It's time to revisit Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskill's Victorian Cheshire village, where modernity threatens to arrive by the advancing railway.
It is 1844, two years on from the previous series, and the Cranford matrons still have much to gossip about, like the arrival of two new families: prosperous Mr Buxton, his son William and ward Erminia, and widowed Mrs Bell with son Edward and put-upon daughter Peggy.
Miss Matty, the gentle heart of Cranford, introduces the families where Peggy is an instant hit with the Buxtons, particularly William.
The railway stops five miles from Cranford as the land ahead is owned by Lady Ludlow, but when she dies her profligate son Septimus arrives and quickly signs her whole estate to the railways for cash.
Mix together thwarted lovers, an unexpected marriage, a derailed train, a runaway schoolboy, an Italian magician, and a Christmas waltz and you have a worthy sequel.
Shelf or charity shop? Joining it's predecessor on the shelf. Sue Birtwhistle and Susie
Conklin's production is slightly more sentimental as it was shown as part of the BBC's Christmas programming but the quality of the production and adaptation by Heidi Thomas from several Gaskill novellas is excellent. Once again Simon Curtis' remarkable cast blend into a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Imelda
Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Tim Curry, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Alex Etel, Rory Kinnear, Jonathan Pryce, Tom Hiddleston and a luminous Jodie Whittaker all shine.
In 1842, the residents of the Cheshire market town of Cranford know their place in Victorian society and in God's eyes. But slowly the modern world is coming...
The formidable spinsters and widows of Cranford spend their days seizing on any gossip and the sight or two women walking quickly usually means new scandal. The arbiter of moral rectitiude is Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who lives with her younger, more gentle sister Matty but both can be relied upon to do the right thing.
The spinsters welcome in Mary Smith, the daughter of an old Manchester friend, when she is forced out by her step-mother and, together they experience new neighbours, new joys, but also new sadnesses because for all of them, death can come unexpectedly.
Heidi Thomas' adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill's novellas is a superb mix of comedy, tragedy and class.
Shelf or charity shop? Definite shelf. Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin's production would have seemed a natural for the BBC but it was hit by the corporation's budget cuts, postponed for a year and having to thin down from 6 episodes to 5 and then changing directors halfway through filming but luckily they persevered. It goes without saying that the cast give excellent performances but they also provide a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Barbara Flynn, Deborah Findlay, Lesley Manville, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Philip Glenister, Michael Gambon and Alex Etel are all memorable.
Over Easter I voted GYPSY one of my four joint-favourite stage musicals so that was a good reason to watch this television film of the most recent London revival, directed originally by Jonathan Kent and filmed for television by Lonny Price.
Of course, a musical filmed onstage will always suffer when a camera is pulling into a performance who is pushing out to the balcony but it makes up for that in capturing a production that would otherwise just live in memory and immortalising performances that need to be treasured.
One such was Imelda Staunton's explosive Rose, the unrelenting stage mother of future stars June Havoc and Gypsy Rose Lee. Rose is called a "pioneer woman without a frontier" and as she travels around America's theatres - one step ahead of the decline of vaudeville - her manic drive is seen in Imelda's performance as driven by a deep psychological hurt.
Shelf or charity shop? One for the shelf, Imelda's galvanising Rose is perfectly balanced by Lara Pulver as the insecure Louise who blossoms into the self-assured Gypsy Rose Lee and Peter Davison as Herbie, the man who could save Rose if she only realised it. A great tribute to Arthur Laurents' excellent book and the glorious score by Jule Styne and 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. So here we are... a year and 10 months in the
making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever -
and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to
consider.
I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I
can say that one of the four is better than the other. So let's
go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)
First performed: 1979, Uris Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1985, Half Moon Theatre, London
Productions seen: ten
Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: Hugh Wheeler
Plot: Sweeney Todd arrives back in Victorian London, rescued from a floating raft by young sailor Anthony, He visits the Fleet Street pie shop of the widow Nellie Lovett who recognises him as Benjamin Barker, the barber who worked above her shop fifteen years before. Barker was transported to Australia by the corrupt pair Judge Turpin and Beadle Bamford so the
Judge could rape Barker's wife Lucy. Mrs Lovett tells Sweeney his wife poisoned herself and his young daughter Johanna is now the Judge's ward who he intends to marry. Mrs Lovett presents him with his old razors and he starts to work again, plotting his revenge - and as the bodies pile up, Mrs Lovett has a solution...
