Charlie’s Girls – Union Theatre, London

Director: Fenton Grey

Head of Music and Resident Composer at the London School of Musical Theatre, where performers Melissa Jacques, Lucyelle Cliffe and Emma Odell studied, Charles Miller may be the most unknown widely-known composer working in musical theatre with over 25 years’ experience in composition and direction. Now the subject of a 90-minute tribute show at the Union Theatre directed by Fenton Grey, Charlie’s Girls celebrates Miller’s work, selecting songs from his best-known shows for fans and those new to his work.

Much of the work selected takes a female perspective, from waiting for lovers to come back, discovering that the object of your passion doesn’t return your feelings and celebrations of marriage, to the ageing process, receiving bad reviews and standing your ground. Grey and Musical Director Daniel Jarvis have selected music that explores a number of musical theatre genres including a jazzy 40s number with a girl group appeal, mellow and melancholy ballads about yearning for someone and even some peppy Gilbert and Sullivan-like comedy tunes that provide a broad overview of Miller’s influence.

Charlie’s Girls is a succession of songs performed as trios and solos primarily but in the second half offers some duets as well, covering 19 individual numbers from When Midnight Strikes, RSVP ASAP, Hope and No One in the World. A high point comes in a piece from 2021’s The Pleasure Gardens co-written with Glenn Chandler and performed by Odell – Why Not, Captain Antrobus? – a fast-paced piece about a woman desperate to take a lover not realising she is addressing another woman in disguise which gives Odell a chance to display a fine talent for comic delivery and timing.

Jacques takes her big moment in the penultimate full song If You Were Mine from the musical Theatrical Love. Co-written by Adam Bard it has a rich and haunting quality and builds to a huge belt from Jacques right before a soft note ending. Cliffe embraces some of the numbers reflecting on theatre itself including the excellent Bad Review Blues from No One in the World and Done from Fabula (both co-written by Kevin Hammonds), two tragi-comic numbers about middle age and something slipping away.

The singers come together for much of the show, performing a poignant number from The Return of the Soldier with Tim Sanders based on the Rebecca West novel pondering the complexity of relationships changing as a result of war, and the finale Friends of Friends which takes Jacques, Cliffe and Odell right back to their time at the London School of Musical Theatre.

Charlie’s Girls is a fairly traditional cabaret show and, for the uninitiated, some connections are made between songs that give either the title or the musical it is from. But other than an appreciation of Miller’s work, there is little that the audience can take from the unexplained selection and ordering of songs, or what the theme of the show might be. Cabaret is evolving and experimenting with presentation all the time, so perhaps there is a missed opportunity here to tell a single story through Miller’s work or even to tell his own using a biographical and progressive structure.

This admiration for Miller is certainly justified and an opportunity for his work to be better known, but it also needs context to bring it to a new audience.

Reviewed on 27 August 2023