50 Favourite Musicals: 13: DREAMGIRLS (1981) (Henry Krieger / Tom Eyen)

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: 1981, Imperial Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 2016, Savoy Theatre, London

Productions seen: one

Score: Henry Krieger / Tom Eyen

Book: Tom Eyen 

Plot: In 1962, The Dreamettes, a black teenage girl group, lose a talent show at Harlem's Apollo Theatre but backstage they meet a shrewd car salesman, Curtis Taylor Jr., who sees in them a way of getting into the music business.  After persuading the outrageous R&B singer James 'Thunder' Early to make The Dreamettes his backing group, Effie, Deena and Lorrell are propelled to fame as The Dreams, making hit records and appearing in fancy nightclubs.  But professional and personal betrayals swiftly wreck their friendship as Curtis plots to make Deena a solo star...

Five memorable numbers: DREAMGIRLS, AND I AM TELLING YOU I'M NOT GOING, STEPPIN' TO THE BAD SIDE, CADILLAC CAR, ONE NIGHT ONLY

I know... I thought it would be higher too.  I first became aware of DREAMGIRLS when I watched the 1981 Tony Awards on tv - ah for the days when they showed it on terrestrial television in the UK - and witnessed the explosive performance of Jennifer Holliday singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going".  A few weeks later, while queueing early in the morning outside the National Theatre with my fellow-Front Row regulars for that night's GUYS AND DOLLS, I started chatting to a New Yorker who was full of excitement for that night's show as he had heard it was *the* musical to see in London and had not realized you could get tickets on the day.  He said he understood totally our devotion to GUYS as he felt the same for DREAMGIRLS, having seen it several times.   Remembering Holliday's performance and on his urging I bought the cast recording and fell in love with it's astonishing score.  Who knew though that I would have to wait 34 long years until I saw the show on a London stage.  A reason might have been because when I worked for an actor's agent in the 1990s she attempted to secure the rights for a one-off performance for AIDS charities but to no avail.  Eventually she was told that the rights holders felt there was no comparable talent in the UK to do the show justice.  So there you go...  What I did have however was that cast recording, a cd so stupendous that it was until relatively recently, the highest placed cast recording on the Billboard 200 chart.  Holiday's performance still bursts out of the recording, taking no prisoners in it's wake.  My DREAMGIRLS fix was added to when also in the 1990s I heard a sound-desk copy of the actual show and realized how much of the score was missing from the album - almost half of the linking songs and exposition were missing

Of course my addiction was mostly fulfilled when Bill Condon's screen version was released in 2006, I had suspected that it would never be as good as I wanted but of course it triumphed on all counts but then finally a theatre production arrived in London, directed by in-demand director Casey Nicholaw.  And...?  Despite a slick production, great choreography, lighting, sets and costumes, something stopped me LOVING the show as much as I felt I should have done.  Maybe the film had stolen it's thunder as in retrospect I can see how faithful it was to Tom Eyen's original book - the film's obvious building up of James 'Thunder' Early, Curtis Taylor and Deena Jones' roles for Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and Beyoncé's roles are the only noticeable changes - but I think what really put a break on my enjoyment was the lack of major star players in the leads; DREAMGIRLS ultimately felt like a glorious firework display; spectacular to experience but a bit hollow at heart.  But that original cast recording - which I have played devotedly for 37 years - means that it still nearly makes my Top 10.

The choice for a video is a obvious... the one that started my love for the show, the performer and the song.  The Tony Awards on June 6th 1982 gave us this legendary footage of Jennifer Holliday's Tony Award-winning performance - astonishing to think she was only 21 years old.  DREAMGIRLS won a total of six Tony Awards out of 13 nominations - most famously losing Best Musical and Michael Bennett's chance at Best Director to Maury Yeston's NINE and it's director Tommy Tune.  However Bennett shared the Best Choreography Award with Michael Peters.  Tragically both Bennett and Peters were lost to the AIDS virus in 1987 and 1994 respectively.

50 Favourite Musicals: 25: A CHORUS LINE (1975) (Marvin Hamlisch, Edward Kleban)

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: 1975, Public Theater, NY

First seen by me: 1989, Shubert Theatre, NY

Productions seen: two

Score: Marvin Hamlisch, Edward Kleban
Book: James Kirkwood Jr, Nicholas Dante

Plot: On an empty Broadway stage, director Zack selects seventeen dancers for the final round of auditions to be cast for an upcoming musical which needs a chorus line of four women and four men.  Zack puts them through a rigorous physical and emotional work-out; he wants dancers for whom it's life itself... not just a job.

