50 Favourite Musicals: 10: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (1973) (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: 1973, Shubert Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1989, Piccadilly Theatre, London

Productions seen: five
  
Score: Stephen Sondheim

Book: Hugh Wheeler

Plot: In 1900 Sweden, actress Desiree and lawyer Fredrik are two former lovers who rekindle their feelings for each other when she visits his town on a theatrical tour; however they are now paired with Anne, Fredrik's teenage bride, and Desiree's jealous lover Count Carl-Magnus.  Matters come to a head during a weekend party at Desiree's haughty mother Madame Armfeldt...

Five memorable numbers: SEND IN THE CLOWNS, THE MILLER'S SON, A WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY, EVERY DAY A LITTLE DEATH, THE GLAMOROUS LIFE

Well, here are... the Top 10 Musicals; these are the ones whose scores mean the most to me.  We start with yet another Sondheim for a very good reason... he is my favourite musical composer.

After COMPANY and FOLLIES had shaken up the Broadway musical in the early 1970s with explorations into what could be done with the form, composer Stephen Sondheim and producer/director Hal Prince were in no mood to stop. They revisited an idea they had in 1964 when they wanted to create a modern take on an operetta-style romantic musical and decided to do an adaptation of Jean Anouilh's RING AROUND THE MOON but Anouilh said no - and said no again after they told him they had writer Hugh Wheeler on board!  Sondheim suggested two films that had a similar theme: Jean Renoir's THE RULES OF THE GAME and Ingmar Bergman's SMILES ON A SUMMER NIGHT as both feature a weekend country house party with romantic intrigues and jealousies enveloping both guests and servants.  Sondheim decided the Bergman had a subtlety that lent itself more to becoming a musical - and luckily Bergman agreed to the adaptation, his only stipulation being it be given a new title.  Hal Prince once described NIGHT MUSIC as "whipped cream with knives" but Sondheim is of the opinion that Prince was more interested in the former, he the latter.  Indeed what makes it such an interesting show is that all the characters are dissatisfied with something or unhappy at an other - they may be in love but it causes as much pain as pleasure - and Hugh Wheeler's witty book runs deceptively deep, something Sondheim has only grown to appreciate in the fullness of time and over many revivals.  Sondheim later asked Ingmar Bergman if he ever saw the show and was surprised when Bergman said he had and enjoyed it, brushing aside Sondheim's apologies about changing certain characters by saying "We are both eating from the same cake".  Oh and the cherry on that cake?  Soon after it opened, Jean Anouilh's 'people' contacted Hal Prince to say that the rights for RING AROUND THE MOON were now available - too late Jean!

Sondheim went into rehearsals with most of the score written but added - and subtracted - more along the way.  The rousing Act 1 closer A WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY was written during the rehearsal period when Hal Prince felt all the story lines had to come together to send the audience out on a high; this also gave Sondheim the opportunity to write the song tailoring it to the cast's specific voices, and speaking of which... Sondheim and Prince has assumed they would cast a comedy actress for the lead role of Desiree who probably wouldn't be able to sing too well, and eventually decided on Glynis Johns who, they discovered, was able to sing in a breathy, delicate style.  Sondheim had given Desiree two duets in Act I and nothing in Act II but it was decided Glynis Johns had the musicality to be given a solo in the second act.  Hal Prince re-directed the scene to focus it on her while Sondheim turned up after two days with SEND IN THE CLOWNS.  Knowing her range meant she could not sustain long notes, he devised the song to comprise of short questions "Isn't it rich? Are we a pair?" that would fit on her voice perfectly.... the rest is history!  The show ran on Broadway for 18 months, was nominated for 12 Tony Awards and won 6 including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book and Best Actress for Glynis Johns.  The London premiere was in 1975 with the dazzling cast of Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland, Hermione Gingold, David Kernan, Maria Aitkin and Diane Langton; the London cast recording remains my favourite with several definitive renditions especially Diane Langton as Petra, the practical maid, tearing the roof off with THE MILLER'S SON.

