This is My Family. Book & Music by Tim Firth. Southwark Playhouse, the Elephant, until 2025, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Mark Senior.

This is My Family. Book & Music by Tim Firth. Southwark Playhouse, the Elephant, until       2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“A treat of a show.”

A glorious performance by Gay Soper as a grandmother slipping into dementia would make this intriguing and different musical by Tim Firth, which first surfaced in Sheffield in 2013 abd has been slowly making its way to London worth seeing. But it has much more to offer in this latest production directed by Vicky Featherstone. It is not so much a musical with songs but a musical in which speeches get sung sometimes at the same time. Nicky has won an essay prize, a family holiday of her choice, and she is our guide to what follows as we meet her parents who are not getting on all that well, her randy auntie, her brother who is a Goth and lives in a world of his own and Grandma, a retired nurse who is beginning to forget things. That takes up act one, in act two we find where Nicky has decided to take them all. The Elephant, for a custome made theatre, has alousy auditorium but for once the sets designed by Chloe Lamford seem as if they were designed to fit, although they do not much differ from what has been on tour over the years with different casts. Soper stands out, apart from giving a beautifully crafted performance, because she knows how to sing so that the words can be heard, and lyrics matter just as much as the sound. She is also 80 and stunningly spry for her years. The cast are all, of course, miked but given the complexities of Firth' score sometimes it becomes a little hard to follow one or two – no complaints, however, about Gemma Wheelan's Mum or Michael Jibson's Dad. This a show that knows what is and director Featherstone has given it exactly the pace it needs. The set for the first half as a sort of doll's house family kitchen that in Act two, when we move to that holiday resort, is swept away and something unexpected is revealed. I suppose you could say they end up singing in the rain – and resolving things as well because happy families can be a little less happy than they seem. A treat of a show.

Cast

Nancy Allsop – Nicky

Victoria Elliot – Sian

Michael Jibson – Steve

Luke Lambert – Matt

Gay Soper – May

Gemma Wheelan – Yvonne

Creatives

Director – Vicky Featherstone

Set Designer – Chloe Lamford

Lighting Designer – Lee Curran

Sound Designer – Dominic Bilkey

Costume Designer – Ethan Cheek

Musical Director – Natalie Pound

Movement Director – Chi-San Oound