New Shows For Old...

Three of the productions I have seen recently are shows that I have either seen before or seen in different productions and had intrigued or delighted me enough to see again.

The first one was Mary O'Malley's ONCE A CATHOLIC - first seen in a far-flung 1979 at the Wyndhams Theatre.  It struck a chord with me and I saw it a few times, enjoying the memories it stirred with my own Catholic secondary school as well as the dirty jokes. 

ONCE A CATHOLIC at the Wyndhams, along with the National Theatre's transfer of BEDROOM FARCE at the Prince of Wales, both started a burgeoning interest in theatre-going but I wasn't in the right place to fully appreciate what theatre could do - that would come three years later with the NT's GUYS AND DOLLS.  But here we are years later in 2013 in the oddly-shaped Tricycle Theatre auditorium, would the play hold up?

The first thing that struck me was how much I remembered of the text - time and again I was remembering lines *just* as they were about to be said so I guess the play did have a lasting effect on me!

This production was directed by Kathy Burke and while she elicited good performances from her cast, the pace felt a bit sluggish - not helped by several ungainly scene changes.  I will admit we saw one of the previews so maybe this was just teething troubles.

ONCE A CATHOLIC is set in 1957 in a Catholic girl's school in Willesden and it's sense of place is excellently evoked - it was hugely enjoyable to be seeing the play not far from where it was set!  Three girls are preparing not only for their final exams but also their launch into the big world and more importantly Life and by natural extension, boys.  They are hindered rather than helped by the religious diktats handed out by the nuns who teach them and the priest who oversees their spiritual wellbeing.

 

The three are the studious Mary Gallagher (Katherine Rose Morley), the hapless Mary Mooney (Molly Logan) and the brassy Mary McGinty (Amy Morgan).  Mary Mooney is a girl who asks the wrong questions and who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Good at heart and baffled by what the nuns insist is the truth, she constantly gets herself into trouble through no fault of her own.  Molly Logan played her with a delightful hangdog expression as if she seemed to expect to be in trouble all the time.  The odd thing is that she is the one who most wants to be devout but fate keeps tripping her up.  She oddly resembled a young Kathy Burke too!

 

 

After her scene-stealing performance in THE AMEN CORNER earlier this year, it was a joy to see Cecilia Noble again.  She was in excellent form as the three Marys' form teacher Mother Peter.  Whether she was ruling on the proper length of school knickers, enacting the miracle at Fatima or turning girlish in the presence of the priest she was a total joy.  Kate Lock played the dry and stern Mother Thomas Aquinas and Clare Cathcart was the scary science teacher Mother Basil.

 

 

There was also excellent support from Sean Campion as Father Mullarkey, the parish priest whose visits send the nuns a-twitter and the girls into boredom.  Campion was hilarious in his addresses to the class and gave the distinct impression of being one question away from cluelessness.  The know-it-all choirboy Cuthbert and horny teddy-boy Derek were played well by Oliver Coopersmith and Calum Callaghan.

 

 

It was good to see the show again and enjoy it's spiky, truthful humour once more.

 

I have seen the Leonard Bernstein musical CANDIDE twice before - but have never seen the same show twice as it's a piece that almost dares each director to make their production *the*  definitive version by adding dialogue, cutting songs or adding songs that other productions had previously dropped!  It's like everyone agrees the score is a jewel but the setting keeps getting hacked at, re-set and the jewel *still* looks wrong.

CANDIDE opened in 1956 with a book by Lillian Hellman (who originated the project), score by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by John Latouche (who died before it opened), Dorothy Parker, the poet Richard Wilbur and Bernstein but it lasted only 73 performances.  However the original cast album grew in cult status - understandably so as it has fine performances from Robert Rounseville as Candide, Max Adrian as Dr. Pangloss and the wonderful Barbara Cook as Cunegonde singing the magnificent "Glitter And Be Gay".

Hal Prince directed a 1973 revival but Hellman refused to let her book be used so Hugh Wheeler provided a new one and Stephen Sondheim supplied a few new songs.  This version was a success but in 1988 Jonathan Miller's version for Scottish Opera added 30 minutes of music and in 1989 Bernstein had another go at the show, re-arranging the second act songs.  In 1999 John Caird rewrote the book *again* making it closer to Voltaire's original novel... and that's where the Menier comes in.

 

 

The Menier have based their production on the 1988 Scottish Opera version but the episodic nature of the show makes it still seem a ramshackle structure for Bernstein's great score so I really wouldn't be surprised if sometime down the line someone has another go at writing a definitive version.  Sigh.

Matthew White has bounced back from the pedestrian TOP HAT with a production that is ever inventive and eye-catching.  Played in the round you can bet there are always going to be moments that you don't catch as the cast are performing at the back of where you are sitting - and although I was seated on one of the inner aisles I managed to avoid the audience participation business... apart from getting pelted with torn-out pages from a book and getting sprayed with water when Candide's boat sank!

