MUSIK at Leicester Square Theatre - is it or isn't it?

We saw the very short run of MUSIK a few weeks ago, fresh from it's Edinburgh Festival debut and since then I have wrestled with quite a few questions - is it theatre?  Should I blog or not?  As it was only an hour long I will finish this off in a few paragraphs.

The 2001 show CLOSER TO HEAVEN made #37 in my ongoing list of favourite musicals, primarily for the Pet Shop Boys score and for some of the performances in the original production.  It had been meant to run from May till September 2001 but initial sold-out houses made the producers extend it to January 2002, however the subsequent negligible press reviews and declining audiences made them close in October.  The cast recording remains a favourite with it's mix of PSB bangers for the club scenes and big ballads for the characters: the millstone around the show's neck is the facile book by Jonathan Harvey.

What made that original production memorable - despite the score - was the barn-storming performance of Frances Barber as the nightclub star Billie Trix.  A legend in her own mind, Billie was a former leading light of the 1960s art scene who has ended up in a tawdry gay club, surviving on drugs and ego.  She is such a memorable character - especially as played by Barber who seemed to be channeling Anita Pallenberg - that it is a surprise it has taken 18 years for the Pets and Harvey to revisit the character in a new show.   MUSIK is Billie's latest incarnation, an hour-long cabaret based on her life -- which oddly doesn't include her referencing the CLOSER TO HEAVEN years.

Barber first appears cloaked, with an eye-patch - "Madonna stole my idea" - and a bizarre fascinator that looks like a bat mating with her head, singing the first of the six Pet Shop Boys that punctuate the piece "Mongrel" about her conception in the ruins of Berlin by a rapey Russian soldier and her teenage mother.  After a minor folk hit in East Germany "Cover Me In Calamine", Billie escapes to the West  and gains an entrée to Andy Warhol's Factory where of course she suggests he paint soup cans.

It's odd that what takes Jonathan Harvey and PSB an hour to do, Stephen Sondheim accomplishes in just over 5 minutes with "I'm Still Here" from FOLLIES as they are essentially telling the same story of careering "from career to career".   Where they differ is Carlotta Campion is in on the joke, Billie Trix is too deluded to notice the appalling reviews and the insults: she proudly says her Mother Courage was judged "incomprehensible" or that Jean-Paul Satre found her pretentious.

So Jonathan Harvey sends his character rattling down the years like a bagatelle, through her art-house classic "The Masturbation of Race" where she played Norway, her disco years, her down and out years in London living in a Soho telephone box - shades of Marianne Faithfull and her drug years of sitting on a wall in St Anne's Court - and her friendship with Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin who she met when Emin pissed up against her telephone box.  That's kind of the level of Harvey's script which again is desperately thin but Barber makes bricks from his straw.

Once again Frances Barber inhabits Billie Trix like a possessed creature... growling and prowling the stage, chopping up lines and spitting out her lines between bawling like a fishwife or chuckling huskily to herself.  I have to give it to her that she perfectly sang the Pet Shop Boys songs, husky and raw, making "Friendly Fire" and "For Every Moment" perfect anthems.  It again illustrated the eternal question of whether you can separate the person from the performance.  It was a close-run thing.

The PSB songs are fine for the show although ultimately they feel like b-sides cobbled together apart from CLOSER TO HEAVEN's "Friendly Fire" and the final song "For Every Moment" which is suitably anthemic.  Director Josh Seymour just about kept the tension running through the hour - it dipped noticeably towards the end during Billie's 'telephone box' era.

I am glad I saw it - Neil Tennant attended the night we went with David Walliams - and the PSB songs are living on after I downloaded them, but Harvey's gossamer-thin contribution is fading fast from memory.

50 Favourite Musicals: 12: SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1984) (Stephen Sondheim)

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: 1984, Booth Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1990, Lyttelton Theatre, London

Productions seen: three
  
Score: Stephen Sondheim

Book: James Lapine

Plot: Paris, 1884: The impressionist painter Georges Seurat obsessively works on his large pointillist painting A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE despite the ridicule of the public and critics; George is also unaware of his mistress Dot's growing resentment until she leaves him.  Despite all this, he finishes his masterpiece.  A hundred years later, Seurat's great-grandson George fears his own artistic vision is fading..

