For the second time this year a show has arrived in London I had seen on our NY trip in February: first was Diane Paulus' glorious production of HAIR and now we have Bill T. Jones' equally big 'n' colourful production FELA! I can't think what is keeping Bartlett Sher's SOUTH PACIFIC - NEXT TO NORMAL however can stay in the Booth Theatre where it belongs.

As is the case with HAIR, I enjoyed the London FELA! much more, with both shows I think I was too busy reacting to the show first time round than actually taking them in fully.

What lives in the memory of the NY version was that we saw it on the night of Snowmageddon when Manhattan was hit by a huge blizzard. It was such a sensory experience to step from the wintry streets into the colourful, vibrant auditorium recreating Fela Kuti's Lagos Shrine club - also it was a pleasure to FINALLY have friendly front-of-house staff, namely the bar girl who happily informed us we could take our drinks to our seats with "we're a party house here!"Re-reading my February blog - here it is - I find that what I didn't like about the show then still applies now. No amount of deliriously exciting choreography or hypnotic Afrobeat beats can disguise the frustratingly thin book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones.

Despite vignettes in the first act about Fela's musical education which led to his developing the Afrobeat sound and his political education bizarrely courtesy of the Black Panthers while visiting America, the second act - despite one stunning coup-de-theatre which brought shocked gasps and exclamations from the rapt audience - meanders around before getting completely lost up it's own yanch via an extended dream ballet of Fela visiting the underworld which sadly only made me think of a "Talk Of The Town" floorshow routine with it's ultra-violet lighting and projections on a scrim. The book keeps Fela's actual political manifesto unknown, just that he was against the corrupt government, and his death from AIDS in 1997 is glossed over.What is undeniable however is the burning intensity of Sahr Ngaujah's performance as Fela, effortless charisma added to a natural ability to handle the more excitable members of the peanut gallery. It might not be the most sympathetic performance - Fela is a difficult character to empathise with - but Ngaujah's Tony-nominated performance makes you realise how Kuti could galvanise an audience. Hell, he even got all the Olivier audience up to dance about 20 minutes into the show!

The two main supporting roles of Fela's activist mother Funmilayo and his American mentor Sandra Izadore are played by Melanie Marshall and Paulette Ivory. Both are blessed with great voices and Marshall in particular is a joy to hear. Again however it is typical of this show that her big second act number - the only song written specifically for the show - is totally shapeless and meanders on interminably.As before, these three performances are supported by a phenomenal company of dancers who are worth the price of admission alone. As I said about the NY production, their wild, frantic and totally thrilling abandon is of course the result of the strictest discipline and for all the problems with the book, one wishes that Bill T. Jones just settled on the music and dancers telling Fela's story.

The Olivier is unrecognizable due to Marina Draghici's fabulous stage design which spreads out into the auditorium with huge colourful posters, paintings and strings of lights covering the walls and doors recreating the feel of Fela Kuti's Shrine club in his Kalakuti compound. Why has no designer ever done this before with this unique space? Robert Wierzel's lighting is also a major component for the show's overall success.A special mention too must go to the magnificent onstage band of 12 musicians who are the show's engine and keep the music coming with a richness of sound that is genuinely exciting.

So for all the problems mentioned with the non-existent book I would still recommend FELA! as a rare achievement in pure theatre.

"Say Yea-Yea!"

One thing that has been rattling around my head since our recent exposure to the NY theatre scene is the actual theatres themselves.

We visited the following theatres -
Booth Theatre which opened in 1913
Al Hirschfeld Theatre which opened in 1924
Eugene O'Neill which opened in 1925
Walter Kerr Theatre which opened in 1921
Vivian Beaumont Theatre which opened in 1973

Can you spot the odd one out there? I am wondering whether one of the reasons we so enjoyed SOUTH PACIFIC at the Beaumont might have been because it was in the most recently-built auditorium? What baffled me was this: why is going to a Broadway theatre, one of the alleged jewels in New York's crown, such an uncomfortable experience?

More often than not the theatre's seemed to be - well - dingy, under-lit and with the strangest atmosphere of neglect and lacking in atmosphere.

It's hard to know where to begin to chronicle the oddness of buying drinks in a Broadway house. In what can only be a throwback to prohibition, the bar seems to be there as some token gesture - it was an odd feeling to be the ONLY people to order interval drinks in two separate theatres! We then had the bizarre occurrence at the Booth Theatre in being told by one of the Lilliputian ushers that we could not take our tiny plastic glasses a) to our seats b) to the bench against the back wall of the theatre behind the back row - and to then stand there and watch us in case we dare move from the one patch of the corridor carpet.

Another peculiarity to that theatre was that the loos were in the basement. I trotted down the stairs to be greeted by a large 'lounge' designed to look like a low-ceilinged Versailles salon that any west end theatre would give it's life to have as a bar - and here it was - quiet as the grave and probably only used for opening or closing night parties.

The Al Hirschfeld has the welcome relief of having a nice permanent exhibition of Hirschfeld's theatrical pen-and-ink caricatures around the circle's foyer but again the auditorium's Moroccan-style interiors seemed to be crying out for some better lighting or at best a steam-clean.

Imagine our joy when we walked into the Eugene O'Neill theatre to find the rather grey auditorium festooned with colour and light thanks to FELA's extended set design. Our happiness was made all the better when the bar-tender told us that we could take our drinks TO OUR SEATS! I nearly kissed her on both cheeks.

The next night saw us in the charming Walter Kerr Theatre with it's lovely auditorium murals of Pan and Harlequin. But again, the 'bar' was in fact a hostess trolley in the already narrow passage behind the back row so the interval was a total bedlam of people either queuing, trying to get away from the queue, trying to get to the loos that were situated on the lower landings of the two narrow staircases on each side of said corridor or people just trying to stretch their legs.

And did we EVER need to stretch... the seats in the circle - and we are talking the top price here - afforded no leg room at all! It was difficult to be swept along by Sondheim's waltz score for A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC when you are crippled by the top-edge of the seat in front of you. Again this was a crime against theatregoers that was perpetrated in the four previous theatres visited!

Imagine then the relief to find the wide open spaces of the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center where one could find a neutral corner in the foyer as well as room to cross your legs while in your seat - well apart from the little mare who kept kicking the back of Owen's seat. I was also amazed to see the Gents illustrated by a neon drop of pee falling into a puddle.

Um... until I realised that it was showing you there was a public water fountain underneath it.Apart from all the above. there was also the strange response from the audiences - to their surroundings and also to what they were watching.

By and large - apart from a couple of totally mad cows who assumed we were there to watch their odd antics - the audiences seemed oddly cowed by their surroundings, as if they were over-awed to be in such temples to the arts. I really didn't feel the audiences felt they had any ownership of the space.

Suzanne put us wise to a recent change that has taken over the audiences - which made me think we are starting to suffer with the same malaise... the need to give EVERYONE a standing ovation.
Now I am happy to say that as Angela Lansbury came on to take her bow I was happy to stand and applaud her effortlessly magical performance - but by then, my fellow-audience members had been on their feet applauding the lowliest supporting cast.

I suspect there are two things at play here - the ticket price is so lofty these days that people need to reassure themselves that the performances they are seeing are all of an unmatched brilliance and also I put it down to the Cowallism of culture - where the most common or garden performance is praised as the Second Coming - or First Going.

Mind you... any theatre that gives me a free programme will have me running back for more. Even from the DON'T LOOK NOW dwarfs of the Booth Theatre.