{"id":299463,"date":"2025-11-18T16:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299463\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T16:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:57:07","slug":"john-c-reilly-wants-to-win-hearts-in-mister-romantic-a-show-thats-truly-lovable-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/299463\/","title":{"rendered":"John C Reilly wants to win hearts in Mister Romantic, a show that\u2019s truly lovable | Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In one of Hollywood\u2019s nicer ironies, character actor John C Reilly finally made it big with a song about being invisible. His Oscar-nominated performance as the duped and devoted schmuck Amos Hart in Kander and Ebb\u2019s Chicago was defined by his solo, Mister Cellophane<\/a>. Director Rob Marshall had him sing it in an empty theatre so Amos doesn\u2019t even get an audience for his big number.<\/p>\n

More than 20 years later, Reilly has dusted off a not dissimilar tailcoat and rouged his cheeks once more under a new moniker, Mister Romantic, and this time there\u2019s a full house. Backed by a four-piece band he is here to win our hearts with 90 minutes of jazz standards and popular songs, plus the odd chanson and comic verse. After a dozen or so dates in the US, the show has a short run this week in London at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, whose beautifully restored interior and history as a music hall<\/a> fits Mister Romantic like a glove.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s vaudeville with the gentlest hint of grand guignol. The band wind their way through the auditorium, Charles De Castro doing double duty on accordion and cornet, opening with Tom Waits\u2019 instrumental Just Another Sucker on the Vine. They proceed to drag our host on to the stage concealed inside a trunk. When he climbs out, hair like Shock-Headed Peter<\/a>, he professes not to know the day of the week, his location or even his band. But if just one of us will love him for ever, he won\u2019t have to go back in the box.<\/p>\n

Steve Coogan and John C Reilly in the 2018 film Stan & Ollie. Photograph: Bbc Films\/Allstar<\/p>\n

And so the seduction begins. Reilly starts off with Pretend, a hit for Nat King Cole in 1953, its melancholic optimism here re-spun as if to honour the theatre audience\u2019s role in all of this: \u201cAnd if you sing this melody \/ You\u2019ll be pretending just like me \/ The world is mine it can be yours my friend.\u201d It\u2019s a kind of promise: submit to the show and you won\u2019t regret it.<\/p>\n

In between the lyrics Reilly drifts around the stage with some silent clowning that brings back memories of his Oliver Hardy on screen, opposite Steve Coogan\u2019s Stan Laurel, in their film<\/a> about the double act\u2019s 50s variety hall tour. As Mister Romantic lights up an invisible cigar, blows smoke rings and hulas inside them, he can\u2019t conceal a smile at the whimsy. And who can blame him? Then it\u2019s on to Irving Berlin\u2019s Blue Skies, with Reilly miming the song\u2019s bluebirds as if he\u2019s a grizzled Snow White.<\/p>\n

The tone of the evening is equal parts wide-eyed ingenuity and seasoned world-weariness. He\u2019s a kind of eternal troubadour and a gag on the show\u2019s website lists tour dates going back to 1590 at London\u2019s Globe (nine years before it was actually built) and the night before the famous 1903 fire at Chicago\u2019s Iroquois theatre. Mister Romantic is apparently as ageless as his set list is timeless. But his innocent air also brings to mind Buddy the Elf, played by his Step Brothers co-star, Will Ferrell.<\/p>\n

Jack White as Elvis Presley with John C Reilly in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). Photograph: Columbia Pictures\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n

Step Brothers gave Reilly a couple of goofy throwaway songs, as did several of the comedies he made at the time, but his lead role in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story relied on his prowess as a singer. The spoof music biopic about Cox\u2019s bid to become a \u201cdouble great\u201d singer, after the unfortunate death by machete of his brother, rattles through pastiches of Johnny Cash, the Beatles and beyond, with Reilly\u2019s musicality helping the jokes land.<\/p>\n

Most of Mister Romantic\u2019s songs are done straight, his band (completed by Dav\u00edd Garza on piano and guitar, Gabe Witcher on violin and David Piltch on bass) wearing sombre expressions. But he gets all loosey-goosey on Earl Okin\u2019s eccentric come-on, My Room, matching the bluesy humour with lascivious gestures. That\u2019s a welcome gear change in a show that cleaves just a little too closely to one register and misses the more unvarnished emotion of the other Waits tracks featured on Reilly\u2019s album<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On screen, some of Reilly\u2019s musical highlights have been duets \u2013 see his cowboy pardnership with Woody Harrelson in Robert Altman\u2019s swansong, A Prairie Home Companion. Mister Romantic sings instead on his lonesome, save for recruiting us as backing singers and riffing with the audience as he seeks out someone \u2013 anyone \u2013 to love him. The crowd work, done with a red rose microphone, is carefully managed and Reilly\u2019s features are captivating in closeup \u2013 that face, halfway to its own caricature, veers from smitten to crestfallen as Mister Romantic is rejected time after time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This feeds into the drama of the songs when, for example, he dedicates You Don\u2019t Know Me (written by Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker) to those individuals \u2013 the song veering from the usual unrequited loyalty to the scorn of a spurned suitor. It\u2019s a clever concept: here is a singer of soul-baring songs whose heart is broken by his own audience.<\/p>\n

All shades of love are here: pining and enduring, effortless and hopeless, yet none of it to ever be regretted or fully extinguished. \u201cYou and the song are gone \/ But the melody lingers on,\u201d he sings as it approaches the end of the evening, another nod \u2013 like that opening number \u2013 to the alchemy between performer and audience.<\/p>\n

Reilly dreamed this enchanting show up after he \u201clooked at our weary world a few years ago and tried to think of a way I could spread love and empathy\u201d. It\u2019s rare to feel that songs are being delivered straight to you but that\u2019s what he achieves \u2013 never mind the goofing \u2013 through his unquestionable sincerity. \u201cHope I didn\u2019t take up too much of your time,\u201d mumbled Amos at the end of Mister Cellophane. On the contrary: I could have kept listening right through the night.<\/p>\n

At Soho Theatre Walthamstow, London<\/a>, until 19 November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In one of Hollywood\u2019s nicer ironies, character actor John C Reilly finally made it big with a song…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-299463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}