Outshining the problems

In Sylvia Freedman's 19th-century feminist musical (bear with me), Sapphic, it's more than grim up North. 'Our mam's had ten children, seven are in the cemetery,' notes the plucky Jessie Sanders, laying down her 'stitching' and waiting for her Da to come home and start walloping the bejesus out of them all.

Our Jessie wants out, and it's the London stage that's fired her imagination. First she must endure trial by toy factory, where she draws the amorous attentions of upstanding local impressionist Jack and a curious cross-dressing girl known as Chad.

And when professional thesps Wilbert and Monticello come to town with their travelling Shakespeare show, Jessie's spirited singing in the local pub earns her a ticket to the music hall.

Freedman's script veers off repeatedly into Pythonesque excess, and her focus is almost always off-centre. Chad, for instance, is quickly disposed of with only a handful of lines, despite being the most interesting thing on stage, and Jessie is not psychologically situated well.

But John Adams's direction is simply superlative, the ensemble cast, particularly Laura-Kate Gordon's tragic Chad and Bryony Afferson's carousing Jessie effortlessly inhabit the rough and tumble world of Victorian entertainment, and the musical numbers are a delight. This is an odd case of a beautifully turned production outshining a problem-riddled play.

Rough Music
King's Head, Islington
Upper Street, Islington, N1 1QN