Rating: ★★★
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Elephant
Cast: Keala Settle, Cavin Cornwall, Robyn Rose-Li, Maddison Bulleyment, Max Gill, Edward Chitticks, Bessy Ewa, Harry Mallaghan, Sara Bartos, Kieran Usher, Zasha Rabie and JoJo Meredith
Star of Broadway, West End and The Greatest Showman, Tony-nominated Keala Settle joins the cast of this sensational new musical. Based on lived experiences the uplifting and inspiring show navigates grief with some incredible songs that are bound to get stuck in your head! This isn’t just a musical, it’s a journey that will break your heart and mend it all in one night.
Fly More Than You Fall is a new musical that promises to "break and mend your heart all in one night", currently running at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant, and starring Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman) and Robyn Rose-Li as the mother-daughter duo at the centre of this story.
Malia's life is thrown into turmoil after her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Her dream of being an author gets tangled up with the nightmare that facing life without her mother is, and as she grapples with grief, she tries to find comfort in her writing and in her friends. As much as I wanted to enjoy this show, I unfortunately left feeling like it fell more than it flew.
First, the positives. The story, despite not being ground-breaking in its originality, is very wholesome at its core. I wouldn't say it broke my heart as promised, but that might be down to the actual writing (more on this later).
The highlight of the show was undoubtably the voices of the performers on stage and the vocal arrangements that showcased their talent perfectly. Keala Settle's performance gave me chills on more than one occasion, but my favourite moments were those when Malia and Willow, the main character of her story (played by Maddison Bulleyment) came together. Max Gill as Caleb was a delight, even though the character felt one-dimensional and was unfortunately reduced to "inspirational friend" and nothing else.
The stage design was beautiful, but the care and thought put to the background didn't translate to the downstage section, where crates and boxes were moved (far too often and to no effect) by members of the ensemble.
I quite enjoyed the meta story within the show, the one our protagonist is writing throughout. It added an element of whimsy that arguably aged down the show, but that provided very cute moments that I found myself looking forward to more and more throughout.
Sadly, this is where the positives end. The biggest issue of the show was in the writing. The dialogue felt amateurish, stilted at times, and cheesy at others. As a whole, the story works, but when you break it down to scene by scene, the structure breaks apart. Characters get upset at random, and nowhere is this issue more obvious than towards the final 10% of the show, where we go from happy to angry to sad to happy again at breakneck speed for seemingly no reason.
Even though some of the songs were enjoyable and bop-py, they were repetitive, and there was little variation between them, as they showed an over-reliance on big belting finales, a la Idina Menzel, only for every number, which grew tired very quickly.
The set transitions were unnecessary and disruptive. I was sat in the basement/stalls level at the Southwark Playhouse and was constantly distracted by the doors opening and closing, far too often, by members of the ensemble. In all honesty, I feel the company could have been half the size and not much would have been lost. This is by no means a criticism of the ensemble's talent, as every performer was fabulous, but the Southwark Playhouse has a very small stage, and for 80% of the runtime we only saw them when crates had to be moved.
If only to see Keala Settle, I think this show was worth it, but sadly the issues are far too great to gap the chasm between okay (which it was) and wonderful (which I was hoping for).
You can book tickets to Fly More Than You Fall, here.
Review by Luma
**photo credit: Craig Fuller**
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