Five memorable numbers: A LITTLE PRIEST, THE WORST PIES IN LONDON, THE BALLAD OF SWEENEY TODD, JOHANNA, PRETTY WOMEN
,
In 1973, while in London for the UK premiere of GYPSY, Stephen Sondheim
went to the Theatre Royal Stratford East to see Chris Bond's
version of the melodrama SWEENEY TODD. Sondheim enjoyed the Grand Guignol
atmosphere and how street songs were incorporated into the action but
what really excited him was how Bond changed the plot from a
penny-dreadful melodrama into a revenge thriller with Sweeney seeking
vengeance on Judge Turpin: an idea was
born. In 1979, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF LONDON opened on Broadway starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury and, the following year, in London with Denis Quilley and Sheila Hancock and although audiences couldn't warm to the American take on a London villain, London has since taken the show
to it's heart as was Sondheim's original wish - the original production
(despite it's short run) won the Olivier Award for Best Musical and it has since won two further
Oliviers for Best Musical Revival.
Over time I realised I could happily watch a good production of SWEENEY TODD every day.
I have seen it ten times with only two productions I didn't like - a
ghastly am-dram one at the Bloomsbury Theatre in 1992 and the actor/musician John Doyle production that most loved but just got on my nerves. I think eight out of ten is a very
good batting average. The show is a good example of why Sondheim always gives praise to
his book writers. Hugh Wheeler's book for SWEENEY is a classic of
musical storytelling, there are nine main characters who are all vividly
drawn and it not only stands up to repeated viewings but the book
always throws up things I had never noticed before; despite the different directorial takes on it, it just *works*. Sondheim's score acts as an aural fog that whisps, curls and evelopes the characters through the plot, not only through the songs but the relentless underscoring that happens throughout the show, which gives the audience a feeling of foreboding... that all the characters are on a moving path to a very dark place. What I particularly love about the show is, after the introductory "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" which gives you a flavour of the ominous atmosphere of the show, you are pitched right into the action with Sweeney and Anthony arriving in London, having their first meeting with the Beggar Woman, and onto the visit to the Pie Shop and the first appearance of Mrs Lovett - all within ten minutes.
Then you are off on the wonderful runaway ghost train that is SWEENEY TODD, an unstoppable ride to it's shattering conclusion. As I have
often said, the final 20 minutes of the show - if done right - should be
one of the most relentlessly scary things you can experience, even if
you know the show It has an internal motor that if stoked properly
keeps gathering pace leaving dead bodies in it's wake and an icy, clammy grip on
the back of your neck. My first introduction to the musical was through the Broadway cast recording which, for me, is still is the definitive version of the score, capturing the remarkable performances of Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. In 1981 the US tour was filmed in Los Angeles with Lansbury's outrageous, glorious turn as Nellie Lovett immortalised with George Hearn, partnering her perfectly as Sweeney. It's interesting that when first offered the role Lansbury hesitated - she pointed out the show was called SWEENEY TODD and was reluctant to play what she felt was a less-than-lead role. Sondheim 'auditioned' some of Mrs Lovett's songs for her and she realised that she was being given the chance to create from the ground up such a memorable character and she was onboard. My first experience seeing it live was at the long-gone Half Moon Theatre in 1985, directed by Chris Bond, the writer of the original play that Sondheim had seen 12 years before. It was wonderful to see it finally and to see the book and score working as one, and it starred Leon Greene's larger-than-life Sweeney. In 1989 I saw it again, this time on Broadway at the Circle In The Square, the first of many 'chamber' versions of the show, with Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler as the killer couple.
