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First seen off-Broadway 17 years ago, Kirsten Childs’s musical doesn’t show its age – if anything, it feels timely. Following Viveca – known as Bubbly – from mixed-up childhood to adult self-acceptance, it’s an upbeat show that nonetheless tackles racism in many forms, from cultural stereotyping to police brutality and internalised self-loathing.
We begin in LA in 1963, with little Bubbly – played with an often grating squeaky childishness by Karis Jack – wishing she could be more like her white, blonde-haired doll, Chitty Chatty. The backdrop is the real-life Ku Klux Klan bomb attack on an Alabama church, where four young black girls were killed, but Bubbly is told by her father (in a rather schmaltzy song) to always smile in the face of trouble. It’s advice that will see Bubbly endlessly people-please, whether that’s changing her hair for an idiotic hippie boyfriend or putting on an absurd southern accent to win a part in a Broadway show.
Still, Childs has plenty of fun on the way, with a groovy score that embraces soul, hippie rock, Motown and funk. Giving Bubbly showbiz ambitions, there are dance sequences in gym class, discotheques and on the streets of New York, where she moves to follow her dreams – although the production feels strangely lacking a big finale.
The ’80s-set second half matches the change of locale with a switch of actor, with Sophia Mackay playing a grown-up Bubbly, as she navigates dodgy boyfriends and dodgier casting directors. This feels unnecessary: given the modest cast size, we’ve already seen Mackay playing a kid too, and although she’s got the moves, perma-grinning comic timing and a fruitily deep voice to make the older Bubbly her own, the role-swap still somehow dilutes the character.
Under Josette Bushell-Mingo’s direction, the musical is served up with peppy, cartoonish gumption; if day-dreams and nightmares are a slightly chaotic addition to Childs’s already fast-paced, pack-it-in storytelling, they’re also staged with real élan. For a show that critiques limited cultural stereotypes, however, it engages in plenty of its own, with an abundance of over-egged characterisations and cheesy costumes. Despite this, ‘The Bubbly Black Girl…’ still makes for a hearty, and heart-warming, bit of #BlackGirlMagic.
BY: HOLLY WILLIAMS