The 7 Shows of Xmas 5: CITY OF ANGELS

Finally, here it was... the one I had most been looking forward to seeing this Christmas. One of my all-time favourite shows, CITY OF ANGELS at the Donmar was bound to fall short of my high expectations - but by how much, Constant Reader?

CITY OF ANGELS, directed by Michael Blakemore, opened on Broadway in 1989 where it ran for over two years, in the process winning the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Musical, Best Book for Larry Gelbart and Best Score for Cy Coleman & David Zippel.

It appeared in London in 1993 but, despite Blakemore again directing and with the great cast of the late Martin Smith, Roger Allam (perfect as the private eye Stone), Henry Goldman (also perfect as the manipulative film producer/director Buddy Fiddler) and the dazzling Film Noir siren quartet of Susannah Fellows, Haydn Gwynne, Sarah Jane Hassell and Fiona Hendley, the show managed only 8 months at the Prince of Wales.  However it still won the Olivier Award that year for Best Musical.

A loving celebration of Film Noir thrillers, Gelbart's wonderfully witty book tells of Stine, a NY crime writer who is lured to Hollywood - against his editor wife's wishes - to write the script for a film adaptation of City of Angels, the latest novel to feature his private eye hero Stone.  However once there, he finds it difficult to remain faithful to his creation with the constant meddling of his tyrannical producer/director Buddy Fiddler - to say nothing of remaining faithful to his wife.  Eventually even his hero has to make his feelings known...

Even without Coleman & Zippel's delicious score, Gelbart's book would be a joy as he switches the action constantly between Stine writing the script and the fictional world he is creating for his hard-bitten private eye alter-ego Stone amid an array of Film Noir characters: the mysterious wife of the decrepit wealthy man, the night-club singer that broke Stone's heart, the lovelorn Girl Friday, the nymphet jailbait daughter, the mysterious quack doctor etc etc.  The actors playing the film characters also double up as the actors and crew of the film Stine is working on and the fun is seeing how life imitates art and vice-versa.

I had a chance to see the show again in 2008 at the Guildhall Drama School where it was proven that you really do need actors who can sing to make the show a success.  So the news that Donmar Artistic Director Josie Rourke had chosen the show to be the first musical she would direct had me cock-a-hoop: who would be cast and how on earth could they stage this complicated show on such an intimate stage?

The answer was: quite easily actually!  Against a towering backdrop of piled up manuscripts, Robert Jones has designed a show that uses minimal set dressing to conjure the mood required and it is aided immeasurably by Howard Harrison's Noiresque lighting and the witty use of Duncan McLean's video projections.  It was a pleasure to see the show coming to life on that small stage.

The casting I have a bit more trouble with.  Countless plays of the original Broadway cast recording have spoiled me as the double act of Gregg Edelman and James Naughton (who won the Tony Award) as Stine and Stone are matchless, closely followed by the London pairing of Smith and Allam.

I am not sure whether it is symptomatic of the calibre of West End leading men at present but although Hadley Fraser could certainly belt out the last notes of DOUBLE TALK and FUNNY - and clamber like a mountain goat over the vertiginous backdrop - I felt he was too lightweight as Stine and Tam Mutu also seemed to lack the real grit needed for Stone, the tough dick hiding a bruised heart.  I was hoping for Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon" and got George Segal in "The Black Bird". 

I hasten to add that the two theatre groupies who were sitting next to me more than made up for my muted applause for Fraser as they couldn't keep still when he was on stage.  Bless.

Also disappointing was Peter Polycarpou's Buddy Fiddler.  The perfect scene-stealing role, this Fiddler growled rather than roared.  I don't know whether he was playing down to match the size of the stage but this tyrant of the sound stage came across as some guy from the front office.  Where the production did score big however was with the female cast.

Larry Gelbart wrote four excellent roles which give the actresses playing them a real opportunity to show their versatility.  There is Donna, Fiddler's secretary who helps Stine rewrite his script while seducing him over the typewriter, who also doubles as Oolie, Stone's dependable but lovelorn secretary; there is Gabby, Stine's practical editor wife, who doubles as Bobbi, a cabaret torch singer who Stone loved when he was a cop and who vanished after he took the rap for her shooting a man.  

There is Avril Raines, the dumb blonde 'protegée' starlet of Fiddler who knows plenty when it comes to advancing her career who doubles as Mallory Kingsley, a teenage heiress whose unexplained disappearance is solved when she turns up very much alive in Stone's bed; and there is Carla Haywood, Fiddler's none-too-faithful but no-nonsense actress wife who also doubles as the seductively mysterious Alaura Kingsley, wife of a sickly industrialist who might or might not know more than she lets on.

