A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Old Vic - Rhys Ifan's Ghost Dance

Yes it's that time of the year when Owen seeks out a new adaptation of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL - more often than not to be able to say "They don't do *that* in the book".  This year it was to the Old Vic we ventured to see how Ebenezer Scrooge saw the light on Christmas Eve night and became a better man for it...

 

The Old Vic has been radically changed with a transom stage that dissects the auditorium in two - and audience seating on the stage too - for a production that brings the audience right into the centre of the Jack Thorne's version of the story though it wasn't used to it's fullest extent, most of the action still took place in the centre of the stage crossroads - the transom just made for some room for dancing and, at it's best, for Jacob Marley's lengthy train of chains and cashboxes.

For all the production's explosion of theatricality - more of that later - Thorne's adaptation felt thin and uninvolved, maybe I am over-familiar with the story but it felt like they were playing the synopsis and not the script.  Maybe it was Thorne's take on Dickens tale; Thorne has invented the character of Scrooge's father who is emotionally distant and uncaring - ah so that's it - Scrooge isn't nasty he just never had enough love in his childhood - and to quote Roxie Hart in CHICAGO - "and that's show biz, kids".  I think I prefer my Scrooge to just be a bastard.

None of the ghostly apparitions changed the tempo either - maybe because they were all played by similar-looking women - and the Ghost of Christmas Future was profoundly unscary, what is the point of that??  Scrooge really didn't have far to jump from being just narked to embracing life.

It felt like director Matthew Warchus couldn't wait to get to the scene where Scrooge wakes up a changed man on Christmas morning and the preparations for the biggest Xmas feat ever take over the whole of the auditorium while the audience experiences the wonder of a white Christmas.  But is Scrooge just dreaming?

I loved the theatricality of it all - the ensemble handing out free mince pies and oranges before the show started, the bell-ringing for lovely hushed versions of Christmas carols, the snow blizzards, the It's A Knockout feel to the Xmas dinner preparations but it all felt a bit added on; none of it seemed to rise from Thorne's text.

Rhys Ifans is good as Scrooge looking like a wizened husk of a man who blooms into an excitable beanstalk at the joy of life, he has great charisma on stage and it has just been announced that he will make a third Old Vic appearance in 2018 in a new play about the music business.

There was fine contributions from John Dagleish as Bob Cratchett, Alex Gaumond as Bob Marley and Golda Rosheuvel as the Ghost of Christmas Present.  I also liked Erin Doherty as Belle who has an invented scene at the close of the play where Scrooge visits her to apologize for his behaviour as a young man and she replies in a very non-Dickensian way that without him in her earlier life she would not be happily married and able to forgive him all these years later.

Warchus directs with a steady hand but the show does belong to designer Rob Howell and lighting designer Hugh Vanstone who create a very unique theatrical experience.  The music adds greatly to the feel of the show and Christopher Nightingale deserves plaudits for his composing and arranging of carols.

I would recommend A CHRISTMAS CAROL for it's exuberant festive finale and nice performances but do we really need a psychologically-profiled Scrooge?  I don't think so.

DREAMGIRLS at the Savoy - "Every man has his own special dream..."

...and that dream has finally come true.

Back in 1982 when I was queueing up overnight for front-row seats for GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre (yes Constant Reader, ALL roads lead back to that life-changing production) a conversation was started with an American chap who had heard that this was not only *the* production to see in London but that Julia McKenzie was giving *the* performance to see.  He likened this to DREAMGIRLS in New York and Jennifer Holiday playing the role of 'Effie White'.

The more he talked the more I thought "Oh wow" I need to see this" and figured that it would probably pop up in London by 1983.  But no... there was no transfer - could it have been that although it won 6 Tony Awards it didn't win for the all-important Best Musical, Best Score or Best Director?  Later in the 1990s I would find out possibly the real reason.  I worked for an actor's agent named Ann Molloy and 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 the original cast recording, a recording so stupendous that it is the highest placed Broadway Cast Recording on the Billboard 200 chart in recent years and won two Grammy Awards, for Best Cast Recording and for Jennifer Holliday's titanic vocal on "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going".  This incendiary 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.

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 and now finally... a theatre production arrives in London, directed by in-demand director Casey Nicholaw and produced by the equally in-demand producer Sonia Friedman. 

I booked as soon as the box office opened for the Wednesday after Christmas, just before they announced that the role of 'Effie' would be played by GLEE star Amber Riley who would not be playing on Wednesdays.  Oh how I smiled during the confrontation scene when Effie is sacked when the accusation is hurled that she is a diva who can't sustain...

Our 'Effie' was Karen Mav in what appears to be her acting debut having become famous in last year's "The X Factor".  Needless to say that gave me worries but she was actually quite good and sang the hell out of her songs.

