EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE at the Apollo Theatre - Prom Teen Drag Queen

London has a plethora of shows based on films: ALADDIN, KINKY BOOTS, THE LION KING, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, 42ND STREET, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, BIG FISH, THE EXORCIST, NETWORK - and we have STRICTLY BALLROOM, FANNY AND ALEXANDER, HAROLD AND MAUDE and JUBILEE on the way as well.  Not many based on tv programmes - THE TWILIGHT ZONE at the Almeida anyone? - but even rarer, a tv documentary?  Sashay forward EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE.

In 2011 director Jonathan Butterell happened to catch the BBC3 documentary JAMIE: DRAG QUEEN AT 16 and was intrigued by Jamie Campbell, who was indeed 16 and was indeed into drag.  So much so that he wanted to attend his last year school disco - nope, not calling it a prom - in a dress.  The ever-resourceful Jamie googled "how do I make a documentary" and he found his way to BBC3 who commissioned a film of his big event.  Butterell felt the story had musical potential and turned to Daniel Evans, then-artistic director of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield who also was interested.

Cut to Chichester Theatre - where spookily, Daniel Evans was due to move to - and Michael Ball is talking to two new theatre composers Tom MacRae and Dan Gillespie Sells (from the pop band The Feeling).  Ball put them in touch with Butterell, Butterell told them about his JAMIE idea and a musical was born!  It opened at the Crucible in February 2017, producer Nica Burns saw it's last matinee and nine months later she is producing it at the Apollo Theatre,

Jamie is in his last year at school and has a burning ambition - to be a drag queen.  As the last year disco - nope, not calling it a prom - is all about their launch into adulthood, Jamie decides to attend in drag, a secret he shares only with his mother Margaret, her friend Ray and his closest school friend Pritti, a put-upon Muslim girl who shares the bond of the bullied with Jamie.  Jamie wants the approval of his divorced dad but apart from sending him birthday and Christmas cards he dislikes his son's gayness and refuses to help him.

Jamie plucks up the courage to go into a Manchester drag shop and is befriended by the owner Hugo who still performs in a local drag club.  Jamie decides he will launch his career there and brazenly invites his classmates to it.  Backstage he discovers a dress he has coveted in the shop with a bunch of flowers, seemingly a present from his dad - but it's actually from his mum.  Jamie's club-date is a success and he finds his classmates are mostly happy for him, but the class bully Dean secretly tips off the teachers and Jamie is told he cannot attend the school event in a dress.

Jamie goes to his father for help but he is told the presents were not from him and he thinks Jamie is disgusting.  Jamie confronts his mum with the truth and berates her for her lies, he storms out, gets drunk and is beaten up in a homophobic attack.  Hugo discovers him and helps him home where he and his mum realize their love is too strong to break.  Now for that final hurdle... can Jamie get into the school party?

A bit of dramatic licence has ramped up the conflicts in Jamie's story but the book still cannot quite make us ever doubt that Jamie will get his wish.  There is a lengthy scene where Hugo recalls his drag superstar days but it feels unnecessary as it's Jamie we are emotionally involved with.  The club night is also oddly muffed: it introduces us to three seen-it-all drag queens which feels too much of a GYPSY rip-off to be interesting and Jamie's club debut in front of his schoolmates happens offstage and during the interval.  The next thing we see are all his schoolmates obsessing about it in class the next day - but shouldn't we the audience have seen how our 16 year-old hero fared onstage in front of paying punters for the first time?

It's MacRae's book which stops JAMIE being a total success but don't get me wrong, there is much to enjoy in the show and I left it smiling and thinking about a return visit, and there are relatively few new musicals that can do that these days.  Dan Gillespie Sells' score is great: the songs in the first act quickly establish a real excitement - apart from the soggy Latin pastiche fantasy number about Hugo's drag past - and I was soon thinking "cast album" but there isn't one yet, just a 'concept' album by the composers with guest singers, which isn't the same thing at all; this is a great score with some great hooks which deserves to be recorded with this cast.

