14 – 18 April
The strange but true story of Florence Foster Jenkins was turned into a play in 2005 by Peter Quilter, and the life of this utterly hopeless would-be opera singer has also been the inspiration for two films. Now Glorious! is making its twentieth anniversary tour and arrives at the Oxford Playhouse. Obviously there’s an audience for comic failure on an epic scale.
Jenkins was born into a wealthy Pennsylvanian family towards the end of the nineteenth century and seems to have had a bumpy, loveless early life. Inheriting a fortune on the death of her father, she pursued what she believed was her vocation as a classical singer. She eventually became the toast of New York – or perhaps just toast – when she gave a sell-out performance at Carnegie Hall not long before her death in 1944. She had fans like Cole Porter though it’s never clear whether they were there for the laugh or because they admired her self-belief and ‘resilient throat’. Probably a bit of both.
Glorious! turns on the connection between Jenkins and her much younger pianist, the slightly fey Cosme McMoon, engagingly played by Matthew James Morrison. There’s some nice humour when the diva questions Cosme about his love life, as oblivious to his true orientation as she is to everything else. Wendi Peters in the role of FJJ suggests her character’s peculiar mixture of need and invulnerability and she has certainly acquired the skill of singing badly – her ‘recitals’ raise the biggest laughs from the audience. But I found her shrieking tones, particularly in the first half, quite painful to listen to and sometimes to follow.
There’s a poignant mother-son aspect to the relationship between her and McMoon who, a sceptic to begin with, ends up genuinely fond of the eccentric old lady and not just because she has given him the chance to play at Carnegie Hall. This is the climax of Glorious! and the apotheosis of the central character who finishes up in angelic garb, one of several over-the-top costumes on display.
Sioned Jones plays Dorothy, Florence’s devoted follower and friend, while Caroline Gruber as Verrinder Gedge represents the horrified, rather prissy side of New York musical society as she protests at the travesty which Florence makes out of opera highlights like The Queen of the Night. Gruber also doubles as FFJ’s Italian cook, and the exchanges between her and FFJ are reminiscent of the Manuel scenes in Fawlty Towers, though milked for laughs a little too often.
Under the direction of Kirk Jameson, Glorious! makes for a diverting enough evening though whether you admire FFJ for her grit or laugh at her for her absurdity probably depends which side of bed you got out of that morning.
★★★☆☆. Philip Gooden, 15 April, 2026
Photography credit: Chris Davis