The premise is a troupe of players putting on CANDIDE, all elaborate gestures and patched costumes and Paul Farnsworth's designs were a delight as was his ramshackle set easily suggesting each of the locations where our hero shored up.

We follow the journeys and misadventures of Candide as he searches for his love, the beautiful but shallow Cunegonde, who he keeps finding but losing again as fate constantly intervenes.  Characters are seemingly killed only to pop up again in a different country, usually with a baffling reason for their survival but still Candide believes in the philosophy of his teacher Dr. Pangloss that "All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds", always optimistic despite what life throws at him.

The absurdly-named Fra Fee sang Candide well but was easy to forget when he shared the stage with the sensational Scarlett Strallen as Cunegonde and Jackie Clune as The Old Lady the eternal survivor (even with only one buttock).

The Old Lady gave Jackie Clune ample opportunities to display her considerable musical and comic talents while Scarlet Strallen followed up her energetic performance as 'Cassie' in A CHORUS LINE with a wonderful Cunegonde.

Both times I have seen the show before, the actresses playing the role had been too busy trying to sing the coloratura parts of "Glitter And Be Gay" to also bring out the humour in the lyrics but Strallen nailed it - while also making each word decipherable.  It was great to see her triumph in this particular song while also racing around snatching jewels not only from out of her treasure chest but also snatching the strings of diamonds from the chandelier too!

James Dreyfus was off  the night we went so the roles of Dr. Pangloss, Cacambo and Martin were played by Martin Cahill who rose to the occasion well.  A special mention as well for David Thaxton's Maximilian, it's a shame he was in such a small role as he sang it very well and had a commanding stage presence.

The show is also very well staged by Adam Cooper.  Oh and on the subject of Mr. Cooper...

The last show seen before Christmas was the one that made Cooper a star, yes it was time to return to Matthew Bourne's SWAN LAKE at Sadler's Wells.

 

This was the fourth time I had seen SWAN LAKE at Sadler's Wells - previous visits were in 2004, 2007 and 2009.  I can't believe it's four years since I saw it!  I have blogged about the 2007 production here and 2009 here so there is little more to be said about how much I love this production but suffice to say that it worked it's magic all over again as again I felt a tear or two trickle down my cheek at the heartbreaking climax.

 

What I will add is that we saw Jonathan Ollivier as The Swan / The Stranger who played the same role when we saw it in 2009!  He has a darkly charismatic presence on stage and was excellent.  Simon Williams was a tortured, troubled Prince - and we had seen him play the role in 2007.  Even more delightful is the fact that he was a mere swan ensemble member when we first saw it in 2004!!

 

 

The Christmas treat was that two other New Adventures favourites were on: the delightful Kerry Biggin was great as the clueless Girlfriend and Michela Meazza's Queen was imperiously cold.

 

This iconic production is on until 26 January 2014, you know you have to see it!

 

 

 

To you, Constant Reader...

MERRY

CHRISTMAS!!!

Designing Theatre...

My last two trips to the National Theatre this year have both been to see new plays adapted from children's literature and it was interesting to see the different ways that they were staged.  The one thing they both did was to give the production teams a free hand - but was it to the detriment of the shows?

First up off the rank was THE LIGHT PRINCESS, a new musical written by alternative pop singer Tori Amos and playwright Samuel Adamson that is based on a fairy tale by George MacDonald.  I honestly had no idea what to expect when we took our seats as I had stayed away from all the reviews.  Indeed I wasn't too sure why I had booked in the first place as I am not a big Amos fan - it just seemed a good show to see on an Autumn Sunday afternoon!  However we were both instantly onside as the front-cloth was a colourful and glittering map of the imaginary lands of Lagobel and Sealand.

The show has a major plus in that it's creative team of director Marianne Elliott, designer Rae Smith and lighting designer Paule Constable were responsible for WAR HORSE.  They have brought their collective excellence to this project too, the show is a visual treat and the somewhat twee story is told with a bold panache by Elliott.  What is truly odd however is that at no time do any of the humans in THE LIGHT PRINCESS ever make you care for them as much as you care for puppet Joey in WAR HORSE.

We follow the story of two motherless royals - Princess Althea (Rosalie Craig), the daughter of the King of Lagobel, has refused to ever cry again following the deaths of both her mother and brother and has become so deliberately light-hearted that she has lost her sense of gravity and floats instead of walking.  Her father (Clive Rowe) is at his wit's end so keeps her locked in a tower bedroom where she is tethered by her faithful servant Piper (Amy Booth-Steel).

Meanwhile in the neighbouring country of Sealand the young Prince Digby (Nick Hendrix) since the loss of his mother has lost all mirth and is continually down-hearted.  His wicked father (Hal Fowler a.k.a. Mr. Kim Wilde) actually had his wife killed and rules his country with an iron fist.  His disconsolate son's only friend is his brother Llewelyn (Kane Oliver Parry) and his only joy is with his mother's falcon.

Of course when the two countries resume their eternal war for each other's land, the two royals are bound somehow to meet and of course fall in love.  But their idyll by the lonely lake in The Wilderness which separates their countries cannot last and all seems lost for the young lovers.

