RAGS at The Park Theatre - Bits and pieces...

My first trip to the theatre this year was to see a musical I had seen before - or had I?

RAGS opened on Broadway in 1986 and promptly closed after only four performances.  It's tiny run belies the fact that the show had a score written by Charles Strouse who wrote ANNIE and BYE BYE BIRDIE, the lyricist was Stephen Schwartz who already had GODSPELL and PIPPIN under his belt (WICKED was in the future) and the book was by Joseph Stein who wrote FIDDLER ON THE ROOF.

The cast included opera singer Theresa Stratas joining the combined Broadway experience of Larry Kert, Lonny Price and Judy Kuhn.  Although the audience didn't show up, the nominations did: RAGS received five Tony nominations but no awards and another five from the Drama Desk with Stratas winning it's Best Musical Actress Award.  The cast recording lived on after the show garnering a dedicated following (hello Guy!)

RAGS received several small-scale revivals during the 1990s and into the 2000s; I saw one of these at the Bridewell Theatre off Fleet Street in 2001 starring Sally Ann Triplett and found it pleasant but fairly forgettable.  In 2017 the show reappeared at Connecticut's Goodspeed Theatre, using a totally new book by David Thompson which ditched a character or two and refocused the story and this is the basis of The Park's production.  However, despite some fine work within the production, it has all been an exercise in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic - RAGS is just that, scraps of ideas that when joined together shows it's loose stitching.

Despite the new book by David Thompson, the story is overshadowed with memories of Joseph Stein's earlier hit FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and plays like a sequel to that show. with it's tale of Russian Jews arriving in New York to begin a new life away from the dangers of the homeland's pogroms.

Rebecca and her young son David have bribed their way aboard a 'rag' ship sailing for New York from Russia and has made a friend with fellow-emigre Bella who tells her new-found friend that she is lucky as her father Avram is already in the city and can give her a home in the cramped apartment he shares with his brother and sister-in-law.  Rebecca and David have no arrangement and are quickly singled out by the immigration officers to be returned back to Russia but Bella and Avram pretend she is family and they start their life together on the Lower East Side.

Avram's brother Jack is an outsourced tailor who works for the flashy German garment factory boss Bronfman, who while visiting the apartment one day is taken with Rebecca's dress-making skills and, more importantly, by Rebecca herself.  Another visitor is Sal, an Italian-born union leader who hates the sweatshop conditions that his fellow immigrants have to work in, including Bronfman's factory.  Needless to say, Rebecca is soon caught between what the two men can offer her and her son.  Love also blossoms between Bella and the nebbish songwriter Ben, while Avram strikes up a relationship with street peddler widow Rachel.  For one couple, it ends tragically...

This new version of RAGS has, in total, nine lead and supporting characters to keep up with and that's when the problems start: in the first act alone there are twenty numbers (including reprises) that I suspect are expected to provide any depth and emotional resonance you are supposed to feel for the characters but sadly the score is so insubstantial that this does not work.  So you grasp for depth in the book scenes but apart from the characters of Jack and his wife Anna, and Avram and the widow Rachel, you have the relentlessly two-dimensional heroine Rebecca and her colourless rich and poor lovers, and the saccharine partnership of Bella and Ben.

I had to wait until halfway through the second act before my interest finally was engaged with "Three Sunny Rooms" a sly and tentative courtship number between the pursuing Rachel and the more hesitant Avram, but this was more down to the playing of two seasoned musical actors who could sock over the comedy but also mine the loneliness underneath.  After that we hit the Tragic Plot Twist but this was followed a rousing ensemble Union song and Rebecca's big Eleven O'Clock number so at least by the curtain you are a bit more willing to be generous in the applause.

Again I was struck how the The Park200 auditorium feels like a thinner Donmar Warehouse so it was interesting to see a musical there, my other trips have been to see plays.  Bronagh Lagan - in her production imported from Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre - at least kept the action moving and knew when to let the afore-mentioned supporting quartet shine while Gregor Donnelly's design made clever use of battered suitcases as a backdrop and a simple line of shirts to suggest tenement life - even if Owen was probably right in pointing out that the shirts surely would have been collarless in 1910!  Derek Anderson's lighting also was well done at achieving specific moods.

As I said earlier, RAGS became pure Dior whenever Jeremy Rose as Jack, Debbie Chazen as Anna, Dave Willetts as Avram and in particular Rachel Izen as, um, Rachel where onstage, socking their characters into the audience with top-spin.  In particular, Izen and Willets were exquisite in their scenes together - the "Three Sunny Rooms" number was delightfully handled and in their final scene, with his now-wife Rachel unable to shift Avram from all-encompassing grief, they both played it with a telling heavy sadness.

