DVD/150: MADONNA: THE CONFESSIONS TOUR - LIVE FROM LONDON (Jonas Akerlund, 2007)

My favourite Madonna tour is immortalised in this exhilarating, sometimes maddening, tv film, shot over two nights during her 8-night residency at Wembley Arena.

Released with a live cd lifted from the soundtrack, for all Akerlund's editorial faults, it takes me right back to the three nights I saw it and still leaves me in pure Madonna Heaven.

CONFESSIONS was a sensory explosion of colour, music, lights, costumes, choreography and video which Aklund attempts to recapture but several times, mostly at the start, he superimposes so many visuals on top of rapid editing that you simply cannot just enjoy the performance.  As usual, the worst casualties of the frantic cutting is the excellent work of the dancers - they were exciting enough, trying to generate a fake excitement never works.

Divided into four 'acts': Equestrian, Bedouin, Never Mind The Bollocks and Disco, Madonna delivers unforgettable, iconic, non-stop, glorious performances.

Shelf or charity shop?  Are you INSANE?  Despite Aklund's visual schizophrenia, what a way to relive the glorious CONFESSIONS tour.  Iconic performances of GET TOGETHER, LIKE A VIRGIN, LIVE TO TELL, LIKE IT OR NOT, RAY OF LIGHT, LET IT WILL BE, MUSIC INFERNO, EROTICA, LA ISLA BONITA, LUCKY STAR and HUNG UP light up the set-list but there is not a dud among them and the show is augmented by Stuart Price's great music arrangements and the non-stop dancers including the marvellous Daniel 'Cloud' Campos (aka Skater Boy).  One of the most exciting shows reliveable whenever I want...

SIX at Vaudeville Theatre - They're Back To Snatch Their Crowns

On the 7th January 1536, Catherine of Aragon was 50, Anne Boleyn was 32ish, Jane Seymour was about 28, Anne of Cleves was 21, Catherine Howard was 13ish and Catherine Parr was 33.  It was the last day these six women were all alive at the same time as Catherine of Aragon died later that day... that is until 481 years later when they came together to form a girl group... and the rest is history!

I had no interest in seeing Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss' musical SIX - it sounded like the archetypal Edinburgh fringe show grown beyond all recognition, the unrelenting marketing campaign, the ersatz empowerment of the post-WICKED audience, as well as the sheer banality of the concept.  So I had no expectations when I took my seat in the Vaudeville Theatre, surrounded by an audience who bubbled with a febrile excitement, the last time that happened was when I saw HAMILTON with an audience who seemed to know the score and the book backwards and nearly clapped the ushers.

Constant Reader... I loved it.

I sat up as soon as the show started with it's ominous drums punctuating the intoned "Divorced, Beheaded, Died... Divorced, Beheaded, Survived" and by the time the Queens had introduced themselves with the anthemic "Ex-Wives" I was onboard.  Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss' exhilarating and witty score takes in girl group anthems, r&b sass, girl pop, Adele-style ballads, Euro House bangers, Scandi-pop and Alicia Keys-style swoony ballads and they all come together to give us an exciting MegaSix where they all are reprised in a blaze of light.  They totally deserved their Tony Award for Best Score.

Lucy Moss co-directed the show with Jamie Armitage and the show is gripping from start to finish. Although this is now the second cast after the show's post-COVID opening, they all play with a ferocious commitment.  The show demands much of the cast as they not only sing their own solos but provide backing vocals for the others, so they have four alternatives ready to jump in to any of the roles - indeed we saw an alternate Anne of Cleves but she fitted seamlessly with the cast.

The Queens decide on a competition to find the lead singer based on who suffered the most: Amy Di Bartolomeo was an imperious Catherine of Aragon relishing her position as the longest surviving wife, Amanda Lindgren was a deliciously vixenish Anne Boleyn, Claudia Kariuki stopped the show with her Adele-ish "Heart of Stone" as Jane Seymour shows her love was unbreakable, Esme Rothero was a delighful Anna of Cleves, relishing her freedom as a divorcée, and Tsemaye Bob-Egbe made a heartbreaking Catherine Howard slowly revealing a damaged young girl who was sexually used by the men who surrounded her from her early teens.

The show turns on this solo and the real issue of Marlow and Moss' show is revealed when Meesha Turner's Catherine Parr refuses to take part in the game. revealing that she left her real love to marry the King.  It is Parr who makes the Queens realise that their individual lives have been reduced into mere anecdotes in the life of a Great Historical Man.  It all reminded me of Hallie Rubenhold's THE FIVE where she brought the victims of Jack The Ripper into the light, no longer just a pile of bodies.  It might read as obvious MeToo enpowerment but within the show it is a powerful moment.

