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Reviews: When Harry Met Sally; Salad Days

metromagazine
5/ 5/2005

Salad Days

Palace Theatre until Saturday

CONFESSIONS first: I do remember the first time round.

This production celebrates 50 years since Salad Days began, and though I saw it on tour several years later, memory lingers on.

No show captured the spirit of 1950s Britain in quite the same way.

But it was a delicate flower.

No use trying to update: references to Windsor register office and Guantanamo, and a desperate attempt to camp up references to "feeling gay", don't work and should be dropped.

But period costumes, picture-style settings and of course the original score bring an innocent and beautiful past to life - pity about those technical problems.

Casting is variable.

Helen Power works really hard as Jane and gets there.

Of the others, Tony Howes stands out, and Vicki Michelle delivers her cameos as Lady Raeburn and Asphynxia determinedly.

I think two things made this show in 1954, youth's exuberance and sheer, unaided theatrical skill.

With canned sound and less natural talent, it couldn't be quite the same.

But thanks for trying.

And, of course, we who said we "wouldn't look back" have changed and done just that.

Robert Beale

When Harry Met Sally

The Lowry until Saturday

BASED on the 1989 romantic comedy hit that is still freely available, the most pressing question this show evokes is "why bother?" Admittedly the film was a fairly static and dialogue-driven affair, but this stage adaptation, starring Gaby Roslin in the Meg Ryan role of the perkily romantic Sally and Jonathan Wrather as Billy Crystal's depressive sexual opportunist Harry, adds nothing to it.

Like a tribute group, the show heads straight for the audience's comfort zone, with almost all of the good and admittedly still funny lines coming straight from the film.

Many of them, in fact, have become so familiar that audience members could be heard anticipating them.

In the build-up to the famous fake orgasm scene, their own building excitement was palpable and, in the wake of Gaby Roslin's creditable effort, the applause all but drowned out the famous "I'll have what she's having" payoff.

Obviously, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with a live audience enjoying themselves and, if a competent live-action version of one of your favourite films sounds like your idea of a great night out at the theatre, then this is the show for you.

Kevin Bourke