101 Dalmations
Open Air Regents Park | ★★★★✩

In 2014 I interviewed Sir Patrick Stewart for this paper about his Shylock.

We spoke about Shakespeare’s Jew obviously but his acclaimed Macbeth was also still fresh in the mind.

And when I mentioned the actor playing opposite him in the role of Lady Macbeth his eyes widened, he shook his head as if mentally playing a flashback, and said one word. “Terrifying.”

In this new musical Kate Fleetwood channels the ruthlessness of that performance into her latest character, Cruella. Fleetwood’s version is less high society fashionista than social media psychopath on a mission to go viral.

Her make up is a painted-on pout and sartorially her style is a nightmarish version of Ginger Spice complete with a black and white version of of Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress.

Eric Stroud and Company. 101 Dalmatians. Photo Mark Senior

Eric Stroud, centre, in 101 Dalmatians

Zinnie Harris’s script is based on Dodie Smith’s original novel rather than the Disney films. But this show, with a score by actor/composer Douglas Hodge, feels very much like its own take on the story.

Colin Richmond’s design for the show is a high concept affair. A giant red collar and a lead wends its way around the open air stage like a great panting tongue.

Supersized mobile letters, which in the right order spell at out the species in the show’s title, combine to create sets such as the modest home in which Dalmation owners Danielle (Karen Fishwick) and Dominic (Eric Stroud) live.

It is their pets that Cruella wants to conscript into her photoshoot. And their pets’s puppies that she wants to be turned into a coat to wear at the celeb event of the year.

It takes, somewhat cumbersomely, two puppeteer performers to operate their pets Perdi and Pongo, and sweet melody is oddly absent from Hodge’s score.

Perdi and Pongo puppeteered by Yana Penrose, Emma Lucia, Ben Thompson and Danny Collin

With so many elements crowding the stage the first half of Timothy Sheader’s production teeters close to being a dog’s dinner.

Yet all these seemingly disparate parts miraculously cohere in the second half of the show turning it into a hugely enjoyable evening.

Hodge’s score is good as far is it goes, although the songs never fully flower. It works best as a vehicle for Fleetwood’s voice and seems intentionally pitched for her range allowing Cruella to power through the evening with not a scintilla of regret for the bad things she has done in the service of ambition.

Lady Macbeth would approve.