> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# REVIEW: Me and the Girls @The Devonshire Theatre Eastbourne
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/review-me-and-the-girls-the-devonshire-theatre-eastbourne/
- Published: 2019-09-19T14:14:50.000Z
- Updated: 2019-09-26T08:27:38.000Z
- Description: Me and the Girls is a paradox – a ‘new’ Noel Coward play. It is in fact a clever musical adaptation of a short story which the Master wrote on holiday in Jamaica, and published in 1962.
- Author: Brian Butler

## Me and the Girls is a paradox – a ‘new’ Noel Coward play.

![](https://www.gscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Me-and-the-girls.WEB_.600.jpg)

IT is in fact a clever musical adaptation of a short story which the *Master* wrote on holiday in Jamaica, and published in 1962.

Coward’s dialogue- witty, precise, clipped and often stingingly accurate – shines out of his stage work. But not really out of this confection, created by **Richard Stirling**.

**James Gaddas**, well-known to TV addicts and soap fans, is the clapped-out cabaret singer/impresario, stuck in bed in his final days in a Swiss clinic, while he waits to die.

It’s not at first sight a promising idea for a light musical comedy play. And it only really works when the very many bed-based monologues to the audience give way to the routines of the manager’s six blonde bombshells – the girls of the title.

They play sax, violin, trumpet, cello and flute; they sing cutely; they tap their troubles away , and they are easily the best element of the show.

**Gaddas** makes us like his character George Banks, and it’s not difficult. He displays the dying man’s spirit of being totally at ease with his love of other men, tinged with a slight ache of not having seen his name in lights. He half-sings, half-speaks some of his songs and lets the girls take the strain of doing the dance steps but in *If Love Were All*, he really hits an emotional chord which soars above the rest of his performance.

All 6 girls are terrific in their little cameo roles but **Josephine Brydges** as the bouncy, ever-optimistic Sally and **Nicola Bryant’s** older, acerbic love-lorn Mavis take the acting credits.

Director/choreographer **Stewart Nicholls** moves the show on at a fair pace and he’s helped by the lack of any scenic effects except the central brightly-lit hospital bed. The dancing owes more to the end of the pier than the Palladium but this is supposed to be a tawdry third-rate touring group so it works well enough.

The musical interludes give us some of Coward’s best musical numbers – not least the laconic *Sail Away* and the innuendo-filled *Chase Me Charlie* and *Would you like to stick a pin in my balloon daddy* ?

When it features the ‘tits and teeth’ song and dance numbers, the show really is delightful to watch and it would play more effectively in a smaller cabaret-style venue, but as a piece of Coward memorabilia, it is certainly collectible.

*Me and the Girls* plays at the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne until Saturday September 21 as part of a UK tour.

**Review by Brian Butler**