The original story has been rewritten by Adamson to have a rather leaden feminist overtone which at times is bearable but at other times is thumpingly obvious as to appear to be a reworking of a Drill Hall feminist panto from the early 80s.  My other concern was the rather listless score by Adamson and Amos which carries enough of her standard introspection but not enough variation to give the musical it's all-important rise and fall. 

 

Indeed in the second act Clive Rowe had a ballad that was so one-note as to make you wonder if it would actually ever end - it was only the thought that at some point he must have gone to sleep the night before that gave me hope for it's conclusion.  Saying this I have to say that the meeting of Craig and Hendrix in the first act was one of the most lovely and lyrical falling-in-love pas-de-deux I have seen.

These things are all the more irritating because visually the show is a such a triumph.  Of course there is the possible argument that Elliott has stuffed the production with puppetry, physical theatre elements and good old fashioned stage magic to distract from these central weaknesses but these tend to slip your mind when you are keeping an eye out for the scene-stealing rodent that lives in Althea's bookshelf, marvelling at the swirling colourful birds that play key moments in the action and the amphibian creatures of Althea and Digby's lakeside home.

Rosalie Craig's performance was all the more impressive for the physicality that is involved in it.  Whether she is soaring on her wire or being passed around the stage by the onstage acrobats she never dropped the level of her singing and made Althea a passionate and vital presence - if a touch too much of a bluestocking.  Nick Hendrix - last seen as the under-achieving older brother in THE WINSLOW BOY - brought more to Prince Digby than was on the page.

In a sometimes solid, sometimes stolid supporting cast, I particularly enjoyed Malinda Parris as the Serjeant-at-Arms and Laura Pitt-Pulford as the Falconer.  By the fairy-tale finale I must admit I had been swept along by Elliott's mis-en-scene and have booked to see the show again before New Year's Eve so I guess I liked it after all.

The second show which was an even more blatant example of design over content was this year's Christmas production in the Olivier, EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES, adapted for the stage by Carl Miller from the famous novel by Erich Kästner.

 

The National has a history of interesting Christmas shows based on 'intelligent' kid's books - HIS DARK MATERIALS, CORAM BOY, NATION and - yes that show again - WAR HORSE.

 

I have never read EMIL nor seen any of the five film versions so this was all new to me. 

 

Um.. I'm still not too sure what it's all in aid of as we were 20 minutes late due to a mix-up over the start time.  Sigh, sadly this is where my theatrical autism kicks in - if I don't see a show from the lights going down then all I see are people walking around a stage saying words, I just cannot give myself over to it.

 

 

Anyhoo here we are in 1929 Germany and Emil is a young lad who journeys to Berlin from his small town with money saved by his mother from her job that he has to deliver to his grandmother.  On the train journey he shares a carriage with the mysterious Mr. Snow who on learning of Emil's reason for travelling, drugs him and steals the money.  Emil wakes up and chases after the slippery Mr. Snow but where can a young boy who's alone in the city turn to for help in catching an adult?

 

To the 'Detectives' of course.  A rag-tag group of Berliner children who befriend Emil and using their network of friends across the city seek out the nasty Mr. Snow.  Led by the know-it-all Toots and incorporating Emil's girl cousin Pony The Hat (shrugs) Mr. Snow doesn't stand a chance.

 

 

It's a charming tale that tells a good story of friendship helping to triumph over the baddy but it also seemed to be stretched terribly thin across the huge Olivier stage.  Enter Bunny Christie to distract us all with a set that echoed the era of German expressionism with wonky angled sets allied with film and projections to render the stage alive with movement at all times.  As much as I liked the design, it totally engulfed the production - when you are more interested in what the set is going to do rather than what happens to your hero you know something is awry.

 

Out of a fairly non-descript cast, the younger actors impressed the most.  I am fairly certain our Emil was Toby Murray and he had a nice stillness to his performance which made him stand-out from the clamour onstage, Izzy Lee was good as the bolshy daredevil Pony on her bike and Georgie Farmer impressed as the ringleader Toots who is not half as self-assured as he seems.  Ryan Quarterly was also good as Petzoid, one of the gang who all too soon reveals a hatred for all things non-German and turns the play momentarily toward what was to happen soon.

 

 

I'm not sure whether this character exists in the book or whether he has been written that way by Carl Miller but for the rest of the play, after he is ostracised by the group, I wondered what would have happened to our scrappy bunch of crime-busters when the real Nazty men took over.  The slightly uneven and woozy feeling of Bijan Sheibani's production is probably down to a feeling that it's time-setting is too close to an impeding nightmare that one cannot readily put out of one's mind in retrospect.

 

Or maybe I just feel that because I was not totally immersed in the production?

Vivien at 100

To celebrate Vivien Leigh's centenary the British Film Institute have had a season of her films showing at the National Film Theatre and I have finally caught up with two of her harder-to-find films.

