HAMILTON at Victoria Palace - In The Room Where It Happened...

There is an odd alchemy that happens in a theatre that is the home for a hit show; the audience are excited that they are the lucky ones in the seats while the cast - especially within the first few months of opening - are confident in their show and their contribution within it and can relax in the joys of a good run.

It is always an exciting atmosphere to experience, it's happened a few times for me in the National Theatre: Richard Eyre's original production of GUYS AND DOLLS, the premiere of WAR HORSE, and the recent revivals of ANGELS IN AMERICA and FOLLIES; in the West End there were the original casts of 42nd STREET, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and THE BOOK OF MORMON and on Broadway there was Patti LuPone's GYPSY and WICKED.

And now I can add HAMILTON at the Victoria Palace...

As the World and it's significant other knows, HAMILTON is Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop musical biography of the American founding father and first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, a man who could obviously start a fight in an empty room and who ended up dead after a duel with the Vice-President and longtime adversary Aaron Burr in 1804.  However the term 'hip-hop musical' does the show a dis-service as Miranda's punchy, intricate score incorporates rap, hip-hop, r&b and pop but all filtered through a definite Broadway musical idiom.

While appearing in his earlier Tony award-winning musical IN THE HEIGHTS, Miranda read Ron Chernow's biography of Hamilton and was taken with the idea that this controversial historical figure had been a poor white immigrant from the West Indies who had risen to the higher echelons of American power.  After a lengthy workshop period HAMILTON opened off-Broadway in 2015 and quickly moved to Broadway later that year, winning the Pulitzer Prize and 11 Tony Awards.  The London production has just won 7 Olivier Awards. 

The show is totally sung/rapped-through but not for Miranda the dreary, bum-clenching  recitative beloved by Lloyd Webber but his tricky, intricate rhymes are spun across the stage with fizzing dexterity by the cast which keep you involved in the fast-moving action of the plot of Hamilton's rise from poor immigrant to George Washington's secretary and then onto the USA's first Treasury Secretary.  I had "Aaron Burr, sir" stuck in my mind afterward...  I hasten to add, Owen and I appeared to be the only ones in the theatre who did not know the score: the girls next to me screamed with laughter ON every joke line and knew every swerve of the music.

Thomas Kail's production is a whirl of inventive movement and, certainly in the first half, conjures up the feeling of a country in the tumult of changing times.  The second half - as the plot concentrates on Hamilton's personal and political troubles - feels becalmed with one too many standard love songs for Hamilton and his wife Eliza.  It's a natural consequence of telling a tale of life after war but it is noticeable.

As good as Kail's direction is, equal praise must go the non-stop choreography of Andy Blankenbuehler, the ensemble helping to shape the story through dynamic moves and martial line-ups.  David Korins' tiered wooden stage certainly gives the show a strong look, Paul Tazewell's costumes help define character - I particularly liked Jefferson's flashy mauve and purple outfit which immediately gave his cocky, larger-than-life character a Prince-like sheen.  Our seats in the upper circle also gave us the chance to fully appreciate Howell Binkley's excellent lighting.

My main problem with HAMILTON was with the female characters.  Eliza and her sisters Angelica and Peggy are introduced with the swaggering "The Schuyler Sisters" - think Destiny's Child in hoop skirts - giving them the persona of liberated women who want to be in the thick of intellectual company.  Eliza marries Hamilton while Anjelica hides her unrequited love for him in writing letters.  At the end of the first act Anjelica leaves for married life in England but as she is a much more interesting character than dreary Eliza, the show suffers for her being sidelined.  Hamilton, of course, has an affair with a married woman which bring shame on him and Eliza but apart from a solo number along the lines of "You Hurt Me And I Hate You", all Miranda can have her do is mope around the stage being noble.  For a show that aims to be radical in it's story-telling, Miranda's stereotypical female characters are disappointing. Owen also pointed out that the female ensemble's costumes of figure-hugging leggings and tight bodices was all the more obvious against the male ensemble's loose clothes.  A CHORUS LINE's 'tits and ass' song seemed all too relevant.

As I said, the cast are feeling pretty fearless as they are in THE show to see so there are plenty of eye-catching performances.  Jamael Westman certainly commands the stage with his rangy height and swagger but Hamilton remains a cypher; everyone says what they think about him and we build up the character through the reactions of others to him but he remains ultimately unknowable, so his fate left me unmoved.  It's a knowing irony that Hamilton goes through the show telling the world he's not going to throw away his shot... but he does in the end.

Westman is easily overshadowed by the sheer star quality of Giles Terera as Aaron Burr, an actor whose time has definitely come and who steals every scene he is in.  His Burr is the respected man who cannot quite make the top table, who loses out to the flashier, more headstrong Hamilton for the big jobs and whose needling jealousy only grows with every slight.  Playing Salieri to Hamilton's Mozart, Burr finally gets his chance to influence affairs and they come to an irreversible breaking point.  Terera's watchful reserve explodes in the second act with the number "The Room Where It Happens".  Tipping a silent nod to Sondheim's "Someone In A Tree" from PACIFIC OVERTURES, it's about how it's all about being in the right place at the right time.

There is also a teasing, lip-smacking performance by Jason Pennycooke: he is a passionate Lafayette in the first act but really explodes in the second act as Hamilton's other béte noir Thomas Jefferson.  Embodying the cocky swagger of Prince or James Brown, his Jefferson turns up from the safety of France after the Independence wars are won and sings the jazzy "What'd I Miss?"  Jefferson then locks horns with Hamilton over the latter's finance bill - the verbal spats in Congress nicely played as rap turf battles.  It is when Burr and Jefferson both run for President that Hamilton, having to chose between his two evils makes a fatal choice.  Along with Terera, it's great to see Pennycooke finally have a role to show off all his talents.

Obioma Ugoala as George Washington certainly had the gravitas to play the role but his voice was more suitable to singing than to the rap recitative.  As I have said above, the roles for the women are frustrating in that the roles are imbalanced: Rachel John tears the roof off the Victoria Palace with her mid-first act number "Satisfied" - a real showstopper - but then has little to do but join in group numbers while the Steam-Whistle Soprano Of Death that is Rachelle Ann Go commandeers the second act as Eliza.  Her big solo "Burn" doesn't so much shred our hearts as our ear-drums and she also takes the main part of the last song "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story" - an honour which really should go to Rachel John.

There are many witty put-downs in Miranda's lyrics but there are few musical moments where you can just sit back and enjoy them - the brunt of the songs are rammed with exposition - but luckily for us (and the show) there are several musical interludes from the quite delicious Michael Jibson as King George III.  He is absolutely hilarious in King George's dummy-spitting vignettes, they have the same tune but the attitude changes:  "You'll Be Back" has George in a snit that his subjects have chosen Independence, "What Comes Next" has the King scoffing at the idea the Americans can govern themselves, and finally "I Know Him" has George rubbing his hands in glee at the internecine fighting following Washington's retirement.  Jibson just won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Musical Actor and it is justly deserved, despite only 9 minutes stage-time.

The booking method for HAMILTON has come in for criticism for the mouse-in-a-maze way of actually getting to your seat.  We booked when the tickets went on sale but no actual tickets were issued; Owen had to turn up with the original e-mail confirmation, the credit card used and a Government-issued ID!  Just to get in to a theatre...  The reasoning is that it will ensure that the seats go to paying punters and not ticket touts.  But is this really about people power or just a way for Cameron Mackintosh to get every single pound?  Owen discovered the day before that the card he booked with so long before the show had been thrown away when it expired, luckily a call to Ticketmaster got a substitute card put on the booking!  We had to queue for about five minutes to get to the door, they checked the e-mail and card, ticket stubs were printed using a PDQ-style machine... and we were in.  "Allow an hour" to gain entrance?  It took about 15 minutes all-in-all.  Though they never asked to see the passport... go figure!

I came out of it quietly thinking I would like to see it again.  But knowing the clamour for tickets I would probably get tickets for the 383rd cast change with Aston Merrygold from JLS as Alexander Hamilton, Kenny Lynch as Aaron Burr and Sinitta as Angelica.  Maybe they will have filmed it by then?  Lin-Manuel Miranda said last year it was on the cards, now THAT will be a casting feeding-frenzy...

So there you are... HAMILTON not only lives up to the hype, it transcends it. An abiding memory of the show is the explosion of applause that greeted the line “Immigrants, they get the job done". This American cultural immigrant does just that.

