Looking For Me Friend: The Music of Victoria Wood
Paulus & Michael Roulston
Directed by Sarah-Louise Young
Jacksons Lane and touring
Star rating: 3
It’s a cheerful, pleasing show with moments of poignancy. And it’s also a crowd-pleaser – providing the crowd is steeped in the comedy of Victoria Wood. She was a stalwart of TV comedy in the 1980s and 90s with a very distinctive voice which punctured the pomposity of daily life. Anyone who isn’t happily au fait with what Wood said, sung and did will feel, sadly, a bit excluded at this show. It’s like being at a lively party where you don’t know anyone.
Paulus The Cabaret Geek (Paul L Martin) is an accomplished performer who has toured this show since 2020. It features Wood’s songs with linking repartee. He knows how to work an audience, sings well and, best of all, has impeccable diction without ever being mannered. So the songs work well from Feeling in the Mood and Pam though to Fourteen Again and the hilarious The Ballad of Barry and Freda. The samey, simpering beam which he bestows on the audience at the end of each anecdote gets a bit wearing though.
Paulus is accompanied on piano by Michael Roulston who is an impressively talented musician. He and Paulus are totally at one as they have to be. Wood, after all, accompanied herself from the keyboard, Tom Lehrer style. I really liked the way he picks up the intro to the next song as Paulus reaches the final sentence of his spiel – evidence of careful rehearsal and years of doing this show together. Roulston also contributes the occasional bit of sung harmony and he is, himself, no mean actor doing a range of voices and perfectly timed interjections.
It’s fun be reminded of all those things we’ve half-forgotten such as the mascara brush you spit on, communal changing rooms in shops, the Bunty comic and Swarfega to remove engine grease from your hands. But you need to be a certain age to identify with it. And it helps to be in the Wood cult.
Nonetheless it’s a warm, quite pleasant two hours of theatre smoothly delivered.
