50 Favourite Musicals: 43: FINGS AIN'T WOT THEY USED T'BE (1959) (Lionel Bart)

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: 1959, Theatre Royal, Stratford East 

First seen by me: 2011, Union Theatre, London

Productions seen: two

Score: Lionel Bart
Book: Frank Norman

Plot:  1950s Soho; Fred runs a 'spieler' - a gambling bar/brothel - with his longtime girlfriend Lil, but their relatively peaceful life catering to brasses, pimps, bent coppers and ne'er-do-wells is threatened by the expansionist plans of a neighbouring thug Meatface...

Five memorable numbers: FINGS AIN'T WHAT THEY USED T'BE, WHERE DO LITTLE BIRDS GO?, THE CEILING'S COMING DAHN, POLKA DOTS, G'NIGHT DEARIE

Ex-con Frank Norman had originally sent his play to Joan Littlewood as a possible production for her Theatre Workshop company but Littlewood saw it's potential instead as a London musical and sent it to pop songwriter Lionel Bart - who had just written the lyrics for his first musical LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS - to see what he could come up with.  The musical took off like a rocket, straight from Stratford East into the West End where it ran for 886 performances and won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Musical.  Despite it's mundane - and now rather dated - storyline, Bart's music and vibrantly non-pc lyrics still burst off the stage with his unmistakable signature cocky cockney bravado.  After a muddled and clumsy Union Theatre production - nothing new there - there was a much better revival at Stratford East in 2014.  However which cast nowadays can compare to the sensational original cast recording. recorded live, which features Glynn Edwards, Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, Toni Palmer, James Booth and Yootha Joyce?   That original production, by the way, was choreographed by Jean Newlove who was pregnant with her daughter, Kirsty MacColl...

Here is a trailer for the 2014 Stratford East revival, staged to celebrate Joan Littlewood's centenary..

50 Favourite Musicals: 49: OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! (1963) (various)

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: 1963, Theatre Workshop, Stratford East
First seen by me: 1998, Roundhouse, London

Productions seen: three

Score: various

Book: Joan Littlewood / Theatre Workshop / Charles Chilton / Gerry Raffles / Ted Allen

Plot: The savagery and foolishness of the Western Front in World War I is performed by a troupe of Pierrots.

Five memorable numbers: I'LL MAKE A MAN OF YOU; GOOD-BYE-EE; OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR; THEY WERE ONLY PLAYING LEAPFROG; AND WHEN THEY ASK US

Although Richard Attenborough's heavy-handed film version - loathed by Joan Littlewood - is probably more well known, the original still retains it's ability to freeze the smile on your face at it's depictions of the carnage on the Western Front during WWI.  Littlewood's partner Gerry Raffles had heard Charles Chilton's radio programme on the songs sung in the trenches and commissioned a script which Littlewood ditched.  She wanted her Theatre Workshop actors - including Murray Melvin, Brian Murphy, Larry Dann. Ann Beach and Victor Spinetti - to each research an aspect of the war and the short agit-prop linking sketches sprung from that; she also wanted the show to be from the ordinary soldier's point of view and NO uniforms.   Some of the sketches now seem heavy-handed - one on industrialists comparing the fortunes made through munitions lasts forever - but the three productions I have seen all had fine moments, my first at the Roundhouse was the most consistent; the irony being it was a mobile production by the National Theatre - another thing that Littlewood loathed!  There was also a Northern Stage tour which interpolated other songs - Owen liked it when a song not heard for ages, "Cushy Butterfield", popped up - and a revival at Stratford East.  The heartbreaking juxtaposition of the songs - optimism turning to weariness in the face of resignation and death - against the moving scenes of the 1914 Christmas truce between the British and Germans, and the French army literally baa-ing their way, like lambs to slaughter, into machine gun fire, keep their theatrical power.

Here is a trailer for the 2015 tour that followed the Stratford East revival the year before:

ANITA AND ME at Stratford East - Meera Syal's novel comes to the stage

In 1996 ANITA AND ME was published and was an immediate success for first-time novelist Meera Syal.  Since then it has won the Betty Trask Award for first-time novelists, Syal adapted it for a 2002 film version as well as appearing it and has also become a set book n English Literature exams.

