THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY at Menier Chocolate Factory - capturing the moment...

Ah the power of a well-timed casting notice.  I wasn't particularly enthused about seeing the Menier Chocolate Factory's new show THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY but then they announced who was playing the lead role - thank you Menier Box Office, two please...

I knew very little about the show other than it flopped on Broadway in 2014; directed by Bartlett Sher, it had starred Broadway heroine Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale but ran for just under three months.  The composer Jason Robert Brown is a Broadway quandary: his songs are loved by cabaret singers and his scores attract awards - two Best Score Tony Awards (PARADE / BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY)  and four Drama Desk Best Music or Lyrics Awards (PARADE / THE LAST FIVE YEARS / ...MADISON COUNTY) but not one of his shows - either on Broadway or Off-Broadway - has ever run longer than three months! 

This is the Menier's first Jason Robert Brown show for 13 years after his two-hander THE LAST FIVE YEARS in 2006, and his only other London productions have been PARADE at the Donmar and SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD at the St. James Theatre (as was).  I must admit that I still have issues with his music and the score for MADISON COUNTY overall didn't really impress either - yes there are some stand-out numbers particularly towards the end of the show but a lot of the time the score sounded like it was stitched together from 'New Country' b-sides.  They floated around the auditorium to little effect, but luckily the cast were strong enough to keep my interest in the show going.

I also had very little knowledge of the story having never seen the film starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep or read the original novel - interestingly in his programme interview, Brown says that both he and book writer Marsha Norman had to pay lip service to the novel when interviewed in the lead-up to the original production as they both felt the book was under-par and they had changed the plot for the musical.

Italian-born Francesca moved to Iowa with her American GI husband Bud at the end of WWII and, as the musical starts, she is waving off Bud and their teenage children Michael and Carolyn to a Youth Fair in 1965 for a few days.  Alone on their farm her thoughts of what might have been are disrupted when Robert, a photographer on an assignment for National Geographic magazine, stops by to ask for directions to a nearby covered bridge as he is photographing Iowa's famous bridges for the project.  After showing him the location, Francesca invites him to have dinner at the farm due to the late hour and is charmed by his knowledge of the world, even her old home city of Naples.

Slowly these two lonely people realize that they have a unique understanding for each other and, despite daily calls from Bud, their bickering children and her prying neighbour, Francesca and Robert discover they have both fallen in love.  But how can Francesca leave her family despite Robert's insistence that she can just take off and make a new life with him?  With time running out until Robert leaves town, Francesca makes a decision that effects her and Robert forever...

Marsha Norman's sparse book which focuses on about six characters cannot fight off the inescapable Mills and Boon elements of the story - the character of Robert is too obvious a romantic fiction device to be truly believable - but thanks to the committed performances of the cast I found it very easy to bob along with the story's current as it raced to it's emotional climax.

Director Trevor Nunn brings his usual drawn-out playing time to the show - it does feel a fairly long 2 hours 45 minutes - but he also elicits fine performances from his cast.  There are two good performances from David Perkins and newcomer Maddison Bulleyment as the opinionated teens Michael and Carolyn and a very nice performance from Dale Rapley as stolid and unknowing Bud.  Robert was played by Edward Baker-Duly and he was fairly lightweight in the role, he sang well but he couldn't make the photographer anything but a foil for the more strongly-defined character of Francesca.

And what a Francesca the production has in Jenna Russell, once again proving herself as one our finest musical actresses.  She played her character's unexpected blossoming into the passionately loved woman she could only dream of with a shifting delicacy that made you believe her every growing smile, every hesitant step along the way, came from the heart.  By the time of her soaring last song she had created a character that was truly believable.

The production is also graced with Tim Lutkin's lighting, Tal Rosner's videos and Jon Bausor's clapboard set (Owen wondered if it was the old COLOR PURPLE set!) which opens to reveal Francesca's world of kitchen, porch and bedroom, although I must admit the glimpses of stagehands shifting the sets into place rather pulled focus.

