The Menier Chocolate Factory is accruing an awesome reputation for unearthing musical gems, so hopes were high for Victoria Wood’s 1978 Talent, set in the Mancunian cabaret bar ‘Bunter’s Nitespot’. But whilst Talent is a sound crystallisation of the 1970s cabaret scene – the sleazy veneer that seemingly encased everything and everyone, the odd-ball performers, the repressed ladies and the profound indifference to talent – a significant musical it is not. I can imagine this slight piece working well on TV (the play was subsequently adapted into a Granada series, starring Victoria Wood and Julie Walters), with sharper cuts and two quirky comic actors in the main role, but without these vital ingredients the recipe falls fairly flat. 

The plot, which feels spurious and could do with being pushed further still into the background, revolves around aspiring singer Julie (played by Leanne Rowe – a slighter, prettier, younger Lulu) and her dowdy best friend Maureen (Suzie Toase), whose lips are pursed in permanent disapproval. The play is set on the night of a local talent contest, which Julie hopes will catapult her to fame and freedom, until she discovers the whole thing is rigged and that it is her sexuality and not musicality that Bunter’s management is interested in. The play ends with Julie and her best buddy fleeing, with a final cheery song that advises the audience, ‘You can’t avoid misadventures, so slap a smile on your dentures’.

What this should have been is a puffed-out sketch show. There are some cute one-liners nestled in here, but they are lost amidst a swathe of functional scenes and meandering exchanges. Julie’s plot, which should hold the show together, actually tears it apart, with each plot-turn taking us away from the much juicier, incidental stuff. In fact, most of the scenes with Julie and friend Maureen droop significantly: Rowe and Toase are solid actors, but neither are nuanced comic performers and they play their scenes too straight, with not nearly enough spice and panache. The result is an awkwardly balanced production, with random comic set pieces shining through, but the supposedly more significant scenes slipping by unnoticed.

It is in the bit-parts and sub-plots that Victoria Wood finds her comic voice and the actors find their feet. The actors who stand out are those playing the stalwarts of the nightclub scene: the embittered night-club manager, the slightly loony magician assistant and the shady compere. These characters drip with clichés, but this is when Wood writes best – when she has a solid, familiar base to work from and spark off. Mark Hadfield stands streets ahead of everyone else and imbues his roles with weight and flair. We only get one scene with Hadfield’s cantankerous manager Mary, but her peculiar manner, her acute knowledge of the ins out outs of this squalid nightclub, her garish makeup and sinking weariness, create a touching and authentic impression of the inimitable 1970s cabaret scene. 

If Wood had stuck with her quirkier characters and a slighter format, this play could have transformed into something sparkling and smart. As it is, this feels like a stretched out sketch-show (the plinky plonky musical numbers decorate the show rather than forming its backbone), which showcases Wood’s ability to capture and riff off conventional cliches rather than her talent as a musical maestro.

Till 14 November 2009