I like watching rows of hoofers doing their thing, all teeth and tits. I love the gunshot staccato of 60 feet simultaneously tap-dancing. Like any girl, and a good few men of my acquaintance, I adore ostrich feathers and sequins and the sheer feelgood uplift of a great West End musical. But if I can't have a massive chorus line (and with budgets the way they are, who can?) - or the kind of finale that makes you lament never getting tap-dancing lessons - then what I want from a musical is what I want from all theatre: intimacy.
Watching the Union's revival of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (clearly on a below-par night, judging by the other reviews), I was reminded that a chamber Sweeney or Fiddler on the Roof can fire an audience's imagination just as much as a chamber Macbeth or Strindberg. Small-scale musicals can make a newly orchestrated score and book seem much more rich and multi-layered than a traditional West End approach.
I recall Phil Willmott's pocket-sized musicals at BAC, such as The Sound of Music, The King and I and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with huge affection. I've never seen full-scale versions to match them. The close-up is as important as the expansive gesture in a musical . As the closure of Never Forget proves, the expansive gesture – that show-stopping rain sequence that closed the first act – is no guarantee of success if the book is rubbish.
John Doyle's Fiddler at the Watermill near Newbury towered head and shoulders above the recent Sheffield Theatres/West End revival with Henry Goodman. Doyle and his musical arranger, Sarah Tipple, made a strength out of the Watermill's tiny space with a string of successful actor-musician productions of Sondheim and others. Sondheim seems particularly suited to the intimate, and this Christmas London still has Trevor Nunn's revival of A Little Night Music at the Menier and an Into the Woods at the tiny Upstairs at the Gatehouse to look forward to. One of the advantages of the Union for a show such as Sweeney is that its under-the-arches location drips atmosphere so the production has an inbuilt site-responsive element. If we can have site-responsive dance and plays, why not site-responsive musicals? Indeed, why not site-specific musicals?
Sometimes bigger is better: plenty say that La Cage aux Folles works more successfully at the Playhouse than at the Menier. Doyle became a maestro at moving shows from the Watermill to the West End and Broadway without losing the pared-down immediacy of the productions. Whether Craig Revel Horwood can manage the same with his revival of the blowsy Sunset Boulevard, which arrives at the Comedy theatre this week, remains to be seen. One of the problems with his Watermill production was its lack of restraint and inner emotional truth. Maybe that won't be such a problem on a West End stage.
With the Broadway in Lewisham currently playing host to Thom Sutherland's revival of Mack and Mabel (he also directed the Union's much acclaimed Annie Get Your Gun and The Pajama Game), and the Landor regularly proving its musical credentials, it's clear that the big musical doesn't always have to have a mega-staging. In these difficult economic times, lower costs and lower ticket prices may mean that the big musical hits of the past will - if estates and publishers are sufficiently forward thinking to allow the rights to be secured - find an entirely new lease of life and new audiences in small spaces at a price that theatregoers can afford.
