50 Favourite Musicals: 19: TITANIC (1997) (Maury Yeston)

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: 1997, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 2013, Southwark Playhouse, London

Productions seen: two

Score: Maury Yeston
Book: Peter Stone
Plot:  April, 1912: the 'unsinkable' RMS Titanic leaves Southampton to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to New York with a cross-section of society aboard.  It never arrived...

Five memorable numbers: GODSPEED: TITANIC, BARRETT'S SONG, LADY'S MAID, NO MOON, WE'LL MEET TOMORROW

There was a lot of raised eyebrows when it was announced that a musical was to appear on Broadway based on the sinking of the Titanic - it sounded like something from a comedy script; who would play the iceberg?  Was the stage going to tip up or would they just flood the theatre?  How would critics stop themselves from the obvious gags about the show going down with all hands etc.?  But then something rather odd happened... it opened and although there were some mixed reviews, there were also some raves including this from the New Yorker: "It seemed a foregone conclusion that the show would be a failure; a musical about history's most tragic maiden voyage, in which fifteen hundred people lost their lives, was obviously preposterous [but] astonishingly, TITANIC manages to be grave and entertaining, somber and joyful; little by little you realize that you are in the presence of a genuine addition to American musical theatre."  On the back of the positivity about it, I bought the Cast Recording and immediately fell in love with Maury Yeston's masterly score.  It takes in a wide range of contemporaneous musical styles of 1912: ragtime trots, Gilbert & Sullivan pastiches, stirring Elgar-esque themes, choral work, hymns, folk airs, all filtered through a traditional Broadway score of ballads and up-tempo numbers.  TITANIC found an audience on Broadway and ran for nearly two years - indeed, although James Cameron's film opened in December 1997, it actually helped increase the show's attendance rather than the reverse as was expected.  At awards time, it won each of the five Tony Awards it was nominated for including Peter Stone's sober book, Yeston's score and the big one, Best Musical.

Then something even odder happened: TITANIC became a much sought-after show for amateur dramatic companies, final-year student productions and international companies who all realized that the show's minimalist designs, recognizable name and possibilities for large casts made it ideal for them.  I had to wait 16 years until the Southwark Playhouse and director Thom Southerland took a chance on staging it and was completely won over by the show; I knew the score of course but loved how the late Peter Stone's book showed what could be achieved in storytelling within a musical setting and was struck how often he comes back to the fact that on Titanic everything depended on what class you were, even in the ultimate extreme of whether you lived or died.  Three years later, Southerland was made Artistic Director of the equally snug Charing Cross Theatre and it was great that his first production was a revival of his Southwark Playhouse TITANIC, giving more people a chance to see it and experience Yeston's breath-taking score.  Maury Yeston is represented by three musicals in my Top 50 - NINE (#39), GRAND HOTEL (#20) and now TITANIC (#19).  They are three scores that glow with excellence.  Now all together: "Sail on, Sail on / Great ship Titanic...."

There is a fair few TITANIC videos available on YouTube but they fall a bit short; the 1997 Broadway clips are not the best quality and most of the others are filmed amateur productions so I will stick to the trailer for Thom Southerland's Southwark production when it sailed over to the Charing Cross Theatre.

50 Favourite Musicals: 20: GRAND HOTEL (1989) (Robert Wright / George Forrest / Maury Yeston)

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: 1989, Martin Beck Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1992, Dominion, London

Productions seen: five

Score: Robert Wright / George Forrest / Maury Yeston
Book: Luther Davis
Plot:  Berlin, 1928: the Grand Hotel's visitors and staff live lives of quiet desperation and within 24 hours, some will be changed forever:  the famous ballerina Grushinskaya is fighting age and falling audiences attended by her dresser Raffaela who secretly loves her, Baron Felix Von Gaigern is eluding his creditors with dwindling success, businessman Hermann Preysing has lied to his board of directors about a financial merger and needs to travel to the US to save it, temp secretary Flaemmchen is just surviving between jobs and discovers she is pregnant when assigned to Preysing as a typist, and the dying book-keeper Otto Kringelein - who knows all of Preysing's secrets - has left his sanatorium to check into the Grand Hotel for one last happy memory...