Five memorable numbers: SUNDAY, CHILDREN AND ART, FINISHING THE HAT, PUTTING IT TOGETHER, MOVE ON

So here we go.  Each musical I choose from now on are the ones which mean the most to me, the ones that all feature indelible memories of songs or stage and screen images; these are the ones that on any other day might appear higher up in the chart.  So why does SUNDAY not make it to the Top 10?  A certain austere distancing in James Lapine's book which makes it easy to admire but difficult to love?  The tricky second act where, after the lovely opening scene where each of the painting's characters relate the history of LA GRANDE JATTE and the fate of Seurat, it then pitches into the 1984 sequence which, in essence, entails the audience having to warm to a prickly new lead character too late in the day?  The character of Dot which feels sketched in at best and should be more pronounced?  After the shock Broadway failure of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 1981 which severed forever the working relationship between Sondheim and his longtime director-producer Hal Prince, Sondheim felt disenchanted with musical theatre.  However when he was approached by the younger playwright-director James Lapine he found a new impetus to do something different, more experimental.  Lapine suggested the teasing enigma of Seurat's painting and that was the spur.  The first-ever showing of SUNDAY was at the Off-Broadway not-for-profit theatre Playwrights Horizons for 25 performances only.  When it opened Lapine and Sondheim had only the first act completed - the full show was only staged for the last three performances.  Despite this they still managed to get the show financed for a Broadway transfer in 1984.  Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, while known stars, had never appeared in a Sondheim show before and despite their frustrations during the Playwrights Horizons run in trying to shape their characters while half the score still was being worked on, they both opened on Broadway and both received Tony Award nominations.  Bernadette was particularly frustrated in the under-developed role of Dot which was only solved when Sondheim's friend playwright John Guare suggested that while Seurat is painting his masterwork maybe Dot can be learning to read?  Dot's joy in bettering herself is all the more cruelly dashed as Seurat is so absorbed in his art.  Sondheim and Lapine also gifted the actress playing Dot with the second act role of Marie, Dot's 98 year-old daughter, before Dot appears again in the final scene which ties in all the strands of the three lead characters.  Lapine's Broadway production was nominated for 10 Tony Awards but only won two design awards, it was the year of the feel-good juggernaut LA CAGE AUX FOLLES which beat SUNDAY in most of the bigger awards; however it did better at the Drama Desk Awards where it won 8 of it's 13 nominations including Best Musical.  By a stroke of luck just as the Box Office was starting to slow down SUNDAY won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama which perked the Box Office up again and the show closed after a year, the good news being that a week after it closed, the cast returned to film it for television which is now available on DVD.

I had to wait six years to see the show - after having fallen in love with Sondheim's score through the original cast recording - but found that National Theatre production disappointing as Maria Friedman failed to soar to Bernadette Peters' artistry but Philip Quast was an excellent Georges / George, deservedly winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor in A Musical.  It also won Best New Musical - beating Sondheim and Lapine's London production of INTO THE WOODS!  It would be 15 years before another London production came along but this time it was the Menier Chocolate Factory's game-changing production which incorporated the wonderful designs of Timothy Bird's digital projections which flooded the stage with colour and fluid movement.  Used with economy and wit, the digital animations were a total delight with nice touches such as the ensemble leaving the onstage 'tableau' of the painting one by one at the start of the second act, while their character digitally reappeared in the original painting behind them hanging on the Art Institute of Chicago's wall.   More importantly they did not distract from the performances particularly that of Daniel Evans who had never been better than as Georges / George.  This production also marked my first time visiting the Menier and it has stayed in my mind as one of their finest productions.  Sam Buntrock's production transferred first to the West End where Evans was joined memorably by Jenna Russell as Dot and then to Broadway in 2008 where I saw it with Owen and my late friend Dezur at Studio 54.  This production was nominated for 7 Tony Awards but failed to win any as it was the year of two other all-conquering revivals of SOUTH PACIFIC and GYPSY.  However Buntrock's production triumphed at the Olivier Awards winning 5 of it's 6 nominations including Best Musical.  But above all, there is Sondheim's wonderful and challenging score - the score shows itself as Sondheim's most personal to date, in particular his glorious solo for Georges "Finishing The Hat" in which he wonderfully encapsulates the joy of the artist in creating something from nothing while acknowledging the personal cost that brings.  Whatever failings the book has, the score for SUNDAY is the one that effects me the most emotionally.  The three songs that finish the first act floor me - Dot's farewell "We Do Not Belong Together" usually starts me off. Georges' duet with his mother "Beautiful" keeps the snuffles on a fairly low-light and then the tears just flow during the final song "Sunday".  One of the most beautiful melodies ever, it's sung softly by the characters in Seurat's painting as he moves around them, arranging them into the final 'tableau' that will freeze as A SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE - It gets me EVERY time - and I'm not talking one tear trickling down my cheek, I am talking seat-row-shuddering sobs.  To make things worse, the three last songs of the second act mirror this: George's despairing "Lesson #8", George and Dot's empowering "Move On" and a final reprise of "Sunday"; floods... just floods.

