Lesley steals Little Voice thunder
There was an absoutely knock-out West End debut in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice last night.
And it wasn’t made by X Factor finalist Diana Vickers, good though she was in the Jane Horrocks role. No, the real star turn is that of Lesley Sharp as her mum, Mari Hoff, the blowzy, boozy mother from hell, or at least somewhere like Rochdale or Burnley.
There are certain actors who, whenever you see them, you think, well, there is simply no one else better than this.
The thought crosses my mind whenever I see Miranda Richardson (too rarely) on the stage. Or Mark Rylance. Or Lesley Sharp.
And amazingly, despite a list of impressive credits at the National (where her performance in Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan won nominations in both the Whatsonstage.com and Evening Standard awards), the Royal Court and on television, she’s never been in the West End before.
But suddenly she’s in danger of becoming a regular. She follows Little Voice next year with Mrs Alving in Ghosts, playing opposite Iain Glen, who also directs, at the Duchess in the New Year.
The opening twenty minutes of Little Voice belong almost exclusively to Sharp, just as the first act of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof belongs to Maggie. And Sharp tears up the stage not in any showy or superficial way: she’s terrifying, and terrifyingly good, because she’s so fiercely inside the character, blazing away from within like a boozed-up banshee.
No disrespect to Alison Steadman, whom I revere just this side of idolatry, but this Mari is in a different tragi-comic league to Steadman’s in the original Sam Mendes production because she leaves no room for critical ambiguity in the role.
It’s not a question of presenting a sad comic character whose delusions outstrip her sad reality. It’s a total steam-rollering assault on our sensibilities by a monstrous harridan who obliterates any hint of patronising mockery or well-meaning sympathy on both sides of the footlights.
In her wardrobe of outlandish glitter frocks, thigh boots and baby doll nightwear, Sharp comes at the audience like a Sherman tank on a hen night operation designed to flatten the surrounding terrain. And the greatness of the performance lies in its state of absolute spiritual panic, as if she’s grabbing the moment, each moment, like it’s her very last on earth.
I just hope that with this performance and Mrs Alving, Sharp manages to break out of the nominations stage to becomes what she fully deserves to be, an outright award winner.