Syal's semi-autobiographical novel has now been turned into a stage show at the perfect home for it, the Theatre Royal Stratford East.  The stage version is adapted by Tanika Gupta and is an uneasy mix of music and drama but it is one that Stratford East's legendary figurehead Joan Littlewood would probably have approved of it's mix of music and politics within a raggedy production.

The story takes place in the 1970s in a fictional midlands town and centres on the teenage Meena who straddles two worlds: her traditional Indian home life where her parents have great ambitions for her future and the outside world of Tollington where she yearns to fit in with her contemporaries, in particular the local tearaway Anita.

Meena and Anita have an uneasy relationship, their friendship is not one that can last but they fascinate each other, the one jealous of what they think the other have: Meena wants Anita's freedom, Anita wants Meena's loving family background.

Meena's father Shyam and mother Daljit cannot understand why their daughter is so enamoured with the gobby, sluttish teenager but are also facing their own problem's when Daljit is overwhelmed by having a new baby but the family dynamic takes an interesting turn when they arrange for her mother to fly to the UK to help her with the baby.

Meena slowly grows to appreciate her Nanima and her renewed connection to her family makes her to reevaluate her relationship with her increasingly wayward best friend, especially as Anita is now the girlfriend of Sam, a former friend of Meena who is now a right-wing skinhead.  It was an enjoyable enough show but apart from the occasional sharp insight into Anita's miserable family home or the slow creep of the racist right that surrounded Meena and her family, it was all a bit too reverentially cute.

The performances were mostly all drawn slightly too large but subtlety is rarely the Stratford East way.  There were however nice performances from Yasmin Wilde as the long-suffering Nanima, Kiren Jogi as Meena's middle-class aunt Shaila and Ayesha Dharker as Daljit.  Mandeep Dhillon as Meena and Jalleh Alizadeh as Anita were both effective but at times were obviously too old for their roles.

Roxana Silbert's direction kept the pace swift and breezy but the score by Ben & Max Ringham and Tanika Gupta felt intrusive and stalled the action rather than moving it forward.

The show ended in a celebratory bhangra dance with a final shower of confetti that successfully wiped a lot of the show's niggles out of mind.  So... a nice show but lacking the sharp insight of Syal's original.

The State of FINGS

 
This year marks the centinery of visionary theatre director Joan Littlewood's birth and Theatre Royal Stratford East are celebrating by staging revivals of two of her iconic shows, both directed by Terry Johnson.  A few months ago I saw the affecting but slightly under-powered OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR but now he is on surer ground with a punchy and rollicking production of Lionel Bart and Frank Norman's FINGS AIN'T WOT THEY USED T'BE.  As with OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR it was so exciting to see these on the stage where they were created by Littlewood.

In 1958 Frank Norman submitted his first play to Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East. She thought his story of Soho crooks and prostitutes - drawn from a milieu that ex-con Norman knew all too well - would be more effective with songs from a previous collaborator Lionel Bart, mainly known as a pop song writer, who had recently written the score for his first musical LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS. The show was a huge success, transferring to the Garrick where it ran for 886 performances and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical.  By the way, the choreographer for the production was Jean Newlove, pregnant at the time with her daughter Kirsty MacColl.

The West End cast - recorded 'live' on the album - was one I would now kill to see: Glynn Edwards as Fred Cochran, the crook who owns a gambling club/brothel, Miriam Karlin as Lil, his long-suffering lover who runs his decrepit knocking shop, James Booth as Tosher, Fred's second-in-command who pimps the brasses Rosie and Betty, played by Barbara Windsor and Toni Palmer, Wallis Eaton as the camp interior decorator Horace, Tom Chatto as the bent local Police Inspector and, among the supporting cast, a young Yootha Joyce. That album is so packed with larger-than-life vocal performances that it's hard for any revival to match it but Johnson has given us a production which leaps off the stage with full-on attack and neon-lit characterisations.

I had seen the show when it was revived in 2011 by the Union Theatre and while that production was compromised by bad design and a shocking supporting performance - see here for that blog review - it's nice to see two of the better performers appearing here, Ruth Alfie Adams and the unstoppable Suzie Chard.