SWEENEY made a triumphant return to London in the National Theatre's production directed by Declan Donnellan in 1993. Staged again in a 'chamber' version, it was a wonderfully thrilling production with an excellent cast of Alun Armstrong as Sweeney, Adrian Lester as a charismatic Anthony, Barry James as Beadle Bamford and Denis Quilley, London's original Sweeney, now playing Judge Turpin. But they were overshadowed by Julia McKenzie's magnificent Mrs Lovett - a gin-soaked cockney harridan, hilarious and amoral. She deservedly won the Olivier Award for Best Actress and later, when the show transferred to the larger Lyttelton Theatre shared the stage with Quilley again, this time returning to the role of Sweeney, Sadly this was the last Sondheim role Julia played onstage. The production never had a cast recording issued but the Radio 4 full-length broadcast is available on YouTube. In 2000 the Bridewell Theatre - too close to Fleet Street for comfort - staged a prominade performance with a memorable Mrs Lovett from Jessica Martin.
In the 2010s I saw three contrasting versions: Chichester gave us Jonathan Kent's dingy between-the-wars version with Michael Ball as Sweeney and Imelda Staunton as Mrs Lovett. Imelda gave us an all-too-real Mrs Lovett, gimlet-eyed and itching to be respectable, while Michael Ball downplayed his natural exuberance to almost a monotone. I then saw the concert version at the London Coliseum directed by Lonny Price starring Bryn Terfel as Sweeney who of course sang the bejesus out of it and Emma Thompson finally onstage again as Mrs Lovett, playing up the comedy but also finding the step-up to the drama at the end. It's a key moment in the second act when, while singing "Not While I'm Around", Tobias realises that Sweeney killed his boss, and, attempting to distract him, Mrs Lovett joins him in singing that nothing's going to harm him; you have to feel the murdererous intent behind the grotesque comedy harridan at that point - it's always a chilling moment and the great actresses who have played the role such as Lansbury, McKenzie, Staunton and Thompson can manage that transformation with ease. The last production I saw was in 2016 in a final-year production by the Royal Academy of Music's Musical Theatre students, what made it special was it was at the Theatre Royal Stratford East where 43 years before, Sondheim first saw Chris Bond's original.
Again, a true wealth of video is available for SWEENEY TODD on YouTube - as I said, the full Radio 4 broadcast of Denis Quilley and Julia McKenzie in the NT's production is there - so I shall stick with that production and Julia's full-throttle "Worst Pies In London" from that year's Olivier Awards ceremony...
Then Bryn Terfel's Sweeney and Emma Thompson as Mrs Lovett delighting in her new receipe for meat pies in "A Little Priest"
and finally, the music-hall out-front performance of Lansbury, secretly laying her own plans by giving George Hearn's Sweeney only some of the truth in "Poor Thing":
I hope you have enjoyed reading about these 50 great musicals as much as I have blogging about them...
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. So here we are... a year and 10 months in the
making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever -
and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to
consider.
I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I
can say that one of the four is better than the other. So let's
go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)
First performed: 1959, Broadway Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1989, St. James Theatre, NY
Productions seen: four
Score: Jule Styne / Stephen Sondheim
Book: Arthur Laurents
Plot: Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir and set against the decline of vaudeville, the unstoppable Rose travels around the country with the song-and-dance act featuring her daughters June and Louise. Rose is obsessed with making June a star - whether she wants it or not - while Louise is overlooked emotionally. However when June suddenly marries and quits the act, Rose switches her ambition... now Louise will be a star. But as she can't sing or dance, how can she become a star?
Five memorable numbers: ROSE'S TURN, YOU GOTTA GET A GIMMICK, EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES, IF MOMMA WAS MARRIED, "GYPSY" OVERTURE
Despite being one of the greatest musicals ever written, there is one imbalance that every production confronts: the title character is not the one the show is built around, nor cast with a star. Arthur Laurents was faced with adapting Gypsy's memoir while she was still alive which might explain why the character of Louise seems slightly blank. However Louise comes into her own midway
through the second act and become a match for her mother towards the
end. This is a difficult ask as Rose is always cast with powerhouse
performers in a role that is proven to be one of the biggest in musical
theatre so whoever is cast as Louise has to be able to step up to this.
