Talent, Victoria Wood’s first play, premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in 1978 and was made into a television drama the following year for ITV. Roger Glossop asked Wood to revisit the work for a festival he runs at the Old Laundry Theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere and last night it transferred to the Menier Chocolate Factory in south London, another delightful small powerhouse that punches well above its weight in the arts world.
We are in Bunters, a "niteclub" in Manchester where a talent show is taking place. Ageing, unfunny turns, a seedy compere and talentless musicians all make their appearance as would-be torch singer Julie (Leanne Rowe) and her friend, frumpy Maureen (Suzie Toase), there to provide moral support, sit in the tatty dressing room while Julie waits to go on stage. The roles were memorably played on TV by Julie Walters and Wood, who directs this revival.
Although she has added a couple of numbers and beefed up the male roles, Wood has resisted the temptation to update the text. So younger audience members may be puzzled by references to Kiku perfume, New Faces and the Bachelors, but they can enjoy Glossop’s fabulously retro set and costumes; he really has gone to town, particularly in the opening song-and-dance number, a very funny new addition.
Jeffrey Holland, Eugene O’Hare and Mark Curry appear as the painfully cheesy trio Triple Velvet, dressed in lurid petrol-blue velvet suits and bright yellow frilly shirts atop dangerous-looking platform shoes. The 1970s may have been the decade taste forgot, but when the Nolan Sisters are about to strut their stuff again one doesn’t need pomo irony to enjoy the joke, and it’s a brilliant addition to the play.
Wood’s script, full of dour Northern aphorisms and non sequiturs that often rival Alan Bennett’s, still has the power to make one laugh aloud - "She wasn’t used to ventriloquists, being a nun" - and here is given new life by Holland as George the ageing magician and Mark Hadfield as his hapless assistant. Hadfield’s other turn (the men all play two roles) as the club manager, Mary, organising seating arrangements for the pre-show supper, is a particular joy.
Curry is nicely smarmy as the sex-pest compere, although a touch more perviness wouldn’t go amiss, and O’Hare acquits himself well as the underwritten Mel, the ex-boyfriend who got Julie pregnant when she was a schoolgirl and deserted her, and turns up here as a henpecked, alcoholic musician.
But it pains me to say that the evening loses much of its sparkle when the action moves backstage to the dressing room and we are alone with Maureen and Julie. This is where Talent’s bathos and Wood’s knowing, cynical humour should tug at our emotions and, although Rowe makes a fine job of the engagingly worldweary “I Wanna be 14 Again”, the scenes feel devoid of energy or emotion. What should be touching, goading banter between the friends - where we come to understand the mutual dependence between self-deluding Julie and the fearful Maureen - falls flat.
The play struggles to pick up the pace thereafter and even the witty, Sondheim-esque final ensemble number (another addition) can't dispel the suspicion that much of the play's power depends on our memory of the terrific Wood and Walters double act.
Talent continues at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 until 14 November. Book here
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