DVD/150: FROM HELL (Albert Hughes / Allen Hughes, 2001)

The Hughes Brothers, whose previous films were urban crime dramas, swapped one ghetto for an earlier one by bringing Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel about Jack The Ripper to the screen.

Their vision of Whitechapel in 1888 is wonderfully gothic with blood red skies looming over a shadowy London and the the desperate lives of the women who became the victims.

FROM HELL follows Stephen Knight's theory that the women were murdered for knowing about the Duke of Clarence's secret marriage to a shop-girl and her subsequent baby; this was also used in the 1979 Sherlock Holmes film MURDER BY DECREE.

FROM HELL goes beyond this suggesting that the last victim Mary Kelly managed to escape her fate through a relationship with Inspector Abberline.  I guess that's one way of getting a happy ending...

Johnny Depp rehearses his cockney accent ready for SWEENEY TODD six years later.

Shelf or charity shop? It doesn't hold up as well as I remembered but I will keep it for the fantastic production design by Martin Childs; a standing set was built outside Prague of the Whitechapel known to the victims which allowed for fluid cinematography within a believable world.  Johnny Depp as the opium addict Inspector holds the attention, but while Heather Graham maintains a believeable Cockney accent she is fairly colourless.  Much better are the sympathetic performances of the actresses playing the victims: Samantha Spiro, Annabelle Apsion, Kristin Cartlidge (sadly her last filn appearance), Lesley Sharp and Susan Lynch.  Two late Sir Ians turn in their usual good performances: Holm as the deadly Sir William Gull and Richardson as the disdainful Sir Charles Warren.

50 Favourite Musicals: 11: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (1981) (Stephen Sondheim)

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, Alvin Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1983, Bloomsbury Theatre, London

Productions seen: four
  
Score: Stephen Sondheim

Book: George Furth

Plot: Franklin Shepard is a successful composer and film producer but as he looks back over his 20 year career he can see how step-by-step his aspirations were lost along with his two best friends Charley Kingkas and Mary Flynn.

Five memorable numbers: MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, OUR TIME. NOT A DAY GOES BY, GOOD THING GOING, OUR TIME

One show had to just lose out on the top 10 - how ironic it had to be MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.  After their previous show SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FEET STREET won eight Tony Awards and nine Drama Desk Awards, the partnership of composer Stephen Sondheim and producer / director Hal Prince were expected to come up with another smash hit.  But it was not to be... MERRILY lasted a mere 44 performances after a troubled rehearsal period where the original leading man and choreographer where replaced and audiences walked out, confused by the back-to-front plotline.  Prince's concept of a cast of teenage performers, all in sweatshirts and jeans, backfired and the resultant failure had a lasting effect on it's devastated young cast as well as Sondheim and Prince who would not work together again on a new work for 22 years.  The odd thing is that the seemingly revolutionary plot-twist of having the story told backwards originated in 1934 in a play of the same name by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, which had also closed losing money - albeit with more performances.  It was neglected at Awards time too, MERRILY received a single Tony nomination for Best Musical Score - which lost to Maury Yeston's NINE.  The palpable sadness of that original production has remained, especially as that cast's recording of the score has kept the show alive down the years - remarkable considering they recorded it the day after they closed.  Since then MERRILY has gone on to be reclaimed as one of Sondheim's most remarkable scores - particularly as the usual criticism thrown at him that he is too cerebral to be emotional is made ridiculous by songs such as NOT A DAY GOES BY and GOOD THING GOING which are tear-triggers of the highest magnitude.  Sondheim's score ripples with great songs whose tunes appear throughout the show in different guises so you can track them seemingly down the years as Charley, Frank and Mary's lives change and grow apart.

I was lucky enough to see MERRILY's European premiere when the Guildhall School's production transferred to the small Bloomsbury Theatre two months after it was first staged at the school.  Ian Judge's wonderful production swept me away and made the show instantly one of my favourites.  Over the years as it's status has grown with every UK and US revival, Sondheim has revisited the score and added new numbers for Frank and Gussie, the musical star he marries, but for me the original score is the one I return to.  After the 1983 Guildhall show I had to wait 17 years until another London production at the Donmar.  Michael Grandage's production featured career-defining performances from Samantha Spiro as Mary, Daniel Evans as Charley and Julian Ovenden as Frank and won three Olivier Awards for Best Musical, Best Actress and Best Actor for Evans; sadly no West End transfer occurred.  That happened three years later when Maria Friedman's production at the Menier Chocolate Factory transferred to the Pinter Theatre for a few months.  While happy that this remarkable show was finally seen in a proper West End house I was less enthusiastic by Friedman's garish and broad production - it did however win the Olivier for Best Musical Revival. The latest news on MERRILY is that Richard Linklater has announced he will make a film of it with the absurd idea of filming it over 20 years so the characters can be seen to age properly... one is tempted to think of Olivier's line to Dustin Hoffman while he was holding up filming doing his Method shenanigans "Why don't you try acting?".