Tom Murray's music direction made the eleven-strong orchestra fill the auditorium so even the most unsubstantial song sounded good.  THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY is on at the Menier until 14th September and is definitely worth a visit to see Jenna Russell illuminate the work with her lovely performance.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF at the Playhouse - Fathers and Daughters...

I couldn't get terribly worked up over seeing Trevor Nunn's revival of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF when it originated at the Menier Chocolate Factory as, while I admire the stagecraft that went into it's creation, it's not really one of my favourite musicals.  But it's glowing reviews, it's transfer to the Playhouse Theatre - and the fact that I had seen every other show in the West End that interested me - meant that my birthday theatre event found me journeying back to the Russian shtetl of Anatevka in the early 1900s.

In it's transfer to the Playhouse, director Trevor Nunn has reconfigured the stalls to echo his Menier staging so a raised meandering path runs through the stalls to bring you into the middle of the small Jewish town, it's a bit cumbersome in finding your seat but very effective and for once, I felt engaged with the show.  Of course being a Trevor Nunn production, it's very lengthy which for me only highlighted the repetitions in Joseph Stein's book, but as I said, I was engaged.

I have only seen the show once before onstage - a jaw-dropping 14 years ago in New York in a Chekhovian production directed by David Leveaux starring Harvey Fierstein and Rosie O'Donnell - and, of course, the Norman Jewison film version starring Topol. As I said, it's not a particular favourite of mine, mostly because I find the plot device of a Jewish village milkman finding the traditions he lives by erode through his three daughters marrying against his wishes too repetitive.  I will agree that this is done by degrees: the first falls in love with a nebbish Jewish tailor, the second to a Bolshevik, the third to a gentile - but, particularly in this production, the three daughters are played exactly the same, sound exactly the same - typical west end soprano - and are so resolutely two-dimensional, that it's like you are seeing one actress on a revolve.  The three boyfriends are all given different shadings but the daughters get no personalities at all.

I also am not the biggest fan of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's score which has it's standards - "Tradition", "If I Were A Rich Man", "Sunrise Sunset", "Do You Love Me" - but otherwise I find it fairly anonymous and repetitive. But as I said, I found Nunn's production to be involving with very good musical direction from Paul Bogaev which serves the score well, apart from the endless "Tevye's Nightmare" which proves that time is not always a continuum.

Nunn has chosen Andy Nyman for his Tevye and he is excellent, making him a very human-sized character, unlike the usual Star turn from actors taking their lead from the originator of the role, the larger-than-life Zero Mostel.  Without the character being figuratively spot-lit downstage while the other actors huddle upstage, it makes for more integrated story-telling with the town of Anatevka coming fully to life.

Like the daughters, the role of Tevye's wife Golde is a fairly thankless one; for ever careworn and kvetching at her husband's foolish dreams, but Broadway actress Judy Kuhn suggested more depth to the character than is on the page.  In particular the duet "Do You Love Me?" where Tevye finally plucks up the courage to ask Golde whether their 25-year marriage is based on love or just circumstance is a touching, almost embarrassed moment between Nyman and Kuhn rather than being played for comedy.

The other stand-out in the cast is Louise Gold as Yente, the gossipy matchmaker of the village; another two-dimensional female character but imbued by the ever-reliable Gold with a vibrant personality who again had colour and depth that was not suggested by the script.  I also liked Stewart Clarke as Perchik the stern Bolshevik student who is smitten by the middle daughter Hodel.

Of course the spirit of Jerome Robbins, the show's original director/choreographer, is ever-present in the big dance routines for "To Life" and "The Wedding / Bottle Dance"; for a man who has been dead 21 years, it's not bad that he gets named three times on the poster.  Matt Cole is responsible for the rest of the enjoyable choreography.

