Theatre / Reviews
Review: Nanny, Bristol Old Vic Weston Studio – ‘Wonderfully warm-hearted’
There’s a line from a review of a play within Nanny that I’m going to steal: “enthusiastically silly”.
It’s an apt description of friends Amy and Leanne who sing, dance, gossip, scheme, fall out and make up in this wonderfully warm-hearted new production.
I found myself rooting for them to break free of the drudgery of professional childcare, sharing in their successes and commiserating in their failures.
is needed now More than ever
Alana Ramsey (Amy), Lizzie Stables (Leanne) in Nanny – photo: Folio
We meet the two friends, played by co-writers Alana Ramsey and Lizzie Stables, at a stay and play session in a church while they are looking after two children but spend more time planning their careers in showbiz.
The other co-writer is Jenny Rainsford, also the director of Nanny, who skilfully brings the audience into Amy and Leanne’s world as naughty co-conspirators; parents in the audience laughing at all-too recognisable situations.
Off stage are the children in their care and also Kim, who runs the session and whose foibles we get to know without once seeing or hearing her.
Just off-stage too is pianist Matthew Floyd Jones, whose musical accompaniment provides some uplifting and gloriously funny moments for the duetting funny girls (I’ve stolen that line from the review within the play as well).
The tradition of plays within plays goes all the way back to Shakespeare’s folios; with Wiltshire-based female-led theatre company Folio updating it for the digital generation in which we are regularly interrupted by a mobile phone.
Ramsey and Stables are a brilliant double act – themselves referencing from the Weston Theatre stage another female duo, Mel and Sue, one half of who in a meta twist will soon be appearing in the Old Vic’s main auditorium in Starter For Ten.
“We absolutely nailed the bollocks out of that,” says Ramsey after a full-throttled rendition of Ride a Cock-Horse to Banbury Cross.
And they absolutely do during the whole of Nanny, a play that could well achieve the real showbiz success that our two fictional protagonists so crave.
Nanny is at the Weston Studio at Bristol Old Vic until February 10. For tickets and more information, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/nanny
Main photo: Folio
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