Glorious!

Meryl Streep is a hard act to follow but Diana McLean makes you forget her in an instant the moment she walks on stage in this touring production of Glorious!, Peter Quilter’s play about the legendary off-key singing soprano Florence Foster Jenkins. Bringing zeal, passion and considerable warmth to the character, she establishes instant rapport with the audience (as Foster Jenkins obviously did back in the forties) massacring some of the most difficult arias in the opera canon. Who knew McLean could sing and sing so well badly? Not an easy thing to do for even the most accomplished singer. Her “Queen of the Night” was excruciatingly magnificent and deserved a bravo on its own.

Quilter uses the character of Cosme McMoon (Mitchell Roberts), her accompanist, to top and tail the show as a narrator, which nicely sets-up the story. In a performance that runs the gamut from incredulous when he first hears Foster Jenkins sing, to acolyte when she reaches the pinnacle of her success at a vanity concert in Carnegie Hall, he’s a brilliant foil to McLean’s extravagant vocal excesses. He’s also accomplished on the piano as an accompanist and as a singer, knocking off a smooth version of Cole Porter’s “At Long Last Love”.

Felicity Soper brings a wealth of experience to three roles; Maria, the fiery non-English speaking Spanish maid who can’t be fired because Foster Jenkins doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Dorothy, an obsequious society supporter, and Mrs Verrinder-Gedge, an outraged music affictionado who thinks she should be banned.

Costumes and props reeked of the period, with a large upstage photo-frame depicting New York in B&W photos of the era and an onstage grand piano.

Denny Lawrence’s direction was admirable, with one of the play’s most tender moments, just prior to the Carnegie Hall concert, where he has McLean and Roberts dance briefly to Gershwin’s “Someone To Watch Over Me”. It was magic.

With her cult following, especially amongst gay men, Foster Jenkins was the original ‘camp’ long before that word came into currency. A dreamer, an eccentric, but a woman with a huge heart. McLean more than does her justice.

Peter Pinne

Images: CHRISfotographik