Norman's book has been revised by Bart afficianado Elliot Davis so it was a bit jolting for songs to pop up out of their usual context and sung by different characters.  The score has been filled out with three of Bart's early hits - WOULD YOU MIND?, LIVING DOLL and SPARRERS CAN'T SING - which are nice to hear but do stand out from the score's particular sound but I must admit that even Davis has not managed to fix the plot's odd climax which seems to stop too soon and then take a long time about it.  Davis is also the musical director of the onstage band.

A big plus is William Dudley's evocative basement spieler and costumes as well as a clever use of video footage to suggest the Soho world above.  The show was enlivened by Nathan M. Wright's inventive choreography, a constant delight.  But what raised the roof and rattled the rafters were the vibrant performances.

Jessie Wallace, while essentially playing a variation of her "Eastenders" character Kat, gave a full-on performance as Lil, her weariness at her unfulfilled life with Fred very palpable and she belted Lil's great songs with real brio.  Mark Arden played Fred with a real menace although his 'dead 'ard' accent was a bit overdone.  One of the surprises was Gary Kemp who played the bent copper PC Collins with a welcome light touch and sang his big number COP A BIT OF PRIDE well.

 

He had the added pleasure of sharing his number with the fabulous Suzie Chard who brought big hair, big personality, big boobs and more importantly a big voice to the role of Betty the tart with a heart of pure brass.  She belted over her number BIG TIME with the attack of the late and great Georgia Brown and it was lovely to see her again.  Oddly enough although she played the same character at the Union Theatre, there she was named Barbara!

A real standout was Sarah Middleton as Rosie, the young runaway who Tosher recuits as the latest addition to his stable.  She had a nice presence on stage and her performance of Rosie's big song WHERE DO LITTLE BIRDS GO TO? was wonderful.  Christopher Ryan also made a big impression as the eternal jailbird Red Hot, always on the cadge and with knocked-off goods to sell.  The supporting cast also featured fine work by Will Barton and Vivien Carter as the posh couple who arrive at the spieler.

The cast had a few mis-steps too: Ryan Molloy played the gay interior decorator Horace but, while not as atrocious as the Union Theatre actor, again this role was over-played to the nth degree and it was not surprising that his laugh lines went for nothing while Stefan Booth was oddly over-emphatic as Tosher.

But these can be overlooked easily as the show was so hugely enjoyable, it would be great if it had a continued life after it's scheduled run.  It deserves a West End run just like it's original incarnation to enliven the current London theatre musical scene.

Well done Startford East on the genius stroke to reprint the original 1959 programme!  Who knew that the very first production featured A TASTE OF HONEY writer Shelagh Delaney playing a young "mystery" and that none other than Richard Harris played the crooked copper Collins?  I wonder whatever happened to Mrs Parham who sold drinks in the long bar, Mrs. Murphy who sold teas in the snack bar and Miss Darvill who ran the box office?

After seeing FINGS, again I find myself wondering when will we see a revival of Lionel Bart's Liverpool musical MAGGIE MAY which played at the Adelphi in 1964, first with Rachel Roberts then Georgia Brown in the title role and a young Julia McKenzie in the chorus.

100 x 2

That's an odd title isn't it?  But it ties in with the revival of OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR at Stratford East, the theatre where this groundbreaking show was born.

In case you haven't noticed, this year is the Centenary of the start of World War I but at Stratford East they are also celebrating the Centenary of the birth of the theatre's unique former artistic director Joan Littlewood.  Ironically, Littlewood came close to not even doing the show in 1963.

Her partner Gerry Raffles heard Charles Chilton's radio programme "The Long, Long Road" in 1962 which interspersed soldier's reminiscences with the songs they sang among themselves.  Raffles told Littlewood about it and suggested it might make a good show for her company Theatre Workshop but she turned the idea down as she was an avowed pacifist.  Undeterred, Raffles invited Chilton to the theatre and while going through the songs, Littlewood began to see the potential in making a show that was a critique of the war and the warmongers but to also celebrate the lives of the ordinary people swept up in their power-games.  Her idea to present the company as a Pierrot troupe gave the show a suitably Brechtian twist and featured such characterful actors as Victor Spinetti, Brian Murphy, Murray Melvin, Larry Dann and Fanny Carby.  The show was a huge popular success and moved on to both the West End and Broadway.  Richard Attenborough then went on to make a leaden, joyless screen version in 1969.