The show stands or falls off it's platform heels by the actor playing Jamie who is rarely offstage but John McCrea shines like a diamond in the role: self-assured but doubtful, funny but sad, brazen but sympathetic, McCrea lights up the show and is never less than captivating.  Whether he can parlay this triumph into other suitable roles will be interesting to see but right here, right now, he is quite wonderful.

Josie Walker plays the role of Margaret the loving mum with a resigned lovingness but sings her two solos with tremendous power; they are still travelling when they hit the back wall of the upper circle.  In the programme notes, Gillespie Sells writes that her songs were written in a Dusty Springfield style as Margaret would have grown up listening to her and it shows - her big second act "He's My Boy" immediately had me thinking Dusty *wrist flick*

Lucie Shorthouse as the bookish but loving Pritti has a delightful presence on stage and excels in her big number "It Means Beautiful", Mina Anwar as Margaret's best friend Ray stands around waiting for a killer line which never quites materializes but she does what she needs to do well. It's a show where the women tend to stand out more than the men but Phil Nichol has his moments as Hugo as does Luke Baxter as the bully Dean who ultimately is hiding his own fears too.

Jonathan Butterell's direction is quick on it's heels but takes the time in the second act to give Jamie's loss of confidence a real feeling of sadness, Anna Fleischle keeps springing surprises on her standing set of a grey inner-city school which is well-lit by Lucy Carter, while Kate Prince's choreography is truly non-stop fun and adds greatly to the success of the show.

As luck would have it, a few days after seeing the musical I finally saw the original BBC3 documentary so it was interesting to compare the way moments like the refusal to let Jamie attend the school event in a dress, his bickering with his mother over whether to attend or not and his father's off-camera callousness were ramped up in the show.

EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE... and maybe you should do too.  It's booking until April 21st 2018 and will leave you with a spring in your step and a sissy in your walk...

WOOLF WORKS: Moments of Being...

I was lost for words when Owen told me he had booked tickets for the Royal Ballet's WOOLF WORKS at Covent Garden.  I just couldn't grasp it... three short ballets based on MRS DALLOWAY, ORLANDO and THE WAVES?  How could this be?  What can there be of Woolf without her writing, it's rhythms and the power to connect moments of her life with ours.  How could this succeed robbed of her words?  It was with this air of quiet bafflement that I took my very good seat in that most sumptuously decadent of London auditoriums and the light lowered as the curtain raised...

Within seconds my central question was resolutely answered.  Virginia's voice sounded out, steady and strong in her only recorded piece for the BBC in 1937, talking about the difficulty with trying to find new forms of writing when English words are so over-familiar through being used again and again.  As we listened, her writing appeared on a screen, meshing and re-forming into a likeness of Virginia then coming apart again.  It was as if choreographer Wayne McGregor was saying that if words have lost their imaginative use then their must be other ways.

The first in the triptych was I NOW, I THEN based on the main characters in MRS DALLOWAY and the atmosphere and mood of the story.  Again after a few minutes not only did the penny drop but I found myself deeply involved.  This was helped by Lucy Carter's sombre lighting, the hazy video projections of London as seen through a dream and the striking set design of Cigué, 3 wooden oblongs that rotated slowly to open up new vistas and configurations, occasionally revealing a new dancer as if from nowhere. 

The hypnotic Alessandra Ferri, returned from retirement, danced the role of Clarissa Dalloway and as the title suggests, she was joined onstage by Francesca Hayward as the younger Clarissa who danced with Beatriz Stix-Brunell as the quicksilver Sally Seton and Gary Avis as the younger Peter Walsh, the older Peter was danced by Federico Bonelli.  Max Richter's intriguing score kept returning to the chiming of Big Ben, ticking clocks and watches, all suggesting Woolf's subject of time, the past and memory.

