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Getting its first London revival in almost 20 years, Kander and Ebb’s musical ‘The Rink’ makes a welcome return: it’s got tunes, memorable characters, and the odd tear-jerking moment. It’s also got roller skates.
If musicals aren’t your bag, this absolutely won’t convert you – it’s a well-made affair that feels familiar in its like-clockwork workings, and isn’t Kander and Ebb at their idiosyncratic, ‘Cabaret’ best. But if they are your thing, then get your skates on – you’re in for a treat (that’s the last of that, promise).
It’s the 1970s, and Anna is selling the shabby roller rink she inherited on the boardwalk of some seaside town; she’s planning to retire to Florida. Demolition men become a chorus that drift into her old memories of the place, and her romance with local hunk Dino. He turned out to be less than an ideal husband, abandoning her and their small daughter Angel.
But just as they prepare to tear it all down, Angel – who hasn’t been home for seven years – turns up (what timing!) A hippy drifter, she wants to settle at the rink, and is distraught her mother is selling up. Cue much yearning, sighing wistfulness, a nostalgic look back at living in an amusement park, and a pensive sense of how life doesn’t always turn out as you’d hoped. The glitter ball turns and the coloured lights come back on – in memory at least. It’s all very ‘Follies’-lite.
At first, Anna and Angel’s relationship seems like a badly drawn cliché of mother-daughter resentment in Terence McNally’s not-always-convincing book; they go from hello to hair-tearing frustration in approximately 12 seconds.
But actually, it settles soon enough, and deepens in the second half, as we go further into flashbacks. The sliding between past and present is handled fluidly in Adam Lenson’s production and by the end, you’re fully invested in the relationship.
The performances help of course. Caroline O’Connor is excellent as the wise-cracking tough-cookie Anna, also suggesting the vivacity of her younger self. Gemma Sutton doesn’t convince as a hippy, but she has a gorgeous, bell-clear voice, and switches to playing Angel as a small child or teenager with sweetness and control.
The show is annoyingly coy about its roller rink setting – by the interval, there’s not been a single bit of fancy footwork. But the second half makes up for it when the vigorous male chorus basically do a tap routine – on skates. It is fabulously camp.
The score is a sprightly, toe-tapping thing, often recalling the waltzing rhythms of old fairground tunes, and has at least one earworm in the title number. And within this bijou space, Bec Chippndale’s loving detailed set is economically evocative of the fading glory of the old roller disco and boardwalk. Roll up, roll up!