ORDINARY DAYS - AT THE TOWN AND GOWN
There is nothing ordinary about ‘Ordinary Days’. The 2012 musical weaves a very clever and thoroughly satisfying plot around the lives of a pair of seemingly ill-matched couples. The setting is Manhattan, the stage our new pub theatre, the Town and Gown. It is a marriage made in musical heaven – a perfect, intimate space for a show whose driving force is inner thought. It is completely sung through, and this case, sung extraordinarily well.
The show begins before the beginning. The character of Warren, baseball capped and tee-shirt printed, hands the audience coloured flyers proclaiming uplifting maxims. These seemingly unremarkable bits of paper will have a significant role to play as the plot develops. They will also form the basis of a simple but rather beautiful coup de theatre (No Spoiler Alert! There will be no spoilers here).
Adam Gwon’s piece (he wrote words and music), comes from a long stable of American musicals going back to Sondheim’s Company and Merry We Roll Along: introspective, sentimental and largely around young hopes either dashed or attained. In Ordinary Days we have two couples: the aforementioned Warren and an apparent stranger, Deb a disillusioned Eng Lit student; then there’s a fractious pair who have just moved in together – Jason and his girlfriend Claire. Warren has found the vital thesis notes lost by the hapless Deb. They meet in New York’s Met Museum of Art where we learn that Warren’s outward gauche hides an artistic sensibility that the grateful but distant Deb fails to spot. As for Claire and Jason, something is deeply amiss in their relationship; he sings of his favourite places one of which is Claire’s heart, but it’s a location out of reach: mawkish yes but with Gwon’s lyrical music, it is genuinely moving. We later discover the root of Claire’s unhappiness and it comes as a dramatic punch in the gut.
The show is directed by the theatre’s manager Karl Steele. His use of the small stage is particularly effective – a series of simple blocks cast and recast as seats in the museum, taxi cabs, apartment furniture or roof terraces. They are rapidly manipulated by the cast with some simple but effective lighting all underscored with Nick Allen on piano. It is a fast-moving, dynamic experience that seldom flags though one or two of the introspective numbers got a tad repetitive.
The strength of the show lay in its four young, very talented actors. Each was in powerful voice, words cascading in conversational melody. Lisa Macgregor brought the psychologically damaged Claire to life with many truly powerful numbers. James Edge had emotional power too as the romantically bewildered Jason. Duncan Burt played the nudnik cat-sitter cum would-be artist Warren with panache and deep feeling. The quartet was completed by newcomer Dora Gee as the wild-eyed Deb. She is clearly a name to watch as she thoroughly brought alive the part (and her performance of it) which alternated from savagely sardonic (as in her professed hatred of Virginia Woolf) to the tender young woman who glimpses the healing power of art.
All in all, this was a thoroughly uplifting piece, a tribute to the power of small-scale music theatre, a celebration of our new pub theatre, and a showcase for some wonderful emerging talents. See the show – it will make your day, and make it far from ordinary.
‘ORDINARY DAYS’ RUNS UNTIL SUNDAY 17 OCTOBER WITH MATINEES ON SAT AND SUNDAY
https://www.townandgown.co.uk/theatre/