Robert Jones' set design brings the crowded Anatevka to vibrant life both onstage and off, while Tim Lutkin's subtle, shifting lighting gives the town the warmth of summer and the dark of winter.  None more so than in the final scenes when the mood turns sombre with the forced eviction of the Jews from the town.  Despite my problems with the show, it is impossible not to be moved by the final scene where lifelong friends and families say their goodbyes knowing they will probably never see each other again as they scatter over Europe and America.

As the snow falls on Tevye's shattered community slowly trudging out of their hometown, clutching their few possessions on a long journey to who knows what fate, Nunn shows his production is sadly very relevant to today's world of displaced people and the search for home in a world of prejudice and fear.

I am not always a fan of Trevor Nunn's work but here he gives us a memorable production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, maybe one to see again...

LOVE IN IDLENESS at the Menier - Rattigan Reimagined

Just when it looked like the revivals of plays by Terence Rattigan were over, up pops another one at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a highly unlikely home for this writer.

It turns out that LOVE IN IDLENESS is a bit of a cut-and-shunt job.  In 1944 Terence Rattigan wanted to write a play which reflected the conflicts of the time - when confidence in winning the war was tempered by worries of what the country would do next - as well as write a typical Shaftesbury Avenue comedy star vehicle.  Gertrude Lawrence turned it down unread but the acting (and married) partnership of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne picked it up.

The title was LESS THAN KIND which hints at the play's riffing on HAMLET but Lunt felt it's plot - young man burning with Socialist idealism returns from wartime evacuation to Canada to discover that his widowed mother has moved in with an industrialist currently serving in Churchill's wartime cabinet - was not humorous enough for him so Rattigan rewrote it, dropping most of the confrontations over politics.  Later on he recanted saying that he wished he had kept the play as it was and not bowed to star power.

Fast forward to 2016: Trevor Nunn was looking for another Rattigan project after his successful revival of FLARE PATH in 2011 and discovered the two similar projects and after urging from the Rattigan estate to meld the two scripts - reinstating some of the political debate but also keeping it light and amusing - we now have LOVE IN IDLENESS.  Incidentally the unperformed LESS THAN KIND was given a belated debut in 2011 too at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre (home of the hags, don't get me started).

I must admit to some trepidation at the thought of Trevor Nunn imposing his love of playing length on what sounded like a frothy comedy (and it does come down after nearly three hours) but remarkably his production delighted in it's brio and in the winning performances.  True, Rattigan weights the plot in favour of the industrialist Sir John Fletcher but when he is played so delightfully by Anthony Head it's a point one is willing to concede.

I was also hugely surprised by Eve Best as the high society-loving Olivia Brown.  Best is *ahem* best at roles which usually find her mournful and constantly wiping away tears or blowing her nose on a hankie secreted up the arm of her dowdy dress but here she blossoms as a gushingly over-indulgent mother but whose sense of fun is nicely balanced with a sense of fair play.  There were several times during the play that I thought what a nice part this would have been for Emma Thompson to have played had she not seemingly turned her back on theatre (SWEENEY TODD withstanding).

As I said Anthony Head is utterly charming as Sir John, possibly the best I have seen him on stage.  He captures the combination of a believable powerful man of influence while also being totally thrown by the emotional devastation that Olivia's truculent son brings with his arrival back from Canada.  As Michael, Olivia's son determined to break up his mother from a man who represents everything he despises, Edward Bluemel starts a bit wobbly but gained in strength during the evening, eventually playing Michael's selfish side well.

Another performance which really surprised me was Helen George as the society girl Diana.  Nicely introduced as what you expect to be a girl that Michael has picked up, the reveal that she is in fact Sir John's estranged wife is nicely done and she plays Diana's ruthless determination very well.  She more than holds her own against her more illustrious co-stars. Sadly the other supporting cast members are all a bit weak but the four leads carry them well.

Stephen Brimson Lewis has designed a pleasing Mayfair apartment for the primary action to take place which converts nicely into a low-rent Baron's Court flat for the final scene and it's a nice touch to have the time and place so well established with old Pathe News clips projected onto the wraparound scrim curtain.