Five memorable numbers: LOVE CAN'T HAPPEN, WE'LL TAKE A GLASS TOGETHER, I WANT TO GO TO HOLLYWOOD, ROSES AT THE STATION, AT THE GRAND HOTEL

A musical which shows you should never give up.  In 1958, book writer Luther Davis and song-writers George Forrest and Robert Wright decided to follow their hit KISMET with a musical based on Vicki Baum's novel and the MGM film GRAND HOTEL, titled AT THE GRAND starring KISMET actress Joan Deiner (with her husband signed to direct) and the 1930s film star Paul Muni.   But Muni was unhappy, and despite his role being made bigger, he eventually quit and AT THE GRAND closed on the West Coast.  Whip-pan to 1988: director/choreographer Tommy Tune was given AT THE GRAND to work his magic on after his recent Broadway hit NINE; as he did with his previous show he totally revised it and when Wright, Forrest and Davis balked at his changes, Tune gave the score to NINE composer Maury Yeston to doctor it and add several songs of his own.  The book was also doctored by Peter Stone who refused a writing credit.

Tune's chic, minimalist production ran on Broadway for over 2 years, winning five Tony Awards, although not for score or book. I saw Tune's production in 1992 at the Dominion Theatre when it opened with Lilianne Montevecchi reprising her role as Grushinskaya but the barn-like Dominion did the production no favours and it closed after only four months.  I could see good things in it but it just didn't grab me.  I saw GRAND HOTEL again in 2000 at the Guildhall school performed by final year students but finally 'connected' with it when Michael Grandage directed a thrilling Olivier award-winning production at the Donmar in 2004 with Julien Ovenden as the Baron, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Grushinskaya, Helen Baker as Flaemmchen and Daniel Evans as Kringelein.  Finally the show's strength was revealed in a smaller, more direct approach.  I felt more engaged with the characters and the hidden jewels in the score stood out more.  A further Guildhall production was followed by another chamber version at the Southwark Playhouse.  Staged as a traverse production, it was inventive and enjoyable but suffered at the end from a striving for profundity that was misplaced.  As with recent productions of CABARET, It's a bit of a lazy option to end any musical set in 1930s Germany with concentration camp imagery.  Although Forrest and Wright's score included such fine book numbers as "Maybe My Baby Loves Me", "Who Couldn't Dance With You?" and "We'll Take A Glass Together", it is Maury Yeston's songs that give the characters wonderful moments of clarity and depth: Flaemmchen's desperate "I Want To Go To Hollywood", Grushinskaya's sweeping "Toujours Amour" and more importantly The Baron's two solos "Love Can't Happen" and "Roses At The Station" are both remarkable compositions; it's Yeston's contributions that make GRAND HOTEL a show that suddenly touches your heart.

I was sorely tempted to post the wonderful Tony Awards segment of the late Michael Jeter and Brent Barrett stopping the show with "We'll Take A Glass Together" which illustrates how Jeter won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Otto but that would not do justice to the rest of the score so here is a selection of songs from the 2018 Encores! staged concert.



Ps. click here!

50 Favourite Musicals: 39: NINE (1982) (Maury Yeston)

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: 1982, 46th Street Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1997, Donmar

Productions seen: one

Score: Maury Yeston

Book: Arthur Kopit

Plot:  1960s Venice; Guido Contini, a famous film director, wrestles with the subject of his overdue next film while thinking of the women in his life, both current and in the past...

Five memorable numbers: FOLLIES BERGERES, BE ON YOUR OWN, MY HUSBAND MAKES MOVIES, UNUSUAL WAY, BE ITALIAN

It's odd how you come to some musicals... I came to NINE through Elaine Paige's "Be On Your Own" on an 1983 album 'Stages'; the song intrigued me with it's compelling, snaking through-line that calls out an unfaithful lover.  I was so intrigued I bought the Broadway cast album and found that in it's original setting, it wasn't Paige's 80s power pop ballad but a downbeat, powerful, cold-as-ice dismissal.  The more I played the album, the more I was drawn into Maury Yeston's thrilling musical of Federico Fellini's film "8 1/2"  that gives a dizzying array of numbers to his lead character Guido and the women in his life: his long-suffering wife Luisa, his mistress Carla, his favourite actress Claudia, his producer Liliane and in his memory, Saraghina, the ample prostitute he desired as a boy.  Tommy Tune famously made his original production a chic black & white-themed show in which Raul Julia was the only male (along with a boy actor) in a cast of women.  I finally got to see the show in David Levaux's Donmar production which made a virtue of it's small playing area but still flooded the stage to show us Guido's vision of "The Grand Canal".  Laconic Larry Lamb played Guido and he was surrounded by some great musical actresses: Clare Burt, Eleanor David, Sara Kestelman and, in particular, Susannah Fellows who brought real heartbreak to Luisa, and a show-stopping turn from Jenny Galloway as the voluptuous Saraghina.  Despite the clunking screen version, this is a show that could definitely take a revival...

