It’s probably best not to think too hard about this one. A recently divorced dad pretends to be an old Scottish nanny so he can see his kids, deceiving them and his ex-wife in the process. Ya couldn’t get away with it nowadays, eh?
Except here we are, revisiting the 1993 film in the form of (what else?) a musical. A damp squib on Broadway – Covid was partly to blame – this adaptation by brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and writer/satirist John O’Farrell entertains plenty, even if the songs dissolve like sugar as soon as we’ve heard them. There’s lots of fun farce and very silly comedy, which is what you’d expect from the co-writers of Chicken Run, and it’s clear that this is a show for young kids, in the elevated realm of dancing grannies and silly voices.
We’re in San Francisco. Fashion designer Miranda Hillard – Laura Tebbutt, who brings emotional range and an incredibly resonant voice – wants a divorce from her annoying voice-actor husband Daniel (Gabriel Vick). He doesn’t want to lose access to his three children, so when Miranda advertises for a nanny he hacks into her email (erm?), changes the ad and invents the perfect candidate in no-nonsense Scottish granny Mrs Doubtfire.
And there she is: tartan skirt, and thick wodges of latex mined from the Uncanny Valley, everything slightly misshapen like someone asked Dall-E to recreate Mrs Doubtfire. But underneath the mask, Vick gets to prove himself the star of the show. He latches on to the whole Robin Williams schtick as he zaps between impressions of King Charles and Homer Simpson, letting the fourth wall bulge slightly when, despite the show being set in California, he riffs on Partygate as Boris Johnson (again, don’t think too hard).
More impressive is the number of quick changes: in and out of that bodysuit and mask a couple of dozen times. Director Jerry Zaks decides not to hide the transitions and it’s amazing seeing Vick transform so instantly. The latex limits his facial expressions, so it’s not a performance that digs too deep emotionally; Williams always got the comedy/tragedy equation right – something about those rueful eyes – where Vick just seems very lovely. But his performance is technically spectacular, and very funny, particularly in a farce scene where he tries to spatchcock a chicken.
The second act becomes slightly more imaginative as a coven of Doubtfires appears and cartoonishly beats up Daniel, but for every elevated moment there are misfires, too: the scene where Daniel is first transformed into Doubtfire has Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher come on as drag harridans – smeared rouge, ill-fitting wigs – and dance. Again, there’s probably no point here other than ‘lol dancing grannies’ but it doesn’t do any favours to a show that’s been criticised by some communities for its purely comic approach to drag.
In the great glut of movie-to-musical adaptations currently force-feeding the West End, this is some kind of exact median. It’s not superb, like Groundhog Day, but it’s not Pretty Woman either, thank God. Aimed squarely at young audiences, there are laughs, some great performances, a couple of big notes and a zippy plot, all aided by the technical slickness of Zaks’s direction. Just don’t look too deeply under those layers of latex, because you might not like what you find.
Shaftesbury Theatre, booking to January 13; book tickets here
