Fourteen Again: a ‘smartly funny evocation of female friendship’ that’s ‘hard to resist’

Ria Jones and Sally Ann Triplett in Fourteen Again — ‘Magnificent stars’: Ria Jones and Sally Ann Triplett

(Image credit: Pamela Raith Photography)

Victoria Wood’s death ten years ago, aged just 62, left “a hole where her wit and wisdom, her humanity and her sharp satirical eye used to be”, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. Now, at a theatre in the Lake District newly renamed in her honour, comes this chamber musical showcasing 12 of her best songs. It is an “enterprise built on love and friendship”: the show’s “magnificent stars” (Sally Ann Triplett and Ria Jones) and key members of its creative team had long associations with Wood. But it is not just a tribute to an inimitable talent: “Fourteen Again” is a “smartly funny evocation of female friendship and endurance that is heart-raisingly hard to resist”.

In this “time-slip” show, Triplett and Jones play Peggy and Lou, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian – best friends at school who meet again at a diet club decades later. The two reminisce, and share the disappointments of their lives. Then Peggy wakes up 14 again, and vows to do better this time. With references to Bejam and Basil Brush, the show initially comes across as a slightly ersatz “nostalgia fest”, but by the end “you are crying for these women, as well as for the genius who died too early” but left us her “glorious” songs. Some are “giddy with domestic delights”, others Larkinesque in their melancholy, pathos and bathos.

Strongly sung, and pacily directed by Jonathan O’Boyle, the show has two problems, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. One is that “while evoking Wood, it also makes you miss her singular melt-an-audience-with-one-look quality”. Another is that her songs were not written to “advance a plot”: they are “compressed dramas”. Still, it does prove an essential truth about her: she is rarely one thing. In her work, sadness and joy, exuberance and despair, all dissolve into each other. At their sharpest, her songs are “the musical equivalent of Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’ monologues”, said Clive Davis in The Times – and it is a pleasure to hear them again, in this poignant, effervescent, superbly acted show. It “would need bulking up if it transferred to a larger venue”, but it surely deserves another life.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.