The 1982 Tony Awards delivered a shock when NINE beat the highly-touted DREAMGIRLS to Best Musical along with winning four other awards; the telecast immortalized the late Kathi Moss' rattling performance as Saraghina and her big number "Be Italian"...

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY at Charing Cross Theatre - Time Out Of Life...

Thom Southerland's latest production as artistic director of the Charing Cross Theatre is the hitherto unseen 2011 musical DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY with a score by Maury Yeston and a book by Peter Stone and Thomas Meehan.  This follows on from Southerland's past success with Yeston's musicals GRAND HOTEL and TITANIC but sadly DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY is one of diminished returns.

After the success of TITANIC Yeston and bookwriter Peter Stone wanted a smaller canvas to work on and the release of the Brad Pitt turkey MEET JOE BLACK drove them back to that film's source material, LA MORTE IN VACANZA a 1924 Italian play which later became the Broadway success DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY and subsequent film starring Fredric March.

The musical took an astonishing 14 years from initial idea to stage and ironically one of the hold-ups was Peter Stone's death in 2003.  Yeston chose Broadway writer Thomas Meehan to complete the work but I felt this is reflected in the script which refuses to - um... - come to life.  Meehan's natural style is in musical comedy - ANNIE, THE PRODUCERS, HAIRSPRAY - so the existential drama of Death observing human reactions to him are an uncomfortable fit.

A rich Italian family are returning to their villa after celebrating their daughter's engagement but she is thrown from one of the cars as it spins out of the control, she is surprisingly unharmed from this accident.  A shadowy figure had been seen before the accident and the man later appears at the villa and reveals to the father that he is Death, still recovering from the exhaustion of his labours during the First World War and wishing to spend time with humans wanting to understand his effect on them and their dreams.

Disguised as a Russian prince, Death spends time with the family and guests but feels an unmistakable attraction for the daughter Grazia who is drawn to the mysterious stranger too, much to the anger of her fiancee Corrado.  Among the guests are the widow and best friend of Grazia's brother who was killed in the war and they both feel uneasy in the stranger's presence.  Nothing can stop Grazia's attraction to Death however, and as news filters through that no-one has died in the world since the week before, Grazia must decide where her future lies...

The allegorical source material is so unique that the chamber musical must hit the right tone and it is this that the production struggles with.  Southerland's direction and the cast are certainly po-faced but despite Matt Daw's atmospheric lighting and Morgan Large's economical but persuasive crumbling Italian villa, the production is let down by several ungainly performances and the downbeat, thin book.

Maury Yeston's score is certainly awash with doomy romance but too often it sounded like his TITANIC score: the solo number "Roberto's Eyes" sung by the dead son's friend as he describes a fatal plane crash was an almost note-for-note copy of TITANIC's "Mr Andrew's Vision" where the last moments of the ship are recounted.  The romantic ballads were too interchangeable and again a duet for an elderly loving couple only reminded one of the similar song for TITANIC'S Mr and Mrs Strauss.  Yeston is a good composer but bearing in mind how long the show took to write one would have hoped for more originality.

The cast with their cut-glass, stage school accents did little to suggest a Venetian family - Henley-On-Thames yes, Venice no.  There was also too little variety of performance across the quite large cast of 14, when they all crowded onto the set at times it made me think that a few characters could easily have been dropped to concentrate the attention more on the lead roles.

American actor Chris Peluso was a bit too lightweight to convince as Death as he hung around like a lovesick teenager at an ex's wedding but it was the performance of Zoe Doano as Grazia which made the production so earthbound, her shrill singing and showroom dummy performance did nothing to suggest Grazia's conflict in choosing life or death - she barely suggested if the choice was between red or clear nail varnish.  There were nice performances from James Gant as the butler Fidele, fearful of the new guest after finding out his secret, and Scarlett Courtney as a guest quietly in love with Grazia's fiancee but they shone only occasionally

There is a musical lurking within DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY but I suspect a few more years might be needed to get it exactly right, and certainly a new writer revisiting the source play.

Nice poster though... 

TITANIC at the Charing Cross Theatre - Goin' down for a second time!

