The Life, theatre review: Gut-churning story of drugs and defiance

Twenty-seven years on from its premiere Off-Broadway, this vivid musical portrait of urban squalor finally makes it to these shores. Michael Blakemore, who’s previously directed it on a grander scale, presides over a full-blooded production that’s comparatively modest in dimensions but not in ambition.

It’s a brutal and sometimes gut-churning story of desperate individuals lurking on the fringes of New York’s Times Square. Their currencies are drugs, sleaze and defiance, and the king of their grubby world is hard-faced Memphis, played with sinister magnetism by Cornell S John.

Buzzing around him are several lesser hustlers and the women they manipulate, all jockeying for position. Those who aren’t in his thrall, at least initially, include T’Shan Williams’s high-minded Queen and her damaged, reckless lover Fleetwood (David Albury), along with apparently innocent Minnesotan newcomer Mary (Joanna Woodward), who’s far cannier than she looks.

As betrayals multiply and violence flares, an eleven-piece band exuberantly relays the mixture of jazz, funk and gospel in Cy Coleman’s surging score. At nearly three hours it’s an overlong show — some of the tunes feel overstretched and the book is bumpy. But Ira Gasman’s lyrics are often pin-sharp, and the performances pulsate with vitality. The standout is Sharon D Clarke. As Sonja, a veteran of 15,000 paid encounters, she’s vocally majestic and an expert with the acerbic one-liners.

Until April 29, Southwark Playhouse; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk