Nanny review – light comedy about the dreams and day jobs of a double act

Bristol Old Vic
This play with songs has pleasing performances but needs a clearer idea of what it wants to satirise

A comedy double act since their university days and now working as nannies, Lea and Amy dream of success at the Edinburgh fringe. This year will surely bring their big break. With the festival fast approaching, they prepare the act during a weekly “stay and play” session in a church hall as they nanny the coddled offspring of wealthy north London mums.

Directed for Folio theatre company by Jenny Rainsford, starring Alana Ramsey as Amy, Lizzie Stables as Lea, and co-written by all three, Nanny’s episodic nature allows it to move at a brisk pace and the performances are charming. It is billed as a play with songs, composed by Matthew Floyd Jones, and the musical numbers are sung acoustically within a theatrical setting. There’s something notably effective about hearing them without the usual flattening amplification.

However, despite the performances and harmonies the dramatic conceit never quite fully coheres. The plotting feels condensed and sometimes contrived, strained by the continuous deus ex machina of showbiz emails and texts and the interruptions of offstage children’s needs. Its comedic tone is undefined: not uncanny enough to be absurd, insufficiently self-reflexive to be knowingly ironic, and not remotely cutting enough to satirise what it sometimes seems to be mocking.

At Bristol Old Vic until 10 February then at Theatre Royal Plymouth, 27-28 February.