David Merrick produced the original Broadway show as a vehicle for Ethel Merman that was to be directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, his first musical since WEST SIDE STORY. But choosing a composer was more problematic: former Merman composers Irving Berlin and Cole Porter both declined saying they couldn't see how to approach it, so Robbins and Laurents asked their WEST SIDE STORY lyricist Stephen Sondheim as they knew he wanted to be the sole composer of a show. But Merman refused to trust an untried composer as her last Broadway show had been written by unknown writers and she disliked the experience intently. While happy for Sondheim to be lyricist, she asked for the music to be trusted to Jule Styne, composer of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and BELLS ARE RINGING. Sondheim wanted to quit as he did not want to just write lyrics but his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II advised he accept as it would be an ideal chance to write for a specific - and unique - star. As it turned out, Styne was ego-free and they collaborated well together. Like GUYS AND DOLLS, GYPSY is a seamless show where the score and book work in a perfect relationship, the songs springing naturally out of the action and always moving the plot forward. What GYPSY also has is one of the greatest overtures for any Broadway show, running at just over 5 minutes, it bounces you around the show's wonderfully varied moods, I particularly love the section where the gentle ballad "Small World" skips along only to be elbowed out of the way by the sleazy, strutting burlesque strip music.
The original production received 8 Tony Award nominations but lost them all to either THE SOUND OF MUSIC or FIORELLO! Of the five actresses who have played Rose on Broadway, all have been
Tony Award-nominated with Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly and Patti LuPone
winning. Lansbury also won the London
Critic's Circle Award for Best Actress, the first time it had been given
to a musical actress. For the last revival of GYPSY in London, Imelda Staunton rightly won both the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards. It is incredible to think that between Angela Lansbury in the London premiere and Imelda Staunton in it's first London revival it was a wait of 40 years... did no one think Julia McKenzie would have been a perfect Rose in the 1980s or 1990s? I first saw GYPSY onstage in New York when Tyne Daly made the show a personal triumph in her first theatre role after finding television fame in CAGNEY AND LACEY. I then saw Lynda Baron deliver an excellent performance in a production at Cheltenham in 1993 but then had to endure a long wait until 2008 when we saw Patti LuPone - oddly enough at the same theatre as Tyne Daly and with the same director, the book-writer Arthur Laurents. We saw her the Saturday after her opening night - it was a surreal experience to be seeing it so soon after the critics had ordained it as The show to see - the audience screaming and clapping at everything that moved, even the dog playing Chowsie. Patti LuPone is always an experience best seen onstage and she certainly took no prisoners, making no attempt to sugar-coat the monster in Rose, but ultimately she didn't surprise me... I got the performance I was expecting from her. Imelda on the other hand...
Under Jonathan Kent's direction, Imelda Staunton inhabited Rose from the inside out: her tenacious, terrier-like,
attack on the world to make one of her daughters a star, the
tough-as-nails exterior covering up a damaged child's vulnerability, it was all
there; at various points Rose is described as "always being in the middle of a sentence" and "a pioneer woman without a frontier" and that's what Imelda delivered. But truly hair-raising was how she took on the two act-closing
solos where any actress playing Rose has to go from 0-to-100 in as many
minutes. Discovering June has rejected
both her and the act, Rose switches her dreams
to unprepared Louise by declaring "Everything's Coming Up
Roses". Staunton's Rose was so
caught up in her vision that she hugged Louise to her only to cast her aside as she went for her scorching final note, button-holed
with her twirling her coat around, off to start her burning
new mission. Laurents' book really comes into it's own in the final section of the musical: Louise is now Gypsy Rose Lee, the top-billed star at Minsky's Burlesque Theatre, and Rose sneaks backstage where she is not permitted. They finally confront each other and when Rose angrily demands an answer to why she did all the fighting and pushing to get Louise her stardom, Gypsy coldly retorts "I thought you did it for me Mama". Alone on the empty stage, Rose finally releases her long-bottled-up
rage at all those who have walked out on her with the scorching "Rose's
Turn". This legendary number - a mental breakdown performed to a
bump-and-grind beat - is what the whole show has been building to and
any actress playing the role has to be up to it's tricky challenges. Imelda totally nailed it: the sarcasm, the anger, the despair and the
mania that she had hinted at earlier all came together in an
all-too-human performance. Resisting the temptation to chew the
scenery, Staunton kept it in check which made it all the more thrilling.