I first saw NIGHT MUSIC through Hal Prince's misguided film version starring a miscast Elizabeth Taylor; Sondheim had advised against it but Prince wanted to prove he was as good a film director as he was on stage - he wasn't.  I first saw it on stage in 1989 when Ian Judge's Chichester production transferred to the Piccadilly with Dorothy Tutin's unforgettable Desiree, Susan Hampshire's excellent Countess Charlotte and Sara Weymouth again mining gold with THE MILLER'S SON.  I saw Judi Dench's magnificent Desiree at the Olivier Theatre in 1995 which won her an Olivier Award in an otherwise over-directed production by Sean Mathias.  The Menier production in 2008 was a delightful chamber version, let down by Trevor Nunn's rather languorous pacing, not helped by his inclusion of the previously cut song SILLY PEOPLE but with winning lead performances from Hannah Waddington and Alexander Hanson.  Hanson transferred with the production to Broadway where I finally saw Angela Lansbury onstage as Madame Armfeldt; Catherine Zeta-Jones was an oddly lascivious Desiree but she reined in the Swansea barmaid interpretation to deliver a heartfelt SEND IN THE CLOWNS.  In 2015 we saw a concert version at the Palace Theatre with Janie Dee as Desiree, Joanna Riding as Charlotte, Jamie Parker as Carl-Magnus, Laura Pitt-Pulford as Petra (delivering yet another fiery THE MILLER'S SON) and Anne Reid as Madame Armfeldt.  It's a show I would happily see again but sadly the one that got away was a fundraising concert version in January 2009 for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York with Natasha Richardson as Desiree, Victor Garber as Fredrik, Christine Baranski as Charlotte and Vanessa Redgrave as Madame Armfeldt; two months later Richardson was injured in a skiing accident and later died.

So which SEND IN THE CLOWNS will it be?  Despite memorable versions by Glynis Johns, Bernadette Peters, Barbara Cook and Angela Lansbury, for me it's Judi Dench in the 1995 NT production, seen here over the end credits of a South Bank Show profile.  It's not a good transfer but Dench delivers a nigh-on definitive rendition where every word comes straight from Desiree's broken heart...

FOLLIES at the Olivier, National Theatre - We're still here...

At the start of FOLLIES, the aged Broadway producer Dimitri Weismann welcomes his guests with "Welcome to our first - and last - reunion"... well Dimitri, we all had such a great time in 2017 that another one is being thrown on the Olivier stage.

Dominic Cooke's Olivier award-winning production was the theatrical sensation of 2017, and in my original blog I found it "...nigh-on perfect; an American classic given the production it deserves on our leading stage." (click on the link to read my 2017 blog) and, by the end of it's run, I had seen it four times, plus when it was screened to cinemas as part of NT Live.

And now it returns in a revival with some key cast changes: Joanna Riding and Alexander Hanson are now playing Sally Durant Plummer and Benjamin Stone while Harry Hepple, Ian McIntosh, Gemma Sutton and Christine Tucker play the ghosts of younger Buddy, Ben, Sally and Phyllis; the ex-Weismann Girls now feature Claire Moore belting out "Broadway Baby" while Heidi Schiller is being shared between two 1980s opera divas: Felicity Lott until April then taken over by the production's original star Josephine Barstow.

The interesting thing was to see how the show has been tweaked for the new cast and also to bring out some hitherto hidden moments.  The ghosts of the showgirls and the younger principals seem to be interacting with their older selves more pointedly, and in Joanna Riding's "Losing My Mind" and Alex Hanson's "Live Laugh Love" there are noticeable changes to the originals.  All in all, there are enough new touches to warrant another visit - needless to say I was clapping like a mad thing at the curtain call.