It's always nice when you see a musical staged that you never expected to see... it's even better when you get to see it again!

In 2013 I finally saw the musical TITANIC at the Southwark Playhouse.  I have been a big fan of Maury Yeston's wonderfully stirring score since first hearing the cast recording in 1997 when the show premiered on Broadway and just assumed that no London production would ever happen due to the risky prospect of the staging such a big show.  But the Southwark Playhouse seems to relish putting on shows that other West End producers might baulk at and although the show was naturally compromised by the size of the auditorium, cast and musicians, the quality of the show shone through.

And now the show's director Thom Southerland has been made the Artistic Director of the small Charing Cross Theatre and his lead show?  TITANIC - Yaay!  It's great that his fine production is getting another chance to be seen.  I am happy to say that the production has garnered some excellent reviews and it has been extended past it's closing date.

As much as I liked the original production there were one or two performances that pulled the focus in a bad way but I am happy to report that the cast here present a more unified whole.  There are quite a few of the cast returning from the original production and the new additions fit snugly in with them and like I said, they made a seamless ensemble - who also deserve much praise for the lightning speed in which they double and triple up in the character and ensemble roles they all have.

Of the new cast I liked David Bardsley's hissable Ismay, Helena Blackman's poised Lady Caroline, James Gant as the unflappable head waiter Mr Etches, Douglas Hansell's doomed Charles Clarke, Claire Machin's social-climbing Alice Beane and Peter Prentice as her exasperated husband Edgar.

It was a delight to see again Matthew Crowe's Harold Bride, the wireless operator who only lights up when talking about his machine, Victoria Serra as the vivacious (and secretly pregnant) Irish girl Kate McGowan eager to start a new life in America and Shane McDaid as her quick-thinking 'fella' Jim.

The ensemble singing again made the show thrilling as they belted out Maury Yeston's emotional score - GODSPEED TITANIC, LADY'S MAID and WE'LL MEET TOMORROW were all effortless tearjerkers. The late Peter Stone's book again stood out for what can be achieved in storytelling within a musical setting and I was struck how often he comes back to the fact that on Titanic everything depended on what class you were, even in the ultimate extreme of whether you lived or died.

David Woodhead's economical set fitted snugly onto the Charing Cross Theatre stage and again proved remarkably effective in changing locations aboard the ship - especially in the frantic action that takes place when the ship starts to sink.

Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's TITANIC is playing until the 13th August at the Charing Cross Theatre and, for me, it is currently the best show on in the West End.

GRAND HOTEL at Southwark Playhouse - Fifth time checking in

For a show that has never had a long run in London, it's noticeable that I have seen GRAND HOTEL five times - I guess I like it but it wasn't always that way.

Let's step back in time to 1958: writer Luther Wright and song-writers George Forrest and Robert Wright wanted to follow up their Broadway hit KISMET with a musical based on the Vicki Baum novel and MGM film GRAND HOTEL, retitled AT THE GRAND.  KISMET leading lady Joan Deiner was to star (and her husband was to direct) but when Paul Muni was cast too the book underwent changes to make his role bigger.  But Muni was unhappy, feeling Deiner was getting preferential treatment from her husband and the show died on the West Coast.

In 1988 director/choreographer Tommy Tune was asked to revisit it and he made the show more conceptual and play with no interval. The two Wrights and Dixon balked at his changes so Tune fired them!  He gave the score to NINE composer Maury Yeston to rejig the lyrics and add several songs of his own.  The book was rewritten by Peter Stone who refused to take a writing credit.

Tune's black and gold minimalist production ran on Broadway for over 2 years, winning five Tony Awards, although not for score or book.  Still smarting from their sacking, Forrest & Wright blocked any cast album for over two years - too late for David Carroll who played the Baron as he died from a pulmonary embolism in the recording studio.

I saw the Tommy Tune production in 1992 at the Dominion Theatre when it opened with Lilianne Montevecchi reprising her role as Grushinskaya but the show closed after only four months.  I thought it visually impressive but the show was lost on that barnlike stage.

I saw the show again in 2000 at the Guildhall school performed by final year students but finally 'connected' with it when Michael Grandage directed a thrilling Olivier award-winning production at the Donmar in 2004 with Julien Ovenden as the Baron, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Grushinskaya, Helen Baker as Flaemmchen and Daniel Evans as Kringelein.