A much more poignant and telling film take on MERRILY is Lonny Price's wonderful documentary BEST WORST THING THAT EVER COULD HAVE HAPPENED from 2016.  Initially a film about the making of MERRILY and the impact of it's failure on it's young cast, Price - who was the original Charley - had remembered ABC News filming all of the audition and rehearsals for a segment in one of their news programme but when they were informed they had an investment in MERRILY they stopped the filming and put out a statement that the footage was destroyed.  However the original videotapes were finally tracked down and Price utilizes the footage to recreate the excitement of the young cast turn to bewilderment at it's failure to work despite Sondheim and Prince's best efforts.  The bigger themes of looking back to see what you gave up to live your dreams - or giving up your dreams to live - are as palpable as MERRILY itself - do hunt it out...

LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN at the Vaudeville - Looking at the stars...

Dominic Dromgoole's Classic Spring Theatre Company has been set up to stage the works of great British dramatists from the 19th and 20th Centuries in the theatres where they were first presented.  Their first season is celebrating the work of Oscar Wilde at the Vaudeville Theatre, a theatre Wilde knew well, and after an excellent launch with Dromgoole's own production of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, we now have LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN, fluttering away in a production directed by Kathy Burke.

Wilde's comedy of manners was first staged in 1892 and has been revived frequently since as well as being the basis for five film versions although it's fair to say that none of these have lived long in the collective memory.  I had only read the play so was keen to experience it properly, although I wondered at the choice of Burke as director.  Luckily I need not have worried as her production has a humanity and warmth to it that one might not expect from Wilde's comedy of shaken morals among the English upper class.

Lord and Lady Windermere have been married for two years and he has given her an expensive fan as a gift for her 21st birthday.  However two titled friends, Lord Darlington and the Duchess of Berwick, spoil her day by telling her that it is the talk of society that her husband has been making secretive visits to Mrs Erlynne, an older woman of scandalous reputation.  The priggishly moral Lady Windermere confronts her husband who admits he has been paying Mrs Erlynne money but says he has not been unfaithful; when he asks her to invite Mrs Erlynne to her birthday ball she refuses, but Windermere invites her anyway.

Mrs Erlynne arrives at the party and causes a sensation but Lady Windermere ignores her.  Alone with Lord Darlington he takes advantage of her upset and invites her to leave her husband for him as Darlington has always secretly loved her.  The confused Lady Windermere refuses and Darlington leaves saying he will leave the country the next day.  However when she sees how her husband stays with Mrs Erlynne and that their family friend 'Tuppy' Lorton is equally smitten with her, Lady Windermere changes her mind and after leaving a note, follows Darlington to his home.

Mrs. Erlynne finds the note but destroys it before the husband can see it; of course that's when we discover that Mrs. Erlynne is actually Lady Windermere's long-presumed-dead mother.  She too fled her husband and baby for another man but when he left her she found herself alone.  Under an assumed name she has returned to London and blackmailed Lord Windermere into bankrolling her to a new start in society.  However now her daughter looks about to repeat her own actions, Mrs. Erlynne will stop at nothing to save her from a life of shame...

I am sure the play could be acted in "the traditional style" - lots of declamatory readings, the cast in frozen tableaux and heavy brocade and Victorian excess everywhere - but Kathy Burke keeps the action souffle-like and it is a production full of air and light.  This is helped immeasurably by designer Paul Wills' stripped-back, simple set and costume designs as well as the chosen colour palette of soft hues of pink, purple and blues - it really makes for a delightful production to watch.

Kathy Burke is also helped with a cast who play with a twinkle in their eye which makes the sudden melodramatic moments seem all the more serious; they also all play with a disregard that they are saying some of Wilde's most memorable lines, there is no signalling to the audience as if to say "You are all going to know what I am about to say..."

After having graduated from drama school only last year, it would be unlikely that Grace Molony's Lady Windermere had any particular depth but she played it with a pleasing sincerity as did Joshua James in the tricky role of Lord Windermere who came into his own in the final scene of compromise and keeping secrets.  I also liked Joseph Marcell as "Tuppy" the Windermere's friend who finds himself besotted with the mysterious Mrs. Erlynne but fearful of her reputation; he played it with just the right air of happy befuddlement.