HAMILTON... NOW AND FOREVER

BENT Rehearsed Reading at the Lyttelton Theatre: The Power of Words...

With it's combination of Pride and celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in the England and Wales, last weekend was probably the best time to revisit the thought-provoking and understated horror of Martin Sherman's BENT, staged as a rehearsed reading as part of the National Theatre's celebration of Queer Theatre.

How, I had wondered, would the play fare as a reading; it's a play that thrives on images as well as words, images that linger long in the mind.  But I had reckoned without Stephen Daldrey's insightful and nuanced handling of the text and the exemplary performances of his cast.  In the Q&A afterward he revealed that he had about seven hours in total to rehearse the reading which elicited a gasp of surprise from the audience as it was a seamless performance.

On 14th August 1979, a group of us who worked at Claude Gill Books in Piccadilly went for a night out at the Criterion, our neighbouring theatre.  I am not sure if we knew what the play was about but we emerged poleaxed.  We made for Henekey's pub next door and I remember not only being unable to speak about what I had just seen but being vaguely angry that my straight colleagues were even trying to discuss it.  I wasn't out (but felt I didn't need to be) and it was possibly the first time I had experienced seeing gay men represented as anything other than camp caricatures; this was my first exposure to BENT, seen in it's original production directed by Robert Chetwyn and starring Ian McKellen and Tom Bell.

That production haunted me, in particular the wonderful understated performance of Tom Bell as Horst, contrasting against the usual overly-showy McKellen.  I saw it again in 1990 in Sean Mathias' less-memorable production which again starred Serena opposite the milquetoast Michael Cashman.  Cashman chaired the Q&A afterward and was very eloquent about how that production not only came to be staged initially as a fundraiser to set up the charity Stonewall to fight Section 28 but also how Richard Eyre invited the production to be staged at the National Theatre.

Again talk of that initial fundraiser at the Adelphi in 1989 made me mentally beat myself up about not seeing it as it meant I missed Ian Charleson's performance of club-ower Greta, less than 6 months later he had died.  Cashman spoke fondly about Ian and it always makes me smile when I hear my favourite actor remembered with love.  Mathias' production also led to his 1997 film which is a fairly inert experience.  But that was then and this is now... 

Russell Tovey was excellent as Max, the black sheep of a wealthy family who has found Wiemar Berlin to be his playground: making black-market deals, living on his wits, selling drugs and finding plenty of men to play with despite his relationship with dancer Rudy (sweetly petulant George MacKay).  The play starts out as a comedy with Rudy tartly telling a hungover Max about what he got up to during his drunken binge but the tone darkens when the SS arrive to arrest Max's pickup Wolf who is a member of Ernst Rohm's SA, it's the morning after "The Night of the Long Knives" when Hitler had Rohm's Brownshirts organization liquidized by the SS.  Wolf is murdered and the lovers are on the run.

They turn to Greta, the self-serving owner of the gay club but Greta, although gay, has a wife and children to hide behind, and he even reveals he betrayed them to the SS to deflect attention from his club.  Giles Terera seized all the opportunities the role offers and sang Greta's haunting song "Streets of Berlin" very well, indeed it seemed to linger in the air throughout the play.  Max and Rudy's hopes of escaping to Amsterdam are dashed when Max's closeted Uncle Freddie can only supply a single ticket which Max refuses; in this one small scene, Simon Russell Beale was delicious.

Max and Rudy are finally arrested and deported to Dachau as "Anti-social" members of society.  On the train Rudy is singled out for brutality by an officer (all the SS officers were played with understated terror by Pip Torrens) and Max is made to help beat him to death to prove he means nothing to him.  Max later reveals that he was also forced to have sex with a dead Jewish girl to prove he is not gay and once at the camp wears a yellow star to prove he is a Jew which actually wins him more concessions once in the camp.

There he meets gay political activist Horst (a powerful Paapa Essiedu) who witnessed what happened on the train and who wears a pink triangle and is disgusted that Max is denying his reality.  Max gets Horst onto his mind-numbing but relatively safe work detail of moving rocks from one pile to another next to the camp's electric fence.  Slowly the men prove that love can flourish in the stoniest of ground and Horst even verbally makes love to Max during one of their enforced rest periods standing a few feet apart.  But eventually - and in the worst circumstance - Max must admit to the world and himself that he is a homosexual...

