Review: Keep Your Sunny Side Up: The Gracie Fields Story, Museum of Comedy

The Museum of Comedy attracts laughter and a good night out, so a new play by David Hampshire about Gracie Fields, Keep Your Sunny Side Up, has found a suitable venue. It’s a humorous, light-hearted story about a hard-working lass from Rochdale who did rather well for herself. Hampshire has done his research well as the play combs the up and downs of Gracie’s life from Rochdale to Peacehaven to Capri – and a lot more in between. What becomes very clear is her endless hard work and application to performing. She says to her managers and husbands “It’s in the blood”, but clearly it was hard graft that got her to be arguably the highest paid and most successful variety artist of all time.

Fields is played with great charm and verve by Lisa Rouselle. Her singing is delightful and being clear as a bell allows the narrative of the songs to capture both sentiment and humour. Rouselle gives a very engaging performance; one of both pathos and bathos as she unravels the growing up and growing old of this variety legend.

Gracie enters the business aged ten, working for a variety troupe that is looking for fourteen-year-olds. Although rejected at first, her personality is tenacious, explaining to the producer that she has done it all in theatre already – from laundering for the local players to cleaning dressing rooms and toilets (as well as honing her act). “Our Gracie” with her no-nonsense work ethic (along with steely support from mum) gets the job! And so, she treads the boards for the next 70 years. 

It is a remarkable career, and in an era of little or no child protection she has to fend off devious men and exploitative managers, along with managing disinterested husbands. Rousselle mines this emotional rollercoaster through a range of endearing numbers with vocal and physical dexterity. She is a class act.

Gracie finds companionship with fellow performers and success with perceptive producers, but she is constantly undervalued. However, she eventually becomes one of the highest paid variety performers of all time and happily, she does find love with her `Italian husband. The male characters, from comics to dads, to producers and husbands are all played by the playwright himself (Hampshire) with a confidence and some neat comic timing, often at the expense of Gracie. 

Hampshire’s background research is impressive and Gracie’s story is told with sensitivity. It is a heartfelt piece that seeks to celebrate the extraordinarily successful career of a talented performer, who not only gave much pleasure to audiences at home and abroad with her war effort, but also secured an international film career that depicted her as a lively working-class lass from Rochdale. Apart from performing to troops around the globe, she tirelessly supported charities, including establishing a local orphanage – and she seemingly never lost the heart to give to her fans. So, an informative and entertaining evening. 

Musical supervision by Pete and Emily Moody is delightfully authentic. The staging, however, is rather cramped which limits expression at times, but moving into the horseshoe-shaped seating is a crowd pleaser, very much including the audience. And of course this suits the show perfectly well, echoing the intimate relationship that Gracie had with her audiences – a deft touch by director Crissy Mullen. I am sure that with some revisions this show could go further, so I suspect we will hear more about Gracie Fields thanks to this rich storytelling.

Written by David Hampshire
Staging and styling by Crissy Mullen
Musical Supervision by Moody & Moody

Keep Your Sunny Side Up: The Gracie Fields Story runs at the Museum of Comedy until Sunday 15 March.