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The Times - Saturday 19th October 2002
Theatre
Babes in Arms
New Theatre, Cardiff
* * * *

SEVERAL of the tastier offerings in Cardiff’s International Festival of Music Theatre are "concert performances", which must mean that folk in evening dress will be singing Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle, Porter's Jubilee and (too expensive and American a show to get the British premiere it merits) McNally and Flaherty's Ragtime. But Rodgers and Hart's Babes in Arms is receiving the full treatment.

That's to say, the decor is up to British touring if not Broadway standards, and the cast, though a bit raw, is young, spirited and hugely likeable.

Though the musical dates from the late 1930s, it represents the end of an era, not the start of a new one. And that's ironic, for the plot is supposedly about the theatre's future. The "babes in arms" are the youthful flotsam and jetsam working in a playhouse in Cape Cod, hoping to produce a show introducing New York to a brave new generation.

And how to achieve this? Their triumphant closing number, packed with girls in gold swimsuits, demonstrates how. By wowing the Great White Way with exactly the sort of jaunty show that had been wowing it for two decades. You might almost say that Babes in Arms marks the death-throes of the kind of musical the war and Oklahoma! would sweep away.

But who cares? If you enjoy escapist 1920s and 1930s musicals, you'll enjoy this. The plot is sappy, key events are ill-motivated, but it's fun, fun, fun. It's fun to meet Rose Owen, the ex-child star who comes from Hollywood to launch a stage career in a doleful saga called The Deep North. It's fun to see this play's pretentious Southern author made to look a fool by the "babes in arms" when he dons a Davy Crockett hat and spouts lines about “facing the perils of the wind and snow". It's fun when, in a preposterously curt denouement, everything thespian and romantic turns out well.

The songs include Babes in Arms itself, Johnny One Note, My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, which in its proper context is what it should be, a ode to freedom and wanderlust. With the delightful Alexandra Jay singing that, and Alicia Davies, Joshua Dallas, Simon Coulthard and Tiffany Graves also making quite an impression, I don't see why Martin Connor's production shouldn't go far.

Benedict Nightingale

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SOUTH WALES ARGUS - 21st October 2002
REVIEW
Babes In Arms
New Theatre, Cardiff

OKAY - hands up - who knew that My Funny Valentine was about a boy called Valentine? Or that The Lady Is A Tramp, made famous by Sinatra, was originally written for a woman?

Babes In Arms is a little-known 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical which contains some very famous songs. It tells the story of a group of kids who work at a theatre and decide to put on their own show.

The tunes are fresh, the lyrics are witty, and the young cast's singing and dancing were incredible. There were a couple of songs which paled in comparison to their more famous neighbours, but also some little-heard classics.

The only area that let the production down was the book, which had not aged well and would benefit from being taken out of the period setting. There were good jokes in the production, but too many creaked alarmingly, and the characters, while well-played, were always sketchy. Alexandra Jay, 19, found fame as understudy to Martine McCutcheon in My Fair Lady and had one of the best parts, and, in My Funny Valentine, the best song.

But she was outshone by Alicia Davies as former child star 'Baby Rose' Owen, who was superbly polished and very believable. Her lead on the final song, a bug traditional Broadway glitzy number complete with top hats, canes and gold leotards, took the audience's breath away. If you like musicals, you'll love Babes In Arms, but this is one production where the plot comes a distant second to the show.

Babes In Arms ends its run on Saturday October 26th.

Tom Whiteley

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SOUTH WALES ECHO – Tuesday 22nd October 2002

IT'S true. There really IS a show out there where the cast leap to their feet, strike a dramatic pose and yell: "I know... let's put the show on right HERE!”

Or words to that effect. But more of that later. Babes In Arms doesn't get staged too often, but you’ll know the Rodgers and Hart score.

My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is A Tramp, Johnny One Note ... in other words, you won't leave the theatre whistling the songs, you'll already be whistling them when you get there. And it's a gorgeous, warm and funny show, old-fashioned in an endearing way, given fresh energy by a sensational young cast brought together by director Martin Connor and choreographer Bill Deamer especially for Cardiff's International Festival of Musical Theatre. The plot? That's simple. In deepest Cape Cod, a troop of talented young performers are putting on a play which, frankly, stinks. If only they could get their own vaudevillian spectacular on stage instead... No prizes for guessing what happens, but that's part of Babes In Arms' charm.

So, more of that young cast. I especially liked the beaming Simon Coulthard (one from the Donald O'Connor mould) as romantic Gus, rising star Alexandra Jay as drifter Billie, Tiffany Graves as the leggy temptress Dolores and Alicia Davies as ex-child star Baby Rose. For me, Babes In Arms is the highlight of the musical festival.

Babes In Arms is at the New Theatre until Saturday.

Review by Sandra Loy

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The Independent – Review – Thursday 24th October 2002
MUSICAL
BABES IN ARMS
New Theatre
Cardiff

Sometimes I despair of humanity - in this case, the people of Cardiff. What on earth can they have to do, I wondered, looking round the half-empty New Theatre, that's more important than going to Babes in Arms? The Rodgers and Hart show, part of the International Festival of Musical Theatre, is far worthier of the definition "musical" than anything in the West End except My Fair Lady, and certainly of the term "musical comedy". As the luscious Tiffany Graves berates and biffs her erstwhile beau, then kicks out as he drags her off, then decides she likes it, one's delight at the fusion of song, dance and wit is mixed with sadness at its rarity.

