Allegra Review – Maureen Lipman’s rant about a woman who won’t stop singing | Theater

There’s some good humor in Peter Quilter’s new play and Maureen Lipman he knows how to deliver. “Some people drink cocaine, I do cabaret,” he mocks Allegra, whose singing annoys her neighbors. “The strange thing is that cabaret gets people’s noses up.”

Allegra’s performances – at the butcher, the baker, the hairdresser – are not welcome in her village. Waiters kick him out of restaurants, and even local choirs ban him. Her brother Ronen (John Middleton), worried about her health, hires a Czech social worker to make sure she eats. Every now and then Lipman takes a twinkle in his eye, shimmies in his shoulders, and starts singing.

And that’s about it, in a Stephen Mear production that’s heavy and light on everything else. Allegra presents as one of Alan Bennett’s loveliest characters, but we never learn anything about her beyond her worldliness. Pouring his father’s ashes into several cans of food – the setting for a joke that doesn’t really pay off – is the closest thing to our history.

If Lipman feels a little quieter than she does, it may be because she has to make appearances in flashy clothes and flashbacks. The plot involves a brush with popular justice that seeks to force Allegra to control her beautiful mind with drugs. A policeman charges an elderly woman for treating Annie at a gas station, and a judge orders that a man who does not harm himself or anyone else be medicated.

Meanwhile Anna (Elizabeth Bower), a compassionate social worker, fights her corner with the zeal of someone born under Soviet rule, who also knows the obscure words of the Great American Songbook. (I personally love the catchy chorus of Take Me Out to the Ball Game – but if you’re trying to encourage audience participation, don’t choose a song that’s unfamiliar to most Britons.)

Twenty years ago, Lipman has a star in Quilter’s play Glorious! about Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York socialite considered a great opera singer. There is a clear path to Allegra, whose unstoppable happiness and unconventional way of expressing it is considered inappropriate for the public. “Considering the hardships they have … if you’re smiling all day, there must be something wrong with you,” says Ronen. It’s a good point, but it’s a shame that Quilter has to push it home so hard.

• At Richmond theatre, London, until 13 June. So visiting until 4 July and at the Harold Pinter theatre, London, from 8 July to 8 August.