50 Favourite Musicals: 29: CARMEN JONES (1943) (Georges Bizet, Oscar Hammerstein II)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1943, Broadway Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1992, Old Vic, London

Productions seen: one

Score: Georges Bizet, Oscar Hammerstein II
Book: Oscar Hammerstein II

Plot:  At a parachute factory during WWII, Joe, an air-force recruit, is ordered to escort the fiery Carmen Jones to the police in the next town.  Carmen seduces him however and escapes, resulting in Joe being confined to the stockade.  Joe and Carmen are reunited on his release but she has already attracted the attention of boxer Husky Miller who is offering the highlife in Chicago... 

Five memorable numbers: DAT'S LOVE, BEAT OUT DAT RHYTHM ON A DRUM, THE CARD SONG, DIS FLOWER, WHIZZIN' AWAY ALONG THE TRACK

In these earnest, crashingly obvious days of re-imagined, gender-fluid, re-written reinterpretations of classic works, the idea of re-imagining a classic opera as an all-black musical would be guaranteed a slot at the National, the Young Vic or the Almeida.  Too late hipsters, that ship sailed 76 years ago with the Broadway premiere of Oscar Hammerstein II's updated version of Bizet's "Carmen", CARMEN JONES.  Hammerstein took the Bizet opera and re-wrote the lyrics and book to update it to a drab WWII parachute factory in North Carolina.  CARMEN JONES will always lose out to the earlier PORGY AND BESS in status as it does not have the imprimatur of the opera house, although both roughly tell the same tale of a doggedly dull man in love with a flighty woman.  For me - and despite Hammerstein's dated Dat, Dem and Dis lines for his characters - CARMEN JONES wins out as a perfect re-imagining of a classic work and in the transformation, becoming it's own work of art.  Carmen - fiery, sly, unattainable - is a magnificent character and Hammerstein is clever enough to give her the "Card Song" where her true tragic independence is shown, determined to live life to her rules no matter what the consequences down the line, and she becomes a powerfully sympathetic heroine.  And oh those songs... "Dat's Love", "Beat Out Dat Rhythm On A Drum",  "Whizzin' Away Along The Track", "Dis Flower" and the afore-mentioned "Card Song" jump out of the score like firecrackers.  I finally saw the musical on stage when Simon Callow directed the UK premiere - astonishingly nearly 50 years after it's Broadway premiere - and loved it's inherent theatrical power with a magnetic lead performance by Sharon Benson.  Otto Preminger's film version remains marvellously powerful with stand-out performances from Pearl Bailey and Dorothy Dandridge, the first black actress to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award.  The film also has the strange claim that of the five lead performers, three were dubbed.  However what this anomaly gave us was the fantastic vocal performance of Marilyn Horne as Carmen, only 20 years old and her first major job before becoming one of America's great opera singers.  By the final scene, Dandridge's acting and Horne's singing fuse into one of the great film musical performances.

There is precious little video on stage productions of CARMEN JONES so here is the splashy trailer for Preminger's film... 

DE PROFUNDIS at the Vaudeville Theatre: Oscar Wilde and the space between...

The first theatre visit of 2018 was to see Simon Callow performing Frank McGuinness' adaptation of DE PROFUNDIS, Oscar Wilde's deeply moving exploration of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, written three months before his release from Reading Prison.

Oscar had begun his prison sentence of two years hard labour in the spring of 1895, being housed first in the London jails of Pentonville and Wandsworth where he soon was physically broken by the poor food, deprived conditions and the meaningless, gruelling tasks that made up his sentence.  In the chapel at Wandsworth, he collapsed and burst his right ear-drum.  He was transferred to Reading jail in the hopes he would be given easier work but the brutal governor made sure he was punished for any infringement.

In 1897 a new governor Major Nelson was installed and made a point of visiting his infamous prisoner and bringing him a book from his own library, a small act of kindness that reduced Oscar to tears.  Oscar had not been allowed to write anything while in prison but Nelson soon arranged for him to have a page of paper at a time to write to friends and his legal team, an important lifeline to any prisoner approaching the end of their sentence.