Since then there has been another Guildhall production last year and now we are invited to check in again at the Southwark Playhouse from the same team who gave us Yeston's TITANIC last year.  Staged as a traverse production, it was a production that was inventive and enjoyable but it suffered at the end from a striving for profundity that was misplaced.  Sometimes a musical is *just* a musical.

Most of the budget looks like it has gone on a massive chandelier which hangs above the playing area although Lee Newby's tiled floor summons up visions of a bygone elegance.  Sadly it's a bit of a rundown Grand Hotel as the only furniture it had was chairs and a table but the cast summoned up enough business to detract from the lack of set.

The eight-piece orchestra under Michael Bradley made the score sound great and there was atmospheric lighting from Derek Anderson.  Director Thom Sutherland maintains a through-line of near-desperation for all the show's characters who are all facing their own demons: Preysing faces financial ruin, Baron Felix von Gaigern faces physical danger through owed debts to gangsters, Grushinskaya faces the end of her ballet career, Kringelein faces the end of his life and Flaemmchen faces her unwanted pregnancy.

The cast have a good company feel which serves well in the ensemble numbers but the unstarry cast sometimes struggle to stand out in the larger-than-life roles.  Victoria Serra was vibrant as the Hollywood-sighted Flaemmschen but I didn't feel she captured the character's vulnerability.  Although too young for the role, I liked George Rae's dying-but-optimistic Kringelein and Italian musicals diva Christine Grimandi was fine as the tempestuous Grushenskaya although she was unevenly paired with Scott Garnham's Baron.  Although well sung, he wasn't terribly charismatic and the Baron needs to have it in spades as he is the glue between all the other characters.

Lee Proud's choreography was inventive within the confines of the space and none more so in the Baron's final song "Roses At The Station" where he moves between handfuls of rose petals hurled by the other cast members, moving closer all the time to his own destiny.

Sutherland badly fumbles the end of the show however: the show ends with the hotel's staff reprising their surly song "Some Have, Some Have Not" only this time in German, hinting at the coming rise of the brutish under-class thanks to the Nazis.  All well and good, but here Sutherland has them rough up the lead characters, piling up their suitcases and divesting them of their coats and keepsakes.  Rather than illuminating the moment, it felt like Sutherland was ripping off the productions of CABARET by Sam Mendes and Rufus Norris which both ended with concentration camp imagery.

Despite this I still enjoyed seeing the show again and would urge you to see it if you never have before.  GRAND HOTEL plays at the Southwark Playhouse until 5th September,

On Revival Day...

Once again I find myself in a Revival week... two shows I have seen before, but which did I enjoy more this time out?

 

The Menier Chocolate Factory has revived FORBIDDEN BROADWAY again, the theatre where it was last revived in 2009.  I missed that but made sure I saw this one as the intimacy of the Menier would suit this show well and it did, suggesting the cabaret atmosphere that was the original birthplace of the satirical show 32 years ago.

The brainchild of Gerard Alessandrini, FORBIDDEN BROADWAY takes a not too-savage swipe at current theatre shows as well as personalities past and present.  I have seen the show a few times before: in New York in the late 1980s, at it's first London incarnation in 1989 when it flopped at the Fortune and a later 1999 revival at the Jermyn Street Theatre which featured the great Christine Pedi from the NY version who as Liza Minnelli picked on me!  That's what you get for sitting in the front row.

The current show was enjoyable but at the end I was left oddly unsatisfied.  It might have been because I am over-familiar with a good portion of the material thanks to past visits or listening to the off-Broadway cast recordings.  The MISS SAIGON number is twenty years old while the afore-mentioned Liza number, Chita Rivera-Rita Moreno spat duet, the Sondheim "Into The Woods" song, the main section of LES MISERABLES and "Fugue For Scalpers" are all aged 23!  Yes, to newcomers, these will be new but by the look of most of the audience I suspect most ot them knew the songs.

Also - and not for the first time - some of the audience were *profoundly* irritating as they BELLOWED with laughter at the smallest, weakest pun as if to say "I GET this joke, you don't but I do because I know what they are referring to."  God save me from show-queens.  For the show to actually have a bit of real bite it would be nice if Alessandrini wrote a song about his audience.

When you have been writing parodies for 32 years you can pull readymade numbers out of the trunk to cover any revival that might be playing so a recent PAJAMA GAME Broadway production can be dusted down for our current one.  Is that another reason that I was less excited?  That there is obviously so little difference between London and Broadway?  Surely there should have been a number ripping up STEPHEN WARD to say nothing of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.