Carolyn Maitland certainly had a grave presence as Rebecca and certainly whacked the character's big ballad "Children Of The Wind" into the back wall of the stalls, sadly what she has not yet managed to get yet is an inner light that illuminates a real lead performer.

I suspect RAGS will continue to be tinkered with, re-cut and re-assembled until it's just THREADS - give me Ahrens and Flaherty's RAGTIME anyday.  But it was a nice way to slide into 2020's theatre going.

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM at the Park Theatre - ...In Gay Years...

Forty years ago this year, Martin Sherman's play BENT opened at the Royal Court Theatre.  Originally written for the Gay Sweatshop theatre group, they passed on it hoping a bigger theatre company would do it so the play could be seen by a wider audience.  It was initially rejected by the Royal Court while Hampstead would only stage it if a gay director did it, but none came forward.  The Court eventually staged it with the star power of Ian McKellen and Tom Bell but the management still disapproved.  No leading West End producers wanted it until producer Eddie Kulukundis took it to the Criterion but only on the agreement with the Society of West End Theatre that it would be gone by December as the Society felt it would be distasteful to be seen at Christmas time in the West End.

In those forty years, gay plays and musicals have found an easier journey to the stage usually through the tried and tested route of either the subsidized theatre or fringe stages.  Those forty years have also seen a whole societal change for gay men and women in the UK and Martin Sherman's latest play GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM addresses that very idea.

Directed by Sherman's frequent collaborator Sean Mathias, GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM takes place in London between the years 2001 and 2014.  Pianist Beau is an American from New Orleans who has lived mostly in Paris and London since the 1950s, ruefully observing the world around him from a distance and through the prism of his music.  Beau has taken the plunge and met a much younger man called Rufus online through Gaydar.  Beau is taken aback when Rufus reveals that he is actually a fan of his music and, in particular, his years accompanying the legendary cabaret star Mabel Mercer.

It transpires that Rufus - who works in the City of London - loves the films and music from the 1930s onwards and had been aware of Beau's presence online and made the first move.  Beau is skeptical of Rufus' effusiveness - especially when he confesses to being bi-polar - but is slowly charmed by him and his genuine interest in recording Beau's reminiscences of his life as a gay man down the years.  However he refuses to indulge in Rufus' starry-eyed nostalgia, telling him that those years were dangerous and lonely years for gay men: "Someone like Mabel confirmed our misery, and mythologized it, but misery it was - and, as a result, everyone was drunk.”

Rufus moves in and they negotiate his manic spells and Beau's unspoken disbelief that they can possibly have a life together, a combination of his only serious affairs having ended sadly, and his knowing that any new-won rights can just as easily be taken away.  Eventually Rufus confesses that he has fallen in love with Harry, a gay performance artist in his early 20s with an ego bigger than his empathy.  Beau is saddened but maintains a friendship and even acts as the couple's Best Man at their wedding.  While Rufus and Harry dwindle into a semi-bickering married life, Beau realizes that happiness can arrive just when you wouldn't suspect it...

Sherman's work can sometimes take on too many themes - I shudder to remember his clunky 1989 play A MADHOUSE IN GOA which even Vanessa Redgrave couldn't rescue - but here the bulk of 20th Century gay experience isn't as unwieldy, thanks in no small part to Beau being such a fascinating character, aloof from the world's cruelties but surprising himself at his capacity to feel.  At times it reminded me of another Sherman play called ROSE which starred Olympia Dukakis at the National Theatre which, while an admirable one-woman feat, finally wore you out as the eponymous Everywoman figure hit every major Jewish experience in the 20th Century like a crazed bagatelle.   Here, because Beau is imparting his stories to Rufus, the experiences of living through Mabel Mercer, AIDS, the shocking 1973 UpStairs lounge arson attack and gay soldiers in WWII New York, doesn't seem such information overload.  Beau got through it all... and he's still here.

This is helped by Jonathan Hyde's exquisite performance as Beau; looking at times like a slightly pissed-off parrot, Hyde's wonderfully acerbic patrician Beau showed subtle changes of thought with delicate expressions of under-played humanity.  It is remarkable to think that the 2017 premiere of GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM off-Broadway starred Harvey Fierstein as Beau, a radically different interpretation I am sure.

The roles of Rufus and Harry cannot help but pale next the the all-encompassing Beau but Ben Allen and Harry Lawtey both eased their performances into the spaces around Hyde's to give him plenty to react to, Lawtey in particular, was very good at turning the initially ghastly feckless Harry into a character with hidden depth.  Sean Mathias might have had some misfires before but here his direction was nuanced and illuminating.

GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM certainly sends you into the night musing on Sherman's arguments of the changing gay experience and I hope it will be seen by a wider audience than us lucky few who have seen it at The Park.

