Review: Reservoir Mogs, Wardrobe Theatre

For the past several years, the Wardrobe Theatre have done something nicely different at Christmas. Their antidote to all the frost-clad festive schmaltz has been a series of brilliantly witty hybrids of much-loved staples from film and TV. So, we’ve had (spot the odd couples) Rocky: A Horror Show; Goldilock, Stock & Three Smoking Bears; and Muppits Die Hard.

They’ve done it again, with most of their usual success, with this unholy mash-up of Tarantino’s blood-spattered Reservoir Dogs and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s (after T.S. Eliot) feline musical Cats. The choice of classics being soldered together is as comically improbable (yet somehow brilliant) as ever, and there’s much fun to be had with the cat/gangster interface – the nine lives, the vanity, the odd combination of violence and skittishness.

L-R Emma Keaveney-Roys, Katy Sobey, Lizzy Skrzypiec, Lotte Allan.
Pics: Paul Blakemore

Lotte Allan (Pink), Emma Keaveney-Roys (Blonde), Lizzy Skrzypiec (White, and the gang’s de facto leader) and Katy Sobey (Orange) are four shady felines drawn together for the mother of all heists: the theft of the mythical Jellicle Ball. When the job doesn’t come off as planned, there are some bitter and, well, catty recriminations, all building towards a final settling of scores where the cats’ nine lives are stretched to breaking point. Intercut with all this, a la Tarantino’s film, are nice, wittily over-flagged flashbacks telling how the ill-assorted quartet got together.

The performances range from decent to splendid. Standouts are Keaveney-Roys’ captivating, graceful, nihilistic Blonde, who exudes a kind of waif-like, Debbie Harry/Patti Smith cool and shares the casual, gleeful violence of her film double, Michael Madsen; and Allan’s Pink, who has the same weaselish delivery and trust-no-one circumspection of her Steve Buscemi counterpart.

Whole episodes from the film are lovingly plundered. Blonde’s torture scene (shrinking violets should perhaps avoid the front row) is a highlight, eliciting roars of laughter from the audience, with Keaveney-Roys’ nonchalant sadism coming into its own. And there’s a lovely comic touch straight after, with the cat metaphor mined again as, fresh from the torture room, Blonde gets mesmerized by a pair of woollen balls.

The set is spare in the extreme, which works very well – both for the nimbleness of the scene changes, and for evoking the various unloved L.A. back alleys and safe houses where the action takes place.

So: performances: very good. Set: just fine. Plot, and the way it both echoes and riffs off Tarantino and Lloyd Webber: all good. Script (and songs): fine. It all works well, and it may well only be me that comes away unable to recall many lines or hum any of the tunes the next day. I took away the sense of an excellent cast acting their socks off through a fair-to-good script.

The lines may not bounce off the page, but the whole world of the show – from the actors’ committed performances to Madeleine Girling’s felines-gone-gothic-costumes, via the knowing references to the show’s two much-loved progenitors – is an atmospheric one.

If this positive, but not hysterical review leaves you needing more reasons to get off the couch and see this show, I can supply plenty: like the fact that the Wardrobe Theatre is about the most welcoming, intimate venue in town, above (in the Old Market Assembly) an equally convivial café/bar; that the Wardrobe team work brilliantly at putting on a hugely impressive and varied programme of theatre, comedy, music and spoken word; and that, once ensconced, you will be buzzing, up for it, nestled into one of Bristol’s most vigorous and joyous artistic communities.

Go for the performances, go for the whole Wardrobe experience; and you may well find that the script works its magic too.

Reservoir Mogs is at the Wardrobe Theatre until Saturday, Jan 21. For more info and to book tickets, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/reservoir-mogs

Read more: 2017 Christmas theatre roundup