As with any revue, you can comfort yourself that if you are landed with a duff number then there will be another along in a minute, but some definitely outstayed their welcome - a LuPone/Patinkin number seemed to last forever, a MAMMA MIA skit was negligible, an Angela Lansbury number seemed rather lame, the ONCE pisstake outstayed it's welcome - and is it really necessary to have two Idina Menzel numbers?

What I DID enjoy however were the whirlwind performances of the four cast members: Anna-Jane Casey - who I saw at my first-ever Menier visit (nine years ago!) in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE - was great fun as the shrieking Menzel "defying subtlety" as well as a bored Éponine in LES MIS and even as Frankie Valli putting the boot into JERSEY BOYS; Sophie-Louise Dann gave me the biggest laugh of the night with an on-the-money Elaine Paige as well as a gurning Mme Thénardier in LES MIS - well aware that the role isn't funny while playing to half-empty houses.

Damian Humbley was huge fun as LES MIS' long-suffering Jean Valjean bemoaning "It's Too High", a demonic Miss Trunchbull and as a swift-tongued Rafiki in THE LION KING while Ben Lewis scored as Willy Wonka welcoming us to CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY's "Show Of No Imagination" and as the perpetually bored Guy in ONCE.  They also worked well together as MISS SAIGON's over-amplified soldiers and as the stars of THE BOOK OF MORON.

The last number raised an interesting conundrum - how do you satirise what in itself is a satire on the Broadway musical?  The show also addressed this in a SPAMALOT skit where they said that show had stolen from them.  Where does a satirical show go when the shows themselves are becoming self-reverential?  A special mention must go to the inexhaustible Joel Fram on piano.

Onto the Guildhall School of Drama and Music where the final year students have been appearing in a production of the sadly little-seen musical GRAND HOTEL.

It's been 6 years since I last saw a Guildhall production which is a shame as it's always interesting to see if you can spot which student may go on to success.  The last production I saw was CITY OF ANGELS and, of the four that I picked out, only Gwilym Lee appears to have gone on to major success, winning the Ian Charleston award for his performance as Edgar in KING LEAR at the Donmar as well as appearing as a regular in MIDSUMMER MURDERS.  Oddly enough CITY OF ANGELS beat GRAND HOTEL to the 1990 Tony Award to Best Musical!

GRAND HOTEL had a very stuttering genesis.  Vicki Baum wrote her original novel in 1928 then adapted it into a play in 1930 which, in translation, played on Broadway until 1931.  The year after saw the release of the classic MGM film which won the Best Film Academy Award that year.

Amazingly that was it's only nomination, it's stellar cast were all overlooked: Greta Garbo as Grushinskaya the fading ballerina, John Barrymore as the down-on-his-luck Baron, Lionel Barrymore as Kringelein the dying bookkeeper, Wallace Beery as Kringelein's former employer Preysing and Joan Crawford as Flaemmchen the ambitious typist.

In 1958, writer Luther Wright and song-writing team George Forrest & Robert Wright followed up their KISMET hit by choosing to musicalize GRAND MUSICAL, retitled AT THE GRAND. Berlin 1928 became present-day Rome, the ballerina became an opera singer (so KISMET star Joan Deiner could be cast) and Paul Muni was cast as Kringelein.  Characters were ditched so Muni's role could be expanded and it opened in 1958 on the West Coast. Muni however felt that the director Albert Marre (who was also Deiner's husband) was favouring her over him and refused to re-sign for Broadway and the show closed.

30 years later, the original writers tried again by offering it to the successful director/choreographer of NINE and MY ONE AND ONLY Tommy Tune.  His concept was to make the show more streamlined, more thematic and to play without an interval. The original team refused to accept his changes so Tune fired them and brought in NINE composer Maury Yeston to rewrite their songs and add several of his own.  The book was rewritten by Peter Stone who refused to take a writing credit.

Tune's sleek production ran on Broadway for nearly 2 1/2 years and won Tony Awards for Tune's direction & choreography, the set & costume design and Michael Jeter's scene-stealing Kringelein.  Still smarting from Tune sacking them, Forrest & Wright blocked the cast album for over two years but this ended in tragedy when David Carroll, who had originated the role of the Baron, died from a pulmonary embolism in the recording studio.  His replacement Brent Barrett sang on the album instead but Carroll was represented by a live track from his cabaret show.