The production team have all added to the show's success: the marvellous four onstage musicians blast the music over the footlights, Carrie-Anne Ingrouille's energetic choreography delivers, Emma Bailey's set design focuses the action, Gabriella Slade's Tony Award-winning costumes are witty and delightful, Tim Deiling's lighting is remarkable and the Vaudeville's rafters are shaken by Paul Gatehouse's powerful sound design.  How the show lost every Olivier nomination is beyond me - SIX lost to the dull COME FROM AWAY??  Queen, please!

Marlow and Moss have written a show that can be played by a non-binery cast which would be very interesting to see, they are talents worth watching.  It is 50 years since my life was changed by Richard Eyre's GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre; looking around at the excited, shining faces of the young audience leaving SIX I can only hope that the spark of the transformative alchemy that happens when seeing a great theatre production had been passed on...

...you just need the right production.

SOUTH PACIFIC at Sadler's Wells - In a land far, far away...

As Lt. Cable sings, you have to be carefully taught.  For many years I had an active disinterest in  Rodgers & Hammerstein. The only show of theirs I had seen on stage was CAROUSEL which I found dreary, and despite seeing the films of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, THE KING AND I and OKLAHOMA!, still I never sought out their work; my baptism in stage musicals coincided with discovering Stephen Sondheim so I kept their perceived excessive sentimentality at bay.  Any liking I had for them was thanks to Barbara Cook, Nancy LaMott or Bernadette Peters cds. But all that changed in 2010 on a trip to New York when I saw Bartlett Sher's acclaimed Lincoln Center production which vividly illustrated a respect for the sub-plots of lonely people, unchallenged prejudice and the irretrievable loss of the future that war brings - and of course showed off their score magnificently!

Thanks to COVID, we had to settle on seeing Daniel Evans' production at Chichester online but here we are a year later, seeing it onstage at Sadler's Wells and how nice it was to see again. It reinforced how remarkable the show's score is when you see the show onstage: all those standards seem fresh when you see the characters' lives that they were written to illustrate.  

The original 1949 production won 10 Tony Awards - every one it was nominated for - as well as the Pulitzer Prize.  Seeing the show onstage again brings to mind the challenge Rodgers and Hammerstein faced when writing the score: Broadway sweetheart Mary Martin had been cast as Nellie opposite opera singer Ezio Pinza as Emile which worried her as she felt she would not be able to compete vocally with him in duets so they composed Nellie and Emile's "Twin Soliliques" so they take a verse each but as sung thoughts.

Based on James H Michener's 1947 novel TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC (which also won a Pulitzer Prize), nurses and sailors in the US Navy find love on an island in the South Pacific during WWII,  Nurse Nellie Forbush falls in love with French plantation owner Emile de Becque while Lt Joseph Cable falls for Liat, the young daughter of Bloody Mary, a wily Tonkinese peddler, but the happiness of all four founders on the perceptions of race from within and without.

One can only imagine how the plot twist of Nellie's racism was received by audiences 73 years ago but it is true that YOU'VE GOT TO BE CAREFULLY TAUGHT where Cable sings of his disgust at his own capitulation to racist thinking was nearly dropped from several productions of the show but the composers stood firm against it and it's 1949 national tour was threatened with boycotts and cancellation in the South.

There are still rumblings about the show - only now it's being questioned for the representations of Bloody Mary and Liat; here's what you do - go write your own musical... and see if it is still around in 73 years.

Daniel Evans has sought to intigrate the character of Liat more into the action; difficult when she hardly has any lines but by featuring her in the productions opening and closing moments and making Bloody Mary less of a stock character - but if the actress playing the role is any good she can seize the character's changes in the second act anyway.

The cast felt capable but Julian Ovenden was excellent as Emile, his rich voice suiting SOME ENCHANTED EVENING and THIS NEARLY WAS MINE, the latter only spoiled by the over-emphatic orchestra; but his charisma and easy playing style made Emile the central figure of the show.  Gina Beck was ok as Nellie, she just doesn't have the star wattage needed to make her memorable after leaving the theatre but she certainly sang the songs well.

Joanna Ampil and Rod Houchen were also ok as Bloody Mary and Cable singing their songs well, they just didn't have that extra spark to make them memorable.  Douggie McMeekin as the eternal chancer Luther Billis left hardly any impression.

