PATRICK MARMION reviews Clueless at the Trafalgar Theatre: Big-hearted Barbie doll is flawless

Clueless (Trafalgar Theatre, London) 

Verdict: Retro fun  

Rating:

From Legally Blonde to Heathers and Mean Girls, musicalisations of teenage romcoms can seem two a penny these days. But this bangin’, big-hearted new staging of the 1995 movie Clueless still has plenty to sing about.

That’s largely down to the bright and breezy score by Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall.

But it’s also thanks to a sustained burst of Californian sunshine from American starlet Emma Flynn, as wilful but loveable Beverly Hills bimbo Cher.

Fans of the film, inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma, should fear not: the gags and catchphrases have all been integrated by the movie’s screenwriter Amy Heckerling.

Flynn’s Cher is every inch the immaculate LA Barbie doll as Beverly Hills High School’s queen bee and self-appointed fashion guru. I lost count of the outfits that follow her tiny yellow tartan suit.

Despite looking faintly appalled when dealing with lesser mortals, she manages to find Cher’s bottomless optimism.

Flynn can sing, too, in a part that’s made all the jauntier by Tunstall’s tunes, which channel Alanis Morissette, Green Day and The Spice Girls.

Glenn Slater’s lyrics bring verbal bounce of their own – and any lyricist who can rhyme ‘clueless’ with ‘socially IQ-less’ has my vote.

Lizzi Gee’s pulsing choreography ranges from breakdance to the Charleston, while Rachel Kavanaugh’s production skates inventively all over Beverly Hills.

There are neat comic turns from Chyna-Rose Frederick and Romona Lewis-Malley as Cher’s friends lippy Dionne and bashful Tai, as well as Max Mirza and Isaac J. Lewis as alpha suitor Elton and ‘cake boy’ Christian – alongside the main character rizz of Cher’s stepbrother Josh (Keelan McAuley).

The show isn’t original, but it is as flawless as Cher’s complexion – and a sunny, retro night out.

Farewell Mister Haffmann (Park Theatre, London) 

Verdict: Far-right surge 

Rating:

There’s nothing like a Nazi to liven up a drama, and Jean-Philippe Daguerre’s play Farewell Mister Haffmann certainly benefits from a late Teutonic far-right surge.

It’s a play that sees Hitler’s ambassador to France and his wife (Nigel Harman and Jemima Rooper) invited to dinner at the house of a Parisian jeweller – who’s hiding his Jewish boss in the cellar.

Until then, Daguerre’s work is a slightly earnest confection.

Jewish jeweller Joseph Haffmann (Alex Waldmann) turns over his business to his talented assistant Pierre (Michael Fox). Pierre, however, is having trouble conceiving a child with his wife Isabelle (Jennifer Kirby) – and asks if Mr Haffmann might lend a hand, while he’s in hiding. This is all promisingly uncomfortable, but it’s not until there’s a real live Nazi on site that things really kick off.

It’s an hour before the awkward fumbling downstairs becomes a white-knuckle ride upstairs, with the arrival of Harman’s dapper ambassador and Rooper’s flirtatious wife. But it’s worth the wait.

The play manages to be a comedy and a drama exposing the still bitter enmities of French wartime society. But it’s the Nazi threat that really gets the blood pumping.

Clueless runs until September 27. Farewell Mister Haffmann runs until April 12.

Punch (Young Vic, London) 

Verdict: It’s a knockout  

Rating:

It’s all in the title: a thumping, in-yer-face drama that leaves you winded — and in tears.

Once again the prolific, prodigiously talented James Graham (Sherwood on the telly, Dear England at the National) uses a real-life story to illustrate and interrogate Britain’s crumbling social and political fabric.

The play begins with a flashback to one fateful night in 2011. Working-class, drug-dealing waster Jacob, aged 19, is out on the tiles in Nottingham’s grim Meadows estate, vividly suggested by Anna Fleischle’s slabbed walkways over a shadowy underpass. 

David Shields’s frenetic Jacob is tanked-up — and pumped-up for a fight, for no other reason than that’s what he and his feckless, reckless gang always do on a Saturday night.

One single, senseless swing kills James, 28, a trainee paramedic.

Having served his 15-month sentence for manslaughter, Jacob’s enlightened probation officer gets him to attend a support group. For the first time, Jacob reflects on the impact of that punch, not on himself but on James’s angry, grieving parents.

Through Remedi, an organisation dedicated to restorative justice, he meets them.

James’s father (Tony Hirst) refuses to touch the fist which delivered the fatal blow. It’s hard not to cry when, years later, the two shake hands — or when James’s mother (Coronation Street’s Julie Hesmondhalgh) stands alongside Jacob, now almost unrecognisably still, composed and remorseful, as they talk to schoolkids about violence. She can’t forgive him, but it’s better than hate.

Punch is essentially a true parable and the compression of necessary information as well as time can make it feel schematic, if only by Graham’s dazzling theatrical standards.

But Adam Penford’s superbly performed production, which began at Nottingham Playhouse and is now Broadway-bound, lands its message like a piledriver. Right — of sorts — can come from wrong. And in that respect, Punch is a knockout.

Until April 26.

REVIEWED BY GEORGINA BROWN