Theatre review: The Boy in the Dress

With Cameron Mackintosh recently finding a loophole around having to give them a cut of the Les Misérables profits, it's not surprising if the RSC are on the lookout for another big musical earner to replace it, and join Matilda as a way of bankrolling some of their less commercial work. And it's definitely the latter show they have in mind with this new musical of David Walliams' popular children's novel The Boy in the Dress - just as Walliams' books themselves invite a Roald Dahl comparison by using Quentin Blake illustrations, so Robert Jones' colouring-book design for Gregory Doran's production instantly calls to mind the company's last big musical juggernaut. Mark Ravenhill (book,) Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers and Chris Heath's (music and lyrics) adaptation opens in a nameless English town, the setting for a family to explosively break up as a woman walks out on her husband and two young sons.

Dad (Rufus Hound) and oldest son John (Zachary Loonie, alternating with Alfie Jukes,) have very old-fashioned, granite views on how a man should deal with his emotions, and put up a stiff-upper-lip front that everything's fine, but the younger son finds it harder to hide the sense of loss.

12-year-old Dennis (Tom Lomas, alternating with Oliver Crouch, Jackson Laing and Toby Mocrei) gets short shrift from his father and mockery from his brother when he cries, so puts all his energies into football, where he's the school's star striker, and gets the team into a local cup final. But his memories of his mother, tied up in an image of her in a yellow dress from the family's last good day together, find a new outlet when he makes friends with Lisa James (Tabitha Knowles, alternating with Asha Banks and Miriam Nyarko,) the school's most-fancied girl and an aspiring fashion designer. When Lisa uses Dennis as a clothes horse for the dress she's designing, he realises that his interest in Vogue magazine is because he wants to wear the fashions himself, and soon Lisa's encouraging him to go to school in disguise as a French exchange student called Denise.

There's a very laudable, truly modern intention behind the show, that celebrates individuality and encourages kids to be who they are, particularly in standing up to toxic masculinity. But with a creative team including Walliams, Ravenhill and Fat Bob it's not entirely surprising if it's somewhat heavy-handed. The feel is somewhere between an '80s sitcom and the Beano, the obvious intention that what actually happens undercuts this - the boy in the dress who would have been a one-off punchline in one of those stories becomes the hero. Except an unseen drama teacher who regularly buys Vogue is a one-off punchline, and there's an inevitability to Asian shopkeeper Raj's (Irvine Iqbal) big number being a Bollywood pastiche.

Meanwhile I can absolutely see the intention behind Forbes Masson's evil headmaster Mr Hawtrey¹, being held up as an example of hypocrisy, but the end result is still asking the audience to laugh at a man in a dress (and his final look is 100% panto Dame, I don't even know what they're trying to do there.) As for the songs, the opening number "Ordinary" worryingly lives up to the name, as do a number of those that follow, but there's a few brighter musical moments along the way even if there's no obvious standouts.

There are a lot of positives in Doran's production as well though; the RSC's experience with the aforementioned Matilda means they know a child actor can effectively carry a show, and Lomas is a likeably understated lead as the pre-teen finding his feet, well-matched by Knowles as the more confident Lisa. Dennis' best friend Darvesh (Arjun Singh Khakh, alternating with Kassian Shae Akhtar, Ethan Dattani and Shivain Kara-Patel) is a bit of a thankless role but he does get a nice moment as the first to reject peer pressure and support his friend. There's also some good running gags for kids' and adults' sensibilities alike, like Ben Thompson's farting dog Oddbod, Darvesh's over-enthusiastic, malapropising mum (Natasha Lewis,) and John's fixation with Magnums (which you could interpret as his own way of harking back to the last happy family day but... probably isn't.) Elsewhere Grace Wylde and Charlotte Jaconelli are scene-stealers as the school's resident cool kids.

Maybe trying to get that Les Mis financial gap plugged has brought this to the stage a bit earlier than it was quite ready, which may be why despite a lot of details working much of the big picture doesn't (the mother's utter disappearance from her children's lives is never really dealt with.) The feeling that this is primarily aimed at a transfer also comes from the end-on reconfiguration, which will slot straight into a West End house but leaves the RST, where half the seats are on the sides, with some sightline issues. The big names involved will probably guarantee it has a further life for a while; but I suspect that if the company are looking for a classic that'll keep them going for the next thirty years they're going to have to keep looking a bit longer.

The Boy in the Dress by Mark Ravenhill, Robbie Williams, Guy Chambers and Chris Heath, based on the novel by David Walliams, is booking until the 8th of March at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

¹naming every character in a children's story after a regular Carry On cast member is about the most David Walliams thing I can think of.