It's the 2014 Chrissies!

Yes for the 8th year I am proud to present the apex of theatrical awards... the Chrissies!  As always, it has been hugely easy to find nominees, more difficult to sift a winner.  Be that as it may, here we go...

BEST DRAMA (Original/Revival):

 

MY NIGHT WITH REG - Kevin Elyot (Donmar)

Nominees:
BEYOND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS - Hare (Olivier, NT) /

ELLEN TERRY WITH EILEEN ATKINS - Atkins (Wanamaker Playhouse) /

KING LEAR - Shakespeare (Olivier, NT) / MEDEA - Euripedes (Olivier, NT)

BEST MUSICAL (Original/Revival):

GYPSY - Arthur Laurents / Jule Styne / Stephen Sondheim (Chichester)

 Nominees:

CITY OF ANGELS - Gelbart / Coleman / Zippel (Donmar) / FINGS AIN'T WOT THEY USED T'BE - Norman / Bart (Stratford East) / HERE LIES LOVE - Byrne / Cook (Dorfman, NT) / SUNNY AFTERNOON - Penhall / Davies (Hampstead) 

BEST ACTOR (Drama):

 SIMON RUSSELL BEALE - King Lear (Olivier, NT)

 Nominees:
BRIAN COX (The Weir) / RUPERT EVERETT (Amadeus) /

BILL NIGHY (Skylight) / CLIVE WOOD (Antony and Cleopatra)

BEST ACTRESS (Drama):

HELEN McCRORY - Medea (Olivier, NT)

Nominees:
EILEEN ATKINS (Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins) / ASHLEY McGUIRE (Henry IV) /

CAREY MULLIGAN (Skylight) / IMELDA STAUNTON (Good People) 

BEST ACTOR (Musical):

 

JAMIE PARKER - Guys and Dolls (Chichester)

 

Nominees:
ALEXANDER HANSON (Stephen Ward) / DOMINIC NORTH (Edward Scissorhands) /

PETER POLYCARPOU (Guys and Dolls) / MICHAEL XAVIER (The Pajama Game)

BEST ACTRESS (Musical):

 IMELDA STAUNTON - Gypsy (Chichester)

Nominees:
JANIE DEE (Keeping it Together) / NATALIE MENDOZA (Here Lies Love) /

SOPHIE THOMPSON (Guys and Dolls) / JESSIE WALLACE (Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama):

Geoffrey Streatfeild - My Night With Reg (Donmar)

Nominees:
MATT BARDOCK (My Night With Reg) / PHIL DANIELS (Antony and Cleopatra) /

ADRIAN SCARBOROUGH (King Lear) / STANLEY TOWNSEND (King Lear)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama):

 
ANGELA LANSBURY - Blithe Spirit (Gielgud)

Nominees:
ANGEL COULBY (Good People) / NOMA DUMEZWENI (Henry V) /

PATSY FERRAN (Blithe Spirit) / SHARON ROONEY (Henry IV) 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (Musical):

 MIKE McSHANE - Assassins (Menier)

 Nominees:

GEORGE MAGUIRE (Sunny Afternoon) / ANDY NYMAN (Assassins) /

JAMIE PARKER (Assassins) / AARON TVEIT (Assassins)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Musical):

REBECCA TREHEARN - City of Angels (Donmar)

Nominees:
SAMANTHA BARKS (City of Angels) / SUZIE CHARD (Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be) / KATHERINE KELLY (City of Angels) / LARA PULVER (Gypsy) 

BEST DIRECTOR:

ROBERT HASTIE - My Night With Reg (Donmar)

Nominees:
CARRIE CRACKNELL (Medea) / JONATHAN KENT (Gypsy) /

JOSIE ROURKE (The Weir) / ALEX TIMBERS (Here Lies Love) 

BEST DESIGNER:

LIZZIE CLACHAN - Treasure Island (Olivier, NT)

 Nominees:

BOB CROWLEY (Skylight) / WILLIAM DUDLEY (Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be) /

ROBERT JONES (City of Angels) / Tom Scutt (The Weir) 

BEST LIGHTING:

HOWARD HARRISON - City of Angels (Donmar)

Nominees:

NEIL AUSTIN (Henry V) / MARK HENDERSON (Gypsy) /

PAUL PYANT (My Night With Reg) / JUSTIN TOWNSEND (Here Lies Love) 

BEST CHOREOGRAPHY:

 SCOTT AMBLER - Lord of The Flies (Sadler's Wells)

Nominees:

MATTHEW BOURNE (Edward Scissorhands) / BILL DEAMER (Grand Hotel) /

STEPHEN MEAR/JEROME ROBBINS (Gypsy) / ANNIE-B PARSON (Here Lies Love)

I do enjoy doing these!  Congratulations all...