Yes it's lightweight and throwaway, and not really Rattigan's best work, but it entertains and proves that sometimes experience does count for everything.  I was somewhat surprised to hear that it will transfer to the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue in May but wish it well as it is a play written to be seen on the Avenue.  I hope it finds it's audience.

Dvd/150: NATIONAL THEATRE 50 (2013)

A marvellous celebration of the National Theatre's 50th birthday, this 2-disc dvd includes the all-star gala which re-staged scenes and musical numbers from the NT's greatest shows plus the 2-part BBC Arena programme covering the National's tumultuous history, as dramatic as anything ever staged there.

Wonderful archive recordings and footage tell how Laurence Olivier launched the NT at the Old Vic and, in the second programme, how Peter Hall took over with it's move to the South Bank and how his successors Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner have sustained it.  The programme interviews these directors along with the new Artistic Director Rufus Norris.

Also interviewed are Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Tom Stoppard, Peter Brook, Ronald Pickup, Jonathan Miller, Ian McKellen, David Hare, Peter Shaffer, Judi Dench and Alan Bennett.

It's worth it for the footage of GUYS AND DOLLS alone!

Shelf or charity shop? It has a shelf all to itself.

I suspect we shall know by the end of the year where we stand with Terence Rattigan. Much is being made that this year marks the centenary of his birth and a slew of productions are being staged to celebrate this as well as the release later in the year of Terence Davies' remake of THE DEEP BLUE SEA.

It's all rather odd as 2011 is also the centenary of Tennessee Williams' birth and he is a writer whose work has received more attention in the past few years in London than Rattigan's but of Tennessee there appears to be nary a peep of celebrations this year.

Rattigan in truth has never been that far from our stages with fairly frequent revivals of THE DEEP BLUE SEA and, to a lesser extent, SEPARATE TABLES and THE WINSLOW BOY but I suspect the upswing in Rattigan's profile has been due to the phenomenal success last year of the National Theatre's AFTER THE DANCE. This seems to have led to him now being seen more as a playwright to be taken seriously as opposed to a writer whose plays make handy vehicles for starry revivals.Trevor Nunn is launching his tenure as Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket with a production of Rattigan's 1941 play FLARE PATH, written while he was serving with the RAF. It is what you expect from Rattigan, a solid well-made West End play with a beginning, a middle and an end - in that order. Not as haunting as AFTER THE DANCE but worthy of a revival I guess.

The Falcon Hotel is a genteel Lincolnshire hotel which has as it's clientele the officers (and wives) of the neighbouring RAF airbase. We follow the events that take place over a single night when the airmen are recalled to the base for a night flight over Germany. One of the four planes in the squadron is fired upon by waiting enemy planes on take-off and one is reported Missing In Action and we watch as the news of a missing pilot refracts on his wife and his friends.
Rattigan rewrote the play for the 1945 film THE WAY TO THE STARS which packs a more emotional punch as he didn't hedge his dramatic bets as he does here. I suspect that because the film script was written towards the end of the war, it was easier to include lead characters being killed in action.

The action here is given a melodramatic twist by having the hotel's occupants surprised by the appearance in their midst of Peter Kyle, an actor who has made a name for himself in Hollywood. It turns out that it isn't just a random visit as Kyle has been conducting a clandestine affair with Patricia, one of the pilot's wives. She is on the verge of telling her husband that she is leaving him when the call comes through for the night flight so the tension is stretched to breaking point between the lovers.
With not much sub-text to play, Trever Nunn ramps up the tension of the waiting women and this works very well. He also elicits sympathetic performances from his cast, the stand-out being the 'West End's Sweetheart' Sheridan Smith as Doris the down-to-earth and amiable ex-barmaid who now finds herself the Countess Skriczevinsky after her marriage to a Polish airman.