I had been most worried by the casting of Joanna Riding as Sally as Imelda Staunton had been so extraordinary in the role in the production's first incarnation, making Sally's mental breakdown shockingly real and painful.  Joanna Riding started slow, not having Staunton's immediate galvanizing onstage wattage, and played in a softer style.  To be honest, I have found her at times to be an anonymous actress; she has given performances I enjoyed while watching - THE PAJAMA GAME and a concert performance of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (with FOLLIES co-star Janie Dee) - but nothing really stays in the mind.  However by the time, she hit her big moment "Losing My Mind" she gave an intriguing interpretation which I found oddly riveting.  Imelda Staunton sang it with an unbearable painful desolation but Riding, with some extra business swallowing a handful of pills, ends the number almost catatonic in isolation and on the last note pulling her blonde wig off as if to reveal the reality behind the artifice of her Harlow-esque costume.  She also played Sally's unrelenting despair in the final scene well so I guess she got there in the end.  I must admit I also liked her 'look' - like a suburban Dusty Springfield.

She was matched in a more subdued tone by Alexander Hanson as Ben Stone - and how nice it must be for both of them to have standing ovations and wild applause at their curtain call after their last show together, the Lloyd Webber flop STEPHEN WARD.  Philip Quast was a great physical presence on stage as Ben, singing the songs with a bruised masculinity which fitted his role as a jaded former-politician so his breakdown at the end was all the more affecting; here Hanson plays him with an exhausted ruefulness so Ben's final breakdown suggests more of a relief than anything else, I did enjoy his performance however.  There is also a change to his faltering in "Live Laugh Love" - whereas Philip Quast brought the number to a standstill while the chorus line kept looking around, attempting to feed him his next line or trying to kick-start the number, Hanson goes straight into the breakdown.

It's interesting to see how Janie Dee and Peter Forbes have recalibrated their performances to fit the playing styles of their two new co-stars; there is always the possibility that Janie Dee will just go large as the bitchy Phyllis but she keeps her character's pain grounded in frustrated anger.  Forbes' performance has grown on me now and his Buddy is also paired down to fit Riding's playing style.  The performances of Gemma Sutton, Christine Tucker, Ian McIntosh and the always-watchable Harry Hepple as the shadows of the leads' younger selves were all very good.

13 years ago I saw Claire Moore give a psychologically bruised performance as Sally in the unique experience which was the Landor Theatre's above-a-pub production of FOLLIES so it was nice to see her pop up here as Hattie, using her 1980s West End belt voice to punch across "Broadway Baby" to a huge cheer.

The role of Heidi Schiller, the oldest Weismann 'girl' at the reunion is played - and more importantly - sung by Dame Felicity Lott, who is playing the role until the production's original Heidi, Dame Josephine Barstow, again joins the show in April.  The soaring "One More Kiss", sung by Heidi and her younger self is one of my favourites and again it hit home for me - Young Heidi is once again wonderfully sung by Alison Langer - but Lott just missed out on the majesty that the richer-voiced Barstow brought to the song.  The returning star-turns were as good as before - and I even liked Tracie Bennett as Carlotta now she appears to have toned down the Judy Garlandisms.

Bill Deamer's choreography still sparkles with inventiveness and out-front flash, while Paule Constable and Vicki Mortimer's lighting and design still provide the perfect setting for Dominic Cooke's wonderful production.  We just had the one slip-up: during the "Loveland" number - where the chorus girls raise their glittering trains to spell out L-O-V-E-L-A-ND - the last one had her train fixed on her costume the wrong way round so we got L-O-V-E-L-A.... instead!

But once again what Dominic Cooke, his crew and cast have done more than anything else is to fill the National's Olivier stage with the sheer glory that is FOLLIES by treating James Goldman's book and Stephen Sondheim's score with the respect and love it deserves.  How wonderful it must be for people to see this version of FOLLIES as their introduction to the show.

FOLLIES is running until 11th May - if you didn't see it last time BOOK NOW... if you saw it last time STILL BOOK NOW!

Hats off... here they come...those Beautiful Girls...

.....COMMITTEE..... at the Donmar: Sing Out Those Sentences Camila!