In thinking back on Martin Sherman's work, I am now hoping that one day we will see a revival of his remarkable play WHEN SHE DANCED based on Isadora Duncan's later years in the 1920s Riviera - but where would you find actresses now who could match the power of Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour?

TWILIGHT SONG at Park Theatre - Echoes of a Summer's night...

After the recent reading of Martin Sherman's BENT at the Lyttelton, there was a Q&A with Sherman and director Stephen Daldry and a member of the audience asked them if any gay play in the 38 years since BENT's first production had made a big impression on them. I was surprised that they both shined the question on; Daldry took the opportunity to promote a new two-part play that he is directing next year at the Young Vic and Sherman said there were too many.

I had hoped that Kevin Elyot's sublime MY NIGHT WITH REG would be mentioned, particularly as Elyot, when an actor, had appeared in Martin Sherman's play about Isadora Duncan WHEN SHE DANCED at the Globe Theatre, while Daldry was Artistic Director at the Royal Court when the play was produced.  In passing, not to mention ANGELS IN AMERICA was surprising too as they were sitting on the set for it's current revival!

MY NIGHT WITH REG was revived in a wonderful production three years ago at the Donmar but tragically Kevin Elyot died two months before it's opening and now his final play TWILIGHT SONG is being presented at north London's Park Theatre.  As in his plays REG, THE DAY I STOOD STILL and MOUTH TO MOUTH, Elyot again plays with the concept of time, moving forward and back over months and years to disclose the quiet desperation and gnawing secrets that his mostly-reserved characters are trying to live with.

TWILIGHT SONG takes place in prime Elyot territory: a ground floor living room in a large North London house which belongs to Barry Gough and his mother Isabella who seem locked in a strange, resentful existence.  In his 50s, Barry has taken early retirement to mooch about the house that is sinking into disrepair.  He has invited estate agent Skinner to look around it as he is thinking of downsizing.  After revealing that Skinner grew up in Australia with his father who moved there from England the conversation takes an unexpected turn that, although married, he occasionally fucks for money, men or women.  Barry hesitatingly asks if he would do it to him and after some brutal negotiating Skinner agrees...

The action then moves back to the same room in the summer of 1960, where Isabella and her husband Basil are entertaining two older friends, Uncle Charles and his army friend Harry before going out to La Caprice while outside the garden is being laid.  While alone Charles attempts to kiss Harry who brusquely rebuffs him. Charles is unhappy that they no longer have a secretive sex life but Harry refuses to acknowledge it, he is a father now and a successful solicitor.

Seven years later, a pregnant Isabella and Basil are again going out to dinner with Charles but much has changed; Isabella is bored with Basil and confesses to Charles that the father of her unborn child is a working-class man she once had an affair with while Charles reveals his secret sorrow that he refused to financially help Harry who turned to him for help because he was being blackmailed by a younger man.  Faced with personal disgrace Harry killed himself...

We ricochet back to the night of Barry's meeting with Skinner when an aged and drunken Isabella returns from her weekly visit to a spiritualist.  She is desperately trying to find out what happened to her younger son, the one she was pregnant with by the secret lover, who vanished while still a toddler from the house. Although bickering, it is obvious that Barry still yearns for the maternal love that was lavished on his missing brother.

One last time Elyot takes us back in time, to the same night when Basil, Isabella, Charles and Harry were off to La Caprice... the gardener working outside walks in and catches Isabella alone and their conversation turns to flirtation - just like the scene between Barry and Skinner - and he roughly kisses her.  They are interrupted by Harry and it transpires that the gardener knows Harry as well, he is the blackmailer...

Director Anthony Banks certainly keeps the 75 minute production running along nicely, maintaining the thread of inner sorrow that runs through the characters' lives taut while James Cotterill's simple stage design was effective.  Sadly the play itself seemed to be just off the beat; Elyot was obviously struggling with it's plotting and both the obvious and hidden connections seem finally to be too forced, there were so many crossed lines going on between the relatively few main characters that I missed the one Owen spotted - that Skinner is probably Barry's lost brother.  I am sure Elyot could have given it a re-write had there been time allowed him.

There were particularly fine performances from Hugh Ross as Uncle Charles, saddled with his secret sorrow, and Adam Garcia was great fun as the ever-surprising Skinner but as the catalyst character of the gardener he revealed the fact that Elyot has him there just to link the secrets, there is no real humanity there.  Paul Higgins was effective as the emotionally-stunted Barry but again he revealed the character of Basil to be merely a cypher.  Sadly Bryony Hannah was one-note as Isabella and was totally at sea when she had to age up to being 75 years-old.

There was enough within TWILIGHT SONG to maintain interest and a minor Kevin Elyot play is still worth one's time but what I was ultimately left with is the sadness that there will be no more plays from him now...