Sheridan was the real heart of the play and as the realisation dawned that her husband had not returned with the others, she shone with a stoic sadness. In the scene where Doris asked Kyle to read her the letter that her husband left to be opened in the event of his death, her delicate reactions were heart-breaking.Owing to the non-appearing James Purefoy, the lead role of Peter Kyle was played by Jim Creighton and he was very good. Kyle secretly knows he is coming to the end of his Leading Man roles and is banking all on his relationship with Patricia and Creighton played this quiet desperation very well.

The role of Patricia was played by media darling Sienna Miller. She was ok as the stage actress torn between her love for Kyle and her duty to her obviously disturbed pilot husband but watching her I was amazed that her name has such cachet. There are any number of actresses who could play the role as well if not better and her blandly attractive, blonde looks conjure up the model on a Timotei ad rather than a memorable actress. The media's constant infatuation with her is truly baffling.

The role of the golden boy pilot Teddy Graham who is becoming more and more frazzled with each sortie was played well by the impossibly posh-named Harry Hadden-Paton and there was fine support from Joe Armstrong as Sgt. 'Dusty' Miller, Emma Handy as his visiting wife Maudie, Mark Dexter as Johnny the Polish flyer and in particular from Clive Wood as Squadron Leader Swanson aka 'Gloria' who made a sympathetic older 'uncle' to the pilots.

It was an additional pleasure to see the play in a full theatre - although it was amusing to find that his personification of his core audience 'Aunt Edna' - "a nice, respectable, middle-class, middle-aged, maiden lady, with time on her hands and money to help her pass it, who resides in a West Kensington hotel" - is alive and well. She is going to need that money to catch up with all the upcoming productions of his work!

In retrospect, our theatregoing in NY can be split into distinct pairings. HAIR and FELA! can both be grouped as celebratory 'experiences' and our fourth and fifth shows, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and SOUTH PACIFIC are definitely 'classic' Broadway book musicals. NEXT TO NORMAL stands out as just being naff.

Another pairing that sprung to mind was that we were again seeing a Sondheim production in New York that we had originally seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory back in London - during our last trip we saw SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at Studio 54.

To be honest the only thing on my mind as I took my seat was that FINALLY I was about to see Angela Lansbury in a musical! I had seen her with Bea Arthur at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1990 singing "Bosom Buddies" from MAME at an AIDS fundraiser but finally here I was seeing her in a real show... and where better than on Broadway where she has won five Tony Awards - tying with Julie Harris for the most won for performing.

I was mindful that we had yet to see a cast without an understudy on so I was getting nervous - but the only announcement before the lights went down was from Angela herself in a typically amusing warning to turn off our mobile phones and not to unwrap sweets... needless to say 20 minutes into the show, someone's mobile went off.

Trevor Nunn has broadened out his production to fill the Walter Kerr stage - no other additions apart from that - so yes, the lighting is still as murky in places as it was at the Menier.

When I say that he had broadened it, I don't just mean the set - there was a slightly annoying habit by some of the cast to play up the double-entendres in Hugh Wheeler's book - at times it was worryingly like watching CARRY ON NIGHT MUSIC. I can only assume this was down to Nunn but I don't remember it being so marked in London. Needless to say this being a Trevor Nunn show it of course ran for his regulation three hours. A little more pace would not have gone amiss.
 This show would have been the best of the trip but for a couple of performances which were akin to being elbowed in the eye. The roles of Ann and Henrik are notoriously difficult to pull off - juvenile roles with a fair amount of stage time that have to be played with respectively just the right amount of girlish enthusiasm and pompous rectitude otherwise they become tiresome. Ramona Mallory and Hunter Ryan Herdlicka - both making their Broadway debuts - became VERY tiresome.