The 7 Shows of Xmas 7: ASSASSINS

Well, we made it Constant Reader… end of 2014 and here I am at the last show at Christmas.  I couldn't have done it without you.

The last show of 2014 was in one of my favourite theatres and was one of my favourite shows.  If maybe not in this production...

The show, written in 1990, was a departure for Sondheim - in a career already defined by departures from the norm - in that it was a non-linear, ensemble piece set in an imagined fairground shooting gallery, where the nine living and dead people who attempted or succeeded in killing the President of the United States gather to relive the circumstances that brought them to their murderous deed.  

Gathered together across the years they seek to justify their actions as Sondheim's score and John Weidman's book seek to understand how their twisted logic and sense of failure led them to do what they did.  It's a musical that is also a scathing polemic on the curdled idea of The American Dream and Sondheim willingly takes a backseat in several major scenes giving Weidman the space to explore the characters without the necessity for a song to interrupt the flow.

One by one they step forward into the spotlight that they felt was denied them: John Wilkes Booth, vainglorious actor who shot Lincoln to avenge the South; Italian immigrant Giuseppe Zangara who attempted to shoot Roosevelt in his hatred for the capitalists who he had to slave for ruining his physical and mental health; would-be Anarchist Leon Czolgosz who shot President McKinley to also avenge the masses; deranged Charles Guiteau who shot President Garfield because he did not receive the post of Ambassador to France which he felt he was entitled to.

John Hinckley who attempted to shoot Ronald Reagan so Jodie Foster would notice him; misfit Samuel Byck who attempted to crash a plane into Nixon's White House; Manson acolyte Lynette Frome who attempted to kill Gerald Ford to publicise Manson's world vision and Sara Jane Moore a confused woman desperate to do something radical to be noticed.  And the ninth, of course, is Lee Harvey Oswald who, in Weidman's chilling scene, is persuaded by the others to be the assassin that will define them all.  If the greatest ambition for any American is to rise to be President, how much more famous is it to be the person who kills them?

It's all there in Weidman's excellent book and Sondheim's glorious score which pastiches various American musical forms: rousing Souza marches, folk ballads, high-stepping cakewalk, pop ballads - sadly the ubiquitous director Jamie Lloyd obviously feels that the material is not clear enough and has given us a production which starts so ramped-up and overwrought that it swamps the material.  This leads to several of the cast giving performances that are almost grotesque in their clanging over-emphasis.

Soutra Gilmour's threatening and creepy fairground set also overdoes the emphasis and again suffocates the work's quiet despair.  Mind you, it provided an amusing moment at the start when the ghastly Proprietor popped out of the mouth of a large papier-mâché clown's head and the woman next to it shrieked loudly in alarm.  Oh and I did love Gilmour's visual trick of showering red ticker-tape on the 'successful' assassins.

Ah, the Proprietor.  He is there to introduce the assassins and to play various characters within their scenarios.  But here the role is hideously over-played by Simon Lipkin who literally gasps the opening number "Everybody's Got The Right" while heavy-breathing through his mouth.  What the fuck was director Lloyd thinking about?  Sondheim's lyrics went for nothing as he sounded like someone trying to sing while having an asthmatic seizure.

His truly ghastly performance is mirrored in an over-the-top performance from Stewart Clarke who bellows his lines in "How I Saved Roosevelt" so much I was over-the-moon when he was finally electrocuted.  Sadly this air of high-pitched desperation affected Catherine Tate's woozy Sara Jane Moore which she played as if to an audience of hard-of-hearing patrons in the Albert Hall.  It was a grotesque performance of a woman who was anything but, just very, very confused.

Again the heavy-breathing-through-the-mouth acting style affected Harry Morrison who played John Hinckley as hysterically as a drag act who had just had his wig pulled off.  This was shown off to alarming effect in his duet with Carly Bawden's Lynette Frome.  Sondheim's glorious subversion of the typical musical love song has Hinckley and Frome singing of their unworthiness of someone's love - only this time it's to pictures of Jodie Foster and Charles Manson.  Morrison's over-wrought delivery was instantly forgotten when Bawden started singing - a pure, soprano voice just singing… a rarity in this production.