Barrett played the Baron when I saw it in 1992 at the Dominion Theatre when Tune's production opened with Lilianne Montevecchi reprising her role as Grushinskaya, Lynette Perry was Flaemmchen and Barry James played Kringelein but the show closed ignominiously after only four months!  The show was not produced again professionally in London until 2004 when Michael Grandage directed a thrillingly memorable production with Julien Ovenden as the Baron, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Grushinskaya, Helen Baker as Flaemmchen and Daniel Evans as Kringelein.  Grandage's production won the Olivier Award that year for Best Musical Revival.

In the interim however I had seen the show again in 2000 when the Guildhall School of Music and Drama had staged a production for it's last year students' Summer show.  From what I can recall I enjoyed being reacquainted with the show but none of the performances stay in the mind.  That production was directed by Martin Connor - mainstay of the Guildhall productions - and he again directs this current version.

 

I thought this was an excellent production, adhering to Tune's tight, spare concept and thought, by and large, that the students excelled in delineating their individual roles well.  Sadly Simon Haines as the cynical semi-narrator was as wobbly singing as he was on his injured leg from the War and I was surprised how several of them seemed a bit breathless at the end of their numbers... stamina, darlings, pace yourselves.

Ceri-lyn Cissone was a creditable Grushinskaya suggesting the character's desperation at her fading career well and Jay Saighal, although a trifle shaky, partnered her well as the Baron, doomed by his inate decency.  Ben Hall was an agreeably sinister Preysing, he actually suggested that - similar to other characters in the piece - he is driven to extreme lengths just to survive.  Rebecca Collingwood was a delightful Flaemmchen, really socking over her big solo "I Want To Go To Hollywood".  As you have seen above, the role of Kringelein is the one that usually draws the most praise and Joey Phillips played him as a giddy, hypersensitive soul, maybe lacking depth of feeling but certainly playing up the pathos.

A special mention too for Emily Laing's vocally strong Raffaela, Grushinskaya's quietly devoted companion and Jordan Renzo handled Eric, the put-upon concierge's big moment at the finale with a quiet authority.

Bill Deamer has choreographed the numbers with great panache and invention, I particularly liked the ominous silent Charleston the chorus did when Flaemmchen was trapped by the lustful Preysing as well as a terrifically dramatic Bolero for the two featured dancers Leah Rolfe and Adelmo Mandia.  Indeed the whole company were excellent not only in the dance numbers but also in the stylised movement throughout.  Morgan Large's set and costume design also contributed to the show's success as did Richard Howell's lighting design.  It's just a shame the spot operators always seemed a few beats behind.

The production kept up the sense of creeping menace that is always reminding you that the comings and goings of the rich hotel guests is happening against a growing discontented proletariat that in a few years time will catapult Germany into Hitler's waiting hands.

The evocative score with it's balance of big solo numbers and show-stopping set-pieces is always a pleasure to hear and Steven Edis' excellent musical direction was another reason i enjoyed this revival so much.

TITANIC finally docks in London

A week or so ago I blogged about the pros and cons of seeing large-scale musicals revised to be staged in smaller venues.  Well you can't get bigger and/or smaller than the Maury Yeston musical TITANIC at the Southwark Playhouse.

I had never been to the Southwark Playhouse before.  It has a seating capacity of 240 and is designed so you enter through quite a large bar, get funnelled down a corridor then into the auditorium.  Sound ok?  Not on one of the hottest days of the year when the queue to get into the auditorium to nab one of the un-numbered seats joined the scrum in the bar and all the time the temperature went up or was that just my blood boiling at the sheer ineptness of fringe theatres to get a house in?  If you don't want to piss off your audience NUMBER YOUR BLOODY SEATS.  The Menier Chocolate Factory started off like that but has now entered civilization so come on!  Is there to be *no* progress?

Added to that tsouris we had the always fresh hell of the musical theatre drama students shrieking their heads off at each other allied to the seething hiss of the aged show queen.  I wouldn't put it past them to say they knew the band on the ill-fated ship.

 

Although this was the first time I had seen the show performed I have always been a huge fan of Maury Yeston's score thanks to the 1997 Broadway cast recording.  The derision that greeted the news of a Titanic musical lasted up to it's opening in April with mostly negative reviews but the show found an audience and lasted for nearly two years - indeed, although James Cameron's film opened in December 1997, it actually helped increase the show's attendance rather than the reverse as had been suggested.  At award time, the show's director and cast were all ignored but it won each of the five Tony Awards it was nominated for including Peter Stone's book, Yeston's score and the big one, Best Musical. 

