A Piano Full of Feathers review – White Christmas origin story struggles with pitch

The piano is full of feathers to keep the noise down. Irving Berlin liked to write at night and the feathers were his way to dampen the strings so as not to annoy the neighbours. It is also full of feathers, in Jane Livingstone’s play about the writing and impact of White Christmas, to suggest an imminent snow fall – although, oddly, when the singalong finale comes, it is to a flurry of regular stage snow.

Also odd is that a play about the world’s most famous Christmas song should be staged in October. No matter: April Chamberlain’s production has the feel of a show that will be revived in festive seasons to come.

Is that a good thing? Well, it is an innocent enough excuse to run through the Berlin songbook, pluckily sung by Frances Thorburn and Ross Forbes-MacKenzie with some lovely harmonies by musical director Hilary Brooks. From the plangent When I Lost You to the polemical Supper Time, with detours to the patriotic God Bless America and the light-hearted Sisters, there is much here to enjoy.

As a play, though, it is all over the place. First we get a false start in which Thorburn appears as Moneta, the Roman goddess of memory, introducing a theme about the past that is forgotten as quickly as her white robes. Then Forbes-MacKenzie enters through the auditorium, meek and apologetic with suit and briefcase, but takes an age to declare his purpose. Having arrived at New York’s Tin Pan Alley, he eventually admits to being the human embodiment of White Christmas.

Jolly medley … Frances Thorburn and Ross Forbes-MacKenzie. Photograph: Mihaela Bodlovic

It is a novel idea, but inconsistently applied. Structured as a series of sketches, Livingstone’s play is sometimes the story of the song itself, with its “27 simple lines”, and sometimes the story of the composer, an impoverished immigrant who could play only the black notes on the keyboard.

Coming across like an illustrated Wikipedia page, A Piano Full of Feathers is too piecemeal either to be dramatically coherent or to give its sentimental moments emotional weight. Frequently, the pretence of a story is abandoned altogether in favour of a jolly medley of songs which, along with the buoyant performances, are the production’s chief strength.