My video choice has to be the first act finale of the filmed original Broadway production with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.  The DVD has a commentary by Sondheim, Peters and Patinkin - and Sondheim and Patinkin start to blub during this scene so I am in good company.  Let's see if the score works it's potent magic on me next year when I see it at the Savoy with Jake Gyllenhaal and and Annaleigh Ashford who are repeating their roles of Georges / George and Dot / Marie from the last Broadway revival in 2017.

Dvd/150: LA MALA EDUCACIÓN (Bad Education) (Pedro Almodóvar, 2004)

Almodóvar's most audacious film explores artifice, reality and memory, within a dizzying shifting narrative.

1980: Enrique cannot think of a plot for his next film when he is visited by Angel, a struggling actor who says he was Enrique's former school friend Ignacio.  Angel has written a novella of how their boyhood love was ended by the jealous Father Manolo who lusted after Ignacio, and how the grown Angel, now the transvestite Zahara, visited the priest for revenge.

Enrique sees it's film potential but is suspicious of Angel who demands to play Zahara and whose claims to be Ignacio are suspicious.

Enrique discovers that Ignacio died four years previously and that Angel is actually his younger brother Juan, but despite all this, he makes the film.   On the last day of filming. the real Father Manolo appears on the set - and he has another story to tell of the brothers...

Shelf or charity shop?  An absolute keeper - I found it hard to like when I saw it on release but now I appreciate Almodóvar's masterly multi-layered storytelling, the vivid cinematography and Alberto Iglesiais' marvellous score,  Excellent performances too from Gael Garcia Bernal as the mysterious Angel, Daniel Giménez-Cacho and Lluis Homar as the fictional and real Fr Manolo, Nacho Pérez and Raúl Garcia Forneiro as the younger Ignacio and Enrique, Francisco Boira as the doomed Ignacio and Javier Cámara is hilarious as Zahara's camp friend Paquito.

50 Favourite Musicals: 13: DREAMGIRLS (1981) (Henry Krieger / Tom Eyen)

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: 1981, Imperial Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 2016, Savoy Theatre, London

Productions seen: one

Score: Henry Krieger / Tom Eyen

Book: Tom Eyen 

Plot: In 1962, The Dreamettes, a black teenage girl group, lose a talent show at Harlem's Apollo Theatre but backstage they meet a shrewd car salesman, Curtis Taylor Jr., who sees in them a way of getting into the music business.  After persuading the outrageous R&B singer James 'Thunder' Early to make The Dreamettes his backing group, Effie, Deena and Lorrell are propelled to fame as The Dreams, making hit records and appearing in fancy nightclubs.  But professional and personal betrayals swiftly wreck their friendship as Curtis plots to make Deena a solo star...

Five memorable numbers: DREAMGIRLS, AND I AM TELLING YOU I'M NOT GOING, STEPPIN' TO THE BAD SIDE, CADILLAC CAR, ONE NIGHT ONLY

I know... I thought it would be higher too.  I first became aware of DREAMGIRLS when I watched the 1981 Tony Awards on tv - ah for the days when they showed it on terrestrial television in the UK - and witnessed the explosive performance of Jennifer Holliday singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going".  A few weeks later, while queueing early in the morning outside the National Theatre with my fellow-Front Row regulars for that night's GUYS AND DOLLS, I started chatting to a New Yorker who was full of excitement for that night's show as he had heard it was *the* musical to see in London and had not realized you could get tickets on the day.  He said he understood totally our devotion to GUYS as he felt the same for DREAMGIRLS, having seen it several times.   Remembering Holliday's performance and on his urging I bought the cast recording and fell in love with it's astonishing score.  Who knew though that I would have to wait 34 long years until I saw the show on a London stage.  A reason might have been because when I worked for an actor's agent in the 1990s she attempted to secure the rights for a one-off performance for AIDS charities but to no avail.  Eventually she was told that the rights holders felt there was no comparable talent in the UK to do the show justice.  So there you go...  What I did have however was that cast recording, a cd so stupendous that it was until relatively recently, the highest placed cast recording on the Billboard 200 chart.  Holiday's performance still bursts out of the recording, taking no prisoners in it's wake.  My DREAMGIRLS fix was added to when also in the 1990s I heard a sound-desk copy of the actual show and realized how much of the score was missing from the album - almost half of the linking songs and exposition were missing

Of course my addiction was mostly fulfilled when Bill Condon's screen version was released in 2006, I had suspected that it would never be as good as I wanted but of course it triumphed on all counts but then finally a theatre production arrived in London, directed by in-demand director Casey Nicholaw.  And...?  Despite a slick production, great choreography, lighting, sets and costumes, something stopped me LOVING the show as much as I felt I should have done.  Maybe the film had stolen it's thunder as in retrospect I can see how faithful it was to Tom Eyen's original book - the film's obvious building up of James 'Thunder' Early, Curtis Taylor and Deena Jones' roles for Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé's roles are the only noticeable changes - but I think what really put a break on my enjoyment was the lack of major star players in the leads; DREAMGIRLS ultimately felt like a glorious firework display; spectacular to experience but a bit hollow at heart.  But that original cast recording - which I have played devotedly for 37 years - means that it still nearly makes my Top 10.