Babes in Arms, it's true, will never win any fans from the politically or psychologically aware wings of musical fans. Its book is a sort of ur-text about a group of talented children working backstage at a summer theatre who decide to put on their own show. They rehearse - I kid you not - in a barn. If, however, the book is slight, at least it's weightless, and there's not much of it between songs, which include Where or When, The Lady is a Tramp, I Wish I Were in Love Again, and My Funny Valentine.

Martin Connor's cast are an appealing bunch, their youthful wholesomeness either natural or well-feigned. Joshua Dallas (Valentine) has an attractive presence and a gentle sincerity with a ballad that shows to good effect when he partners Alexandra Jay in You're Nearer. In the latter, a little masterpiece of dazed sensuality, Rodgers slows down the tempo so much that you don’t quite realise you're listening to that musical equivalent of foreplay, a tango.

Jay delivers love songs, jazzy songs and lines with great freshness and sincerity, and sends the lyrics out with beautifully clear articulation (though she has to watch the tendency to hit final consonants too hard). Absent-mindedly kicking her leg higher than her head or exploding into a fireball of naughtiness, Jay gets all the drollery and dazzle out of the part of Graves, the over-sexed soubrette.

Best of all, Bill Deamer, with a cast who can really dance, gives us both comic and frenzied numbers, and a classic tap speciality in which Stori James conveys not only his considerable skill, but also the excitement of being light and fast on one's feet.

RHODA KOENIG

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Daily Mail – Friday 25th October 2002
Bright Babes get lost in the woods

WITH its buzzing St David's concert hall and bid to become the European Capital of Culture in 2008, Cardiff must have seemed a good idea as host city for the first International Festival of Musical Theatre.

The reality proved a little different, with a sparse audience at the New Theatre for an enjoyable though unexceptional revival of Rodgers and Hart's Babes In Arms and a so-what feel to the rest of the programme.

No festival focus, and no real get up and go, even for those brave spirits who got up and went. Latching on to the centenary of Richard Rodgers's birth was a good idea, but the follow-through is abject.

The St David's exhibition in the composer's honour is a scrappy, uninspiring collection of old posters. And while a brief glimpse of the admirable National Youth Music Theatre's Oklahoma! confirmed that show's resilience in the repertoire, however much Trevor Nunn dressed up its 'message' for London and Broadway, Babes reminds us that musical theatre was once just silly and sassy and fun.

Martin Connor's production (last performances tonight and tomorrow) gives you the context - almost too strong a word - for such standards as My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is A Tramp and Johnny One Note.

A cast of young hopefuls on Cape Cod save the day with their revue as an old melodrama splutters to a halt.

And juvenile lead Val (Joshua Dallas) declares to his sweetheart (Alexandra Jay, emerging successfully from Martine McCutcheon's shadow in My Fair Lady) that he has a responsibility towards the future of the theatre.

Gosh! So much for unadulterated triviality. Still, the show is a joy thanks to the vitality of the cast - luscious, leggy Tiffany Graves and pocket dynamo Stori James make stand-out contributions - and the witty choreography of Bill Deamer.

Michael Coveney

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The Daily Telegraph - Friday 25th October 2002
Echoes from the past
Theatre
Babes in Arms
NEW THEATRE, CARDIFF

RODGERS and Hart's Babes in Arms represents both a highly apt and a curiously directionless choice of show to spearhead the inaugural International Festival of Musical Theatre in Cardiff.

Apt because this rarely staged 1937 opus from one of Broadway's all-time great partnerships is a full-throttle celebration of the musical, its entire plot hinging on the chorused desire of a group of young thespian hopefuls to "do the show right here!" -"here" being a barn in Cape Cod to which the youngsters defect from the fusty theatre over the way. The sentiment is particularly pertinent, of course, to a festival that flies the flag for a city long kept on the margins of the UK's theatre scene.

It's directionless because Babes in Arms didn't march with the times, despite its gung-ho spirit. A show with such a lightweight idea as to what constitutes ground-breaking, one which mocks old-hat tastes but was itself rendered passe with the genuine advance of Oklahoma! six years later, sends out a strange signal when presented as the frontispiece of a 21st-century forum for musicals.

Overall, the festival programme, while containing some mouthwatering stuff, looks more to the past than it does to the future. There are concert performances of the Broadway hit Ragtime (receiving its European premiere), Sondheim's early effort Anyone Can Whistle and the Cole Porter rarity Jubilee.

Perhaps I should be more excited about new British musical Sadly Solo Joe, or the allegedly sensational Joan of Arc from Prague, but, if this biennial event is to create waves of change in an art form struggling to find its place in popular culture, a greater emphasis on the experimental should surely be a priority next time around.

Still, it's early days. And flimsy plot and light-as- -tumbleweed characterisation aside, Babes in Arms has a great strength: the witty songs cradled within it, The Lady is a Tramp and My Funny Valentine, being the best known.

You get to hear them loud and clear - together with a heap of others that do anything from raise a light smile to raise the roof - in Martin Connor's pacey production. Alexandra Jay and Joshua Dallas's lovebirds Billie and Valentine are the charismatic leads steering the company towards a high-kicking, tap-dancing finale as the action shifts from backstage gloom to the producer-wowing limelight.

Their collective youthful optimism just about compensates for a show whose flimsy content has hardly aged well.

Dominic Cavendish

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