Indeed Mallory so overdid the hysterical squealing and jabbering that one wondered why Fredrik had not had her sectioned. Why Nunn never reined them in during the rehearsal and previews is totally beyond me. What made her performance even more outlandish was that the young Katherine McNamara who played Desiree's young daughter Fredrika was a model of restraint and charm! What really annoyed me about Mallory and Herdlicka was that without them it would have been an exemplary supporting cast. Ok, Aaron Lazar as the egotistical Carl-Magnus had the grating habit of singing "wimmin" rather than "women" - which is a worry when his big solo was "In Praise Of Women" - but other than that he was fine and he was perfectly partnered by Erin Davie as his bitter and cynical wife Charlotte - her duet with Mallory on "Every Day A Little Death" was beautifully sung and actually drew the only true moment from her co-star.

A special mention must go to Leigh Ann Larkin as the only realist in the show, Ann's maid Petra. She stole every scene she was in - not difficult as she shared most of them with my two least favorite actors - and her rendition of "The Miller's Son" fully deserved the huge ovation she received. On our last trip we had seen her as the mutinous June in GYPSY so it was good to see her coming on!

But again, there was an irksome trick during her solo which I can only lay at Nunn's door. Larkin and Herdlicka play their roles with American accents while all the others use varying degrees of Received Pronunciation and towards the end of her song, while holding the note on "Meanwhiiiiile..." she suddenly verged into a Bronx accent singing "Meanwhiiiiyell..." that got a cheap laugh but ruined it for me. If it was some attempt to show that Petra was lower-class, it was unnecessary as she had done it through her performance!

 
Luckily Alexander Hanson has come over with the production to reprise his role as Fredrik and his witty, understated performance was good to see again. I suspect it was this unshowy aspect to his performance that won him the role against his formidable leading ladies.

As Owen suggested there was probably an interesting generational divide in who in the audience had come to see who and of course quite a few would have been there to see Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree.

Well she has come a long way since I used to see her clattering about backstage at 42ND STREET at Drury Lane with the show baseball cap welded to her head. As I was there to see my friend Carol Ball who played 'Anytime Annie', I have a good memory of who was in the cast - Catherine, your biog is wrong in the programme - you were chorus, love, not lead.

 
I'm not a big fan of her as I find her difficult to warm to. She was interesting to watch but again I never really forgot she was Giving A Performance. She gave a very luxurious, almost voluptuous reading of the part and as such, seemed to have her own rhythm against the other actors on stage, she always seemed somehow off the beat, which made her comedy scenes a trifle strained.

However in the odd moment, when she dropped her guard and allowed herself to be vulnerable on stage she showed a warmth that had been missing before. She was at her best in scenes with Hanson and their easy relationship together made it very easy to believe that they had once been intimate.

One such scene of course included her singing "Send In The Clowns" - not as heartbreaking as Judi Dench or Dorothy Tutin, not as emotional as Hannah Waddingham at the Menier, but all the more effective for her doing it quietly and ruefully. I happily joined in the large ovation she received for it.Which of course brings us to Angela Lansbury.

Mme. Armfeldt is the perfect role for her now - a delightful gem of a part that due to it's   small stage time makes you treasure each moment she's on stage. You simply couldn't take your eyes off her.She gave a performance of true star quality - every one of her laugh lines knocked out of the park with a deceptive ease, every look and piece of business timed to perfection.
  
She indeed has the timing of death - she gave a performance that almost revelled in the artificiality of high comedy but that turned on a coin to be breathtakingly poignant. Her scene toward the end with her grand-daughter (all her scenes with Katherine McNamara were charming) where she wistfully remembers a long lost lover who she turned down because he was not wealthy broke your heart simply by the way she timed the line "He could have been the love of my life".

Her solo number "Liaisons" was an object lesson in singing Sondheim. Perfectly sung, you could hear a pin drop as she quietly made the show her own.

 
Her final moments on stage were quite unforgettable. Slowly playing cards in her wheelchair as her grand-daughter watches for the night to smile, Mme. Armfeldt fell back in her chair with the cards scattering out of her hand as the audience reacted in shock.
  
By God, she was worth the wait.