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The Review - THEATRE by BEN CRAIB
Published: 24 April 2008

Liza Pulman

Porter carries a new show that’s too black and white

THE BLACK AND WHITE BALL
The King's Head Theatre

THAT Cole Porter is one talented guy. Dead 30 years and he’s still cranking out new musicals.
The Black and White Ball says a lot about the enduring musical and commercial power of Porter, integrating a selection of his classics into an original book by Warner Brown.
It also says a lot about the current state of original musicals – recycling the past is standard, almost uniform practice.
The action takes the form of an extended flashback. A young woman called Leah needs closure from her childhood.
Her stepfather, bestselling author Jay St John, was gunned down during a black and white ball 20 years previously, a grand occasion intended to mark the imminent publication of his second novel.
In an ostentatious and camp ceremony he was to present the finished manuscript to his hard-nosed publisher wife, Suzanne, in an extremely valuable ornamental box.
However, the run-up to publication had not been smooth – and his killer had never been discovered.
Matthew White’s slick production is certainly wholehearted.
Its use of the small space is innovative and intimate, and music arranger Larry Blank has made some intelligent arrangements around a tough story.
The singing is uniformly strong, with Katherine Kingsley standing out as the ballsy and catty wife and Mark McGee doing a good job playing an awfully one-
dimensional drag queen.
And of course those Porter melodies are just too goddamn strong to be subdued.
Unfortunately, there’s not much suspense or intrigue to this mystery – the lack of suspects, characterisation and plot see to that. Often the actors seem unsure as to why their characters say and act as they do.
And in going for sinister melancholy as the predominant mood, Porter’s songs lose their unique camp, zippy and joyful edge too.
The Black and White Ball is half original and consequently ends up feeling a little half-baked. It begs the question: Why not just revive a classic 1940s Porter musical, rather than pretending to be one in 2008?
Until May 4
020 7226 1916

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