The Week on Stage: From Crazy For You to Beneatha’s Place

A guide to the week’s theatre

L-R: ‘Modest’, ‘Crazy For You’ and ‘Beneatha’s Place' (Tom Arran / Johan Persson)

This week, a five-star musical revival opens in the West End, Kwame Kwei-Armah’s response to A Raisin in the Sun opens at the Young Vic, and a new show at the Kiln explores a forgotten woman from history.

Beneatha’s Place – Young Vic ★★★☆☆

In the final moments of Lorraine Hansberry’s seminal 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, we see Beneatha considering a proposal: her Nigerian boyfriend has suggested leaving behind the racism of Chicago for Africa. Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Beneatha’s Place is a continuation and conversation with Hansberry’s work. First premiering in Baltimore in 2013, the play’s first half transports the couple to a chic, bare house in 1959, pre-independent Lagos. Then the second, set in the present day where Beneatha is now the dean of an Ivy League school, debates racial politics and whether “critical whiteness” studies should have a place on the curriculum. It is a play of colossal ideas and urgent arguments – but it is stuffed with polemical agenda, and sometimes lacks subtlety for it.

Zackary Momoh and Cherrelle Skeete in ‘Beneatha’s Place' (Johan Persson)

So much happens in the first section, there is barely time to take a breath. The independent group Beneatha’s husband Asagai is part of is explosive. There’s patronising conversation with one white person after the next. But, together, it is a splurge of uneasy moments that never quite push the play into motion.

In the second, argument-focused half, heavy-handed discussion of culture wars make the audience shout out in fury. Some characters exist as mouthpieces for rancid perspectives. But no matter your race, this is a play that challenges any uncomfortable preconceptions and gets you thinking. Led by the indomitable Cherrelle Skeete as Beneatha, who manages to age 60 years before our eyes, Beneatha’s Place might only be the start of a dialogue on race and progress, but it doesn’t make it any less critical. Anya Ryan

Crazy For You – Gillian Lynne Theatre ★★★★★

From punchy adaptations of hit movies (Legally Blonde, Heathers), to history retold from new angles (Six, Hamilton), the hottest stage shows of recent decades are those that lean away from more traditional elements for something more modern, and, well, cooler. And then, there’s Crazy for You. Using the 20th-century standards of George and Ira Gershwin, and the tap, jazz and ballroom choreography of Tony-winner Susan Stroman, this revival of the 1992 Broadway smash makes no attempt to be anything other than a classic, full-force musical – and is all the better for it.

Charlie Stemp and the cast of ‘Crazy For You' (Johan Persson)

Charlie Stemp brings charm, wit and dynamite dancing skills to protagonist Bobby Child, a reluctant banker who dreams of a life on the New York stage. When he winds up in a barren Nevada ex-mining town, he falls hard for postal worker Polly (Carly Anderson) and begins a mission to win her love and save the community by putting on a show. Cue a case of mistaken identity. Slapstick pratfalls. And showgirls dressed in enough decadent sparkles to light up the whole West End.

Though Stemp excels as Bobby, the entire cast brings such spirit and individual charisma that it’s a true company triumph. And the dance numbers are just stellar: on opening night, “I Got Rhythm”, a 12-minute jazz and tap spectacle, has the audience standing at the end of act one, roaring with cheers. Quite simply, Crazy for You is a complete delight that leaves its audience giddy. Who could ask for anything more? Nicole Vassell

Modest – Kiln Theatre ★★★☆☆

What do you know about Elizabeth Thompson? Before Modest, Middle Child’s musical-slash-comedy-slash-cabaret extravaganza about the Victorian painter, I didn’t know much. After two and a half hours, I’m not sure I could tell you much more. Ellen Brammar’s play is no Horrible Histories episode, the audience here less to learn than be entertained. Drag kings gyrate to Rina Sawayama songs and Queen Victoria (Libra Teejay) walks around her fetishwear-clad “dog” on a leash. At times, the performers look constrained by the traditional play structure, but it’s still an intriguing watch.

You might assume Modest is going to present Elizabeth, played here by Emer Dineen, as a feminist hero. Instead, it seems to argue, she is neither. Despite making strides as a female artist in a field dominated by men, she is as self-obsessed as her nickname – Mimi – suggests, and has no intention of helping other women or minorities out on her way to the top. Her success, too, was limited; her later artworks “blackholed” (hidden away in a dark back room) and her election into the Royal Academy of Arts stopped in its tracks by men desperate to maintain the sexist social order.

LJ Parkinson (left) and Emer Dineen in ‘Modest’ (Tom Arran for Middle Child)

Just as Modest refuses to smooth down Elizabeth into a #GirlBoss hero, the show itself is equally rough around the edges. In this piece, genres and styles smash into each other with a distinctly fringe-y feel, with no warning or subtlety. But despite the exhilarating concept, the show gets off to a slow start due to a bizarre pacing to the dialogue. It’s unclear whether it’s a case of poor direction or nerves (the issue is mostly rectified midway through act one), but every line is delivered on a half-second delay, undermining the zingers and intended pauses in Brammar’s sharp script.

When Modest leans into its cabaret messiness, it excels. The best moments are individual, disconnected vignettes, reminiscent of Travis Alabanza’s excellent Sound of the Underground. It’s far less successful when it tries to be a capital M musical. With the exception of “Bossy Women” (which has far more depth and humour than its “well-behaved women rarely make history” tote bag of a title), Rachel Barnes’s lyrics are predictable and forgettable. Six, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s world-conquering musical about Henry VIII’s wives, is an obvious comparison, but the songs here are of a far lower calibre.

But despite Modest being a show that at least claims to be about Elizabeth, the funniest, smartest, most emotional moments aren’t about her at all. Dineen has a charming on-stage presence, but the real stars are in the supporting cast. Fizz Sinclair plays with gender as Elizabeth’s sister Alice and a male member of the RA, gurning and contorting her face in ways impossible to keep your eyes off. LJ Parkinson also shines as an excellently moustachioed member of the gentry. Modest may largely struggle to live up to its fascinating premise, but there are flashes of brilliance within. A modest success, then.

Isobel Lewis