The remarkable thing about Laurents' book is how each of the major characters are nursing a dream: Rose wants her daughters to have the fame and stardom denied to her, Herbie wants Rose to marry him and give up struggling to achieve her dream, Louise wants stability and the attention she is missing, June wants to break away from her mother's tyrannical grip and live her own life - even Tulsa, the dancer Louise secretly has a crush on, has his dream of being a successful dancer onstage with a female dance partner. The only ones who don't are the three strippers Mazeppa, Tessie and Electra: they have done it all and they are past dreaming. But what they can do is educate Louise to the secret of being a successful stripper in the magnificent "You Gotta Get A Gimmick" I have yet to see a production where this number doesn't raise the roof. GYPSY is a musical that, like GUYS AND DOLLS, is a tribute to the Broadway musical's Golden Age and how a collaboration between genuine artists all working to a common goal can make a timeless classic.
Merman, Russell, Lansbury, Daly, Midler, Peters, LuPone, Staunton... I mean, I know someone is going to be disappointed. So I am going to go for the clearest video I can find which happens to be Imelda Staunton with Lara Pulver and Peter Davison in the whole last scene of Act I which leads up to "Everything's Coming Up Roses". Until I saw it within the context of the show I never realised that what sounds otherwise like a gung-ho song of optimism is actually a song of pure delusion on Rose's part - just watch the subtle shifts in Imelda's performance as she works through the song and her physical manhandling of Louise; Louise is just a prop for Rose to get her revenge on June who has abandoned her, It's a perfect example of Laurents' excellent book and Styne and Sondheim's perfect score serving each other to give us an unforgettable experience.
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. So here we are... a year and 10 months in the making and we have reached the stage musical that is my favourite ever - and I cannot name one out of the four shows that I have left to consider.
I have tried every criteria, every angle and there is simply no way I can say that one of the four is better than the other. One nearly lost the shared top place when I considered productions of it that I felt had not done it justice but, with that particular show, I simply had to overlook that, bearing in mind the first I saw was definitive. So let's go... my Top Four Number One's (in alphabetical order)
First performed: 1971, Winter Garden Theatre, NY
First seen by me: 1985, Forum Theatre, Wythenshawe
Productions seen: four
Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: James Goldman
Plot: In 1971, onstage at the derelict Weismann Theatre on the eve of it's demolition, producer Dimitri Weismann holds a reunion of the stars and chorus girls of his "Follies" which ran between the World Wars. Old songs and routines are remembered, stirring up the ghosts of their younger selves. But for former best friends and chorus girls, Sally and Phyllis and their husbands, salesman Buddy and diplomat Ben, it becomes a night of bitter recriminations and the chance for lost love to be found again... what will the cruel light of day reveal?
Five memorable numbers: LOSING MY MIND, IN BUDDY'S EYES, WHO'S THAT WOMAN, I'M STILL HERE, ONE MORE KISS
In 1965, Sondheim and writer James Goldman wanted to collaborate on a project together and agreed on Goldman's idea of a murder mystery set at a
showgirls reunion. The murder plot stalled but
the showgirls reunion intrigued them especially how regrets for what
one did and more importantly didn't do, can haunt your life. Five years later, Sondheim was keen to follow up the success of his groundbreaking COMPANY with the show's producer/director Hal Prince and choreographer Michael Bennett and, when Prince heard of the reunion idea, he had an immediate visual reference: a 1960 Life magazine
photograph of a glamorous but fragile 61 year-old Gloria Swanson, standing in the
rubble of the Roxy Cinema in New York which had opened in 1927 with her film
THE LOVES OF SUNYA. Prince felt this captured the essence of the project
- the survivor, the glamour and the ruin.
Goldman and Sondheim brought in the bittersweet marital discord found in COMPANY and FOLLIES was born. Prince's 1971 production ran for 522 performances but lost over $720,000, due of huge production costs and audience
ambivalence - despite 'names' like film stars Alexis Smith and Yvonne de
Carlo, 1950s singer Dorothy Collins, Broadway star John McMartin and veteran performers Ethel Shutta and
Fifi D'Orsay, audiences found Goldman's book too downbeat. It won seven
of the ten Tony Awards it was nominated for but failed to win Best
Musical. Cult status grew through the original cast album but sadly
Capitol Records only released it on a single album meaning a lot of the score was abridged or not recorded. The show has had two further Broadway revivals in 2001 and
2011, but lost out winning the Best Musical Revival Tony Award both
times.
