GREY GARDENS at Southwark Playhouse - Art Imitating Life...

The Southwark Playhouse is one of the perplexing of theatres - it has almost been designed to put you off going there: the queuing out of the front door to pick up tickets, the crowded bar with the glacially-moving staff, the perennial queue outside the auditorium for the unnumbered seats, the woeful loo... so why go, I hear you cry Constant Reader?  Because they keep putting on musicals I want to see - goddamn them!

The latest is the 2006 Broadway musical GREY GARDENS with a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie and a book by playwright Doug Wright.  The musical is based on the 1975 film documentary of the same name directed by the Maysles brothers which told of the eccentric mother and daughter Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale who lived in a collapsing, derelict East Hampton house that had been the family home when they were rich socialites.

What excited the American media was that these former socialites, now almost as feral as the cats and raccoons making Grey Gardens their home, were the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy - how could it come about that relatives of one of the richest women in the world could be living in squalor?  'Big' Edie and 'Little' Edie lived together as they both felt that the other couldn't survive without the other, trapped in a squabbling relationship but one that was based on unspoken need. 

Interestingly 'Big' Edie also had two sons who had grown away from the Grey Gardens set up and who constantly asked their mother to sell the crumbling mansion and move away but she refused to leave the home where she had once ruled the roost and given private recitals as she was an amateur singer.  'Little' Edie had lived in Manhattan for a while from the late '40s to the early '50s but with both her love life and attempted acting career non-starters she returned to live with her mother and became locked in a bizarre mix of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE and HUIS CLOSE.

Their crumbling, larger-than-life personalities made the documentary an underground hit and camp classic which has resulted in this musical which had a success first off-Broadway and then moving to Broadway where it won Tony Awards for Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson along with one for costume design, but it lost out in all the 'big' awards to SPRING AWAKENING.

The show has an intriguing structure which ultimately isn't that successful - the first half takes place in 1941 where young Edie is looking forward to being centre-stage for once as her engagement to Joe Kennedy Jnr is to be announced but it all collapses when she finds out her mother has turned the event into a concert recital, that her father will not be present as he is with his mistress and also that the engagement is called off when her mother intimates to Kennedy that her daughter has been around.

Act 2 zooms us forward to 1973 with mother and daughter living out their bizarre relationship interrupted by their regular visitors, the gardener son of their former butler and a young, monosyllabic slacker who mooches about as a handy-man while quietly stealing from them.  'Little' Edie finally attempts to make the break but ultimately returns: back to mother, back to the house...

The problem is that the two acts just don't fit together, you can see what Doug Wright is attempting by showing us the sins of the past that locked mother and daughter into their later relationship but it's all invention - 'Little' Edie was never engaged to Joe Kennedy Jr. - and it's as if you can almost feel Wright working overtime to try and make this non-event play.  It's vaguely over-written but seems becalmed.

The show is on surer ground in the second act as anyone who has seen the film knows that this is based on fact, not conjecture.  The score which in the first half sounds like standard pastiche musical fare - admittedly good pastiche - settles into something a bit more original with spiky solos and duets.

The second act also is better thanks to the excellent pairing of Jenna Russell as 'Little' Edie and Sheila Hancock as 'Big' Edie. It's a brave actress who goes up against Sheila Hancock but the show hands Jenna Russell an excellent showcase as she also plays the 40-something 'Big' Edie in the first act.  It is a mark of director Thom Sutherland that you can see how Russell's 'Big' Edie became Hancock over the years unseen.

Although she has all the possibilities of going totally over-the-top as the uncorseted, itchy, manic, possibly barking mad Edie, Jenna Russell still manages to ground her in reality so her final capitulation to the fact that she will never leave Grey Gardens while her mother lives is very powerful.  Hancock of course is excellent, mad as the sea but shading that eccentricity with a knowing quality of 'playing' the decrepit old woman to get what she wants from those around her.  But again, in the final moments of the show, Hancock's panicked fear of being alone really hit home.

Thom Sutherland's direction plods through the first act but picks up in the filial confrontations of the second act while Tom Rogers' set design of the crumbling mansion and Jonathan Lipman's costume design give the show a dank and flaky atmosphere.  The supporting cast have the good sense to keep out of the way of these two fine performances although, again, Sutherland has drawn a performance from Rachel Anne Rayham that exactly suggests the cracked personality 'Little' Edie will grow into.

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,

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.