The Villains' Opera plays to full houses
Posted on Thursday 10 December 2009
London's dark underworld hits Farnborough
The mob hits town!
The Prospect Theatre was a sinister place to be this Christmas, as we were led, at gun point, by an exuberant and talented company into a dark London underworld of villainy and crime.
Under the scrutiny of the all-seeing, all-knowing ever so slightly psychotic Mr Big (Joe Miller), this southside gang operate out of The Flower of Kent pub, orchestrated by the powerful, ruthless hands of Peachum played by David Allwright – part-Delboy, part-Fagin – and his gin-swilling, hard-bitten wife, played by Charlie Fooks. Aided by a colourful array of vicious hoodlums, petty-criminals and bent coppers (Mona Lisa Chinembiri and Zoe Crawford), The Villains’ Opera tells the adventures of MacHeath (Alex Warren) – a latter-day Alfie, all smiles and charms, wholly plausible and entirely untrustworthy! It’s a hard life being a gangster’s moll as poor Polly (Becky Turner) and lovely Lucy (Katie Goodsell) discover as we follow the capers of this colourful treacherous anti-hero to his bloody destiny. Of course, in the tradition of the panto season, who should appear at the end but a good fairy godfather in the form of the recently deceased but super-powered Mr Big, descending from on-high to wave his magic wand (or should that be his machine gun) and restore our hero to the tropical paradise of which he dreams.
A large cast of over 50 students have developed the piece this term and they perform with gusto, singing, dancing and wise-cracking with hi-octane humour. Interspersed with a dazzling range of songs - tantalisingly familiar melodies adapted cleverly by the cast to comment on the events as they unfold – and hilarious cameos (notably the lovelorn Filch, played by Henry Grieve, and the loyal but hapless Pinhead (Georgie Jones). The Villains’ Opera is not the usual Christmas story, perhaps, but would you argue with Scotch Gordon or Sledgehammer Perry? Now, just be careful out there, because car parks can be dangerous places in the dark...
Simon Jarvis, Theatre Critic