Apart from the surroundings and the debilitating nature of his punishment, Oscar had been emotionally distraught that he had heard nothing from Lord Alfred Douglas, his volatile young lover.  With time to dwell on the catastrophic nature of their relationship, Oscar slowly worked on a letter to 'Bosie' which took the last three months of his confinement, each page was taken away when completed.  He was not allowed to send it to Douglas or Oscar's close friend Robbie Ross but Major Nelson gave him the many pages when he was released.

On release he gave it to Ross to have a copy typed up and the original sent to Douglas but Ross wisely did the reverse; Douglas burnt his copy without bothering to read it.  The first publication was in 1905, five years after Oscar's death from Meningitis, believed to have been a result of the fall in Wandsworth.  It is a bitter irony that Lord Alfred Douglas was himself imprisoned for six months in 1923 for libelling no less that Winston Churchill.

Alone in his cell without any distractions, Oscar cast his memory back over their three years together and reveals to Lord Alfred - and himself - that their relationship was always one-sided with Oscar becoming just a pawn in the power-play between members of the poisonous family and, once he was no longer of use, was discarded...

HM Prison, Reading
Dear Bosie,
After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I would not like to think that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you, or any news or message even, except such as gave me pain ...

Oscar recalls with bitter clarity the times when his generosity wasn't reciprocated, most notably the occasion, when staying in Brighton, when he nursed Lord Alfred through a bout of influenza but when Oscar caught it 'Bosie' left him alone to suffer alone and when asked to simply fetch some water for him, Oscar was met with screaming rage.  He also recalls the times when rooms were hired for him to meet a deadline for a play, only to be distracted by an insistent Douglas to take him out to many dinners.

Oscar constantly returns to the misery he inflicted on his wife Constance and his sons Cyril and Vyvyan and his misery in the knowledge that a court order forbade him from ever seeing them.  He contrasts this with the damaging relationship between Lord Alfred and his dangerously vindictive father The Marquess of Queensbury.  After Queensbury's eldest son Francis was found dead, a suspected suicide, having been implicated in a homosexual relationship with the Prime Minister, Queensbury pursued Oscar and Lord Alfred until Oscar fatally sued him for slander.  Citing that Bosie had wanted to revenge the abuse that his mother had suffered at the hands of his father, Oscar tells Bosie he just has to see how Constance is a woman truly destroyed by a husband's actions.

Remarkably, despite his situation, there are still flashes of Oscar's preening ego at what the world has lost with his fall from grace.  He writes well on the that great leveller, Pain - he remembers the disgrace he felt when he was surrounded by a jeering crowd while left to stand on Clapham Junction to the way to prison, and also the heartbreaking pathos of seeing his friend Robbie Ross raise his hat to him in salute as Oscar was led away from the courtroom. The sting in the tail is that on release he still wishes to see Bosie again, even after all that he now understands of their relationship. They did meet again three months after his release but lived together only for a few months in Naples before parting forever due to family pressures and their own disenchantment with each other.

Simon Callow certainly caught all the shifting emotions Oscar conjures up in the letter seated most of the time in a hard-backed chair, occasionally trudging around the stage as Oscar would have walked around the prison yard.  It was a very powerful performance aided by Frank McGuinness' adaptation of the text.

It was well paced by director Mark Rosenblatt and the stark overhead lighting was courtesy of Paul Keogan.  With two more breaks between productions in Classic Spring's year-long Oscar Wilde celebration at the Vaudeville, DE PROFUNDIS might just come back for another limited engagement.

Sometimes you see a production in a theatre that leaves you so shaken it takes a while to get over it. Peter Hall's latest whack at Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT has left me thus... and not in a good way.

The production sold out to the National Theatre mailing list punters so tickets have been on the rare side - when two popped up on the NT website a few weeks back I nabbed them. No doubt Peter Hall wanted the Cottesloe so we are close to the action and, as is his lifelong mission, can concentrate on the text.

The production marks Peter Hall's 80th birthday and it's his fourth go at the play. I have to say that rather than seeing a production that showed that experience, I saw a production obviously directed by an old man.

