DADDY LONG LEGS (Boulevard Productions/Smock Alley Theatre/Stream Theatre)*****

 

By Louise 

Link: https://www.stream.theatre/season/32 

Available until: Performances every night at 7.30pm until Sunday 14^th March. Matinées at 2.30pm on Wednesday 10^th, Saturday 13^th and Sunday 14^th.

I hadn’t even heard of this musical before, but it is so lovely. The pandemic is so sad, but Stream Theatre has been so wonderful to introducing me to musicals and plays I might never have seen otherwise.

Daddy Long Legs is about a girl called Jerusha who is the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home. She enjoys writing and one day she hears that a man calling himself Mr Smith wants to pay for her to be educated in a women’s college so she can train to be a writer. She doesn’t get to meet him, but she sees him from a distance and gets the impression he is a very tall man.

‘Mr Smith’, who is really called Jervis Pendleton, asks Jerusha to write to him once a month to tell him how she is getting on, but he won’t reply. Jerusha finds this surprising and she is very curious about him, but she knows he won’t answer her questions so she builds up an image of him in her mind. She thinks he must be quite old so she imagines him as being grey or bald. As the only thing she knows is that he’s very tall, she decides to call him Daddy Long Legs.

I think that nickname is a little bit rude, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys her lovely, funny letters. He is so curious, he decides he wants to meet her, but instead of introducing himself as Mr Smith, he introduces himself by his real name. He is the uncle of one of Jerusha’s classmates so it is natural for him to be visiting the school and he doesn’t tell anyone he’s also Mr Smith. He and Jerusha get on really well, but Jervis does not tell her the truth about who he is. They meet a few other times too, but he is always Jervis. After their meetings, Jerusha writes to ‘Daddy Long Legs’ and tells him how lovely Jervis is.

The book of the musical was written by John Caird and it was based on a novel called Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. I have never read it, but my mum read it when she was in the infants. She doesn’t remember it very well and although she could read the words, she might not have understood all the themes, but she thinks it is made up of Jerusha’s letters (though she’s called Judy for short in the novel). I think it sounds like a really lovely book, but the ‘Daddy Long Legs’ nickname does make me feel uncomfortable because it makes him sound like a parent, but Jerusha falls in love with him.

It is an interesting musical because there are only two actors in it and they are apart for most of the musical, but It still works really well. Jerusha is a lovely character and she is so good at putting everything into words, she doesn’t really need to talk to anyone else. Jervis joins in sometimes, reading bits from her letters as well as occasionally trying to write letters himself and this works too. He’s not so good at putting things into words so it makes sense for him to say a lot less.

The music and lyrics are written by Paul Gordon. It isn’t sung-through, but most of it is sung, which is a big ask for the actor playing Jerusha, but the music is really lovely. It is slightly in an operatic direction, but I like opera. There are some really lovely lines, including some really humorous moments, and it all feels very authentic.

The directors are Killian Collins and Mark O’Looney. There is very little action – mostly, Jerusha is standing or walking around the stage, saying or singing what is in her letters. Jervis has a desk with a typewriter and other materials and he is seen reading the letters or moving around his little office area. It works really well though because the musical is mostly about what is going on in the characters’ minds and they’re behaving in a natural way. When there is interaction between them, it seems even stronger because they are mostly kept apart, even when they’re thinking about the times they have spent together. (This is actually an old production, not a COVID production, but it would be a good choice if you wanted a small cast and social distancing.)

The role of Jerusha is very demanding as she’s onstage and performing for the whole musical and does most of the singing and talking for two hours, but Róisín Sullivan manages everything really well. She has a really lovely voice and a strong stage presence and she has the vocal and physical energy to keep going. She is really lovely and sweet so you can see why Jervis loves her letters so much. Even though she’s mostly standing there, telling us what happened, she is animated and she shows lots of emotion so it is very involving.

Eoin Cannon plays Jervis. He has the easier job physically as he doesn’t do nearly as much as Jerusha, but he also has to try to get people to care about Jervis as much as they care about Jerusha. That is really difficult when he doesn’t have nearly as much to do as her and he does spend a lot of time lying to her, which not everyone would understand. But Mr Cannon characterises Jervis really well and he shows his awkwardness about social interaction, his fear of messing things up, his guilt that he hasn’t told her the truth yet… he is just so sweet and so human and it’s so lovely watching him fall in love with Jerusha from her letters and then even more when he meets her.

Daddy Long Legs is a really lovely musical and it’s also interesting because it’s so different from a lot of musicals and the story is told in such an unusual way. I don’t think I’ll have the chance to see it again this week, but Stream Theatre often bring their productions back if they’re popular and this is one I’d really love to see again if they brought it back in the future.