As I said the play for me had lived in memory through it's visuals - Greta's drag act, the shadowy train, the bare stage with it's electrified fence (and constant low-level humming), two piles of rocks and a death-pit as well as the visual shock of Wolf's onstage nudity - but here, with just Sherman's text to concentrate on, it proved riveting and possibly will be the version of the play I most remember.

Martin Sherman spoke about it's history: written for Gay Sweatshop, the artistic director deliberately passed on it so it could be seen by a bigger audience but it was initially rejected by the Royal Court and Hampstead would only stage it with a gay director - none of whom took up the challenge.  Finally picked up by director Robert Chetwyn and with the star names of Ian McKellen and Tom Bell attached, it was finally staged at the Royal Court to huge popular appeal - but still with Court management disapproval and fairly hostile press reviews.  No leading West End producers would touch it until the independant producer Eddie Kulukundis brought it in to the Criterion (which is where I came in!) but only on the proviso from the Society of West End Theatre that it would be gone by December as it would be distasteful to be seen at Christmas time in the West End.  Fairly shameful eh?  Stephen Daldry also commented on the impact the production made on him as a young theatregoer. 

As was also touched on in the after-show discussion, BENT's power to shock and move is ever-timely and there was a hint that there might be a new revival next year.  I am so glad I had the opportunity to see this...

MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM at the Lyttelton - August in February!

Back in the day - actually it was 27 year's worth of days - I saw the National Theatre's production of MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM by August Wilson in the intimate Cottesloe Theatre.  It stayed with me as being an exploration of the burgeoning success of black jazz and blues performers and musicians within the 'race' recording companies while also boasting impressive performances from Carol Woods, Hugh Quarshie and Clarke Peters.

August Wilson died in 2005 after writing ten plays in which he wanted to show the experience of black Americans in the 20th Century.  The only other of these that the National has staged was Wilson's first play JITNEY with a visiting American company in 2001.  This played in the Lyttelton Theatre which is now the home of Dominic Cooke's revival of MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM. Everything old is new again!

I am sure Rufus Norris wants to give the production the widest exposure possible but it feels too exposed on the expansive Lyttelton stage - a vast empty space surrounds Ultz's recording studio set and proves too much of a distraction even with the quality of the performances.

Ultz also has a narrow, train-corridor room raise up and down at the front of the stage to show the downstairs musicians' area which could surely have been included somewhere on the main stage as Bob Crowley did for the 1989 Cottesloe version.  It reminded me too much of the set design for THE HAIRY APE at the Old Vic last year.

This was my only problem with Dominic Cooke's production which is hugely involving, after an admittedly slow-moving first hour, and he captures the undercurrents that swirl around an otherwise unexceptional recording session for Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, "The Mother Of The Blues" and her touring band.

Cooke skillfully highlights the air of change that haunts the characters - Rainey's fame is slowly being eclipsed by Bessie Smith who has bigger record sales whereas 'Ma' Rainey's style of shouted blues are perceived as out of fashion.  The band have to face the changing style in music and one in particular, the explosively egotistical Levee, is preening that the record company man has asked him to supply him with songs - surely that means Levee will be a star in his own right soon with his own band?

The play needs a barnstorming actress to play 'Ma' Rainey and Cooke has the good fortune to have Sharon D. Clarke who can act up a fearsome diva storm as well as belt out the title song to the balcony.  Clarke has found a home at Rufus Norris' National Theatre with roles in THE AMEN CORNER and EVERYMAN and here she is in suitably imperious form.

After her manager (a suitably harassed Finbar Lynch) assures the record boss that she will be on her best behaviour, she sweeps in an hour late, says she will not sing her song with the new jazzy arrangement, she won't sing if she doesn't get her bottle of Coca-Cola and she definitely won't sing unless her stuttering nephew is allowed to perform the spoken intro to the song!  Clarke is excellent in the role and shades the divaness when 'Ma' is allowed a reflective moment in the studio.

