The Devil Wears Prada is a fairy tale about an aspiring female novelist, Andy, who receives a job offer from Runway, the nastiest and most influential fashion magazine in America. Miranda, the editor, is a Botoxed uber-bitch who doesn’t really want to hire Andy, but does anyway. And Andy doesn’t really want to work in fashion, but does anyway. Slightly odd.
Visually, the show is a sumptuous treat that offers Olympic-standard costumes, set and lighting designs
Andy is like Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, a bland but trustworthy cipher who bears witness to a fascinating world of excess and corruption. She’s barely a character, more a device. The best lines are delivered by others. Miranda (Vanessa Williams) specialises in toxic putdowns. ‘Is there some reason that my coffee isn’t here? Has she died or something?’
At an editorial conference she notices Andy’s ‘lumpy blue sweater’, which prompts her to summarise the fashion industry in a famous 60-second speech. The director ruins this iconic moment by adding musical chords and disruptive stage business. Bad move. The words do the job on their own. Despite this slip-up, the speech got a round of applause.
The real subject of the story is workplace bullying, which it promotes as a moral virtue. Miranda is the most heartless and vicious boss imaginable and yet her staff dote on her and give her everything she wants. But because she’s invincible, she has little room to develop as a character. Andy is also rather inert narratively and so our focus drifts to her office rival, Emily, who comes across as hard-hearted, ambitious and sympathetic. (An excellent bit of show-stealing work from Amy Di Bartolomeo.)
Emily dreams of accompanying Miranda to Paris on a business trip but she contracts flu and ends up in hospital, where a hunky doctor catches her eye. Their minor-key romance is a welcome respite from the exuberant high-kicking glamour on display elsewhere. Visually, the show is a sumptuous treat that offers Olympic-standard costumes, sets and lighting designs. The male dancers camp it up like mad – and if that’s your thing, you’ll enjoy it. Elton John’s music is perhaps less memorable than it might be. And the show hasn’t a chance of delivering the delicious emotional rush of the film because the venue is too vast. It’s like reading a novel in a gale.
It’s panto time at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, east London, which offers a bizarre take on the story of Pinocchio. The script is sloppily constructed, with several disconnected parts that take too long to cohere. The local area, renamed Stratty Ash, is presented as a failing market town where skint tradesmen mope around lamenting their lack of work.
But before we get there, we’re diverted by two solo artistes. A female insect, Krik Krak (Nichole Louise Lewis), whips the crowd into a frenzy and gets them to shout out her surname. She’s followed by Blue Rinse Fairy (Michael Bertenshaw) who improvises a brilliant series of routines with virtually no material. These performers give the impression that the show is a talent contest where out-of-work comedians try to catch the eye of agents and tour-bookers.
Finally the story begins and we return to Stratty Ash where we meet an annoyingly useless carpenter, Geppetto, who creates a talking puppet out of wood. Pinocchio is like an AI robot with a design fault. He can’t tell lies because he has a telescopic nose that elongates when he speaks untruths and retracts when he’s being honest. This is a very complex idea but it has no impact on the storyline. A couple of boo-hiss baddies, Sly Fox and Miss Kat, abduct Pinocchio and try to profit from his physical peculiarities but they can’t make any money. The obvious method – to exhibit him at a freak show – doesn’t occur to them.
Pinocchio escapes and falls into the hands of another abusive slave-master. Later, he meets up with the annoying carpenter and both are swallowed by a man-eating shark whose digestive juices fail to dissolve either of them. Why not? Very baffling. Then another distraction. Blue Rinse Fairy reappears and throws a handful of sweets into the auditorium. Not many. About 17 in all. Perhaps the theatre is tightening its belt.
One of these rare candies landed near me and was retrieved from under the seats by my nine-year-old companion, River. He assured me that Pinocchio was much better than Jack and the Beanstalk at the same venue last year. I think he was humouring me. In the interval I asked for his half-time verdict. ‘A bit rocky,’ he said. Which seemed about right.
The tempo picked up in Act Two, thanks to plenty of Christmas drinks, and everyone joined in the communal singalong. Afterwards River spoke to me about two men seated on his left who adored the show even though they weren’t part of a family group. ‘They really liked it,’ he said. ‘And both had identical moustaches.’
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