However, it was not all ghastly - some performers fought through the unimaginative staging to make an impression.  US actor Aaron Tveit was an impressive Booth, his preening vanity sitting on him like an ever-present opera cloak and he shone in the afore-mentioned Lee Harvey Oswald scene.  The always dependable Jamie Parker played The Balladeer, the musical's voice of reason who counterpoints the assassin's protestations with asides on how they didn't change anything, they didn't get what they wanted etc.  However when the assassins attack him during their clarion call "Another National Anthem", he emerges from the scrum dressed as Lee Harvey Oswald, ready to be seduced by Booth into his moment of fate. 

Andy Nyman was fun as the clearly deranged Charles Guiteau and made the most of his solo cakewalk number, clapping and dancing his way up the gallow stairs, he even breaks out dancing in mid-air after his lengthy hanging!  I also liked David Roberts as the confused and lonely Leon Czolgosz, he was particularly good in the small but telling scene with Emma Goldman where he struggles to make a connection with a real radical visionary.

As I said, Carly Bawdon was excellent as the angrily obsessed Lynette Frome and at the other end of the spectrum, Mike McShane was blistering fierce as Sam Byck who has two monologues in which we see an angry, disturbed man slowly coming apart.  The interesting thing is that Weidman does give Byck genuine concerns - what Weidman and Sondheim are saying is that it's right to get angry at injustices, it's how you react that is important.

Neil Austin's lighting design was, as always, almost a star in itself and the orchestra gave the score a vibrancy not always echoed by the cast.

I came out of the theatre shattered at the sheer intensity of it all so I guess Jamie Lloyd would say he succeeded but I would seriously debate that.

2014… Thank You and Good Night!

After SPIDERMOOSE: TURN OFF THE VOLUME it was time for something with a little bit more heart... and we had just the show. Who could turn down the chance of seeing The Queen of Broadway Harvey Fierstein as 'Zaza' in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES?

Harvey won a Tony Award for the LA CAGE book in 1983 and he is now the right age to play Albin, the temperamental diva of the Riviera so when Douglas Hodge left the production at the start of the year, Harvey was the most obvious choice to take over the role.

The night we went he was on his third 'Georges', as 'twhere. He started his run with Jeffrey Tambor who then pulled out sharpish due to a back injury which *ahem* seemed to affect his singing voice. He has since been replaced by Christopher Sieber but he was off on our night so we saw the understudy Chris Hoch.

I am presuming that being so partnered was the reason that Harvey was a trifle, um, unstoppable. As he rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out for the nth time, it suddenly occurred to me that he was reminding me of Harpo Marx! Showboating apart, Harvey gave us a larger-than-life performance, a real star turn and his rendition of "I Am What I Am" was wonderfully touching and heartfelt.I must say I also thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Chris Hoch as 'Georges'. Usually cast as Francis the stage manager, Hoch had a brief run as 'Georges' in the hiatus between Tambor and Sieber and he gave a charmingly urbane performance, holding his own against the Fierstein fireworks without really pulling the focus, well done that Hoch!

I'm not sure where it happened - in the journey across the Atlantic or during it's near-year long run at the Longacre Theatre - but Terry Johnson's production has broadened more than somewhat and has lost some of it's Menier/Playhouse charm.

A prime example of this was shown in the performance of Wilson Jermaine Heredia as the camp butler Jacob. Heredia (the original Angel in RENT) was so busy signaling that his lines were funny that the last thing you felt like doing was laughing. Oddly enough the tricky male ingenue role of Georges' son Jean-Michel, which I had not seen done well here, was effortlessly played by A.J. Shively.The comedian Mike McShane as Deputy Dindon was oddly muted but I enjoyed the glamorous performance of Christine Andreas as Jacqueline the restaurateur.

Les Cagelles were as watchable as ever but I felt again, that the personality and characterful line-up from London had been replaced by the more hard-faced professionalism of the Broadway stage.One of the 'broadening' elements however does work - we were greeted at the door by a chatty 'hostess' who popped up again sitting on the stage as a warm-up for the show, chatting and insulting with the audience. She was great fun and an interesting addition to the production.

LA CAGE AUX FOLLES marks the third time we have followed a show from the Menier to Broadway: previous shows have been SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at Studio 54 and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC at the Walter Kerr (which is across the road from the Longacre spookily enough!) - I wonder if there will be a fourth?