The choice for a video is a obvious... the one that started my love for the show, the performer and the song.  The Tony Awards on June 6th 1982 gave us this legendary footage of Jennifer Holliday's Tony Award-winning performance - astonishing to think she was only 21 years old.  DREAMGIRLS won a total of six Tony Awards out of 13 nominations - most famously losing Best Musical and Michael Bennett's chance at Best Director to Maury Yeston's NINE and it's director Tommy Tune.  However Bennett shared the Best Choreography Award with Michael Peters.  Tragically both Bennett and Peters were lost to the AIDS virus in 1987 and 1994 respectively.

50 Favourite Musicals: 14: XANADU (2007) (Jeff Lynne / John Farrar)

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: 2007, Helen Hayes Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 2008, as above

Productions seen: two

Score: Jeff Lynne / John Farrar
Book: Douglas Carter Beane

Plot: 1980, LA: Sonny Malone is a struggling pavement artist whose sadness is observed by Clio, one of the ancient Greek Muses, who descends from Mount Olympus to help him achieve his greatest artistic endeavour - to open a Roller Disco.  Clio is followed to Earth by her wicked sisters Melpomene and Calliope intent on making Clio and Sonny fall in love which will break one of their father Zeus' orders on pain of death but Clio and Sonny have love on their side - and Disco!

Five memorable numbers: ALL OVER THE WORLD, XANADU, EVIL WOMAN, SUDDENLY, DON'T WALK AWAY

The Rialto was abuzz when word got out that XANADU, one of 1980's two ghastly post-disco film flops - the other was CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC - was being made into a Broadway musical.  How low could the jukebox musical go if it was taking inspiration from such a toxic source?  What had not been factored in was the durability of the Jeff Lynne and John Farrar score and the book was being written by comedy playwright Douglas Carter Beane who, while hanging on to the inane plot, subverted the whole premise with a constant stream of gags poking fun at the film and it's star Olivia Newton-John and the whole meta-musical idea was mined with another stream of gags about musical theatre and the production itself.  What resulted was a show that took everyone by surprise - at only 90 minutes with no interval, the show delivered a constant feeling of fun and irreverence and was greeted with positive critical reviews.  The production ran over a year and achieved four Tony Award nominations including Best Musical, and a further six Drama Desk Award nominations, rightly winning for Best Musical Book.

It was the positive vibe around the show that made us take a punt on it when we had an afternoon free in New York and it turned out to be my favourite show of that trip.  It was lead by a winning performance from Kerry Butler as Clio who assumes the roller-skating blonde Australian persona of Kira when on Earth and she was matched skate-glide for skate-glide by Cheyenne Jackson as Sonny Malone, the Venice Beach pavement artist driven to despair by his artistic limitations.  Jackson was gloriously funny as well as being a natural leading man with a strong singing voice and together they made the show sparkle.  There was excellent support from Mary Testa and Jackie Hoffman as Clio's jealous sisters - looking like two Disney villains come to life - who had the best lines like "This is like children's theatre for 40 year-old gay people!"  Tony Roberts was on fine, irascible form as Danny, a wealthy landowner who owns the property that Sonny wants to turn into Xanadu, his ultimate Roller Disco.  Christopher Ashley's production was a pure delight which ended in a glorious finale with glitterballs of all sizes dappling the theatre in light.  Given the show was full of ELO songs that have had continued success down the years, it was frustrating that we had to wait seven long years before XANADU appeared at Southwark Playhouse.  I was very nervous about seeing it there - I enjoyed it so much in NY and the cast recording was one of the albums that kept me going through the dark days of working in Borehamwood - so was very worried that the production would not deliver the goods.  But luckily, apart from some slightly clunky playing, the production worked it's pink and glittery magic.  A small UK tour followed that but this is a show that deserves a West End theatre...  Make it happen oh mighty Zeus.

There is a private video of the whole Broadway production on YouTube but I have chosen Kerry Butler and Cheyenne Jackson promoting XANADU on "The View" introduced by Whoopi Goldberg who appeared for six weeks during it's run as Melpomene