The Stage

Hannah Waddingham - Live at the Chocolate Factory

Published Wednesday 17 March 2010 at 13:40 by Mark Shenton

The good news is that Southwark’s Menier Chocolate Factory has now, at last, been comfortably made over with brand new cushioned benches. The even better news is that Hannah Waddingham, turning it into an intimate cabaret boite, initiates it with a show that will have you wanting to jump out of them.

Waddingham, of course, already scored a major success at the Menier when she played Desiree Armfeldt in its 2008 production of A Little Night Music, which she subsequently led into the West End, though for the current Broadway transfer she has been replaced by the starrier casting of Catherine Zeta Jones, who inevitably carries more box office clout.

But anyone who doubts her star quality, and the fact that she could well follow in Jones’ footsteps to international stardom from humble musical theatre beginnings, had better hasten back to the Menier, where she leads from the front, in every sense (as well as offering a notably curvy derriere as well), as the star of her own cabaret.

Unlike the new generation of reality TV fostered musical theatre stars, she’s also earned her stripes the old-fashioned way - by a solid apprenticeship in shows both good (Monty Python’s Spamalot, The Beautiful Game) and bad (Lautrec, Tonight’s the Night). And now, in this funky and spunky, eclectic and electrifying cabaret, she reveals hidden musical depths behind the poised, polished facade.

There’s always been a rock chick there, of course, ready to belt out Michael Jackson’s Thriller or a superb new arrangement of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Heaven on their Minds, and she’s also a scintillating exponent of classic show tunes, able to invest Send in the Clowns with new notes of aching longing. But here we also get to hear a jazzier voice too, with reinterpretations of songs made famous by the likes of Tony Bennett and “Dame Judy of Garland”, as she calls an obvious inspiration.

Waddingham is a bit like a Samantha Jones of musical theatre, to cite the character played by Kim Cattrall in Sex and the City - she’s sexy and sassy and exudes the same confidence. She is backed a sizzling ten-piece band led by Chris Walker at the piano, plus three supporting singers.