Barnum dances a tightrope between conflicts and contradictions – a fitting summer spectacle for this Berkshire venue, which won national awards even as it lost state funding. For Jonathan O’Boyle’s production, the Watermill’s tiny stage is transformed into a circus ring spacious enough to fit one shy elephant and 18 dazzling, multiskilled performer-musicians, in seemingly perpetual movement (Lee Newby, design; Oti Mabuse, choreography).
The titular hero of this all-singing, all-dancing/ juggling/ clowning/ high-flying bio-musical is the 19th-century showman and circus proprietor PT Barnum. Is he a huckster peddling humbug to “a sucker born every minute” (in the words of the opening number)? Or is he an optimist whose goal is to brighten a grey world with The Colors of My Life? Is he taking advantage of the “attractions he exhibits”, such as “161-year-old” Joice Heth (the effervescent Tania Mathurin) and diminutive General Tom Thumb (delivered with panache by Fergus Rattigan)? Or is he giving them the opportunity to assert that “I’m glad I’m me”, as Tom does in his solo number Bigger Isn’t Better (before being wrapped round by Jumbo’s trunk and dragged off)?
Balancing Matt Rawle’s gleeful trickster, Barnum, is the sensible, sceptical and challenging figure of Monique Young’s Charity, his wife. The pair are not exact opposites, though: he lectures her on the Pilgrim Fathers’ “humbug” of hope; she slyly out humbugs him. Their love story is the pivot around which the action revolves, somersaults and tumbles. It wavers when Barnum, briefly, falls for “Swedish songbird” Jenny Lind, played by Penny Ashmore, touchingly combining sweetness with power in Love Makes Such Fools of Us All (under George Dyer’s musical supervision, which excels throughout, across extremes, from ballads to marches).
Cy Coleman’s music, Michael Stewart’s lyrics and Mark Bramble’s book blend Barnum’s life into a reflection on the fading of an American dream. Having become a politician, the huckster finds himself shafted by more serious liars. His kind of humbug has disappeared, he reflects, mournfully, in his closing monologue. The show’s last word: “Pity!”
Barnum is at the Watermill theatre, Newbury, until 8 September