To start the season there was a talk by Richard Stirling which considered "the three iconic roles of an actress who still fascinates modern audiences.  Three iconic roles comprise the legend of Vivien Leigh: Scarlett O’Hara, Blanche DuBois and ‘Lady Olivier’ (that is, her public image during her famous relationship with Laurence Oliver)"

Sadly it was all rather dull with Stirling looking and sounding like he had stepped out of a bad Rattigan touring production from the 1950s.  Soon after he started I found myself staring at the back of the head of the person in the row in front of me, just waiting for the lights to go down for the next film clip.

The first film I saw was A YANK AT OXFORD (1938) starring Robert Taylor and directed by Jack Conway in which Vivien was fourth-billed, playing the flirtatious Elsa Craddock, forever on the prowl for handsome new students.  She sets her cap at the newly-arrived Lee Sheridan (Taylor) while also being paid attention by Paul Beaumont (Griffith Jones) who dislikes the brash Sheridan.  Needless to say there is a 'nice' girl on hand for Sheridan to pursue, namely Beaumont's sister Molly (Maureen O'Sullivan).

 

It is the sort of film that weekend afternoons are made for and, apart from treading water about two-thirds of the way in, was a delightful 30s MGM star vehicle - among it's many writers was an unbilled contribution from F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Robert Taylor was perfect for the role of Lee, brash and engaging with an easy charm.  In the supporting cast there were noticeable contributions from Edmund Gwynn as the exasperated head of the College and Griffith Jones, it was also nice to spot Richard Wattis and Ronald Shiner in unbilled acting roles.

Vivien was a delicious minx, her star quality making it impossible to watch anyone else when she was onscreen and happily, she was not given a judgemental comeuppance, but moved by her disapproving husband (Noel Howlett) to a new life - near the Colchester army barracks!  Her flighty, calculating Elsa certainly paves the way to her role in the coming year, Scarlett O'Hara.

By the time of THE DEEP BLUE SEA (1955), Vivien had won 2 Academy Awards, had mastered Shakespeare, Sheridan, Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder on stage and married Laurence Olivier.  However the marriage was under strain due to her fluctuating health issues, both physical and mental.

Bearing all this in mind, in hindsight, it was a brave decision to take on the role of the suicidal Hester Collyer in the film version of Rattigan's 1953 play.  It wasn't a happy set seemingly with Kenneth More, reprising his stage role as her feckless lover Freddie, unhappy that Peggy Ashcroft was not reprising her stage role and director Anatole Litvak taking Vivien to task to get her where he felt was the right mind-set.

I have waited for YEARS to see this.  For reasons that are still obscure - despite the introductions by the woman who put the season together and the producer of the Terence Davies version - the film has lapsed into obscurity with no company claiming ownership.  We are not talking a little known film: it was the UK's first Cinemascope production, a co-production between 20th Century Fox and the Korda's London Films, More won the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor and apart from Leigh, it co-starred Eric Portman as the mysterious Mr. Miller and Emlyn Williams as the husband Hester left for her ex-RAF lover.  But I have had to wait until now to see it.

It was worth the wait.  Vivien was heart-breaking as a woman at her wit's end, unable to cope with the loss of a lover who she has given everything up for.  Over the course of a day we follow Hester recover from a desperate suicide attempt to acceptance of what life has in store.

Interestingly More's performance is the one that has not aged well.  He gives his usual slightly hammy and over-ingratiating performance, only in the final scene throwing some shade.  Emlyn Williams was sympathetic as Sir William but the performance that really shone was Eric Portman's as Miller, the enigmatic doctor, struck-off and jailed for a year for an un-named misdemeanour.  His modernity of acting style made the audience sit up when he appeared.

 

As usual there was great fun to be had with the supporting cast: Dandy Nichols as Mrs. Elton the concierge of the house, Arthur Hill as Freddie's pilot friend and Miriam Karlin as a Soho barmaid.  Sid James popped up as an aggressive Soho pimp and Moira Lister was an odd casting choice as Hester's tarty neighbour.

 

But more importantly....I've finally seen it!

 

There is still time to see the digital remastering of GONE WITH THE WIND... shall I go Constant Reader?

New Fillums

BLUE JASMINE is the latest film to be subtitled 'Woody Allen's comeback'.  After the delight of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody has gone serious on us again with this riff on A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (only without the genius).

Cate Blanchett stakes a claim for the Best Actress Academy Award with her performance as the titular Jasmine, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Once the pampered wife of a Wall Street investment advisor, she has now seen her East Side existence vanish with her husband's imprisonment for embezzlement and the loss of everything to pay his debts.  At her wit's end she flies (first class of course) to San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger.  It turns out that they were both adopted and have never been particularly close.

Several years earlier, Ginger and her then-husband Augie had visited New York to celebrate a sizeable lottery win.  Jasmine had suggested her husband invest the money rather than use it to set up Augie in his own business.  The resultant loss of their money ruined Ginger's marriage although she is magnanimous enough not to blame Jasmine.  She is now preparing to marry her mechanic boyfriend Chilli who, needless to say, Jasmine views with distaste.