1985 was my FOLLIES year! To rectify the abridged 1971 recording decision, Herbert Ross staged two concert versions at Lincoln Center to be recorded
over both nights by Thomas Z Shepherd for RCA featuring the full score with a jaw-dropping cast of Barbara
Cook, Lee Remick, George Hearn, Mandy Patinkin, Elaine Stritch, Carol
Burnett, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, etc. which is the nigh-on definitive recording. But
before this, I had seen my first FOLLIES production in
Wythenshawe, Manchester, directed and choreographed by the under-valued Paul Kerryson and starring the wonderful Josephine Blake, The production swept me away, making me yearn for a London transfer.
However, when FOLLIES finally opened in London in 1987, it was with several new songs and a more upbeat ending; producer Cameron Mackintosh had asked the creators to 'revisit' the material to make it more optimistic - Goldman was happy
to, Sondheim less so. After seeing a preview, I was outside the Shaftesbury Theatre stage door
and Sondheim came out on his own. While he signed my programme, I told him I had seen the Manchester production; he
shot me a look and asked which I preferred. Cautiously I said that,
while loving Julia McKenzie, David Healy, Dolores Gray and Lynda
Baron in the new version, I felt that Manchester had the edge for being more true to the material. He replied that while shows
can always stand a revision, it was always possible to return to the
original. Point taken Steve...
In 2006, FOLLIES reappeared in the unlikely location of the Landor Theatre in Clapham which
seated a mere 48 people above a pub! But any lack of grandeur
was compensated with a cast guaranteed to make any 1980s musicals fan giddy: Sarah Payne, Claire Moore, Adele Anderson,
Rachel Izen, Carol Ball and Roni Page among others. This small production scored over the National Theatre's opulent 2017 version in one key element which was also there in 1971: then as at the Landor, the cast were chosen not only for their talents but also because to most of the audience, they would conjure up memories of seeing them in earlier shows back in the day. For FOLLIES to truly work I believe that an audience must have that nostalgic connection to the actors onstage - particularly for those who appear in the smaller but pivotal roles of the former Follies performers, then the audience can supply their own 'ghosts' for the performers; dimly remembered memories of them in previous shows.
It was with trepidation that I watched the National's FOLLIES for the first time in 2017 - I had longed for a production to be done on that stage for so many years, could it measure up? Yes it did - despite the lack of 'names' in the smaller roles, despite Tracie Bennett's mugging through "I'm Still Here" - I got the FOLLIES I have yearned for. Because when
it hit, it hit hard and with astonishing
performances wherever you looked: Imelda Staunton's despairing Sally, Janie Dee's bone-dry Phyllis. Philip Quast's crumbling Ben, but especially Josephine Barstow's tear-enducing "One More Kiss" - that the production managed to cast one of Britain's great operatic
divas for the small role was special enough, but within the short space of her
song, you could hear a pin drop as her voice soared around the
auditorium; in a score of
unstoppable great musical moments this was one to treasure.
The truly astonishing thing about FOLLIES is that Sondheim
floors you with one fantastic song after another. It was director Dominic Cooke's first musical and he gave his production a thoroughness of vision which allowed the
musical numbers to flourish while being equally as thorough at the emotional trauma the four main characters
inflict amid the nostalgia.
So... what video to pick? FOLLIES is well represented on YouTube through productions and one-off performances of songs from the score - and with a score so all-encompassing as this how do you pick a represenative song? How's about a few.. the stinging sophistication of "Could I Leave You" sung by Lee Remick at the 1985 Lincoln Center concert and then, from the same documentary, a fascinating clip of Barbara Cook rehearsing and then performing the pure emotion of "In Buddy's Eyes" and finally, from the NT Live screening of their 2017 production, Imelda Staunton's broken Sally. lost in her obsession, singing "Losing My Mind".
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: 1986, Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, CA
First seen by me: 1988, Martin Beck Theatre, NY
Productions seen: six
Score: Stephen Sondheim
Book: James Lapine
Plot: Once Upon a Time, Cinderella wanted to go to the ball, Little Red Riding Hood wanted to visit Granny's cottage, a baker and his wife were desperate for a child, and Jack had to sell his aged pet cow for a new one and exchanges her for magic beans. They must all go into the woods to get their wishes, including the neighbourhood Witch to visit her daughter Rapunzel. Everyone gets their wish and live Happily Ever After... or do they?
