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Musical theatre writing duo Bill Russell (lyrics and book) and Janet Hood (music) are probably best known for ‘Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens’, a 1989 song cycle telling the stories of people affected by Aids. The pair’s new(ish) musical ‘Unexpected Joy’ finds them in a lighter mood. Seen at Southwark Playhouse after an off-Broadway premiere earlier this year, it’s a sweet but patchy all-female story of a late-in-life sexual awakening.
It follows three generations of female singers who are preparing for a memorial concert. The Joy of the title is a folk singer who made her name in the ’70s, performing with her now-deceased partner Jump. She always thought marrying him would be far too conventional. But this musical’s action revolves around Joy’s decision to wed the female partner she unexpectedly found after his death. Joy’s dour evangelical Christian daughter Rainbow (who’s rechristened herself Rachel) isn’t thrilled to discover that her mother is coming out, and is planning to have her wedding the day after her father’s memorial concert. And the sheer weirdness of this show’s plot means that it’s surprisingly easy to see her point.
Played by a suitably wafty Janet Fullerlove, Joy is infuriatingly vague on why she suddenly needs to tie the knot, with Bill Russell’s lyrics pointing to the ambivalence that ’70s freethinkers have around marriage, straight or gay. Her partner Lou (Melanie Marshall) is a lesbian activist who’s clearly keen to make a statement, but her need to push Joy into a public outing feels implausibly urgent: she forces Joy into painfully blunt gay rights arguments with her daughter that feel like they’re only there to squeeze some plot into this slight story.
Amy Anders Corcoran’s production has its moments: watching Rainbow/Rachel let go of her saintly persona and rip into one of her mother’s more rocking hits is fun, especially as Jodie Jacobs’s voice blows the other three performers out of the water. Sweet-voiced Kelly Sweeney makes a strong debut as her daughter Tamara, too, showing a raw hunger for fame that periodically terrifies both her mother and grandmother. But there’s so little chemistry, or even affection, shown between Joy and Lou that the emotional heart of the story is missing.
‘Fun Home’ has raised the bar insanely high for lesbian musical theatre (admittedly, it’s a pretty tiny genre) by managing to explore ideas of queerness, prejudice and family with authenticity and precision. By comparison, ‘Unexpected Joy’ and its vague ‘let's all just get along’ ending feels unsophisticated, unable to find the real pain in Joy’s reluctant coming-out story.