Five memorable numbers: DANCE: TEN, LOOKS: THREE, WHAT I DID FOR LOVE, NOTHING, AT THE BALLET, ONE

Like a lot of musicals on my list I came to the show first through the cast recording which can be a bit of a problem when you finally see the show: the score which flows naturally from song to song in your mind actually stops every so often: "wait, there are lines *during* the song??  Who knew!"  A case in point was A CHORUS LINE which was played continuously by someone who I used to work with.  I knew practically every breath that the cast took so when I finally saw the show - on Broadway which was like drinking wine in the country where the grape was grown - it was a shock to realize that the show was actually more like a play with music, so strong are the 17 main characters and the situation they find themselves in.  I found myself totally involved, quietly rooting for my favourite dancers to get the all-important job.  The imprint of director/choreographer Michael Bennett is all over the show but of course most of all in the great dance numbers - the exhausting "God I Hope I Get It" as the successful 17 are selected out of a general chorus cattle-call; the epic montage number which incorporates "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love" as all the dancers tell director/choreographer Zack of their years growing up and what lead them to become dancers, and Cassie's big solo number "The Music and The Mirror".  Cassie is Zack's former lover and former established dance soloist who left Broadway - and Zack - to try her luck in Hollywood, but now she's back and despite Zack's goading, desperate to get a job again on Broadway, even if it means being part of an anonymous chorus line: "God, I'm a dancer, a dancer dances".  It all culminates in the shiny and brash "One", the chorus' big number in the upcoming show, which reduces the individual dancers into a glittery, uniform ensemble - all moving and looking as one - but we now know what each of them has gone through to give themselves over to that collective unit, a chorus line.  A CHORUS LINE was Broadway's longest-running musical until overtaken by by CATS in 1997, and won nine Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and, for it's London production, the prize for Best Musical from both the Evening Standard Awards and the Society of West End Theatre Awards (which later became the Oliviers) - the first year the latter were awarded.  It is sad to think that from the eight people who made up the original production team only co-choreographer Bob Avian is still with us. 

Sadly most of the video available for A CHORUS LINE is from Attenborough's galumphing film version but here is the 2018 NY City Center gala production featuring some of Bennett's iconic choreography.

All Singing! All Dancing! All Reviving!

Sorry for the hiccup in blogging - those Battersea dogs and cats can't do their own admin you know.

In an odd reversal for me, this year I have seen more new musicals than revivals.  One usually struggles to find decent first run musicals but this year it's the revivals that I am finding thin on the ground.  It's not looking any better for the rest of 2013, with only THE SOUND OF MUSIC and MISS SAIGON upcoming.  Like, no.

I had such high hopes for MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG at the Menier.  Great reviews bolstered the expectation that this production would be on par with previous productions I had seen - both of which had been hugely enjoyable and profoundly moving: the Guildhall School production from 1983 (my first Sondheim show) and the 2000 Donmar Warehouse production which was revived in concert form in 2010 to celebrate Sondheim's 80th birthday.

 To quote the last act closer: "Now You Know".

 

Stephen Sondheim's wonderful, loving score is one of my absolute favourites with such classics as OLD FRIENDS, GOOD THING GOING, NOT A DAY GOES BY and OUR TIME which tell the story of the fracturing of Frank, Mary and Charley's friendship over 20 years - told in reverse - and has always had the hidden tripwires that start my blubbing.

We saw it just after it had been announced that the production was transferring to the West End which might explain why they performed in such a self-aggrandising manner.  They mugged, they belted where belt was not required and they played the jokes with all the subtlety of the Three Stooges.  I really cannot understand what show the reviewers saw if they performed like this.

There was also the problem that the show was directed by Maria Friedman who somehow seems to have got the cast to sing in her style: declamatory with consonants being hit harder than a cow's arse with a banjo.  It made for an ugly sound, especially as they were all miked up - the Menier, remember, only has a 180 seat capacity.

Another downer was that they were using the re-written book and score which attempts to 'explain' the main character's Franklin's motivations.  Why?  It actually does the show a disservice as these additions feel so bolted on.  Franklin's motivations are there in the text anyway - the whole show is about how we change through the decades and friends become estranged through tiny betrayals and slights.

Of the central trio of friends, Mark Umbers as Frank and Jenna Russell as Mary gave the best performances, sadly Damian Humbley was just irritating as Charley.  The largely irksome supporting cast were regularly shown up by the subtle performances of Glyn Kerslake as the hapless Broadway producer Joe Josephson and Clare Foster as Beth, Franklin's discarded first wife.  Her emotional rendition of NOT A DAY GOES BY was a real highlight.  Josefina Gabrielle played Gussy, the temperamental Broadway actress with her usual clanging stridency.