Five memorable numbers: NO ONE IS ALONE, CHILDREN WILL LISTEN, AGONY, GIANTS IN THE SKY, A MOMENT IN THE WOODS
After the success of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine wanted to work together again and decided on exploring the moral ambiguities of living Happy Ever After when the actions you have done to get there have consequences. Cinderella marries her Prince but what if he was raised to be charming but not faithful? Jack steals from and later kills The Giant but what of the grieving Giant's Wife who wants revenge on the little killer who abused their hospitality? And what do you do when parents or children are taken from you - do you blame others or yourself? Although Sondheim denies there was any deliberate intention for the work to reflect the AIDS crisis that was contemporary to it's writing, you cannot help but read it as a reflection on those times of sudden death, recrimination and the forming of community. It's continued success down the years shows the world has not changed much...
The show had a short initial run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, giving Sondheim and Lapine a chance to see where the show might be enlarged and clarified before it opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in 1987 with the wonderful cast of Bernadette Peters as The Witch, Chip Zien as The Baker, Joanna Gleason as The Baker's Wife, Kim Crosby as Cinderella, Robert Westenberg as Cinderella's Prince as well as The Wolf and Danielle Ferland as Red Riding Hood. The show ran for nearly two years and won three Tony Awards - Gleason for Best Actress, Best Score and Best Book - but losing out in it's production awards to THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. More importantly, just after a year after it opened, INTO THE WOODS was the first musical I ever saw on Broadway.
Lapine's glorious original production was the best introduction to Broadway and luckily it was filmed with the reunited original cast just before it closed and is available on DVD. The first London production only lasted five months at the Phoenix Theatre, largely due to Robert Jones' ugly, over-intellectualised production but it did feature two memorable performances from Julia McKenzie as The Witch and Imelda Staunton as a pugnacious, determined Baker's Wife; Imelda went on to win the Best Actress Olivier Award for Best Actress. A far more cohesive and enjoyable production was John Crowley's 1998 revival at the Donmar - it's smaller stage giving the action more of a focus - with yet another Olivier Award-winning Baker's Wife, this time the wonderful Sophie Thompson, in a cast which also included Jenna Russell as Cinderella, Damien Lewis as her Prince and a break-out performance by 17 year-old Sheridan Smith as Red Riding Hood.
The last three productions I have seen illustrated how versatile directors have found the material - the Landor staged INTO THE WOODS in their 60 seat pub theatre in 2009, the Open Air theatre in Regents Park staged a spectacular production in 2011 with a multi-level set disappearing off into the surrounding trees which certainly gave the piece a vibrant setting, even if not all the directorial choices held up, but did give Hannah Waddingham as The Witch, Jenna Russell as The Baker's Wife, Beverley Rudd as Red Riding Hood and Michael Xavier as The Prince / The Wolf excellent chances to shine. In 2016, the American Fiasco Theater Company brought their INTO THE WOODS to the Menier which had a cast of 10 and a near-bare stage. The show survived of course but the relentless "look what we can do with a rope" got old very quickly. A lovely performance from Harry Hepple as The Baker helped save the day.
I still remember the excitement of buying the orginal cast recording at Tower Records and racing home to play it, reading the libretto and studying the colour foldouts of production shots - and that excitement has not diminished over 36 years, it was a worthy winner of that year's Grammy for Best Cast Recording. It's a score which moves me greatly, especially in the second act where Sondheim unleashes a succession of songs that cut through to a universal sadness: the Witch's "Lament" then her goodbye to the small-minded humans with "Last Midnight"; The Baker's burnt-out cry for a moment of rest "No More" which leads into the anthemic "No One Is Alone" where the characters realise that a family is not just blood relatives - and in between these there is one of Sondheim's most under-rated solos, The Baker's Wife's "A Moment In The Woods", it's this song that makes the role a real award magnet and makes INTO THE WOODS one of my all-time favourite musicals.
