Starry night

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
Vaudeville

Life is a Dream
Donmar

Midnight in a northern slum. The pubs have closed and a boozy, blousy, past-it single mum is trying to seduce a handsome young talent scout. He deters her advances until he hears her teenage daughter, alone in her bedroom, singing jazz classics. The girl is an undiscovered star who can impersonate all the great 20th-century divas, Ella, Edith, Shirley, Dusty, Lulu. The talent scout decides to launch her career and prise her from the clutches of her bullying, drunken mother. Jim Cartwright’s 1992 play is an ingenious comic update of Cinderella. From the producer’s point of view it’s supremely difficult to revive. The title role requires a young actress with fab looks, strong acting skills and a vocal range sufficiently well developed for her to mimic great singers at the height of their powers.

Diana Vickers, a wannabe plucked from The X Factor, has been blessed with the required box of tricks and her starry performance had the stalls leaping and cheering like football hooligans. Lesley Sharp as the hideous, alcoholic mum seems to be exorcising all kinds of demons. Just occasionally she veers into caricature, as if she’s having so much fun playing the toxic matriarch that she doesn’t care if anyone else is having fun watching her. Subtler and more furtively skilful is Marc Warren as the seedy talent scout, who shimmies through the role like a cobra in a gold medallion, and there’s strong support from Rachel Lumberg as the mother’s harassed sidekick, Sadie. Amazingly, one of the smaller roles is played by an actor with the same name as the author, James Cartwright. Even more amazingly he’s the writer’s son. Imagine the rejoicing in the rehearsal room when that coincidence was discovered.