Josie Rourke has the good fortune to be blessed with Rebecca Trehearn as Donna/Oolie, Rosalie Craig as Gabby/Bobbi, Samantha Barks as Avril/Mallory and Katherine Kelly as Carla/Alaura.  Luckily my two favourite songs in the show were wonderfully performed: Samantha Barks turned up the heat as the seductive Mallory without losing Zippel's delicious lyrical double-play in "Lost and Found" and Rebecca Trehearn stopped the show with Oolie/Donna's "You Can Always Count On Me" - her good-natured but worldly-wise performance suggesting Jane Russell at her brunette best.

Cy Coleman and David Zippel's 40s jazz-style score contains so many great songs that should either bounce off the stage like bullets from a .44 or wrap around you like the smoke from a Femme Fatale's cigarette that at times it was frustrating that they were sometimes too plodding in their arrangements.  The innuendo-drenched "Tennis Song" between Stone and Alaura should feel like a bracing rally but here felt like a full 5-set match (with rain delays).

So... there you have it.  Yes there were things I was disappointed with but would I see it again?  In a hot minute.  All they have to do is whistle...

...you know how to whistle don't you Donmar?  You just put your lips together and... blow.

"Guys and Dolls": Yesterday once more...

In 1982, I saw the greatest production ever staged of the greatest musical ever written.  There, Constant Reader, I have said it.  I can say it with confidence because there will never be a company assembled with such an array of talents to draw on, both onstage and off.  I am of course talking about Richard Eyre's now-legendary production of GUYS AND DOLLS.  As you are my Constant Reader you will have read my previous blogs where I have talked about my love for this production - oh ok... look here and here.

The importance of that production was that it turned me literally overnight into a theatre fan while making me realise the special alchemy that can happen between a company of actors and the audience watching them.  And it was a damn fine production.  I know I will never see it's like again but what of future generations?  They must be allowed to experience the joy that Abe Burrows & Jo Swerling's book and Frank Loesser's score combine to make so revivals must be staged.  You just have to hope that they are staged by talented people who understand what the show needs to make it flow.

The Donmar's 2005 revival has faded to a sepia memory but the current revival at the Chichester Festival Theatre left me dazzled, smiling and thoroughly happy - just what this show can do like no other.

Gordon Greenberg's production does nothing to stand in the way of the show's inner motor which powers along through it's plot derived from two stories by Damon Runyan.

Nathan Detroit needs $1000 to secure a place for his floating crap game which he has to hide from both the police and Miss Adelaide, his fiancee of 14 years.  He bets the legendary gambler Sky Masterson that he cannot take the strait-laced Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown to Havana but when Sky pulls off the bet, the couple find themselves falling in love.  Once back on Broadway Sky and Sarah discover the gamblers have used her empty Mission for their crap game and Sarah breaks with Sky... how will we ever get to the happy ending that they and we deserve?

What must frighten any potential revival directors is the knowledge that the show just *works* so if something isn't working then it's your production.  Greenberg luckily has trusted in the material and by and large comes through unscathed although not without the odd audible sigh from me at a missed opportunity or two.

He has cast very well which fits his production just right with one surprising exception.  I have enjoyed Clare Foster's previous performances in CRAZY FOR YOU and MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG but here it felt like she still doesn't have a handle on Sarah, she certainly can play the righteous Sergeant but didn't convince at all that there was anything else to the character.  It is frustrating as it throws the quartet of lovers off-kilter, leaving Jamie Parker with not an awful lot to work with.

Parker is one of the production's big successes. Charismatic and likable, he also has a very good singing voice and I loved in particular how he worked his way through I'VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE, really putting over Sky's own surprise at his feelings.  He also delivered a powerful LUCK, BE A LADY.  I will always compare any Sky against Ian Charleson's performance but Jamie Parker certainly delivers.

A major plus was also Peter Polycarpou as Nathan Detroit who suggested his put-uponess without making him a complete nebbish. He certainly made an excellent foil for Sophie Thompson's Miss Adelaide.  As bright and larger-than-life as Peter McKintosh's permanent backdrop of advertising signs, Sophie effortlessly got her laughs sliding up and down her vocal range and also delivered a delightful ADELAIDE'S LAMENT.  If she lacked that spark of lovability that Julia McKenzie had that made the part forever hers, Sophie still thoroughly deserved the huge cheer at her curtain call and her performance made me feel very proud for her.

Their supporting cast were also all worth the price of admission: Harry Morrison and Ian Hughes made a likable pair as Nathan's gophers Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet with Morrison stepping up nicely-nicely to belt across the show-stopping SIT DOWN YOU'RE ROCKING THE BOAT with excellent help from Melanie La Barrie as the formidable General Cartwright.

I also liked the other double act of Nick Wilton as a pugnacious Harry The Horse and Nic Greenshields as Big Jule, a big noise from Chicago.  I should also mention Neil McCaul's resoundingly Scots Arvide Abernathy who sang a nice but shortened version of MORE I CANNOT WISH YOU.  Sadly, although all good, none of the chorus really stood out which is where Eyre's production will always trump other revivals as he cast such unique talents as his ensemble players, giving them all a back story and a definite personality.