So... what video to pick? In truth I did not mind the Disney film which despite being truncated actually stayed true to the spirit of the show but it has to be the original Broadway cast, and here is the press reel of clips for broadcast purposes; they are not in chronological order but give you a real flavour of the production featuring the marvellous performances of Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, Chip Zien, Danielle Ferland, Robert Westenberg, and Kim Crosby among others.
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: 1728, Lincolns Inn Fields Theatre, London First seen by me: 1982, Cottesloe, National Theatre
Productions seen: two
Score: various Book: John Gay Plot: In the slums of East London, legendary highwayman Macheth's luck finally runs out as he is arrested and taken to Newgate. Facing the prospect of hanging, Macheath must rely on the help of his mistresses - but will they agree to help if they find out about each other?
Five memorable numbers: I LIKE THE FOX SHALL GRIEVE, LET US TAKE THE ROAD, IF THE HEART OF A MAN, I'M BUBBLED I'M TROUBLED, WHY HOW NOW MADAME FLIRT
THE BEGGAR'S OPERA has galloped down 291 years like it's anti-hero Macheath escaping the law. Along the way it has discarded the satirical contemporary references that would have accounted for it's huge success - many saw in the outwardly respectable but secretly double-dealing Peachum a veiled allusion to politician Robert Walpole - as well as referencing 'superstar' villains like Jonathan Wild, Claude Duval and Jack Sheppard but it has retained it's involving plot, larger-than-life characters and it's over-riding message that what is forgiven if you are rich is criminalized if you are poor. John Gay's original intention was to have the many songs and airs sung with no musical accompaniment but that was considered too avant-garde for the 18th Century - I am sure someone will come up with that idea now and be hailed as visionary. THE BEGGAR'S OPERA was such a success that Gay wrote a sequel POLLY featuring Macheath and Polly in the West Indies but the satire was too biting for Walpole and it was banned for fifty years. BEGGAR was of course the inspiration for Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's THE THREEPENNY OPERA which utilized most of the characters and plotline but the original remains the more sprightly. It was thanks to Richard Eyre and his legendary 1982 National Theatre company that I first saw THE BEGGAR'S OPERA when it seemed a natural complement for their more optimistic GUYS AND DOLLS: Eyre gave it more of a Dickensian feel, the pervading gloom of John Gunter's rickety slum set and Peter Radmore's pea-souper lighting made it feel almost immersive. Giving definitive characterizations were Paul Jones as the cocksure Macheath, Belinda Sinclair as Polly, Harry Towb as a Northen Irish Peachum, June Watson as a bustling "Carry On"-style Mrs Peachum ("not wiv an 'ighwayman, you sorry slut"), Kevin Williams' scene-stealing servant Filch and Imelda Staunton's explosive Lucy Lockett.
Annoyingly, although the Richard Eyre production was filmed for Channel 4 in 1983, there isn't any sign of it on YouTube. Most of the videos are of either amateur productions or Peter Brook's lumpy film adaptation so here is a vocal clip of Jenna Russell as Lucy Lockett in the 1992 Royal Shakespeare Company production singing "Lucy's Lament".
You know the film genre: individual / group take a stand against
their fate, there are setbacks but triumph vindicates them: BILLY ELLIOTT, THE FULL MONTY, KINKY BOOTS, MADE IN DAGENHAM...
...and there's PRIDE, Matthew Warchus' marvellous film which tells the true story of how gay activists set up the support group 'Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' during the 1984-85 miner's strike.
Stephen Beresford's excellent script mixes fact and fiction to tell how Mark Ashton and Mike Jackson started the group when they realized that the miners and their families were facing the same forces of oppression that they had experienced: the Government, the police and the press.
Brimming with wit and emotion, the film boasts
memorable performances from Ben Schnetzer, Joe Gilgun, Bill Nighy,
Imelda Staunton, Jessica Gunning, Faye Marsay, Paddy Considine, Dominic
West, Andrew Scott, George MacKay, Menna Trussler and Lisa Palfrey
PRIDE is an instant classic...
Shelf or charity shop? PRIDE never fails to make me blub: a testament to the times I lived through and to the remarkable Mark Ashton who died aged only 26 in 1987 from an AIDS-related illness. Standing proud on the shelf.
