Book, Music and Lyrics: Ewen Moore
Director: Elizabeth Huskisson
This one-woman musical about 1960s actress Carol White is more music hall than swinging London sensation. The rags-to-riches and back-to-rags paradigm is a familiar one, but White’s story is still compelling even if the music is not. Battersea Bardot should lose the songs and the singing as it would be more successful as a straightforward drama.
Anne Rabbitt, wearing a baby doll dress, plays Carol looking back at her life from her death bed at the age of 48. She was famous for being the lead in Ken Loach’s TV play Cathy Come Home and then Loach’s film Poor Cow in 1966 and 1967 respectively. But now she languishes penniless in a rented motel room in Miami. It’s not a happy story and Ewen Moore’s songs are wistful rather than celebratory.
After her success in the UK, White was courted by Hollywood. She went eagerly, husband and children in tow. Soon she fell in love with a film producer and then with Frank Sinatra and then with the whiskey bottle. Her marriage crumbled and the film roles dried up pretty quickly. She had a reputation for being promiscuous but here she explains that in a world full of sexual exploitation she ‘gave up herself’ willingly to ensure that she never got hurt.
But does this tragic tale deserve a musical treatment? On this showing, probably not. The songs don’t ever evoke the sound and the excitement of the ’60s, not helped by the live musical accompaniment which consists of a cello and a piano where a guitar and drums may have been more apt. Instead, the songs and Rabbitt’s delivery are more reminiscent of music hall numbers. In one case, where Moore riffs off I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside, this attention to Victorian entertainment is deliberate, but almost every song seems written for Leicester Square’s Alhambra rather than for Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar, a hotspot of Swinging London.
The songs also are a bad match for Rabbitt’s tone; too much of the time she sings in a higher register and the songs soon become too similar. The lyrics are worth a listen, however, and here the 60s are described colourfully; it’s just a shame that the tunes don’t complement the images held within the words. The show is also too long and could do with some prudent pruning to turn this two-act play into a tidy and concise one-hour show.
For a small space, Alex Forey’s lights are impressive and add some much-needed variety to Battersea Bardot which otherwise is one-note. You never get a sense of the kaleidoscopic era that White was once a part of, and you never really get a sense of who White was either.
Runs until 23 September 2023