COMMITTEE.... not the best musical title eh?  It's not even COMMITTEE!  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single word musical title needs an exclamation mark to really give it that zing.  Ah but Constant Reader, that's because COMMITTEE isn't actually called that...  Got your reading eyes in?

The actual title is THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE TAKES ORAL EVIDENCE ON WHITEHALL'S RELATIONSHIP WITH KID'S COMPANY.  Try and get that on a badge and a mug for the merch stand.  The title nearly lasts longer than the show as it runs only 80 minutes.

Is there any reason for this show to be a musical?  No.  Is there any reason for this Committee to be a show?  Actually I would say yes as it was constantly interesting to observe two immovable objects colliding: the Government and Camila Batmanghelidjh the self-publicizing CEO of the children's charity that spectacularly crashed and burned in 2015.  Donmar artistic director Josie Rourke and the inexplicably-popular actor (at the Donmar anyway) Hadley Fraser wrote it while Tom Deering is the composer of a score that is ever-present but only there to string the words together.

I was never bored - at 80 minutes there really is no time to be bored - but I was exasperated by the twee doodlings that passed as songs.  With the Committee chair Bernard Jenkin becoming increasingly exasperated at Batmanghelidjh and Trustee Chariman Alan Yentob's (yes, him from the BBC) refusal to answer even the most basic questions allied to her larger-than-life personality and his preening ego, you would think that grand themes could be found for them but no.  Wispy tunes go in one ear and out the other...

Being a worker in the Third Sector, I found the dissection of the catastrophic situation that the charity allowed itself to get into fascinating.  I have always been immune to the cult of personality that was Camila Batmanghelidjh - her standard bleat being that any criticism of her or her charity must mean that the questioner was against helping any under-privileged children and was probably racist too.  To see her shown to be the smoke and mirrors expert she was, with her spurious claims to be a registered psychotherapist and her outlandish threats to use her unique access to tv and print media to get what she wanted, was schadenfreude of the highest quality.

The trouble with the show - as with any verbatim theatre - is that ultimately the writer / adapter can never show any real stance either way: so Batmanghelidjh is seen dodging questions with lumbering ability but is then given a big song about how she is just doing it for her children without any sense of irony.  It's like the text is showing her to be untrustworthy but the writers desperately still want to present her as a heroine.  No such qualms with Alan Yentob who is shown to be name-dropping and self-important, and indeed it is his character that provides the climactic blunder when he tells the committee that there was never any real need to worry about Kid's Company finances as the Government would always give them money.

I suspect we had an insider audience on our night as there was lots of knowing laughs at innocuous lines, it did feel like there was a level just playing to that part of the peanut gallery.  What I also found vaguely annoying was that the show just stops dead - there was a lot of set-up with civil servants telling you who all the participants were, what the background was and the purpose behind the committee.  But the show ended with the Chairman thanking the two witnesses amid shuffling papers.  It all seemed to suggest that there was no real reason for it or the audience to have shown an interest in the past 80 minutes.

For me, the show failed because of it's inconclusive structure and drab score but it was briskly directed by Adam Penford and the bland, neutral committee room was well duplicated by Robert Jones.  Luckily too, there were some real stand-out performances: Sandra Marvin was very impressive as Batmanghelidjh, negotiating the odd Sin-Bin trough in the stage with her padding and large frock, but she shone through all that to deliver an impassioned performance.  Sadly Omar Ebrahim as Alan Yentob had no match to Sandra's charisma and his opera voice was too top-heavy for the score.

I really liked Alexander Hanson's performance of Bernard Jenkin, the suave chair of the committee who looked very happy at the prospect of getting the 8am interview slot on the Radio 4 TODAY programme but I liked the way he showed Jenkin becoming more and more rattled by his witness' stone-walling.  Anthony O'Donnell as very good as the combatitive Welsh Labour MP Paul Flynn as was Robert Hands as the milder David Jones MP.

