Marvellous
@sohoplace | ★★★★✩

Having been one of the saviours of British theatre during the pandemic, Jewish producer and theatre-owner Nica Burns has yet again beaten back unfavourable odds by founding the first new purpose-built theatre in the West End for 50 years and then opening it in the teeth of a cost of living crisis.

Brightly lit by its own digital billboards, @sohoplace stands on the site previously occupied by that much loved gig-factory, the Astoria.

And although some may prefer the sticky-floored charm of the old to the air-conditioned comfort of the new, a modern 602 -seat theatre with its own restaurant and bar to feed and water its audience has to be welcomed.

If the aura on entering the glass and steel building is more shopping mall than playhouse, the antidote is to be found on stage with the rough magic of this smart theatre’s first production.

Although the life of one Neil Baldwin has already inspired an autobiographical book and a Bafta-winning film starring Toby Jones, this whirligig stage version which shares the same name as its predecessors is very much its own theatrical thing.

Marvellous @sohoplace. Michael Hugo (Real Neil) and company. Credit - Craig Sugden

Michael Hugo and company

The show was first seen at north Staffordshire’s New Vic Theatre, the oldest in-the-round playhouse in Europe, a configuration which is here adopted by what is presumably Europe’s newest venue.

Like Burns, Baldwin is also a figure who defies odds. Born in 1946 in Newcastle-under-Lyme, today he would have been labelled as a child with special needs and learning difficulties. God knows the names he would have been called back then.

Yet thanks to his mother Mary (Suzanne Ahmet) he managed through the sheer force of his character and with the backing of maternal love to transcend the limits that others placed on him.

His various life roles were sometimes self-appointed or unpaid, but he did them all brilliantly well even if occasionally he was taken advantage of or bullied.

He was a dog- collar-wearing un-ordained vicar for a while and then spent ten years as a circus clown. He was also the soul of Stoke City FC while serving as their mascot and was the unofficial ambassador to Keele University, who later in life awarded him an honorary degree.

All these parts of a big-hearted life lived well which enriched all those who encountered it are inventively conjured by a committed cast in Theresa Heskins’s playful production. The show’s opening Spartacus moment sees each performer claim to be the real Neil before the real Neil (actually Michael Hugo) pipes up from the stalls and proceeds to oversee the play’s account of his own story.

As Neil directs his cast, some of whom are themselves neuro-divergent, the auditorium is immersed in a spirt of inclusivity.

If that sounds rather like the worthy speech about “defying labels and achieving dreams” that one of this show’s characters is mercifully prevented from performing, in practice it amounts to an irredeemably feel-good evening that is not to so much worthy as hugely worthwhile. You leave a little chastened for ever forgetting that life is good.