Daniel Evans' direction and Ann Yee's choreography kept the show moving along on it's perfectly constructed wheels until the moment the show always stalls towards the end when the battalion chiefs listen in to the radio reports from Emile and Cable on a deserted island behind enemy lines; it is a dead sequence visually with a lot of exposition going on.

But it was still a great experience to see SOUTH PACIFIC onstage again where it really lives and breathes.

MUCH ADO ABUT NOTHING at the Lyttelton, National Threatre - thin and crispy

Odd that in forty years of theatregoing at the National Theatre I have just seen only my fourth Shakespearean production at the Lyttelton - directors prefer the sweep of the Olivier or the intimate Cottesloe-as-was, Dorfman-as-is; the Lyttelton seems too 'contained' for the Bard.  Simon Russell Beale in HAMLET, Bill Bryden's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Ian McKellen as RICHARD III can now be joined by Simon Godwin's lightweight MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Imagine a Mitchell Leisen-directed MUCH ADO Hollywood screwball comedy starring Frederic March and Carole Lombard as warring lovers Benedick and Beatrice then imagine a National Theatre stage adaptation of it... then imagine it transferring to the West End... then imagine seeing the second replacement cast.  That's the impression I was left with.

The last MUCH ADO I saw was the bizarre Old Vic production woefully directed by Mark Rylance and starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones - relive the horror here - so I enjoyed the Babycham fizz of this production - just not enough...  All it did was remind me of the wonderful Branagh / Thompson film and the 2008 delicious pairing of Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker at the Olivier - relive that here.

The setting is now Leonato's sprauncy Hotel Messina on the Riviera in the 1930s; in the rewrite, Leonato has lost a brother but gained a wife Antonia.  He still welcomes Don Pedro's batallion of soldiers which includes young Claudio who loves Leonato's daughter Hero, the militantly single Benedick and Don Pedro's illegitimate brother Don John, who is quietly seeking revenge on Claudio for gaining promotion instead of him.

Staying at the hotel already is Beatrice, Hero's cousin, who suffers no fools and had previously had a relationship with Benedick but now "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them."  As the "merry war" resumes, the nasty Don John schemes to undo Claudio's love for Hero.

Something very odd happens midway through MUCH ADO: after Claudio is tricked into thinking Hero has been unfaithful to him and rebuffs her at the altar, a plot is developed to make him think Hero died through his actions and he has to publicly grieve for her before marrying a relative of hers.  Now we know it's a trick, the characters know it's a trick but every production I have seen suddenly switches from comedy to tragedy for this section of the play, with only the interminable "rude mechanicals" sub-plot of Dogberry and his night watchmen discovering the plot.  

Of course it is all eventually laughed off as - indeed - much ado about nothing but the questions always remain: if Claudio has already proved too quick to believe his intended is unfaithful why won't he do so again and if all it took to reunite Beatrice and Benedick was hearsay from others, how solid is their relationship?  Luckily no one has ever dared write a sequel so we will take Mr Shakespeare's word that they did, indeed, live happily ever after.

I just wish Simon Godwin has paused the relentlessly jolly production to have reflected the darker undertows of the capers but the National obviously wants a summer Shakespeare so a summer Shakespeare it shall have with a jazz band and choreographed company dancing to boot.

Anna Fleischele's palatial hotel set is impressive but ultimately all it does is sit there in the way while the costume design is colourful but also distracting: Beatrice's costumes also are very unbecoming on Katherine Parkinson's shortish stature.

John Heffernan is a charming Benedick but again doesn't really remain memorable while Katherine Parkinson again is a serviceable Beatrice but in a very studied ironical way...  it's a rare actress who makes no impression with Beatrice's glorious line "but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."  As I said above, they felt like a replacement cast.

Of the supporting performers I liked the Antonia of Wendy Kweh whose anger at the supposed shaming of her daughter really woke up that scene, there was an intelligent Hero from Ionna Kimbrook and Rufus Wright's Leonato was impressibly quick to anger in the denunciation scene but that's about it.  Don't get me started on Claudio performing his lines like a footballer being inverviewed after a game or Margaret (the actress is making her first professional appearance after drama school) saying her lines like she was shouting them from the main stage at Glastonbury.

But Shakespeare was the star of the show, as is so often the case, with his 423 year-old words still making one laugh and sigh... and was there ever a better summation of a comedy than the lovely "...for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion".

xt Signior Benedick and
her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.

This
a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and
her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.