As I mentioned before, Peter McKintosh's standing set of a rainbow of fragmented vintage ads worked much better than I expected and an unexpected treat was to be seated high enough to be able to appreciate the way the highly polished stage mirrored the action on it.

A major coup for the production is securing the services of fashionable choreographer Carlos Acosta in his musical staging debut but while his routines are a cut above the usual fare - especially for the male dancers - they didn't exactly strike me as being generic to this particular show.  What he is to be applauded for is staying away from any "dance" elements and keeping them all within the musical theatre tradition.  Kudos too for Tim Mitchell's eye-popping lighting and the always-dependable Gareth Valentine's steady music direction.

The cherry on my slice of Mindy's cheesecake - or was it strudel? - was seeing Sophie Thompson afterwards, alarmingly for the first time in 10 years!  I first met Sophie in sister Emma's dressing room in 1986 when she was in ME AND MY GIRL and have watched her successes with a paternal pride.  It was lovely to see her again, get a hug and tell her how much I loved her in this, my most favourite of shows.

I had been more than somewhat nervous about seeing this revival but Gordon Greenberg's production is a joy from start to finish and the thought did cross my mind that hopefully yesterday afternoon, someone was sitting in the same auditorium and had a similar life-changing experience that I had when I first made the acquaintance of these eternally wonderful GUYS AND DOLLS.

A couple of Saturdays ago Owen and I ventured once again out of the Smoke to see a show in the provinces. This time it was to the leafy sleepiness of Chichester to see one of my favorite musicals, Stephen Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET.

It has since been announced that it will transfer to the Adelphi next year but I am glad we saw it in it's original thrust stage setting.

The last production we saw of SWEENEY was John Doyle's at the Ambassadors which started my antipathy for shows with actor-musicians and was really no way to introduce Owen to the show but no such problems here: Jonathan Kent's production is as it should be seen.

Sondheim himself is very keen on it - he stayed on in Chichester after seeing it to see it a second time. Jonathan Kent's vision for the show is to bring it visually forward in time to a gloomy, shadowy Patrick Hamilton-esque late 1920s/early 1930s London, suggesting backstreet warehouses with smashed windows, metal grills and clattering roll-down shutters. A semi-circular gallery topped off Anthony Ward's set giving a good vantage point for members of the chorus to watch the proceedings.

Kent's direction is clean and sharp, giving the action in Hugh Wheeler's marvellous book a real momentum which builds to the show's shattering final act. I have long said that the last section of SWEENEY TODD. if handled well, can be one of the most thrilling theatrical pleasures and so it was here.

The big news around the production has been the casting of Mr. Show Business himself, Michael Ball, as the wronged barber out for bloody revenge. Not the most obvious casting but on the whole I think he succeeded in giving a fine, unexpected performance.

However to give this performance, he underplayed to such a degree that it rendered his Sweeney a trifle colourless and monotone.

Sweeney is a role that does demand a quality of disconnectedness and muffled rage but other actors I have seen play the part have managed to thread though the pea soup fog of his character a glittering dark humour which was hard to find with Ball as he was too busy downplaying. However it cannot be denied that the show probably would not have been staged had he not agreed to play the role.

His banked-down performance was all the more noticeable compared to the tsunami of Imelda Staunton's Mrs. Lovett. Imelda gave the performance I was expecting but that didn't detract from it's pure pleasure.Imelda's Nellie Lovett was the engine for the show, constantly scuttling about in her fur-lined ankle boots. She easily handled the changes from humour to horror while all the time keeping the undertow to Nellie's character strong, her passion for the former lodger who has now re-entered her life.

It was this multi-layered, naturalistic approach which stood out so against Ball's performance - in particular with the dramatic shift in the final act when Nellie's deception is fully revealed. It's almost 30 years on from first seeing her as one of the "Hot Box Girls" in Richard Eyre's landmark National Theatre production of GUYS AND DOLLS and her career has been a joy to follow.

In mentioning GUYS, it is interesting to compare her performance with Julia McKenzie's award-winning one at the National in 1993. Julia's was a gin-soaked harridan straight out of a Penny Dreadful illustration where as Imelda's is played more naturalistic. Both valid, both excellent. The show also benefited from two very hissable villains in John Bowe's venal Judge Turpin and, in particular, Peter Polycarpou's deliciously odious, bowler-hatted Beadle Bamford. The juves were a bit colourless sadly but James McConville was very good as Tobias as was Robert Burt's Pirelli - it was a delightful touch that Pirelli's travelling vehicle should look like a converted ice-cream van! Sondheim's glorious score was well played by the orchestra under the direction of Nicholas Skilbeck and Mark Henderson's lighting design was wonderfully atmospheric.The show is due in at the Adelphi in March 2012 and I urge you to see it. It would be a bloody crime if you missed it!