There were also sparkling performances too from Rosemary Ashe as a terrier-like Kate Hoey (landing her difficult accent to a tee) and Rebecca Lock - standing in for an absent Liz Robertson - as the Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan; patronizing, condescending and blithely mispronouncing 'Batmanghelidjh', Lock nailed the archetype Tory female to perfection.

So in conclusion: if you are going to make a musical then write music to lift the show and if you are going to do verbatim theatre musicals - don't.

Well I would, wouldn't I?

My first theatre visit of the year is one that might surprise you Constant Reader, but then no one is more surprised than me either!

An Andrew Lloyd Webber musical?  The last time I saw a Lloyd Webber show in it's premiere run was SUNSET BOULEVARD, a mere 21 years ago!  WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, THE WOMAN IN WHITE and LOVE NEVER DIES have come and gone in that time and much is being made of this show being smaller in size and more of a standard book musical than is usual with his love of the dreaded recitative.  Yes it's smaller in scale and has definite book scenes but the show is a curate's egg that leaves an odd taste in the mouth.

I have always been fascinated by the whole Profumo scandal, that very English Molotov cocktail of showgirls, mendacity, politics, sex, deference, espionage, black drug-dealers, film stars, stately homes, mews flats, rich men in masks, police harassment and chequebook journalism, all exploding just as social attitudes were changing in 1963.  How many fall-from-grace stories in the past 50 years have referenced "Profumo" without quite coming close to the uniqueness of it all.

 

The case has any number of permutations with which to tell the story but Lloyd Webber has focused on the perceived patsy of the case, his titular anti-hero Stephen Ward, the society osteopath who was charged with living off immoral earnings but killed himself the night before sentencing.

 

Yes, Ward was hung out to dry by those who he thought he could rely on and the case against him was based on tainted evidence, but while John Hurt made him a sadly pathetic figure in SCANDAL yet the queasy nature of the musical can be traced to that despite all this, he is too obscure a character to be the focal point for the show.  For all his patsydom - and given his sympathetic treatment by book-writers Christopher Hampton and Don Black - Ward remains a frustratingly unlikeable and unknowable character.  He wasn't the pimp that the trial painted him to be but his vaguely unsavoury nature and slavish devotion to "his betters" means that the musical's attempts to make him a tragic hero slide off like Teflon.

 

I felt sorry for the ever-urbane Alexander Hanson who plays Ward as a charming social butterfly in the first act but who seems to fade away in the second act and become almost a supporting character in his own musical.  His eleven o'clock number - sung while sitting on a low couch upstage while gulping down sleeping pills - is a curiously bloodless affair which climaxes with the famous press photograph of Ward, being stretchered out of his flat in a coma, projected onto Rob Howell's curtained set.  This moment was held for an eternity as if to make the audience fully understand the tragedy of his suicide but as Ward has remained a slippery, opaque character that it has been impossible to understand, it just makes for a rather obvious stage 'moment'.

 

With such a large group of characters to introduce, some suffer more than others.  Daniel Flynn's Profumo barely registers and his fall from grace, after lying to the House of Parliament over his relationship with Christine Keeler, is quickly glossed over.  Joanna Riding as Valerie Hobson also contributes to the show's imbalance.  Riding is a fine musical performer but is given nothing to do but waft through several brief scenes then in the middle of the second act she is given a huge ballad called "I'm Hopeless When It Comes To You".  Yes she sings it well but it went on & on and as no time had been invested in her as a character, it simply hung around for a while signalling to us "Big Love Song That Has To Be In A Musical".

 

 

Other casualties are Anthony Calf who has next-to-nothing to do as Lord Astor but does it with charm and a deftness of touch and while Ian Conningham plays the Russian attaché Ivanov like the Russian Meerkat from the CompareTheMarket.com ads he comes into his own as the thuggish police Inspector Herbert.  Something the show does spotlight is the way the prostitutes Ronna Ricard and Vickie Barrett were forced into making confessions by Herbert corroborating the Crown's case against Ward which gives Kate Coysten and Amy Griffiths respectively nice moments to shine in the court scene.