 

By far the best component of the show is Yeston's score which takes in a wide range of contemporaneous musical styles of 1912: he gives us ragtime trots, Gilbert & Sullivan pastiches, stirring Elgar-esque themes, hymns, folk airs, all filtered through a traditional Broadway score of ballads and up-tempo numbers.  As much as I like Yeston's scores for GRAND HOTEL and NINE, his TITANIC score hits greatness with it's sweep of intimate and epic moments.

 

 

The design for the show was a simple bare floor stage, a moveable metal staircase and a single upper level/balcony which you entered under.  To get to the seats you walked past Greg Castiglioni as Thomas Andrews, the designer of the ill-fated ship, scribbling away at his desk.  Despite this, director Thom Sutherland took the opening song away from him, allocating it instead to Simon Green's J. Bruce Ismay, the owner of the White Star Line who famously not only pressurised the Captain to increase speed but who also survived by jumping into a lifeboat.  This production started with the cast shouting abuse at Ismay who turns to the audience and sings IN EVERY AGE.

 

 

The production boasts a cast of 20 which is remarkable for a production this size, Broadway boasted 37 cast members.  Of course this meant them rushing off as a 3rd class Irish immigrant to emerge minutes later as a 1st class millionaire but it's to the cast's credit that they all still managed to give strong, definable performances.  There were a couple of dodgy ones - Castiglioni's important second act solo MR. ANDREWS' VISION was horribly over-sung - even if he did had to contend with a platform tipping up underneath him (maybe I have explained him not singing the opening number?)  I was also praying for Jonathan David Dudley's Bellboy to drown, preferably five minutes after leaving Southampton.

 

 

But these were more than compensated by the very fine performances which were full of character, more than are given them in Stone's good but rather spare book: Green's Ismay was superbly hissable while James Austen-Murray stood out as the stoker Barrett.  His solo number, setting up the class divisions within the ship, was excellently sung, even if he had to contend with the distracting modern dance interpretations of shovelling coal around him!  His duet THE NIGHT WAS ALIVE with Matthew Crowe's radioman Harold Bride was also a stand-out, it was almost staged as a love song between the two men which certainly added a frisson to the number.

 

 

Celia Graham was very good as 2nd Class passenger Alice Beane, eager to mix with the upper echelons (vocally better than Victoria Clark on the cast recording) and as her disapproving husband Edgar, Oliver Hemsborough delivered a strong character above and beyond what the book provided for him.  James Hume was fine as Etches the 1st Class steward and Siôn Lloyd was in fine voice as Officer Murdoch, although Stone's book propagates the unsubstantiated story that he shot himself as the ship sank which goes against what several credible eyewitnesses said.

 

 

Victoria Serra made a spirited Kate McGowan travelling to America with a hope for the future of herself and her unborn child while Dudley Stevens and Judith Street made the most of their touching ballad STILL, sung as their characters Isador and Ida Strauss prepare for death on the sinking ship rather than be separated.

 

These were the cast members who stood out for me but the ensemble singing was wonderful too on such numbers as GODSPEED TITANIC (a number that always gets my tear ducts going), LADIES MAID, NO MOON, WE'LL MEET TOMORROW and the FINALE.

 

 

Thom Sutherland's direction was very good given the constraints on his production and David Woodhead's design made invention out of necessity.  Howard Hudson's lighting also contributed to the show's overall success.  Although I would have loved to have had Yeston's sweeping score played by a full orchestra - as it was meant to be heard - Mark Aspinall's band of only six did well.  It was also a nice touch for the show to end with the names of those who died in the tragedy scrolling up the stage.  Indeed all the characters in Stone's book are based on real people aboard the ship although he does play God and alter a couple of fates to suit his story.

 

Although the show was running late, we stayed behind as - totally unbeknownst at the time of booking - Maury Yeston was actually there to give a talk with the ever-gushing critic Mark Shenton.  Now answer me this... why have the cast all head-mic'd for the show but not provide even hand-mics for the interview?  Sadly most of what Yeston had to say about the genesis of the show, his other works and his thoughts on musicals in general was *just* audible from where we were sitting - and as I said it's not that big an auditorium.  Again the cluelessness of this theatre just seemed to end up standing on my one good nerve.

 

But I am very happy that I had the opportunity to finally see TITANIC - and in such an inventive production - so as to fully understand how this excellent score serves the show.