What must be said is that Casey Nicolaw has directed a wonderful show; deliciously fluid and slick, his production moved at a faster rate than even the film managed.  Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger's score sounded wonderful and it was great to see how their songs really do move the action forward while illuminating the character singing it.  I found it interesting too that with four new songs written for the film, only one has been interpolated into the show.  There is a rewritten version of LISTEN which had been Beyoncé's big solo for the film but here it is used as a duet for Effie and Deena when they meet again and reaffirm their friendship.

The show looks excellent too thanks to Tim Hatley's set design, Gregg Barnes' costumes and Hugh Vanstone's lighting while Nicholaw's choreography was slinky for the girls, muscular for the lads.  Unlike the film which really overdid the Motown connection by slavishly copying album covers and famous photo sessions for both The Supremes and Diana Ross, Barnes' costumes were more generic.

But something stopped me LOVING the show as much as I feel I should have done.  Maybe the film really has 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 seeing the Menier's SHE LOVES ME five days before; it's a show that has real warmth in it's book and score whereas DREAMGIRLS ultimately felt like a glorious firework display; spectacular to experience but a bit hollow at heart.

What I also found surprising was the 'meh' quality of the cast - all very nice but where were the fireworks?  Even if it is cast down to build up the Amber Riley, could we not have given Effie a more effective counterpoint than Liisi LaFontaine as Deena?  She has little personalty and no real heft vocally.  The intriguingly-named Ibinabo Jack had more fun with Lorrell, getting laughs and applause for her big number.

The stand-out in the cast was Adam J Bernard as James 'Thunder' Early who had just the right volcanic energy to make him steal whatever scenes he was in.  Joe Aaron Reid was imposing in height as the devilish Curtis Taylor Jr. but was still a bit lightweight sadly.

As we left, Owen suggested maybe a return visit might be in order to see if Amber Riley can maybe ignite the show properly but the news that there is now a THIRD alternate for 'Effie' been cast - the American actress Marisha Wallace who has already played the role in a Dallas production - means it would be now even more of a crapshoot to see her.

It sounds like Martine McCutcheon and MY FAIR LADY all over again...  turn up for the press-night, get the reviews then no doubt have lengthy wrestles with laryngitis.  Not that the audience minded on the night we went - they came prepared to scream at anything and everything.

Despite all this I am glad to finally have seen it onstage, it only took 34 years!

NO'S KNIFE at the Old Vic - Bleak Beckett

One of the most thrilling theatrical events last year was seeing Lisa Dwan performing the three Beckett monologues NOT I, FOOTFALLS and ROCKABY, so when it was announced that she was going to appear this month at the Old Vic in Beckett's NO'S KNIFE I was very keen to see it.

After a particularly awful week - including walking out of the dreadful TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA at the Globe - boy, did I want to drown in Beckett's particular brand of existential nihilism.  NO'S KNIFE didn't disappoint in that respect, but maybe it did in other ways.

Lisa Dwan doesn't make things easy for either herself or us - NO'S KNIFE is a 70 minute monologue which is based on a collection of Beckett's writings published in 1967 under the title TEXTS FOR NOTHING.

In five 'movements', a voice calls out from another place, of the earth but not of the earth; possibly beneath the earth, buried in a peat bog, by turns wheedling, aggressive, plaintive, argumentative, lonely, lost.  That voice is personified by Dwan, who is first seen squeezed into a crack in a rocky landscape, then appearing, Lear-like, on a blasted heath.  She then appears floating above the stage and finally walks down from the stage to address us close-up.

She is a mesmerizing actress who knows how to hold an audience, but dear God, most of the Old Vic audience felt they should make it an interactive event; every time the lights dimmed to signal the end of a particular 'act' off they went: COUGH HACK SPLUTTER COUGH COUGH... it was utterly absurd and totally disrespectful to Dwan.

Co-directed by Dwan and Joe Murphy, the production had a haunting other-worldly look from both set designer Christopher Oram and lighting designer Hugh Vanstone, and their vision was also helped by a mood-setting video piece from Andrzej Goulding...

...but, but, but... why did it leave me cold whereas NOT I, FOOTFALLS and ROCKABY totally gripped me?  I think the answer is somewhere in the fact that these texts were never really meant to be performed in the theatre.  Beckett wrote them as literary pieces although he did allow them to be read on radio in 1974 by Beckett stalwart Patrick Magee, in a hushed non-theatrical style.

Beckett was an individual playwright, everything distilled down to the absolute essence but more importantly, he wrote them to be presented in the theatre for a reason.  I am sure if Beckett had wanted these writings to be theatrical he would have made them so; this had the vague feeling of "let's do these to give Lisa Dwan another chance to do Beckett monologues on stage".  We were there to listen but not to see.

Dwan is such a remarkable performer however that she made the enterprise worthwhile - I wonder when she will get around to HAPPY DAYS?