Edward Watson enthralled as he interpreted McGregor's disjointed choreography as the shell-shocked Septimus Smith partnered by Akane Takada as his despairing wife Rezia.  In a marvellous visual cue, the stage was bathed in a warm reddish light when he danced with Tristan Dyer as Evans, his dead friend from the trenches.

What was good about WOOLF WORKS was that each of the three sections felt totally different, the only connection being the source novelist.  Totally different in tone was BECOMINGS, the second of the three and based on ORLANDO.  Twelve dancers appeared on a darkened stage as an overhead spotlight searched them, their golden costumes gleaming as it swept around them as if trying to find a single person.  It finally alighted on one and the dancers soon started dancing in pairs, male and female, again suggesting Woolf's theme of gender confusion.

This was the longest of the three and it's abstract form did rather outstay it's welcome but what made it all the more thrilling was Richter's crunching music which at one point got so loud I actually thought the circle might give way!  The lighting was all very 80s with laser beams illuminating the dancers, suggesting the other-world space of Orlando's changing gender. The lasers swept into the auditorium too, lighting up each of the circles with beads of light and in a dramatic, sudden finale end with countless lasers firing all over the auditorium, just like the last Pet Shop Boys concert!  It was all very thrilling - and again not what I had expected.

After a second interval - each about the same length as the actual dance pieces themselves - oh and after a second wild strawberry champagne cocktail (I LIKE Covent Garden), it was time for the last of the three, TUESDAY (based on THE WAVES) as the curtain rose on a bare stage apart from a long screen on which a slow film of crashing waves played.  

Gillian Anderson was then heard reading Virginia's heartbreaking suicide letter to Leonard and, as usual when confronted with it, I soon had tears running down my face.  Beautifully read by Anderson and with nothing on stage to distract from the words it was incredibly powerful.  It affects for many reasons: the private nature of a suicide letter to a husband by a writer who always strove to find new ways of describing life, the sheer beauty of the writing even though the content is so tragic, that in describing all she knew she shared with Leonard was not enough to stop Virginia from doing what she did to end her losing battle with her insanity.

Alessandra Ferri was magnificent as the spirit of Woolf, painfully moving through her duet with Federico Bonelli, his attempts to hold her and keep her aloft ending with her escaping away, her sheer force of personality filling the auditorium.  They were joined on stage by children dancing with Sarah Lamb, again Ferri interacting with a dancer playing her younger self, for the children to vanish into an ensemble of dancers who filled the stage with slow, sinuous movement which culminated in Ferri joining them, at first moving on her own but slowly becoming one with their repeated moves, as if subsumed by the rhythm of the waves.

Slowly the ensemble pulled away, moving forward and back, forward and back as Richter's moving composition for strings reached it's climax as Bonelli carried Ferri for the last time to slowly lower her on to the stage to retreat away with the others.  It was powerful, emotional, impossibly moving.  She deserved every minute of her extended ovation, as indeed did her fellow dancers.

At the start of this year, Owen suggested that this should be a year of discovering new cultural things to see and on the back of this visit, Owen has indeed booked to see two more non-Matthew Bourne ballets.  I suspect however that nothing will come close to the emotional tour-de-force of Wayne McGregor's WOOLF WORKS.

"Terrible things breed in broken hearts..."

People with any kind of breathing problems are advised to keep well clear of the Olivier Theatre on certain days until the start of September... their current production of Euripides' MEDEA might just finish you off.  It's rare to see a production of such brutal, in-your-face force that for a long time after I was still poleaxed.

At the climax of this intense production you could hear absolutely nothing in the auditorium, which believe me is rare in the coughing wards that pass for theatres these days and also a fine tribute to director Carrie Cracknell ratcheting up of the tension.

I have only seen the play twice before: the first was Pasolini's 1969 film version with Maria Callas in imperious form in her only non-operatic acting role and I saw Diana Rigg's award-winning turn at the Wyndhams in 1993.  However neither were as visceral as Cracknell's production.