I have seen two revivals of the show and was looking forward to seeing this one on the stage where it was created.

There are several scenes in the show that always start the silent waterworks and again this production hit those moments with a quiet power - the Christmas Eve, 1914 scene on the western front when the English and German soldiers stop fighting and meet each other in no man's land to share makeshift Christmas presents always sets me off and the powerful scene of the French soldiers baa-ing their way towards the guns, literally 'lambs to the slaughter' is still unsettling.  The production uses the original trops of slides of contemporary photographs and a moving display that rolls out the awful casualty totals for the battles but the micro-sign that is in the current production uses too large text which makes it difficult to follow what is being scrolled.

What remains the success of the show is the use of the contemporary tunes as well as the snatches of song that the soldiers would sing while marching or in the trenches which constantly reach down the years and jolt you with their jaundiced and savagely ironical lyrics.  The chilling detachment of their words curdle the pretty melodies that they appropriated and are put across by the present company with both gusto and despair.

Sadly for me the show is now hampered by the too-frequent scenes where those who hold the strings - the Generals, the politicians, the businessmen - disrupt the more interesting ones with the soldiers.  What makes it all the more frustrating is that these are the real legacy of the Littlewood agit-prop style but now they are too blatant, too obvious and ultimately too damn long.  At the start of the second act, there is an interminable scene between American, English, German, French and Dutch businessman comparing the fortunes they have made off their munition-trading while on a Grouse shoot (geddit?).  It's so heavy-handed and obvious that it outstays it's welcome very quickly.  You want to shout at the stage "Yes we get it!!"  A re-write of these scenes could easily be done to make these scenes more effective for a modern audience but I'm guessing the show is frozen in deference to Littlewood's wishes.

The show seemed to take an awful long time to get going - namely down to the interminable "War Game" scenes setting out how the war started but start it did with the first real appearance of Caroline Quentin as the Music Hall star singing the recruitment song "I'll Make A Man Of You".  She shook the production awake by the scruff of the neck with her galvanising rendition and her two other major scenes were very effective - speed-singing "Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts" and also as Mrs. Pankhurst being hectored and pelted as she tries to deliver a pacifist speech to an angry street crowd.  It's actually refreshing that Littlewood included this scene as it showed how most of the general public refused to believe there could be any other way forward apart from through killing.

Among a generally good cast, Ian Bartholomew was particularly fine as General Haig, Shaun Prendergast had a good Max Miller-like quality as the MC of the evening and I liked the contributions of Oliver J. Hembrough, who I remembered as the put-upon husband Edgar in last year's TITANIC.  Terry Johnson has directed the show with a sure but possibly a too-reverential hand and I liked the Lez Brotherston's stage design which copied the theatre's proscenium arch and stage boxes in metal scaffolding and filigree.

 

Constant Reader, as we are on the subject of revisiting shows, I went to see Richard Eyre's pressure-cooker production of GHOSTS again which has now transferred from the Almeida to the Trafalgar Studios (my blog from the original Almeida production is here) and I am happy (?) to report that it is still holds you in a vice-like grip of increasing despair and again I found myself breathless at the power and intensity of Lesley Manville as Mrs. Alving.

It was a pleasure to see her performance again and to see how she subtly shades the reactions and actions of her character and how ultimately she descends into her own living Hell.  She is magnificent and it's amazing she has kept up this remarkable performance with all that is asked of her during the course of it's 90 minutes when she is rarely offstage.

Run to see GHOSTS before it closes on March 23nd, OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR ended it's run on the 15th.

When I heard that the Union Theatre were reviving Lionel Bart's "play with music" FINGS AIN'T WOT THEY USED T'BE I was cockahoop. I have been a fan of the original cast recording - recorded live - for some time but suspected that the show would not be revived as the lyrics certainly betray a certain dated quality. But I should have guessed that the Union, the home of the unlikely revival, would come through. Yes the show has dated in parts - and the production has a few distinct problem areas - but it won me round in the end. It certainly made me imagine how dynamic the original production would have been.