Jasmine dominates life in Ginger's small apartment above a fast food joint although she loathes living there.  While working as a doctor's receptionist she also attends an evening class in computing which she believes will lead to a career as an interior designer.  Through a classmate she and Ginger are invited to a swanky housewarming party.  At the party Jasmine and Ginger both meet new men: Dwight, a wealthy widower with political aspirations, believes Jasmine's line about being a designer and invites her to work on his new apartment while Ginger is drawn to Al, a sound engineer.  Needless to say Jasmine and Dwight are soon a couple which she hopes will return her to the highlife while encouraging Ginger to dump Chilli for Al.

Yes Blanchett is an absolute tour-de-force as Jasmine, crackling nervous energy from every pore but at no time do you ever feel sympathy for her predicament, so that when she looks set to marry Peter Sarsgaard's unlikely Dwight you simply wait for her comeuppance.  As the plot's homage (shall we call it that?) to STREETCAR is so strong this attitude to the main character is strange as this is a feeling you never feel towards Blanche Du Bois, no matter who is playing her.  Cate Blanchett deserves the praise she has been given but I agree when friend Andrew opined that if it had been Lindsay Lohan playing the role then that would be a genius performance!

Woody Allen stores up all the audience's sympathy on Sally Hawkins as Stella - sorry - Ginger and she turns in a very likeable performance.  Alec Baldwin is excellent as Hal, Jasmine's husband who is as slippery with women as he is with money and there are surprisingly effective performances from comedians Louis C.K. as Ginger's pursuer Al and Andrew Dice Clay as Augie, her embittered ex-husband.  Although I had problems with the tonal quality of his script, Woody Allen kept the tension building and it's good to see him still delivering films of this quality.  No one wants to see a return to the nadir of HOLLYWOOD ENDING.  Oh and he has compiled an excellent soundtrack too.

I had expectations of what THE BUTLER would be like and sure enough director Lee Daniels went that extra yard to match them.  Sadly.

The film was inspired by Eugene Allen, a staff member at the White House from 1952 to 1980 who buttled for seven presidents.  The key word is 'inspired' as they have taken the premise and shoehorned it into a clichéd script of The Individual (And By Osmosis The Race) Triumphing Over Adversity.  Oddly for a film about the empowerment of black workers it doesn't stretch to scriptwriters as it's written by Danny Strong, a white actor-cum-writer.

Forest Whitaker plays the adult Cecil Gaines who by the time we meet him has endured seeing his father shot by a racist farmer who had just raped his mother into a state of catatonia.  His move from "field nigger" to "house nigger" is courtesy of the farmer's mother (Vanessa Redgrave in a spit and a cough) who impresses on him that when serving it should be like the room is empty.

Sadly this is how the part is seen by the scriptwriter too as Whitaker, while always interesting to watch. is given nothing to chew on, he always seems to be backing out of rooms saying "Thank ye sir".  To THE BUTLER's detriment, all the way through it I was comparing it to THE REMAINS OF THE DAY where again a butler is seen against the political events of the day.  But where Stevens' wilful ignorance of his appeasing employer is a facet of the devastating emptiness in his life, Cecil is seen to admire all his employers while the personal reactions are given to his loving but dissatisfied wife and his two sons but here screenwriter goes into pure cypher mode.

The older son is there to personify the various threads of black civil rights struggle so he joins the Freedom Riders then finds himself sitting on Martin Luther King's bed in a certain motel room.  After MLK checks out, as 'twere, he becomes a Black Panther only to find out that they are quite aggressive and so becomes a college graduate and a Congressman.  Just like that.  Meanwhile his younger brother is one of those adorable sons who studies hard, is cheeky but in a cute way and smilingly tells his brother that he's going to Vietnam.  I bet he loved reading that page of the script.

Oprah Winfrey was effective as the bored and boozing housewife - it was like a not-so-dry run for a possible stab at Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF - David Oyelowo did what he could with the older cypher son and there are nice supporting turns from Cuba Gooding Jnr. as a fellow White House staffer and Colman Domingo as the senior staffer who teaches our hero the works.  The parade of stars as the presidents is a bit like an Equity costume party: Robin Williams, James Marsden, Liev Schreiber, John Cusack and Alan Rickman shuffle on say a few lines (on the toilet if you are Schreiber) while Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan has to be seen to be believed.  Needless to say it ends with the Obama Presidency, I was half-convinced he would play himself at the end but I guess his agent asked for too much money.

 

Andrew provided the screening tickets for THE BUTLER and also for RUSH.  Not the most obvious of viewing for me but I thought I would give it a go after having seen the excellent SENNA documentary recently.