On reflection, it's remarkable how few of the acknowledged great actresses have taken on this all-encompassing role - very odd.  Luckily Helen McCrory said yes when Cracknell asked her and she is giving a towering performance as Euripides' heroine.  Ah but is she a heroine? You have to decide.

Medea is the wife of Jason who managed to steal the Golden Fleece only after she provided the distraction of murdering her brother, something that would make most men think twice about marrying her but Jason does on his return to Corinth and they have two children.

However Euripedes' play - here in a pared-to-the-bone version by Ben Power - starts with Medea in shock having learnt that Jason is to marry the daughter of King Creon that day.  Creon visits her and tells her she is to be exiled, her children taken from her and given to Jason.  She hysterically begs for just one day before this is done which Creon and Jason reluctantly allow her.  In her despair she is visited by King Aegeus of Athens who has visited the nearby Oracle of Delphi to ask will he remain childless.  Medea tells him she can cure this by magic if he will allow her to live in Athens which he readily agrees to.

Having secured somewhere to live, Medea can now exact her terrifying revenge on Jason and Creon.  She has her children deliver a present to the wedding feast of a beautiful gown for the new bride to wear - only we know that Medea has soaked the dress in a sulphurous poison that will destroy whoever touches it.  Soon she hears that the bride was burnt to death along with Creon when he tried to tear it from his daughter's body and now Medea is ready for the horrific coup-de-grace to punish Jason- to kill their children.

As I said earlier, Helen McCrory is spellbinding as the desperate Medea.  This is no statuesque 'diva' performance, McCrory's Medea is visceral, frantic, driven, almost possessed by her fury.  The moments leading up to her killing her children were mesmerising as the balance of her mind went from mercy to murder, sometimes within seconds of each other.  If she was not before, this performance puts her at the top table.

Cracknell also elicits strong performances from Danny Sapani as the proud, unthinking Jason and Martin Turner as a cold-hearted Creon, embodying a heartless patriarchal ruler.  There is an interesting performance from Michaela Coel as the children's nurse, her sing-song delivery at first odd but then making for a naturalistic, non-showy, performance.

 

There is interesting use of the chorus, first seen as guests at the wedding who then are dotted around the stage watching the unfolding action, doing the usual chorus thing of saying "I wouldn't do that if I were you" then later saying "I told you not to do that".  My heart sank when at the climax of the piece they suddenly lapse into the usual anachronistic modern dance steps - nothing illustrates the depths of hatred and revenge than kicking your leg out and whirling around.  I was reminded of Miss Nicola Blackman calling such segments "ten dancers looking for the toilet with the light out". 

As I have said Carrie Cracknell's direction grips like a vice, there is nothing - apart from said modern dance routine - to distract from the relentless drive to Medea's triumph over the expectations of her role in life.  Ben Power's translation hasn't an inch of spare meat on it either.  I was surprised that the ending does not make it as clear as in the original that Medea is leaving to fly to Athens and freedom with her heavy load, here she just trudges off but I guess it wouldn't fit with the general mood of this particular production.

Tom Scutt's large set at first seemed like a run-down middle eastern hotel foyer but it becomes more interesting with the reveals of an upper function room to illustrate Jason's wedding reception and a creepy, misty and dense forest in the back.  I thought it interesting that the choice was made to show the usual offstage marriage of Jason but Medea's murderous acts are still judged to be experienced offstage.

Lucy Carter's brutal lighting again focuses the attention totally on the action and I was surprised how effective the sonic beats score by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory was, made all the more effective by bearing used sparingly.

The production is now sold out until the end of it's run in early September - is it me or are productions getting shorter and shorter runs at the National? - but there are still seats available on the day as well as the now-obligatory NT Live cinema showing, this will be filmed live interestingly on the production's last night.

MEDEA however - and McCrory's searing performance - are best experienced live and in the Olivier auditorium.