Kevin Bishop is an interesting choice as Lord Darlington who is another of Wilde's charming but dangerous titled womanizers but he fought the temptation to barnstorm lines like "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" and made him a very subtle cad.

The real surprise - for me at lest - was the delightful performance of Jennifer Saunders as the self-entitled and snobbish Duchess of Berwick, a woman at the centre of her own universe and eager to know all the gossip.  I had fears that she might play it too over the top but she fitted into the tone of the production and seemed very at home within it.  Her character's relatively short appearances onstage is helpfully padded out with the Duchess leading the audience in a front-cloth sing-song.  It actually was interesting to watch her in performance, seeing her ease onstage and delivering her witty rejoinders and put-downs with the sure knowledge of how to land a laugh; Dominic Dromgoole... I think you have found your Lady Bracknell for the upcoming production of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. 

Samantha Spiro was an inspired choice as Mrs. Erlynne, sensuous and languidly in command of the men's slavish attentions but able to become passionately sympathetic in defending the daughter she has returned to but realizes will have to leave again without her identity being revealed.  The final scene where she makes her only demand - a photo of her now-grown daughter and grand-child - was played with a lightness of touch which hinted at the emotion beneath.  She really has a uniquely quicksilver personality on stage.

It is impossible to watch any of Wilde's classic plays without looking for clues relating to the downfall that awaited him only three years after the play's premiere, and indeed it is interesting that Wilde wrote of a wife finding out about her husband's clandestine visits to a disreputable woman in the same year that Lord Alfred Douglas started to introduce him to male prostitute 'renters'.  Interesting too that the play's seemingly happy end for the married couple is based on the keeping of secrets from each other.

I highly recommend LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN which runs until April 7th but it will also be screened in cinemas on the 20th March.  Classic Spring's next production is AN IDEAL HUSBAND... and yes Constant Reader, tickets are already booked!

A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Noel Coward Theatre - a Christmas Present from the Past?

As we inched closer to The Big Day it seemed very timely to see Patrick Barlow's new stage version of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Noel Coward Theatre.  I must admit that I primarily went to finally have the opportunity to see Jim Broadbent onstage.

It was all a bit of a curate's egg but it was worth it for Broadbent and Samantha Spiro who played several small roles.

Barlow has adapted a fairly traditional retelling of the Dickens classic but his Scrooge when we first see him is not the usual dessicated old misery but a hearty and overbearing money-lender, in line with the now-received idea of heartless bankers.  The play starts with him putting a woman through the mill before she agrees to his exorbitant interest rates.

With that we get to the main story when Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his dead business partner Jacob Marley warning him to change his ways or he too will spend the afterlife in misery.  His visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future see to it that by Christmas morning he is a changed man.

The whole play takes place within a large toy theatre proscenium arch with two stagehands trundling props into place for the play to continue with the supporting cast of two actors and two actresses playing all the other parts, meeting themselves going off as they are coming on.

Broadbent was as good as I expected him to be and was particularly fine at the end of the play when his bluff and terror gave way to a sweet humility and as I said, of the supporting cast, the standouts were Amelia Bullmore as the ethereal Ghost of Christmas Past and Mrs Cratchitt but in particular Samantha Spiro commanded the stage as the Babs Windsor-style Ghost of Christmas Present among others.  She also gave a very good curtain speech for the St. Martin-In-The-Fields homeless charity.

But the overwhelming cutesy tweeness of the production was a bit unrelenting and the jokey script happily ignored the story's more haunting aspects towards the end which would have helped to vary the tone.

DI AND VIV AND ROSE (and us) at the Vaudeville Theatre

Last Wednesday it was time to step back in time thanks to Amelia Bullmore's comedy of three female friends negotiating life in DI AND VIV AND ROSE at the Vaudeville Theatre.

The play has transferred from Hampstead Theatre to the Vaudeville in the West End for a limited season - sadly without a title change which I think is unnecessarily cumbersome.  What has happened is the cast has had a two-thirds change since Hampstead: out goes Anna Maxwell Martin and Gina McKee, in comes Samantha Spiro and Jenna Russell.

If you know the individual actresses, you can imagine how this will change the dynamic of the play as Spiro and Russell, with their musical experience, play it more 'out front', more West End - and that is certainly not a bad thing in my book.

As good as the actresses are, I must admit that at no time did I find Bullmore's characters at all believable as they seemed to be types rather than fully-rounded characters, sporty lesbian, sex-mad ditz, driven fashion-writer career woman.

The set-up is age-old: three women from different backgrounds come together - here in a shared student flat - and we watch as they slowly evolve into genuine friends despite everything that life - and themselves - can do to them.

