LondonMusicalReview

Standing at the Sky’s Edge – Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

Reviewer: Jane Darcy

Writer: Chris Bush

Music and Lyrics: Richard Hawley

Director: Robert Hastie

Standing at the Sky’s Edge celebrates Sheffield’s Park Hill, the Le Courbusier-inspired brutalist housing scheme built in the 50s to replace slums. It seemed boldly imaginative, offering tenants an ultra-modern standard of living and a magnificent view down over the city. Like other such schemes, however, problems with the building itself, exacerbated by the loss of the steel industry, led to its being virtually abandoned within 30 years. Its controversial listing as a Grade 11* building opened it up to a costly redevelopment programme, swishy newly refurbed apartments now on sale for the breed formerly known as yuppies. One-third of the show focuses on sophisticated Londoner Poppy, one of these new owner-occupiers.

Chris Bush broadly sketches in the political and social developments which cover the decades of Sheffield Park’s story, from the re-nationalisation of steel and the resultant unemployment and industrial unrest, through Thatcherism and the defeat of Neil Kinnock to the present day.

This is the backdrop to three different stories of people who lived in one of these flats at different points in time. In the 1960s a young couple, Rose and Harry, are thrilled to have their first real home. Harry works in the steel industry and his story takes the familiar trajectory in which unemployment eventually crushes his dreams. A brother and sister fleeing turmoil in Liberia move in with their young niece, Joy, whose story will take centre stage. Meanwhile Poppy, with her knowing references to Ottolenghi and Ocado, has bought her flat in the aftermath of a broken relationship.

The set shows a slice of the imagined brutalist housing, two upper layers housing the band. The action for the most part takes place at one level, characters deftly weaving in and out of the outline of a single flat. Under Robert Hastie’s direction, scenes are tightly controlled. Set pieces, such as the one in which characters from all three time frames sit to eat at the dining table and the later New Year’s Eve party, work brilliantly. But Lynne Page’s choreography as the show reaches its third hour feels repetitive.

It’s the same issue with the music. Excellently orchestrated by Tom Deering and directed by Alex Beetschen, it features songs written by Richard Hawley, once a performer in Pulp. Playwright Bush describes her delight in being able to pick from Hawley’s back catalogue. But there is a sense of songs not always being a close fit with the drama itself. This is particularly so of the powerful number, Midnight Train, which opens the second half, its full-blooded American vibe having little to say about Britain in the period. The big number which closes the first half, There’s a Storm A-Comin’, comes after a string of gently sentimental ballads. The sudden switch into full-blown rock, and the attendant enactment of civil unrest, feels unearned. We know about violent scenes on such estates, but the show itself, with its cosy focus on three nice families, has given little to suggest why this is so.

The singers themselves are uniformly excellent, in particular Lauryn Redding as Nikki, Rachel Wooding as Rose and Sharlene Hector as Grace/Alice, and there is no doubting the commitment of all performers. Perhaps it is the transfer from the National Theatre where it won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical of 2023, that allows questions to creep in. The individual stories can seem thin, the determination to show love conquering all too trite. In particular, the will-they won’t-they of Poppy and Nikki seems pointlessly protracted, the reason for their original break-up and Poppy’s rigid determination to banish Nikki from her life having little to say about Sheffield Park, changing social conditions or, the show’s insistent theme, community.

It’s a big, slick, sentimental show, perhaps not as pointedly relevant as it first seemed.

Runs until 3 August 2024

The Reviews Hub Score

Big, slick, sentimental

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The Reviews Hub - London

The Reviews Hub London is under the editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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