 

This was a real disappointment although it seems to have done well enough in it's transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre.  Nope... that doesn't work, it will always be the Comedy Theatre to me.

 

The big revival in February was A CHORUS LINE at the London Palladium in it's first West End appearance since it's original production at Drury Lane in 1976, winning the first ever Society of West End Theatre/Olivier Award for Best Musical.  The show has toured occasionally but it's a mystery why it has taken so long to play a West End theatre.

 

The production is a recreation of Michael Bennett's original production which always throws a little confusion into the mix.  Bob Avian was the original co-choreographer and now he is the director re-creating Bennett's legendary musical, Baayork Lee was the original 'Connie' and now she is restaging Bennett's choreography - so are we applauding his work or theirs?

I saw this archetypal Broadway show there in the early 1990s at the Shubert Theatre where it played for 15 years and have loved the original cast recording for years so I was curious if it would hold it's magic with this production.  Of course it did - and the front row of the dress circle also helped!

Here they all were again... the chosen 17 dancers who have survived the strenuous dance auditions to stand on the line and be quizzed relentlessly by the director/choreographer Zach.  He can't hire them all, he only needs 4 boys, 4 girls.  Although he is only casting for an anonymous chorus line behind the upcoming show's star he wants performers who have real personality and more than that, dancers who *need* to dance.

Who will get through? The testy latina Diana or quiet Paul? The cheeky Chinese Connie or the very gay and Jewish Greg? Brassy Val or mocking Sheila? The married couple Al and Kristine? Don the ex-stripper, cocky Mike or Ritchie who swopped basketball for dancing? And what of Cassie?  An ex-love of Zach's who has had success in the past and left him to try her luck as an actress in L.A.?

Played without an interval, we have two hours to get to know them and to guess who Zach will pick, who deserves it more?  The news that the production is coming off early was a real surprise.  Surely in this culture that loves nothing more than watching performers being eliminated from a race to a showbiz crown A CHORUS LINE should be able to find an audience.  It's very sad that this great show is not getting a bigger audience.

The cast certainly give it there all in the dance routines, if I have a criticism it might be that apart from the performers who have slightly higher profiles within the show, the others are a bit anonymous, you tend to remember them by the colour of their dance clothes rather than for any particular performing quality.



 But their are some fine performances: John Partridge is an odd choice as Zach, he doesn't really suggest a feared/revered director/choreographer but his anonymous quality does help with the character's sphinx-like watchfulness.  Leigh Zimmerman won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Musical Performance and it was richly deserved.  As Sheila, the seen-it-all, danced-it-all glamour girl she steals scenes with her great comic timing and stylish dancing.  Scarlett Strallen, while not having the real natural charisma that Cassie should unknowingly exude, does a fierce solo on her big number THE MUSIC AND THE MIRROR and in the preceding scene with Zach, is touching in her recounting of her failed career in L.A.  

 

As Diana, the wary latina, Victoria Hamilton-Barritt certainly punches over her two big numbers NOTHING and the score's biggest hit WHAT I DID FOR LOVE.  As is usually the case the latter, which has too many supper-club associations when heard outside it's show context, within it makes perfect sense.  By the time this 11 o'clock number is sung in the show, we know how much the dancers have had to give up to be where they are.
 

The interesting thing about the song is that it is in fact the musical coda to what actually is the emotional heart of the show, Paul's speech about his unhappy family life while growing up gay and the redemption he found as a drag artist.  It's a wonderfully written speech - the standout moment in James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante's book - and Gary Wood gave a pitch-perfect performance.  There wasn't a dry eye in my seat. 

 

The design of Robin Wagner still thrills in it's simplicity, Theoni V. Aldredge's dance costumes are still excellently un-theatrical until the glittering finale and Tharon Musser's lighting design still gives expression to the action.

 

Sadly Robin Wagner is the only one of the original show's creators still alive.

 

Lyricist Edward Kleban died in 1987, book writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante died in 1989 and 1991 respectively, lighting designer Tharon Musser died in 2009, costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge died in 2010 and composer Marvin Hamlisch died in 2012.

 

But above all the show stands as a living monument to Michael Bennett who died in 1987.  It was his particular theatrical genius to take something so basically theatrical and turning it into something universal.

 

The show is running until 31st August and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  After all these years it really is One Singular Sensation.