Let your voices carry

Cat and I went down to London at the weekend to see the last night of ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ at the Palace Theatre. Only the second time we’d seen this show (how restrained of us) and I enjoyed it more this second time through, though I think that was probably because the two leads, Tim Rogers and Claire Marlow turned in storming performances for the last night. The relationship between Swallow (Marlow) and ‘the Man’ (Rogers) she finds in her father’s barn is the heart of the story, and, this time, it moved me in a way it hadn’t before. I think I believed this time that Swallow could believe that ‘the Man’ was Jesus, and I’d struggled with that last time. The rest of the story feels like padding to this central relationship. Themes such as religious fanaticism and racism are touched upon, but then casually cast aside as though, hey, this is a musical, and we can’t get in too deep here.

The Palace Theatre is beautiful, with a wonderfully decadent Victorian look, with elaborate decoration and cherubs. It felt quite intimate on Saturday, as only the stalls and the circle were occupied, but I know from experience that if you sit up in the ‘Gods’ you feel a million miles away from the stage, and that just doesn’t do for me.

On a ‘theatre snob’ note, there was a standing ovation going on in the stalls, but I wasn’t part of it.*

*And anyway, we were in the circle.