If Frances Ruffelle fancied putting on a one-woman cabaret show, it would be pretty good. The West End and Broadway star has certainly pulled together a decent set of original songs to flesh out I Can Die Too.
Written by a dozen or so songwriters and brightly arranged by musical director Frew, they have the 1980s/90s pop feel of Cyndi Lauper, Britney Spears and Ultravox; a touch of torch song here, a slice of synth ballad there. Backed by cello, violin, keys and drums, Ruffelle is in her element singing them: nothing histrionic and the good judgment to know when the song needs a swing of the hips, a soft-shoe shuffle or just a straight, closed-eyed rendition.
This, however, is not a cabaret show – although exactly how to categorise I Can Die Too is hard to say. Credited to three writers – Ruffelle, Sally George and Pitlochry’s artistic director Alan Cumming – it is about an actor, Lily, rehearsing a stage performance of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine.
In that 1930 monologue, a woman spends an anxious night phoning a lover on the eve of his marriage to someone else. In this version, Lily repeatedly breaks off from a script she finds too fatalistic to share reminiscences from her own love life – a lost teenage sweetheart, an overpowering boyfriend, a child adopted – none of it out of the ordinary.
Her state of mind is the cue for the songs, played by the five musicians when they are not doubling as the sketchily drawn backstage crew. As is the way of behind-the-scenes dramas, Lily is a boozy narcissist who infuriates her colleagues, but the play is so underwritten it is hard to distinguish between the fictional actor and the character she is playing.
The only action that takes place on stage is the unconvincing squabbling between Lily and her director James (Stephen Ashfield). Everything else happens somewhere else at a different time, remote and undramatic. Belatedly, a story emerges – a sentimental mother-daughter reunion – but too late to invest in it.
A well-resourced studio show, Bill Buckhurst’s production looks as if it has ambitions for a longer life. If that is the case, it will take more than good songs to carry it.
