Having only witnessed the (excellent) UK touring cast of Everybody's Talking About Jamie a couple of weeks ago, it's seems to be the month of Jamie New because at last the long awaited movie version has surfaced in selected cinemas and on the Amazon Prime streaming service.
Transfering stage productions to film has long been a subject much chewed over by Phil and I, we have both been equally frustrated by some adaptations (The Phantom of the Opera) and delighted by others (Mamma Mia!). Thankfully, Jamie has taken the Mamma Mia! route and kept the core of its creative team intact, most importantly its director Jonathan Butterell.
Filmed in and around Sheffield, this is a fairytale doused in glitter and grime. The cinematography is by and large striking, a musical should take us into its world and in this respect Jamie most certainly does, one minute a kitchen of a city semi-detached and the next into a fantasy sequence of glitter balls and fabulousness.
This is a show that rides and falls on its central character and the actor who plays the ambitious but flawed Jamie New. In Max Harwood the director has found a young player who can bring out both aspects of Jamie's journey, and whether its the dancing, singing or the hurt at his rejection by his alpha male Dad, it is a a performance that has you rooting for this eccentric teenager to win through. And we have to like Jamie if this show / film is to succeed. Harwood is lucky to have many scenes opposite Lauren Patel, who as Jamie's best friend Pritti Pasha delivers a very different but equally engaging performance. The big acting guns come in the shape of Sarah Lancashire as Margaret New and Richard E. Grant as Hugo Battersby otherwise known by his drag alter ego Loco Chanelle. It comes as no surprise that Lancashire delivers a first class performance, she has been doing it for decades on stage and on screen, and her performance of 'He's My Boy' is a defining moment of her character and of the movie itself.
The roles of some characters have been cut down. Shobna Gulati's Ray is denied some of her best comic moments from the stage show, some of the fire of the character is missing. I would have liked to have seen Ray tell the head of Mayfield School that the schools attitude to Jamie "boils her piss". But alas she is strangely muted in this screen version. So whilst we get plenty of glitz and campery from Jamie, it sometimes doesn't feel quite as balanced as it could do character wise. We have also lost some of the stage show score. Gone is the lengthy 'The Legend of Loco Chanelle' sequence in favour of the Holly Johnson-does-Pet Shop Boys beat of 'This Was Me' with VHS footage of gay rights campaigners and the ugly spectre of Aids in the 1980s, swapping Loco Chanelle's backstory for Hugo's. But to be fair, you are never going to please everybody when it comes to adapting a popular stage franchise and the high moments of the movie make up for shortfalls in story arcs. A mention for the villains of the piece, Ralph Ineson gives his usual top notch gritty performance as Jamie's Dad whilst Samuel Bottomley is school bully Dean Paxton, who gets a little redemption at the end thanks to Jamie's generous nature. Both deserve a bit more screen time. Richard E. Grant services Hugo well in his pivotal role, thankfully being just OTT enough to grab a few laughs but at the same time reminding us that Hugo has fallen from the heights of topping the bill at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London and is now running a somewhat shabby dress shop for drag queens.
The story of Jamie New is all about being true to yourself, and that is a lesson we all need to learn from time to time, the fact that he does it in a haze of glitter and Prom-fabulous is a bonus which will I suspect by and large delight the stage show followers and also gather some new devotees to the House Of Loco. With this big screen version, Jamie has taken the ultimate step out of the darkenss and into the spotlight. It retains enough of the high energy and comic thrust of the theatre version, and adds a few moments of its own to make sure its not a slavish copy. Its the tonic we need right now in the slow recovery from the pandemic. For me, this is among the high end of movie musical adaptations. Because like Jamie, it has - for the most part - remained true to itself.
Rob Cope for Doctor Theatre
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