We first meet the threesome taking turns on their halls of residence phone, slowly getting to know each other and eventually sharing a flat together.  Over the course of the first act we get to know them too: Tamzin Outhwaite is Di, sporty and taking business studies who can finally admit to the world she is a lesbian after hiding it at home, Jenna Russell as Rose who is studying art history and whose good nature includes sleeping with any man she fancies, and Samantha Spiro is Viv who is studying sociology with a particular interest in how fashion has literally shaped women's lives.

Twice during the play Bullmore delivers a twist to the general sitcom feel, confronting her characters - and the audience - with the casual shocks that life can spring.  The first comes so out of the blue that it takes you totally unawares and the play violently changes gear for a while as the women bond together, only for the former tempo of fairly long scenes to creep back again by the interval.

The interval arrives at the end of their University years and they handle this last scene very well as the realization dawns that, although they are now firm friends, they will never share the experience of living together again. The 80s give way to the 90s and Viv is working for a fashion columnist in New York, Di is living with a partner and Rose is a single mother of two children.

I enjoyed these scenes more - the actresses seemed more comfortable playing ages closer to their own - although I also felt that Bullmore didn't really flesh out the characters that are left offstage, partners are mentioned but you never get a real sense of them.  Midway through the second act, Bullmore pulls the rug out from under the audience again with the death of one of the characters and the tempo changes again to one of loss and recrimination.

I was vaguely reminded of MY NIGHT WITH REG in these final scenes as it too covers the impact of a friend's death on those left behind, who has ownership of what memory, etc. but Kevin Elyot's play works on a more profound level than this one.

What made the play stand out were the performances of the fine actresses, in particular Samantha Spiro as the waspish, and later, soused Viv.  What is also good is seeing a new play that affords three equally prominent roles for actresses, I am sure the play will have a future life as it would be very easy to tour.

Briskly directed by Anna Mackmin, ultimately what's not to love about a production that gives you blasts of Kirsty MacColl *and* Madonna?

If there were any doubts that Stephen Sondheim is theatre royalty then this year's extended celebrations for his 80th birthday proves it. But then if anyone deserves to be celebrated it's our Steve.

The Donmar are paying tribute to the great man with their production of PASSION but they also are honouring two previous Sondheim shows they have staged with concert performances at the Queens Theatre with the original cast members. The first show was very appropriate for the subject of looking back, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.

Based on the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the story charts the disillusion and falling-out of three seemingly close friends only the action takes place in reverse so we start in 1980 with Frank, Charlie and Mary no longer speaking, through all the compromises and betrayals that erodes their friendship to the final scene which shows them all meeting for the first time on a NY rooftop to watch Sputnik overhead in 1957. The device is hugely affecting, by the time you reach the end you feel for the three young people, so wide-eyed with hope and optimism for the future which you know will founder on the rocks of distrust, infidelity, compromise and alcohol.

I was curious to know exactly how they were going to stage this - surely they couldn't just sing the songs with maybe an onstage narrator filling in the blanks? Luckily no, we got the full show acted out although with no costumes and in between lecterns set up across the stage. I was worried that Owen, who had not seen the show, would not be able to get into the story but luckily the performances more than made up for any lack of trappings. Reprising their roles as Mary, Charlie and Franklin were Samantha Spiro, Daniel Evans and Julian Ovenden and it was a delight to see them together again, they obviously enjoy each other's company as much as we did! All three were in fine voice and transcended the bare stage and their fellow cast members sitting in a semi-circle at the back of the stage to flesh out their characters and their stories.

Also I should mention the scene-stealing Anna Francolini as Gussie, I had quite forgotten what an excellent character the book writer George Furth created in her - the bitchy, egomaniacal Broadway star who becomes Frank's second wife. Fine support too was provided by Mary Stockley as Beth, Frank's first wife and James Millard as the crass but caring Broadway producer Joe Josephson.

And of course it was a joy to hear Sondheim's blissful score 'live' again - with songs of the calibre of "Not A Day Goes By", "Good Thing Going" and "Our Time" it is truly one of his most under-rated scores. I don't mind telling you I was a-blub for most of the second half.

Unbelievably there are still people who purport to love the theatre who still fail to recognise Sondheim's unique place within it - surely anyone who has been able to experience in the space of the last few months his individual scores for ASSASSINS, PASSION, INTO THE WOODS and now MERRILY must surely be able to understand exactly why he is to be celebrated as he has this year.

This Sunday sees a similar concert performance of COMPANY with the cast of the Donmar's 1995 production - I cannot wait!