 

Maybe it was a bit too close to seeing SENNA as again we were given the framework of two rivals going head-to-head with a growing antagonism building between them.  And once again it turns out that the truth has been cut to fit the fictional length in Peter Morgan's script as Niki Lauda and James Hunt actually had a good relationship off the track.  But that isn't good for drama is it?  So we have a replay of the ol' AMADEUS clash between the gifted but undisciplined person against the technically exact but dull one.  I think I have sussed the Peter Morgan schtick - substitute new brash ideas vs. old hand and you have Peter Morgan's THE QUEEN. FROST/NIXON, THE AUDIENCE, THE DAMNED UNITED, THE DEAL, LONGFORD, THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP... let's face it, you could stage a Peter Morgan retrospective and all the scenery you would need would be a table and two chairs.

 

 

Ron Howard, not a director I am overly keen on, ramps up the track action with much whizzing, air streams flattening grass verges etc. and seat-shuddering revvings and gear-changes.  The sound design carries off-track as well - a champagne bottle doesn't just pop it EXPLODES, doors SLAM, shoes CLACK.  We get it... it's a testosterone existence.  Hans Zimmer's score is also outrageously over-the-top.

 

Good performances from Daniel Brühl as Lauda, Chris Hemsworth (taking a rest from Thor duty) as Hunt and Alexandra Maria Lara as Lauda's wife Marlene sustain the interest although the film could do with taking a few lessons from it's subject matter as it sometimes seems to drag.

By the way, when exactly did actors become so superfluous to the films they are in?  With no opening credits in RUSH, there are 13 - 13! - end credits before the first actor's name appears.  When exactly did this start?  Is it a way of producers and directors putting their stars in their place?  "Yes we paid you more than you're worth so you will have to wait for your name on the screen bitch". 

I don't know about you Constant Reader but I don't go to see a film for the Executive Producers.

Ghost Light documentaries

I had two visits to the recent London Film Festival but in an odd twist, it was to see two documentaries that took Broadway legends as it's subjects: Marvin Hamlisch and Elaine Stritch.  With similar subject matter, it was also interesting to compare the two styles of documentary.

MARVIN HAMLISCH: WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE was directed by Dori Berinstein who was also the director of the wonderful SHOW BUSINESS: THE ROAD TO BROADWAY which chronicled the fortunes of four shows during the 2003-4 Broadway season.  Dori was at the screening and told us that she had finished editing it only a few days before.  Also in the audience was Maria Friedman who featured in the latter part of the film.

Dori Berinstein knew Hamlisch personally and her documentary is a loving tribute to the composer who in the space of three years won 3 Academy Awards (all in one night!), a Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award.  His later Emmy Award made him one of only eleven performers who have won all these major performance honours.  A Julliard-trained pianist, he went from being a child prodigy to a career on Broadway and in films rather than into the expected classical concert halls.

Although shy when growing up, with his fame came a new bravura which made Hamlisch a popular chat-show guest on both sides of the pond which provides Berinstein with a wealth of footage, an odd occurrence for a composer.  She has also interviewed a wide-ranging group of artists that Hamlisch worked with over the years: Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Carly Simon, Ann-Margret, Quincy Jones, Tim Rice, John Lithgow, Carole Bayer Sager, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Idina Menzel, Steven Soderbergh, Christopher Walken... they're all here.

Dori Berinstein covers his career in a fluid and involving style, from a cossetted Jewish upbringing to his Julliard years, and his stint as the FUNNY GIRL rehearsal pianist which led to his lifelong friendship with Barbra Streisand.  His moonlighting as a pianist at private parties led to meeting film producer Sam Spiegel and an entrée into composing for films but his first love was the Broadway musical.  After the massive success of A CHORUS LINE and the popular THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG Hamlisch found it difficult to keep up the momentum and the film covers his despondency over this.  Interviews with his wife Terre Blair give us an insight into the private man and his sudden death in 2012 is obviously deeply felt by her and colleagues.

 

Later on in the day, while crossing Waterloo Bridge, we bumped into Dori Berinstein so I took the opportunity to tell her how much I had enjoyed the film!  I also told her how much I had enjoyed SHOW BUSINESS and we had a lovely long chat about theatre in NY and London.  She was very interested in my memories of Hamlisch's musical JEAN SEBERG at the National Theatre which I had seen 5 times - never seeing the same show twice.  She said "I should have had you in the film"!  I was thrilled.

The second documentary was ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME, a film by Chiemi Karasawa on the unstoppable Broadway star.  The director was at the screening as well as Stritch's music director Rob Bowman and her friend Julie Keyes.  We arrived at the ICA in the middle of a torrential downpour so watching the film was a very clammy experience as the audience was a mass of leaking shoes and steaming clothes.

Karasawa's film is sometimes hilarious, sometimes queasy, always fascinating look at how an 88 year old woman is still pursuing a career in show business, despite failing faculties and beset by fluctuating blood sugar levels.

The film covers the year 2011 when Stritch had just finished appearing in the revival of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC opposite Bernadette Peters, filmed her last appearance in 30 ROCK and started rehearsing for her cabaret turn SINGING SONDHEIM... ONE SONG AT A TIME at the Carlyle Hotel (where she was a resident) - a full schedule for even someone half her age.  I think it is telling that of her 5 Tony Award nominations, she managed to finally win for her one-woman show.  She is her best performance.