 

Of course the show should be titled CHRISTINE KEELER as she really is the catalyst for the events of the play and the show certainly showcases two Charlottes.  Charlotte Spencer has the right look for Christine and gives an eye-catching and wilful performance.  I wasn't too keen on her high-pitched singing which occasionally jarred but then she also suffers from not having a defining song for the character.

 

 

Charlotte Blackledge was excellent as Mandy Rice-Davies, but then she is the best character in any retelling of the story!  One of nature's survivors, Mandy was the original good-time-girl and of course set her own indelible stamp on the events when giving evidence at the Old Bailey.  Her statement saying she had not only had sex with Lord Astor but that he had given her money was read back to her by the Prosecuting Council who added that Astor had denied all knowledge of knowing her, to which the 18 year-old Mandy coolly replied "Well he would, wouldn't he?"  The sheer sarcastic cheekiness in the face of the might of the establishment is to be applauded.

 

I have made references to Lloyd Webber's score and I was surprised that for most of the first act I liked it.  Three good songs for Ward and Keeler get the show moving although "This Side of The Sky" is really only there because it's time for a Falling In Love song, which doesn't ring true for these characters.  These are followed by a slinky tango called "Manipulation" and then Keeler's "He Sees Something In Me".  Then it takes an embarrassing turn with a faux "Ascot Gavotte"-style ensemble number which takes place during Mariella Novotna's notorious orgy.  It's coy, juvenile and twee style is horribly old-fashioned and, for me, the score never recovers it's earlier promise.  Symptomatic of this is the first act closer "1963" which is sung by an exuberant Christine and Mandy - it's the only time the actual time period is referenced with a couple of desultory Beatles-style "Yeah yeah yeahs" thrown in.

 

 

The direction by Richard Eyre is certainly brisk and I can honestly say that for most of the show I wasn't bored but two long scenes rather stop the show dead: the police grilling their innumerable suspects which is followed by the lengthy courtroom scene.  Rob Howell's noticeably modest set was interesting to watch with it's use of semi-circular curtains that suggested the secret and shrouded world lived in by the onstage characters and Peter Mumford's lighting was as atmospheric as usual.

 

The muted response at the end was echoed by a seemingly hesitant curtain call from the cast, all symptomatic of a show that doesn't seem to know what it actually wants to say or how to say it.

 

What niggles me though is that while Lloyd Webber clamours his insistence of Stephen Ward being a victim of the establishment, he is also a vocal supporter of the self-same Conservative Party that sought revenge on his titular anti-hero.

Another thought that occurred to me after leaving the theatre was that none of the songs in Lloyd Webber's score were as evocative or as haunting as NOTHING HAS BEEN PROVED written by the Pet Shop Boys for the film SCANDAL and sung by Dusty Springfield.

 

FINALLY! My 2011 theatre-going duck has been broken. I knew there was a reason why I was feeling unduly jittery. It's been so long I had to think twice to make sure I was sitting in the seat properly. And what was the production that saw me back in the theatrical saddle? The rather underwhelming AN IDEAL HUSBAND at the Vaudeville Theatre.

I had wanted to see this for a while and, mindful that it was due to close in February, I booked two in the circle using a £10 off discount. Well, I'm not sure what the stalls were doing but my, we were an intimate collection of punters in the Dress - there were 5 of us in J row - and we were seated in seats 1-5! Needless to say there was much spreading out in the interval. In all other rows there were yawning spaces - between the yawning audience.

The production just feels tired, as if the cast had expended all energy in the months leading up to Christmas in the expectation that it would close early. But no, here we are in it's third month and it seemed to me that all the actors were appearing in different plays. If they had a cohesion under Lindsay Posner's direction initially it seems to have been given the go-by. I sat in my little seat in J row and pined for Oliver Parker's screen version - and I didn't expect to say that anytime soon.Oscar Wilde's play is certainly worth this timely revival with it's plot of a seemingly teflon-coated politician gliding his way slowly but surely up the parliamentary foodchain until confronted with evidence from his past which will ruin him if exposed. Peter Hall's acclaimed and long-running revival in the early 1990s also seemed au courant during the end of John Major's Conservative government. But I guess a politician with a secret is never going to be out of fashion - and in the week when it was announced that the Police were going to re-open the News Of The World phone-hacking case it was particularly thrilling to hear Robert Chiltern say "Spies are of no use nowadays... the newspapers do their work instead"!