There are excellent performances too from Lucian Msamati as Toledo, the seen-it-all pianist, Giles Terera as Slow Drag the bass-player, Clint Dyer as trombone-playing Cutler and O-T Fagbenle (a name I marvel at) as the dangerously ambitious Levee.  When his dreams of being a future jazz star are dashed by "the man" his violent response brings to the play to it's shocking conclusion and Fagbenle gave a kinetic, jangly performance.

There is also fine work from Lynch as Rainey's weary manager, Tunji Lucas as her stuttering nephew Sylvester and a nicely sly performance from Tamara Lawrance as Dussie Mae, Ma's latest young lover who one suspects will move from bed to bed as long as it keeps her in new dresses and spending money.

I would recommend MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM very much... and look forward to new plays such as MADONNA'S CAUSING A COMMOTION and DUSTY SPRINGFIELD'S GOIN' BACK!

And to finish off, how about the actual recording the play is based on - although the first photo on the video is actually Bessie Smith (oh and it fades out before the end)  'Ma' would NOT be happy!

KING JOHN aka the Shakespeare megamix

There are a handful of Shakespeare plays I have yet to see - be it on stage, film or television.  And thanks to The Globe Theatre, there is now one less.

I had minimal knowledge of KING JOHN, I had read a synopsis of it a few years back and it sounded a bit of a hodge-podge and to be honest, I didn't expect to see it anytime soon.  But here we are, celebrating 800 years since the detested King John was made to sign the Magna Carta document by his rebellious barons and thanks to a co-production with Nottingham's Royal & Derngate Theatre, I can now finally say I have seen it!

It is even better to be able to say that James Dacre's production was hugely entertaining.  I am sure part of that was due to me discovering the play as I watched it but it is also down to some committed performances and Dacre's direction which swept through the play like a dose of salts.

It's rarely performed which is strange as there are a couple of cracking lead roles and a few excellent speeches.  Afterwards I wondered if the performers felt more able to barnstorm their roles because there is no accumulated 'baggage' attached to them? I certainly didn't have any previous memories of any of the roles so could enjoy them fresh.

It is considered to have been his 15th play, probably nestling between A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.  At times it almost felt like Shakespeare was doing his own megamix as he populated his play with a villainous King, an ambitious Queen, an out-for-himself bastard son who delights in his mischief, a sorrowing but vengeful mother, a courtier-turned-assassin - all characters who would turn up in other plays of his.

The oddest thing about the play is the abrupt ending - suddenly King John is dying, poisoned by a disgruntled monk.  I mean Will lad, what were you thinking?!  The really intriguing thing is that during King John's dying speech, he makes a passing reference to his troublesome lords being appeased - so probably the only thing that King John is remembered for nowadays is brushed aside!

As I said, the actors jumped feet first into their roles with no great actor's shadows to hide from.  Jo Stone-Fewings was a lip-smackingly nasty King John, relishing in his badness like a panto villain.  Alex Waldmann was a revelation as The Bastard, the illegitimate son of Richard The Lion Heart who starts the play as a cynical sod sharing his delight in his actions with the audience but by the end he has changed to a passionate fighter and ends with the rueful observation that England will not be undone by outside forces but from within:

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.

Duking it out as the fighting regal mothers were Barbara Marten as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Tanya Moodie as Lady Constance.  Both has their opportunities to shine - Marten also played The Bastard's unapologetic mother - but Moodie was excellent as the disdainful Constance, fighting for her son's right to rule.  Her final scene where she mourns for her captured son was very powerful, it's a shame that her character doesn't appear again after that.

Also rising to the challenge were Giles Terera in the double role of Pembroke and Austria, Mark Meadows as the apologetic assassin Hubert, Joseph Marcell as the duplicitous Papal emissary and Laurence Belcher as the innocent Prince Arthur.

With Jonathan Fensom's fluttery Plantagenet designs and Orlando Gough's evocative score, this was a real surprise and another success for the Globe's Justice & Mercy season.  By the way, if you think the photographs are showing off the Globe stage as particularly Gothic it's because they were taken during the production's pre-Globe mini-tour of churches and cathedrals.

Coming out of the Globe Theatre and walking along the Thames chattering away about a Shakespeare play I had never seen before, I felt a sudden kinship with my fellow audience members who had done the same thing 419 years before.