50 Favourite Musicals: 37: CLOSER TO HEAVEN (2001) (Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe)

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: 2001, Arts Theatre

First seen by me: as above

Productions seen: two

Score: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe
Book: Jonathan Harvey

Plot:  Shell meets her gay estranged father Vic again at the club he owns, where she also meets Straight Dave an Irish bartender and Billie Trix, the club's star performer who is a druggy former pop singer and actress. Shell and Straight Dave start a relationship just as he is offered a place in a new boy band, but when Dave also meets Mile End Lee, Billie Trix' drug dealer, he finds himself falling in love again...

Five memorable numbers: FRIENDLY FIRE, MY NIGHT, POSITIVE ROLE MODEL, OUT OF MY SYSTEM, SOMETHING SPECIAL

Right this is tricky... how can this musical beat some good competition to get this place in my list when it has such a bad book?  Any fule kno that a musical needs a good book to hold the show together, no matter how great the score, and Jonathan Harvey's book is truly one of the worst.  It clatters along without any regard for creating even remotely interesting characters - maybe Billie Trix and Straight Dave at a push.  The worst offence is that the last quarter of the musical DEMANDS we understand the pain of Straight Dave when his young lover dies from a drug overdose but the character has had only a few scenes and is fairly two-dimensional - it's difficult to feel a character's pain when he only appears to have met his lover twice.  No, CLOSER TO HEAVEN is here on the basis of it's original production, directed by Gemma Bodinetz which, though hampered by the afore-mentioned book, had the benefit of performers who managed to create depth through their own personalities into the characters that the script refused to do.  Paul Keating as Straight Dave, Stacey Roca as Shell, Tom Walker - aka Jonathan Pie - as Mile End Lee, David Burt as Vic - who, when CTH closed early, simply jumped ship to TABOO, the other gay pop musical set in Soho clubland - and primarily Frances Barber, gloriously over the top as the Anita Pallenberg-esque Billie Trix.  The original production was only meant to run from May till September 2001 but initial packed houses made The Really Useful Company extend it to January 2002, however the shaky reviews and declining audiences made them think again and it closed in October.  If proof be needed to the galvanizing presence of the original cast, a 2015 revival at the Union Theatre was appalling; without the benefit of strong, charismatic performers with good voices, the plot made even less sense and even the Pet Shop Boys score couldn't rescue it.  The cast recording of the PSB score remains a favourite with it's mix of PSB bangers for the club scenes and big ballads for the characters: it is very noticeable that any character development at all happens through the songs and not through the scenes in the book.     

Well I think I have found out one good reason why it closed... there is no video recordings of the original production anywhere apart from this 47 second clip of Frances Barber, Paul Keating, Stacey Roca, David Burt and Tom Walker singing the opening number MY NIGHT (although the cast recording is dubbed over it).  Indeed, Neil Tennant bemoaned the show's bad marketing after it closed.  There is a YouTube video of the same number filmed from the back of the Arts Theatre but it's an awful transfer.  Hunt out the casting recording to get a better idea of the PSB score.