We watch as Stritch paces the show out in rehearsal with her patient m.d. Rob Bowman which is at times painful to watch as she grows more angry with each forgotten song lyric.  Bowman truly displays the patience of Job but, with a career that has already encompassed 5 Tony nominations, 8 Emmy nominations, working with Bela Lugosi, originating roles in musicals from Coward to Sondheim, Stritch has high professional standards that refuse to compromise to piffling things such as health and age.  She also keeps up a series of one-nighter appearances and it is during one of these out-of-town that she is hospitalised.  But she refuses to compromise: tickets have been sold for the Carlyle show as well as a one-nighter at New York Town Hall and she must deliver the goods.
 

When we finally see the shows it is a revelation: what to the audience are jokes about forgetting lines and the running order etc. are actually the truth.  Stritch even tells the Carlyle audience that the reason the show is called ONE SONG AT A TIME is because that's all she can hope to remember.  Needless to say the audience roars with laughter.  But having seen the rehearsals we know that it's not just a schtick, she is telling them the truth.  It comes as no surprise that, after another hospitalisation after her Carlyle shows, that she confesses that the only real love she has ever felt is the audience's.

Indeed the level of access the director has had at times seems intrusive but Chiemi Karasawa said afterwards that although Stritch was very disappointed with the film when she first saw it - "the honeymoon period was over" quipped Julie Keyes, "we've all been there" - now she is very happy with it, possibly because she has seen how positive the reactions are of audiences to it.  Karasawa said Stritch had given her notes on what to edit out but she hasn't touched it! 

As with the Hamlisch film, there are many fans of her work interviewed: Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, George C. Woolf, Cherry Jones, Hal Prince, John Turturro and the late James Gandolfini (who would have thought he would be the first to go?) all praise her.  Chiemi Karasawa said after it that the one person who wouldn't appear was Sondheim.  She said that they have a loving but wary relationship - we see his telegram on her opening night at the Carlyle excusing his absence but ruefully noting she can change his lyrics now.  Karasawa said that after his refusals to appear, she had been worried about using his music in the concert footage as the film's budget was miniscule but she said they managed to get all they wanted. 

Both these documentaries are highly recommended and worth seeking out.

Let's Hear It For The Boys!

Two American theatrical imports, two different styles of telling true stories through a musical form.
 

 

Constant Reader, no one was more surprised than me to find myself sitting in the Prince Edward last Saturday about to watch JERSEY BOYS, a production I thought I would never see.

 

Jukebox musicals don't do it for me and The Four Seasons never made any impression on me so I was happy to avoid it.  I was surprised when I read in the programme that the production opened FIVE years ago - I thought it had been running for about two!

 

 

What surprised me too was the sinewy and punchy script that placed us firmly in New Jersey and the blue-collar and mob-friendly background that the group sprang from.  Former Woody Allen co-writer Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice's script may skimp on real characterisation but they have hit on the idea of having the four members of the group each take a turn narrating the plot which gives each of them a definite identity.  It's also funny to think that of all the pop groups who have cultivated a bad-boy image, that it was the squeaky clean Four Seasons who actually had real criminal backgrounds.  I also learnt something new in that a young Joe Pesci used to be a gopher for the band!

 

The production zooms through the group's genesis and fitting the final jigsaw-piece that was Bob Gaudio and his facilty for penning a memorable pop song.  What was a bit irksome about the show was the relegating of Gaudio's song-writing partner Bob Crewe to a walk-on as the band's camp record producer.  Another major contribution to the show's success however is that you are never too far away from a song and the production is so sure of itself that it sometimes gives you just a verse and chorus of a song so it can plough on.

 

 

Des McAnuff's polished and slick production gives us success and failure, compromise and triumph, life and death.  Of course we get a handy telescoping of time.  According to the show, Tony DeVito's massive gambling and personal debts to the mob result in a forced relocation to Las Vegas and having to quit the band which also motivates Nick Massi to quit, whereas in real life Massi left the band five years before DeVito!  The show also takes in the death of Valli's daughter which in reality happened in 1980 and their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame which happened in 1990 - all with no signs of aging among the cast at all.

 

A simple set of an elevated metal walkway and dodgy Lichtenstein-esque projections leaves the stage clear for the performers to hurtle around and although it would be asking too much for good acting too, there were lively and engaging performances from Jon Boydon as Tony DeVito, Edd Post as Bob Gaudio and - yes I really am writing this - ex-S Club 7 member Jon Lee as Frankie Valli.

 

 

Although I have never bought any of their records, the songs were immediately familiar - SHERRY, WALK LIKE A MAN, BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY, RAG DOLL, LET'S HANG ON, CAN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF YOU, BEGGIN',  DECEMBER 1963 (OH WHAT A NIGHT) and WHO LOVES YOU are all socked over the footlights to haunt you out onto the street and all the way home.  I guess the show did it's trick as I now have a compilation thanks to Owen!  Another major-plus for the show was there was no dreaded post-curtain-call megamix.  This probably annoyed the punters around me who were eager to clap along off-the-beat to anything played onstage but not me.

