The new Southwark Playhouse (Elephant) has the feel of a repurposed printworks with all the industrial design tropes that belie its brand-new reality, and is, in fact, a building that will not be spewing out political propaganda but one producing relevant, vital productions that will nourish – and not brainwash – the people of the Elephant & Castle and beyond, writes Michael Holland…
The first big show in the new playhouse is Berlusconi, a new musical, that tells the tale – through song – of Silvio Berlusconi’s life from middle-class mediocrity to media monster spewing out political propaganda.
The main story is based around Berlusconi’s tax fraud trial with his past life told in snatches of flashback between breaks in the court case, and compared with the troubled life of Tiberius, the Roman emperor who suspected many plots against him. The set looks like the Senate steps of ancient Rome where Julius Caesar came to a bloody end at the end of his friends’ knives. The show opens with flag-waving supporters singing ‘Healer, Leader, Saviour, Redeemer’ and Silvio himself proclaiming he is the ‘Jesus Christ of politics’ before a backdrop of projected hagiographic headlines and TV news on screens dotted around the auditorium!
We see Silvio as a boy growing up in Milan, then as a cruise ship crooner, seducing his way across the oceans while schmoozing the women with song and charm. After sailing the seven seas he becomes a property developer, a move that gave him the funds to buy his first TV channel. The money and power this provided went to his head; his lifestyle took him away from the nice person he had been brought up to be and into a life of nightclubs and women and not being exactly honest in business.
The hangers-on he now attracted advised him to go into politics. Berlusconi became a founder member of Forza Italia and within a few months, with the aid of his national TV station, he was appointed Prime Minister. Forza Italia was considered Silvio’s personal party and it was his personality rather than his ideology that appealed to voters.
But over time the cracks appear, there are stories of fraud and ill-treatment of women, though the accusations were mainly kept in check by a lack of media opposition and a corrupt system where he would have court cases thrown out before they got started. When the tide really turns there is ‘a tsunami of bad news’, with a mistress, the hired women, the ex-wife and even his parents from beyond the grave speaking out against him.
And all this is played out in a whole range of tunes that allowed a superb cast to show off their skills: the rockers like ‘Let’s Get This Show On The Road’ as the charismatic leader gets ready to fight; the up-tempo number when Silvio dares them to ‘bring it on’, and Secrets and Lies, the poignant song sung by ex-wife (Emma Hatton) wishing she was dead as she lies alone thinking of her husband with other women. Towards the end, ’When you get paid, played and laid by the Devil’ reveals that you will have to pay back in kind… And then Ilda, the prosecutor who has set her sights on putting Berlusconi in jail, sings of how he has bought power, and corrupted the legal system, through his media companies for 35 years! Like Tango-gladiators in the arena, they circle each other, looking for a weakness, looking for that one chink in the armour before they strike. Berlusconi then sings a hip-thruster about how he won over the Italian women by giving them Dallas and Dynasty and got the men onside by buying AC Milan. The writers, Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan, have made Berlusconi a blast. And they know how to use a cuss word perfectly.
Sebastien Torkia did a sleazy Silvio as if he was born to do it. Emma Hatton glowed as wife Veronica, and Gavin Wilkinson gave a nice cameo of Putin when he comes a-courting Berlusconi. But this is very much an ensemble piece with everyone making sure this rollercoaster with no brakes ran on pure energy.
Bravo to Lucy Osborne’s set that had the cast dicing with danger on every step, and James Grieve for his fun direction.
Berlusconi is a winner that still only tells a fraction of the Italian’s life, who was, perhaps, the prototype for Trump and our own Boris Johnson error. With that in mind, the writers should now turn their attention to BJ because it seems to me that they would only have to change a few names and recast the lead with someone who could portray no style and no class, and they would have another success.
Southwark Playhouse Elephant
Dante Place, 80 Newington Butts, London SE11 4FL
Until 29th April.
Times: Mon-Sat 7.45pm; Thur & Sat matinees 2.30pm.
Admission: £28, £22.50 Concession.
Booking: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/