An unavoidable problem was the clanging amateurishness of Rebecca Hall. Damn girl, how did you get the gig? Oh yes, I forgot for a minute. Her film career might be in the ascendant with roles in VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, FROST/NIXON as well as winning a BAFTA for the RED RIDING trilogy on Channel 4 but her stage work leaves her with nowhere to hide.

Although she won the Ian Charleston award in 2002 for her performance of 'Vivie' in her father's production of MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION I found that portrayal a bit two-dimensional but that at least fitted the kill-joy character, and felt she only succeeded playing Hermione in Sam Mendes' 2009 WINTER'S TALE at the Old Vic when she played the statue at the end!

Time and again Rebecca Hall give us true moments of jaw-dropping thinness. In her solo speeches to the audience she gave a masterclass in coarse acting - her arms stiffly raised from her sides for emphasis or looking from one side of the auditorium to the other to 'include the audience in' on her thoughts. It was a performance that semaphored cluelessness to the audience and more than once I found myself groaning quietly.

It all reminded me of when Jennifer, another of Hall's offspring, appeared as Helena in MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at the Lyttleton in 1983 and gave a performance of resounding averageness.

This mis-firing performance colours the whole production and is not helped by being paired with the rather odd Orsino of Marton Csokas. Looking not unlike a shaggy Russell Crowe, it was a performance that again consistently hit wrong notes all over the place. Like... was Peter Hall having his afternoon sleep during the rehearsals?

Rebecca Hall's Amateur-Night-In-Dixie turn is illuminated all the more by her scenes with Amanda Drew as Olivia. Where Hall speaks her lines with the studied earnestness of an over-achieving schoolgirl, Drew simply acts. For her the lines are learned and tucked away and she simply plays the role with a bemused air that is a pleasure to watch.One of the reasons I wanted to see the production was that Simon Paisley Day was playing Malvolio. His last two roles in ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE and PRIVATE LIVES have shown him as one of our best high comedy actors but here the life seems drained from him, the comedy gold that Simon Russell Beale and Derek Jacobi have found in Malvolio's pomposity and gulling by his enemies is here fitful and on a very low-light. He is a good enough actor to be able to adapt to Hall's doleful take on TWELFTH NIGHT and he certainly makes you sympathise for Malvolio's longing for revenge at the end of the play - I just felt cheated out of the performance I know he could have excelled in.

Sir Peter doesn't seem interested in the play's lovers. No, for him TWELFTH NIGHT is a serious rumination on death and the autumnal shades of Shakespeare later plays. As early as 1960 when he wrote a long preface to the play that is reprinted in the programme, he identified the central role in the play as Feste, Olivia's rueful clown . Not Viola, not Malvolio, Feste.Now as much as I admire David Ryall who plays the woeful jester, his ponderous delivery and lengthy scenes slowed the night to a crawl. While one can understand Hall's desire to make an elderly character the one we should pay most attention to, it unbalances the play so one sits there enduring the molasses-like atmosphere rather than enjoying a proven enjoyable play. Ryall plays the final scene alone, singing one of his interminable songs. Hall's decision to attempt to do it as an audience sing-a-long was a very wrong call.

As much as I liked Ryall's performance, I could not help thinking what the late John Normington could have done with the role as he was an actor capable of the lightest of touches.Apart from Drew, the best performances come from the devious characters in the Lady Olivia's house. Simon Callow's rambunctious Sir Toby Belch, Finty Williams as a sly Maria and, best of all, Charles Edwards as a delightfully daft Sir Andrew Aguecheek lifted the spirit with their every appearance - but these characters should surely be the mischievous devils who are the icing on the cake - not the ones who you are watching the wings for their next entrance?

I really can't be bothered to write any more about it but I must mention the bizarre design of Anthony Ward - a bare stage with a canopy of autumnal leaves - YEAH WE GET IT - with a tiny row of houses on the left-hand side of a shelf that runs along the back of the stage which doesn't so much suggest perspective so much as the remnants of a seaside gift shop at the end of it's closing down sale. The second-act addition of a large doll's house version of Olivia's mansion suggests a large piece of Capodimonte sitting in a litter tray.

Avoid.