What also struck me was how prophetic it was of Wilde's own destiny. The play premiered in January 1895 and only three months later Wilde was in court for the criminal libel charge he brought against the Marquise of Queensberry which led to his own trial for gross indecency and sodomy. Time and again in the play, the subject of a public figure ruined by scandal is raised and while watching it I could see Wilde at his writing desk writing a line, looking up, half-smiling and continuing on to possibly write:

Mrs Cheverley: Sir Robert, you know what your English newspapers are like. ... Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in. Think of the hypocrite with his greasy smile penning his leading article, and arranging the foulness of the public placard.

Oh Oscar you silly arse.What was so annoying about the production was the way all the performances - and accents - seemed to clash. From High Comedy to naturalistic, from idiosyncratic to BBC 3 sitcom there was no unity of style, time and again a character would come on stage and suddenly you are forced to adapt to a new acting style so you are never sure on which level the play truly sits.

Charles Kay is so busy with his harrumphing codger as Lord Goring's father that you can hear the rhythm of the accent while the actual words get lost in the bluster, Rachael Sterling as Lady Chiltern is so similar in her honking tone to her mother Diana Rigg that it keeps pulling focus and Fiona Button plays the Thoroughly Modern Miss that is Sir Robert's younger sister in the usual high-pitched voice that seems the default condescending accent now for The Ingenue. Of course one goes to a Wilde play to be pinioned by the darts of epigrammatic wit but here they are mostly confined to one very long second scene and all delivered by one character Lady Markby, played here by Caroline Blakiston. However as hers is such a one-note performance you begin to wonder is it ever going to end and it begins to resemble nothing more than the most hackneyed sitcom: line - line - joke, line - line joke.

Which brings me to Elliot Cowan as Lord Goring. In the role he was born to play Rupert Everett was sublime in the film version but here Cowan as Wilde's cynical playboy throws away one good laugh line after another by speaking in the most bizarre accent. I suspect that somewhere along the line he has heard the recording allegedly of Wilde reading THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL and has adopted the ew-sew mannered way of speaking with leeeengthened vowellls and what haeve yoooo that you want to punch him silent.
What makes this absurd is that he is the only one speaking like this and when he plays scenes with Alexander Hanson as Sir Robert, who speaks his lines in the most conversational way possible, it leaves you no way to just relax into the scene. Hanson is fine, but I joined Owen in wondering why he can't walk across a stage without skiffing the soles of his shoes. I kept expecting his blackmailed politician to break into a buck and wing.

Thank God for Samantha Bond! Although she appears to be channeling her frequent co-star Judi Dench vocally, she alone knows how to play High Comedy on stage while still creating a character with a possible internal life. Her sly and calculating Mrs. Cheverley was a pure delight and I pined for her when she was not onstage - Oscar you clown, why on earth did you not have her make an appearance in the final long-winded scene?

The supporting company all played the long party scene at the top of the play with an anonymity which almost had them semaphoring "don't worry, the stars will be on soon". One bright spot was Max Digby as Goring's manservant Phipps who got a bigger laugh with one line than Cowan managed with a whole speech.

Stephen Brimson Lewis can usually be relied upon for a glittery design but here we got a standing set of burnished gold which suggested that he too had seen MADAME DE SADE at the Wyndhams two years ago. Apart from his costumes for Mrs. Cheverley, the costumes for the women all looked like they were bolts of fabric ready to go back to Borovics in the morning.Oh well. Onwards and upwards into the theatreland of 2011....

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.