Fly More Than You Fall, Eric Holmes and Nat Zegree’s new musical that’s just opened at Southwark Playhouse’s ‘Elephant’, comes with some cute ideas, a fresh sounding score, and that little extra sprinkle of fairy dust that only comes with a bona fide star, but sadly it failed to take off and fly for me.
The story concerns seventeen year old Malia (a likeable Robyn Rose-Li) who wants to be a writer and is sent off to a writing summer camp by her parents Jennifer (Keala Settle of Greatest Showman fame) a teacher, and Paul (Cavin Cornwall), where she gets the chance to pitch the story she’s working on, that of a bird who can’t fly, Willow (sung with crystal clarity by Maddison Bullyment).
Willow is the de facto avatar for Malia and embodies her dreams (and later on, her fears). If this all sounds confusing you’re going to have to believe me when I say it works on stage.
Just as things are getting going and Malia is settling in and making friends, notably Caleb (Max Gill), she gets called into the office where her parents are waiting to give her the news that she’s being taken out of summer school as her mother has stage four cancer and is clearly dying, something she does during the interval.
Act two concerns the aftermath, and Malia’s relationship with her father. There’s more of her dealing with grief, the bird gets a friend and predictably learns to fly, and she gets published in a magazine.
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is mentioned quite a bit, and we’re given to believe that after getting what she’s always wanted she is resurrected as a better person and faces her final trial, that of dealing with life after the death of her mother.
Where to begin. Well, as with so many new musicals… the book doesn’t work.
I was fully onboard with Malia heading off to summer camp, and things were going well for our active protagonist until… well, until her parents arrived.
From that point onwards she stopped being an active protagonist and became a passive little girl to whom stuff happened. Short of coming up with a cure for cancer there was never any way in which Malia was ever going to get over the insurmountable obstacle in her life of her mother facing certain death. From that point onwards I lost emotional involvement and became a viewer of what was on offer, rather than having any active emotional buy-in.
The music is mainly pleasant enough (please, let’s stop having to shoe-horn in a rap number!), and the cast are excellent, though some seemed to have a problem fitting in all the words, and there were a few sound issues which will presumably be ironed out as the run continues.
I even liked the idea of the birds in Malia’s story becoming the avatars for her thoughts and emotions, though this did have the unfortunate effect of taking those emotions out of Malia’s mouth, which only served to distance her from me further.
Oh, and if you’ve got a genuine star in the show, use her.
Poor Keala Settle was nowhere to be seen between the end of Act One and the finale. This is musical theatre. Anything can happen, or be made to happen. Faced with having Audra McDonald killed off in Act One of Ragtime Ahrens and Flaherty find ways of using her in Act Two, and the big interior monologue in act two of this show, of a grieving husband dreaming of his now dead wife is one of the obvious moments missing from the score.
All in all well done, and well sung, but it didn’t move me.
Venue: The Southwark Playhouse – Elephant
Book & Lyrics: Eric Holmes
Music & Lyrics: Nat Zegree
Starring: Keala Settle, Cavin Cornwall, Robyn Rose-Li, Maddison Bullyment, Max Gill, Edward Chitticks, Bessy Ewa, Harry Mallaghan, Sara Bartos, Kieran Usher, Zasha Ravie, Jojo Meredity
Dates: 18th October to 23rd November 2024
Running time: 135 minutes including 1 x 15 minute Interval
Photo credit: Craig Fuller