Mack as good as it gets

MACK AND MABEL,

Opera House, Manchester, to October 24

AS I have observed before, Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s musical bio of silent movie legend Mack Sennett and his star and lover Mabel Normand, is a bit hit and miss.


It hits only in a handful of the 12 songs and misses pretty much everywhere else, with a tyrannical, boorish leading man and a bright-as-a-button leading lady who... dies of drug and alcohol poisoning before the end.

It hits in this production’s lavish, exuberant choreography and staging... and misses in that the core relationship is at best love-hate and at worst that of dominator and submissive.

But if any production has got close to making Mack and Mabel a genuine hit, it’s this one from the Chichester Festival.

Musicals from this source often end up in the West End. Confidence that mack might also fly can perhaps be gauged from the fact that it is touring first...

But if you have a ticket have no fear that the usual mash up of tragedy and tap is going to be a little too much: director Jonathan Church has a terrific cast led by Michael Ball and American import Rebecca LaChance, who play their roles almost perfectly, aided by a revised book that doesn’t remove some of the drug-induced bitterness but does at least tone it down.

Ball — unlike David Soul, who in 2006 played the role straight and was an unlikeable star — is a playful tyrant, charming his way into the life and heart of Mabel, the feisty girl from the deli. LaChance — an American import, and you can see why — offers a lovely, sparky character and you can see how the camera might have loved the original.

As the relationship wears on she becomes visibly disheartened and sad, making her big second act number Time Heals Everything all the more poignant.

In every other respect the production piles on excitement. There’s a terrific (but pretty pointless) tap number for Anna-Jane Casey and the company, big production numbers at the end of act one and for the Keystone Cops, excellent film inserts on the solid sets, and so on, all driven by a terrific band perched high above the set.

Mack and Mabel is perhaps not just flawed but the product of an entirely misconceived idea. Nonetheless this production makes more enjoyable sense than any I’ve seen before.