JADAR

★★★★☆

The Freaky Friday franchise is pretty impressive given its origin in a 1970s children’s novel. The novel, which was followed by three sequels, has been adapted into three Disney films, each led by two iconic actresses. The third film spawned its own sequel earlier this year, Freakier Friday. A lesser-known adaptation is a stage musical which played four cities in the US, and was even adapted into its own Disney film, but never made it to Broadway. A new production of the musical is currently having its international premiere in Manchester.

This production is directed by Andy Fickman, who directed another Manchester production earlier this year: the world premiere of 13 Going on 30. Outside of his Hollywood work, Fickman is best-known for directing both the US and UK productions of Heathers, with the latter version proving much more popular; it recently transferred off Broadway. Fickman is hoping to do something similar with Freaky Friday, turning a lesser-known American musical into a smash-hit British one.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 50 years, Freaky Friday concerns a bickering middle-aged mother and teenage daughter who suddenly swap bodies and gradually learn to appreciate each other and understand each other’s struggles. The cause of the swap in the book and each film is different, and each gives the mother a different job and the daughter a different ambition. In the musical, the mother, Katherine (Rebecca Lock), is a wedding planner who is organising her whole entire wedding herself – well, with the help of her long-suffering assistant, Torrey (Tori Scott) – which will occur the day after the wedding. She is going to be interviewed by a reporter, Danielle (Katharine Pearson), for Weddings Magazine. The daughter, Ellie (Jena Pandya), is a high school student who wants to skip her mother’s rehearsal dinner to instead go on a hunt, organised by Adam (Max Mirza).

Katherine and Ellie’s relationship has not been the same since Ellie’s father passed away, and she resents her mother’s loving fiancé (Ian Virgo). However, her younger brother, Fletcher, enjoys a good relationship with Mike, because he does not really remember his father.

The supporting cast includes Samantha Ho and Beth Savill as Gretchen and Hannah, Ellie’s best friends; Jessica Butterworth as Savannah, Ellie’s bully; Ellie Gilbert-Grey as Laurel; Morgan Gregory as Parker; Dylan Gordon-Jones as Wells; Waylon Jacobs as Dr Ehrin; James Stirling as Grampa Jo; and Catherine Millsom as Grandma Helene. It’s a very strong cast.

Max Mirza is delightful as the charming, silky-voiced Adam; you can understand why Ellie is so infatuated with him.

The angelic Jena Pandya, who led the cast of another international/UK premiere in Manchester earlier this year (Come Fall in Love), had the difficult job of playing a character that is both younger and older than her (Ellie, a teenager, becomes her middle-aged mother) but she is believable at both.

It is special to see South Asian romantic leads in a show that does not require them to be South Asian. Interestingly, the male lead in Come Fall in Love, who was Indian in the film, was turned White in the musical.

Rebecca Lock – who also starred in another Manchester premiere recently (the tour premiere of Here & Now) – hilariously transforms from a prim-and-proper mother into her messy daughter. The performance (by virtue of how it has been written) sometimes verges on caricature and feels more like a child, like Fletcher, inhabiting their mother’s body, than a teenager; this change feels a bit jarring because that is not how Jena was playing Ellie. Yet, Rebecca does a wonderful job of playing an already chaotic teenager trapped in her mother’s body. Many girls and women worry that they will one day turn into their mother – but this happened much sooner than anticipated!

Rebecca is a powerhouse vocalist. Her renditions of the emotional ballads ‘Parents Lie’ (which Ellie, as her mother, sings to Fletcher, prompting him to run away) and ‘After All of This and Everything’ (which she sings to Fletcher upon his return, flipping the script on ‘Parents Lie’) are exhilarating. She is a worthy successor to Heidi Blickenstaff, who played Katherine in both the US productions and the Disney Channel film adaptation.

The consistently strong score (music by Tom Kitt; lyrics by Brian Yorkey) successfully and smoothly blends sounds, styles and genres. There are some really lovely numbers, especially the aforementioned ballads, the latter of which I already had saved on Spotify!

The opening number, ‘Just One Day’, successfully sets the scene. ‘I Got This’, which begins with Katharine and Ellie trying to convince the other (and themselves) that they can successfully pretend to be the other, is groovy and energetic – and one of the more memorable songs. ‘Go’, in which Adam sings about “The Hunt”, is simultaneously fun and annoying, and ‘Women and Sandwiches’, in which he explains the complexities of women to Fletcher, is very funny.

Some of the songs are lyrically dexterous, blending humour with emotional depth. One of the best-written songs is the final number, ‘Today and Ev’ry Day’, where the mother and daughter fear they may be stuck in each other’s bodies forever: “There’s this whole long life I’ll never live, my college years and more”; “And all that I’ll go through again that hurt so much before.” The aforementioned ‘After All of This and Everything’ is especially poignant and poetic: “You feel… mad as hell at dad because he left you, and angry at yourself to feel that way.”

Some songs are much less memorable, and some blend into one, but they are still aurally pleasing and do what they need to do in a coming-of-age musical. Choreographer Alexzandra Sarmiento clearly had a lot of fun with the bouncy pop-rock score.

Bridget Carpenter’s book is well-written but can sometimes feel a bit tonally uneven. Andy Fickman does his best to fix some of the pacing problems. The material is arguably a little thin for a full-length musical; it could possibly work better as a one-act, 90-minute show (like the Disney film – which prompted a one-act version available for licensing). The plot is pretty predictable but that is to be expected. Where Carpenter excels most is in creating something wholesome and relatable; I’m sure many parents and children leave appreciating each other a bit more.

The poppy and preppy design brings the camp, quirky and whimsical tone of the script to life. David Shields’ set is crooked, geometric and asymmetrical; he embraces the fantasy of the story, with the set also referencing the disjointed lives of the characters, in spite of Katherine’s attempts to control everything. It’s like Tim Burton and David Lynch battled it out designing a production inspired by Wes Anderson, with elements of The Addams Family, Desperate Housewives and Pushing Daisies. Nick Ruchings’ lighting design enhances the feeling of whimsy. Shields’ costumes are more authentic and realistic but still camp and colourful.

In the queue to go into the auditorium, I heard Andy Fickman (who I interviewed ahead of 13 Going on 30) tell some people that the musical had four out-of-town try-outs in the US (he was polite enough not to say “it never made it to Broadway”). But this new version deserves a second life, whether a London transfer or a UK tour. It was lovely to close the year with a show that is so fun, fresh and freaky.

Freaky Friday runs at HOME (Theatre 1) until January 10.