In 1959 Frank Norman submitted his first play to Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East. It's story of Soho heavies and prostitutes - drawn from a milieu that ex-con Norman knew all too well - was too bald for Littlewood and she hit on the inspired idea of suggesting they show the script to Lionel Bart, a successful pop song writer who had recently written the lyrics for his first musical LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS to turn it into a play with music. The result was a huge success and the show transferred to the Garrick where it ran for 886 performances and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical.

The original cast - captured 'live' on the album - was one you would now kill to see: Glynn Edwards as Fred Cochran, the crook who owns a gambling club/brothel, Mariam Karlin as Lily, his long-suffering girlfriend who runs his decrepit knocking shop, James Booth as Tosher, Fred's second-in-command who pimps his two brasses Rosey and Betty, played by Barbara Windsor and Toni Palmer, Wallis Eaton as the camp interior decorator Horace, Tom Chatto as the bent local Police Inspector and, among the supporting cast, a young Yootha Joyce.
Phil Willmott's dimly-lit production did itself no favours by starting off with the cast bellowing out the numbers at the top of the volume which was ridiculous in such a confined space - I have rarely heard such an overbearingly loud noise - even the most experienced of them, Neil McCaul as Fred, barked out his lines and songs like he was on the Palladium stage.

People.... read, your, space.

The entrances and exits were at times a bit haphazard and the whole thing seemed to need a firmer hand controlling it as it's quite a large cast of characters and at times it was hard to get an idea of who one was supposed to be concentrating on.

Also I want to single out Richard Foster-King who played Horace, the camp interior designer. I have never seen such an over-emphasised, ugly, performance. His horribly over-the-top delivery totally ruined Bart's charming "Contempery" - imagine if you will the bastard offspring of Larry Grayson, Julian Glover and Frances de la Tour. Only camper. His screaming and lisping made me seriously consider leaving at the interval.That's him at the back of the picture being strangled by McCaul. If only... But despite this hideous performance and over-pitched delivery, slowly the show began to settle down and I found myself enjoying the show as much as I had hoped to.

Hannah-Jane Fox who it appears is a West End leading lady thanks to four years in WE WILL ROCK YOU played Lil with a gentle restraint - but all it took was a short reprise of "The Ceiling's Comin' Dahn" by Ruth Alfie Adams' weary-but-rough tart to show how great she would have been in the role. I did however like her performance of "Where Do Little Birds Go?" that stopped the show for Barbara Windsor.
The show was stolen by the partnership of Hadrian Delacey's crooked Inspector Collins and Suzie Chard's dizzyingly voluptuous tart Barbara - imagine a talented Jodie Prenger. Their tough-but-tender relationship was fully believable and they performed "Cop A Bit o'Pride" with a real élan.

I also liked Ian Rixon as Fred's 'gopher' Billy who nabbed all the funny lines going and Jo Parsons also made an impression as Tosher, a young cocky wide-boy quietly nursing his ambition for all that Fred has. The trouble with Norman's script is that the characters all have a moment to step up but the storylines are all left hanging as he cuts to a quick denouement to wrap up the Fred/Lily story - a storyline that seemed to be a cockney reflection of GUYS AND DOLLS' Nathan and Miss Adelaide.

A special mention must go to Nick Winston's choreography which makes the most of the wide but shallow stage although it was only a matter of time during Suzie Chard's raucous number "Big Time" that one of the jitterbugging couples would send one of the front row pub tables go a-clattering!

So despite the quibbles - and shiteous performance by Foster-King - I am glad I finally got a chance to see this show with it's delightful score and see a few performers that I will keep an eye open for in the future. It certainly helps to put Bart in perspective - it's frustrating that OLIVER! seems to be the only one of his shows that get's revived.

Maybe the Union Theatre would like to have a go at his Liverpool musical MAGGIE MAY which starred first Rachel Roberts then Georgia Brown during it's run at the Adelphi in 1964.