The Stage

First Lady Suite

Published Monday 5 October 2009 at 13:35 by Mark Shenton

In a West End awash with musicals that are film to stage adaptations, pop compilations or revivals, it’s a serious joy, in every way, to see the London fringe expanding that narrow template with a show that radically dares to go on an original journey entirely of its own.

In offering the UK professional premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s spellbinding, daringly intense 1993 chamber musical First Lady Suite, the aptly-named Take Note Theatre makes the audience wake up to different directions that musicals can take and make. LaChiusa, who first premiered this show at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater, has a constantly intriguing musical voice that combines classical, operatic and Broadway influences.

Though he works prolifically in the US, and the Union Theatre has itself previously hosted his version of The Wild Party and the Bridewell produced Hello Again, he has been heard too little over here in recent years. Now that’s being corrected, not just with this show, but also with the Finborough, soon to produce his Little Fish.

In a quartet of self-contained musical vignettes, topped and tailed on either side by a brief prologue and epilogue featuring the current incumbent of the title of America’s first lady, LaChiusa introduces us to more presidential wives - Jacqueline Kennedy, aboard Air Force One as she heads with her husband to Dallas one fateful 1963 day, Eleanor Roosevelt, also aboard a plane as she takes to the cockpit of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, as well as Mamie Eisenhower and Bess Truman.

None are fully-realised portraits, but somewhere in the discordant melodies and jarring shards of memories he collects around them, LaChiusa summons up something that is both persuasive and utterly compelling - a snapshot of a moment from each of their lives that resonates with feeling, poignance and sometimes dread.

Staged with meticulous elegance by Rania Jumaily on a raised, small, circular platform, this is an unusual but thrilling piece of musical theatre and a stunning ensemble cast that includes Annabelle Williams, Poppy Tierney, Claire Machin and Virgine Gilchrist as the eponymous first ladies (with the sole male member of the cast, Alex McNamara, playing Bess Truman in drag) give it grace and considerable style.