 

My only real titty-lip about JERSEY BOYS was the exclusion of their signing to Motown in the early '70s.  Although they had no hits while briefly on the label, it was where they recorded THE NIGHT, later a huge UK hit for them when reissued three years later in 1975.  But I must say thank you to Owen's brother and sister-in-law for wanting to see the show on their visit to London as I would otherwise not have seen this example of how a jukebox musical can be made enjoyable.

 

 

After this it was time to journey south - over the river to the Young Vic and from Jersey to Alabama with John Kander and the late Fred Ebb's THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS.

 

The show opened off-Broadway in 2010 for a two month limited run and received very good reviews.  Later that year it opened on Broadway in a bigger theatre but couldn't find an audience and closed, again after only two months.  The Tony Award committee recognised it with a staggering 12 nominations but it didn't win any of them, losing out mostly to THE BOOK OF MORMON juggernaut. 

 

 

Now director/choreographer Susan Stroman and her creative team have revived the production at the Young Vic and have given us an involving, inventive show that shocks as it delights.  In their two greatest scores Kander & Ebb have used showbiz forms to comment on uncomfortable events: The Kit-Kat Klub illustrates the growing power of the Nazis in CABARET while within CHICAGO's Vaudeville format lies a caustic look at the corrupt US justice system and tawdry celebrity.  THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS also deals with the US justice system but also how, to quote Richard Pryor (and David Thompson's book), when black Americans look for justice that's all they find, "just us". 

 

 

In 1931 nine black teenagers, travelling through Alabama to Memphis, were falsely accused of raping two white girls Victoria Price & Ruby Bates and sentenced to death.  For the next six years, they saw their sentences commuted only to be re-tried and found guilty again - despite one of the women admitting in court that she lied.  Their defence was funded by the American Communist Party and a successful New York lawyer defended them for free.  But he too was confronted by the racism that the boys were subjected to - the prosecution asked the re-trial jury "Is justice in the case going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?"  In 1937, the four youngest defendants were allowed their freedom and bizarrely they were booked onto a vaudeville tour.  The remaining five either escaped or were paroled - the last being Andy Wright, paroled in 1950 after 19 years of wrongful imprisonment.

In an inspired artistic choice, THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS is told through the form of a minstrel show.  The minstrel form - white performers blacked-up - is subverted here by black performers playing white characters while still under the guidance of a white Interlocutor and refracts the racism of the real story through the accepted racism of the minstrel form.

 

 

On a bare stage apart from a pile of chairs, a white Interlocutor introduces his company of eleven black performers.  One of them asks if this time they can present the story as it happened while the Interlocutor assigns the roles of white authority to the company's two resident clowns Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones.  All the while a woman, unseen by them all, shadows the action, watching as it unfolds.  She provides the coda to the show in a scene that I had guessed might be coming up after her first appearance at the top of the evening but according to the programme notes it does have a bearing with the Scotsboro case.

 

 

David Thompson's fine book has the minstrel performers slowly find their own voice through the retelling of the Scotsboro case - when the genial but threatening Interlocutor insists on hearing a good ol' soothing negro song the company duly deliver but slowly the lyrics change to take in lynchings and the Klan.  By the time of the finale, with his performers performing in blackface, the Interlocutor demands they join him in a traditional cakewalk but they refuse.

 

 

Kander & Ebb's score vibrates with various styles such as cakewalks, tap dances, point numbers and plaintive ballads, some of which homage their back catalogue e.g. a big comedy production number when Ruby Bates, the penitent white girl, changes her story in the courtroom echoes "When Velma Takes The Stand" from CHICAGO but the score is solid and each song adds depth to the story while propelling it forward.

 

 

Susan Stroman's excellent cast includes six American performers, five of whom have appeared in the show before.  Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon reprise their Tony-nominated roles of Messrs. Bones and Tambo, Christian Dante White and James T. Lane ('Ritchie' in the recent revival of A CHORUS LINE) are riotous when playing Victoria Price and Ruby Bates and the lead role of Haywood Paterson, who refused to lie even if it meant the possibility of early release, is powerfully played by Kyle Scatliffe.

 

Julian Glover was an amiable but threatening Interlocutor, Dawn Hope had little to do as The Woman but did it with grace and Adebayo Bolaji ('Harpo' in the Menier COLOR PURPLE) was good as the combative Clarence Norris.

 

 

Beowulf Boritt's set design and Toni-Leslie James' costume designs are major contributors to the show's success as is Ken Billington's lighting design.  Stroman's choreography is inventive and insightful and she directs the show with clarity and power. 

 

In 2010 Susan Stroman co-directed and Beowulf Boritt designed the almighty dog-show that was PARADISE FOUND at the Menier but at the Young Vic with a remarkable cast and the genius team of John Kander and Freb Ebb they have triumphed in one of the shows of the year.

 

Do the clicky on the picture below to book tickets: