcising her own demons. Haunted by her dead daughter and estranged from her sister she finds in the troubles of others that she is not alone. Previously staged in the America this is its European premier. The stars are because I admired the performance by Ward and indeed the rest of the all female cast in spite of the production and the fact that the show itself has major flaws. One sat there thinking this could be, indeed should be, good but it needs work.

The ladies who come seem to be all mothers in pursuit of errant daughters – one is mentally fragile, another is about to tell her mama she is a lesbian, cutting her hair off to reveal the fact – once she would probably have put on a shirt and tie – and so on. Some stories are fleshed out, some not, The book really needs more work and things were not helped by the fact that the evening is over amplified most of the time, That meant that the excellent small band frequently drowned out the words and on press night a failure of the sound system compounded the problem. The words of the opening song, which all the cast sing in chorus, were impossible to understand - women singing in today's musical style became just a lot of screeching rising to crescendo after crescendo. When there are no male voices to add to the mix you need to have female voices that differ, something which should have been looked at when casting the show. The auditorium's dreadful sight lines did not help when it came to following the goings on and the much promoted the new seating, an improvement on what was there before, but anything would have been, should have been reconfigured. In spite of all that Stalled has the makings of a rather good show – but cut the number of tales told, fix the mix of voices, and concentrate on Maggie instead of one would be mother diva after another belting their lungs out to the heavens – admittedly some of them were very good at doing so - and this could have a future.

Cast

Lauren Ward – Maggie

Grace Venus – Emma

Carrie Sutton – Mary Anne.

Evita Khrime – Serena

Josie Benson – Cynthia

Regina Co – Kyrustal

Rebecca-Jo Roberts – Robin

Isabella Gervais – Sophie

Cezarah Bonner – Angela

Emma Espada & Joanna Kirkland – Ensemble/Covers

Creatives

Director – Vikki Stone

Musical Director – Livi Van Warmelo

Movement Director – Dannielle Rhomes Lecointe

Set & Costume Designer – Emily Bestow

Lighting Designer – Ciaran Cunningham

Sound Designer – Dan Samson