Plucked from The X Factor and given a starring role in the West End, Diana Vickers acquits herself well in this polished revival of Jim Cartwright’s 1992 play. As LV, the Little Voice of the title, a Lancashire teenager who can express herself only through the torch songs from her late father’s LP collection, Vickers shuffles around awkwardly before blooming behind the mike in a sparkly gown at a local working-men’s club.
Does that give the game away? Well, Vickers’s fame as a belter-out of primetime power ballads takes away the element of surprise that Jane Horrocks may have had in the original production. But surprise needn’t be the key element here. What Vickers lacks is the facility of a true mimic. “An act of wonder!” exclaims Tony Haygarth as Mr Boo, the club owner. But though Vickers sings her pastiches with power and respect, she rarely sounds as though she’s reincarnating Dusty Springfield, Edith Piaf or Judy Garland. When she sings a new song at the end, co-written by Mark Owen of Take That, it’s supposedly in her own voice. Well, it’s modern, and it soars — but her own voice is just like her other voices.
Still, Cartwright’s more interested in Little Voice’s loudmouth mother, Marie, who keeps a bottle of gin in her beanbag but sticks most of her passion upfront. Lesley Sharp gives an absolutely barnstorming performance. Dressing sexy, dead set on fun, her Marie chooses loudness as her defence just as LV chooses quietness as hers. Sharp’s Lancashire Rs go a bit Nashville now and then, but this is a big performance that isn’t a caricature. And if her closing speeches don’t quite acquire Blanche DuBois levels of a life wasted, it’s because Cartwright put more of the life of the play into his wonderful dialogue than into his northern fairtyale story.
Marc Warren is drily funny as Marie’s boyfriend, Ray Say (pictured with Vickers), a mix of loser and viper who impresses with his guile, then appals with his cruelty. Terry Johnson’s smart production has strong turns, too, from James Cartwright (Jim’s son) as Billy, LV’s besotted fellow wallflower, and Rachel Lumberg as Marie’s punchbag of a best friend, Sadie. And Lez Brotherston’s set is brilliant: Marie’s terraced house swivels on a revolve, its electrics cracking and popping, before turning into Mr Boo’s tinselly club. All that’s lacking is something miraculous, at the show’s heart, to make it as affecting as it is impressive
