Review: Bugsy Malone at the Lyceum, Sheffield

The custard pies are flying, the splurge guns splatting, and the sequins, feathers and pinstripe suits are peppered with gunge. It’s all just another slapstick night at Fat Sam’s Grand Slam Speakeasy.

Bugsy Malone always was a bizarre premise, a Prohibition-era gangster movie played out by children, and the film which made Jodie Foster a star is undeniably unusual.

Its director Alan Parker, back then an unknown, would tell kid-friendly mobster stories to his children on car journeys up to Derbyshire, and his tall tales turned into his first musical movie.

Somehow the spoof surrealism lends itself better to the theatre and, unlike the film, the child stars really sing rather than having their vocals voiced weirdly by grown-ups.

That’s a real treat in the case of Mia Lakha, captivating as Bugsy’s love interest Blousey Brown. Her pure tone steals the show in solos I’m Feeling Fine and Ordinary Fool.

The seven lead roles are all performed by children - three rotating casts of kids aged nine to 15 - supported by an adult ensemble of Fat Sam and Dandy Dan’s rival gangs of hapless hoodlums.

Our Bugsy was played with cute charisma by pint-sized Gabriel Payne, just 13 and an acting veteran already, with credits in the West End, TV ads, and the upcoming Matilda film. Glamorous flapper Jasmine Sakyiama was suitably sophisticated as worldly-wise moll Tallulah.

But what makes Bugsy Malone so memorable, its child cast, can also be its downfall when the acting sometimes slips into school production territory. The enunciation becomes unclear, the comic timing clunky, the New Yoik dialogue a little rushed. And there’s a lot of dialogue - fedoras off to the young cast having to learn so many lines.

Act 2 is stronger than the first, with better songs and more set pieces. So You Wanna Be a Boxer, one of the less memorable melodies in the film, is a knockout number in the show thanks to punchy choreography.

And there are eye catching visuals against the black backdrop of the NYC fire escapes. The cabaret tables look like showgirls’ skirts as they float down from the ceiling, and the speakeasy’s spirits shelf is a glowing kaleidoscope of colour. The frenetic strobe-lit car chase assaults the senses like the blinding pop of the newspaperman’s camera flash.

The story may be almost 50 but there’s still a heart-warming charm to a show that turns gang life into child’s play, rightly making a mockery of the Mafia men playing at mobsters.

And the high energy megamix encore at the end ensures the show goes out with a bang.

Bugsy Malone

The Lyceum, Sheffield

until Saturday, October 1