Roommates: The Musical.

It will be difficult to review this show with its turning into gush.  It’s terrific.  On one level, it’s simple and unadorned. You might wonder, how can a one-woman show be a ‘musical’?  Well, there’s a story, there are characters, Jude, Jane and Alice, and there are songs that arise directly from the story – the story of two women in a run-down share house, who are joined by a third and how they all change.  Yes, the very talented Jude Perl is alone on stage – and at the piano – and the other characters are heard as ‘voices off’ but they also express themselves in the songs.  

Jude – as ‘Jude’ - is anxious, self-doubting and all too easily demoralised by her ‘best friend’ and housemate, Jane.  Jane’s game (in the sense of “Games People Play’) is ‘I’m Only Trying to Help You’ – which licenses her effectively to criticise, undermine, demoralise and paralyse Jude – as a means, of course, of avoiding doing anything about her own inadequacies and loneliness.  Don’t we all have a ‘friend’ like that?  Jude is easy to undermine.  Her anxieties are all very now.  Her relationships don’t last.  Is she sexually inadequate?  Her attempts at anything seem to fail.  In her first song, she’s defensive about being in a share house at thirty-five and explains: ‘…it’s not sad, it’s practical!’  She considers dance classes, but Jane reminds her, with an old VHS tape, of how Jude made a complete fool of herself when she was eight…  And so on.  But they need a new house mate – and happy Alice, a dancer and, naturally, the catalyst, moves in… 

The story holds it all together.  Ms Perl leaves the piano and goes centre stage to suffer Jane’s ‘help’ and be intrigued by Alice’s ‘happiness’, which just bubbles up…  

But the show is really about the songs.  Like any good musical, the songs give us the inner states, the confessions of pain, doubt and the finding of a way up and out.  Musically, the songs are in the style of contemporary music theatre, but without the ‘belting’, screaming and over-emoting.  These are clever songs that trip off Ms Perl’s tongue, have ingenious rhymes, go off at tangents and add parentheses, but are beautifully structured and always come back to the subject.  These songs are funny or poignant or angry – and the audience can’t help applauding every one.  And why not?  They’re so good and so well performed.  When we hit the song in which – of course – Jude rebels against Jane’s perpetual, negative carping, we cheer too.

Ms Perl is a Green Room Award winner.  She’s done a Marvin Gaye tribute show with Simon LaBonte.  I think she can stick to her own material and she can certainly hold the stage.  Go see her: she’s funny, she’s sharp, she’s touching, she can dance and she’s a big talent in a small package.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Annie Bourke.