DREAMGIRLS at the Savoy - "Every man has his own special dream..."

...and that dream has finally come true.

Back in 1982 when I was queueing up overnight for front-row seats for GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre (yes Constant Reader, ALL roads lead back to that life-changing production) a conversation was started with an American chap who had heard that this was not only *the* production to see in London but that Julia McKenzie was giving *the* performance to see.  He likened this to DREAMGIRLS in New York and Jennifer Holiday playing the role of 'Effie White'.

The more he talked the more I thought "Oh wow" I need to see this" and figured that it would probably pop up in London by 1983.  But no... there was no transfer - could it have been that although it won 6 Tony Awards it didn't win for the all-important Best Musical, Best Score or Best Director?  Later in the 1990s I would find out possibly the real reason.  I worked for an actor's agent named Ann Molloy and 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 the original cast recording, a recording so stupendous that it is the highest placed Broadway Cast Recording on the Billboard 200 chart in recent years and won two Grammy Awards, for Best Cast Recording and for Jennifer Holliday's titanic vocal on "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going".  This incendiary 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.

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 and now finally... a theatre production arrives in London, directed by in-demand director Casey Nicholaw and produced by the equally in-demand producer Sonia Friedman. 

I booked as soon as the box office opened for the Wednesday after Christmas, just before they announced that the role of 'Effie' would be played by GLEE star Amber Riley who would not be playing on Wednesdays.  Oh how I smiled during the confrontation scene when Effie is sacked when the accusation is hurled that she is a diva who can't sustain...

Our 'Effie' was Karen Mav in what appears to be her acting debut having become famous in last year's "The X Factor".  Needless to say that gave me worries but she was actually quite good and sang the hell out of her songs.

What must be said is that Casey Nicolaw has directed a wonderful show; deliciously fluid and slick, his production moved at a faster rate than even the film managed.  Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger's score sounded wonderful and it was great to see how their songs really do move the action forward while illuminating the character singing it.  I found it interesting too that with four new songs written for the film, only one has been interpolated into the show.  There is a rewritten version of LISTEN which had been Beyoncé's big solo for the film but here it is used as a duet for Effie and Deena when they meet again and reaffirm their friendship.

The show looks excellent too thanks to Tim Hatley's set design, Gregg Barnes' costumes and Hugh Vanstone's lighting while Nicholaw's choreography was slinky for the girls, muscular for the lads.  Unlike the film which really overdid the Motown connection by slavishly copying album covers and famous photo sessions for both The Supremes and Diana Ross, Barnes' costumes were more generic.

But something stopped me LOVING the show as much as I feel I should have done.  Maybe the film really has 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 seeing the Menier's SHE LOVES ME five days before; it's a show that has real warmth in it's book and score whereas DREAMGIRLS ultimately felt like a glorious firework display; spectacular to experience but a bit hollow at heart.

What I also found surprising was the 'meh' quality of the cast - all very nice but where were the fireworks?  Even if it is cast down to build up the Amber Riley, could we not have given Effie a more effective counterpoint than Liisi LaFontaine as Deena?  She has little personalty and no real heft vocally.  The intriguingly-named Ibinabo Jack had more fun with Lorrell, getting laughs and applause for her big number.

The stand-out in the cast was Adam J Bernard as James 'Thunder' Early who had just the right volcanic energy to make him steal whatever scenes he was in.  Joe Aaron Reid was imposing in height as the devilish Curtis Taylor Jr. but was still a bit lightweight sadly.

As we left, Owen suggested maybe a return visit might be in order to see if Amber Riley can maybe ignite the show properly but the news that there is now a THIRD alternate for 'Effie' been cast - the American actress Marisha Wallace who has already played the role in a Dallas production - means it would be now even more of a crapshoot to see her.

It sounds like Martine McCutcheon and MY FAIR LADY all over again...  turn up for the press-night, get the reviews then no doubt have lengthy wrestles with laryngitis.  Not that the audience minded on the night we went - they came prepared to scream at anything and everything.

Despite all this I am glad to finally have seen it onstage, it only took 34 years!

TEMPLE at the Donmar - Beale appeal

Although he has made frequent visits to the West End, Simon Russell Beale has primarily been one of the jewels in Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre crown.  But now we have Rufus Norris taking over the NT top job and in his first season there appears to be nothing for Beale.

I am sure he will be back there again but for the time being he is exploring other stages; later this year he will be in a new play at Hampstead but recently he has returned to a favourite venue, the Donmar, in a new play TEMPLE.

Steve Waters' play reminded me of the ad lines that used to accompany real-life film dramas in the 1950s - "Ripped From Today's Headlines" they would proclaim.  OK so the Occupy London protest wasn't yesterday nor the day before but it's close enough to remember the febrile atmosphere that surrounded the whole event.  

In October 2011, the anti-capitalist Occupy London protesters, blocked from protesting outside the Stock Exchange, pitched up instead outside St Pauls Cathedral for four months.  Eventually it all broke up after action by The City of London Corporation but as is often the case in third-party areas drawn into a conflict, the Cathedral found itself coming off the worst.  The Canon Chancellor resigned in sympathy with the protesters saying the Cathedral was siding with the wrong side and the Dean of St Pauls later resigned after being criticised in the Cathedral's anti-protester stance.  This is the background of the fictionalised version in TEMPLE.

It's the morning after the late-night meeting in the St Pauls' Chapter House where it has been decided that St. Pauls is to be re-opened after the Dean ordered it's doors closed a week ago for "health and safety reasons".  Far from restoring order this is the catalyst for more soul-searching by Simon Russell Beale's Dean as he comes under increasing pressure to show his colours to a society that seems to demand black and white positions rather than his more considered approach.

Helping and hindering him in the 90 minute lead-up to the morning's press conference are Anna Calder-Marshall's no-nonsense Virger, Paul Higgins' Canon Chancellor who announces his resignation on Twitter, Rebecca Humphries' temp PA who has hidden depths, Shereen Martin's City of London lawyer - all iPad, high heels and cold-heart - and Malcolm Sinclair's Bishop of London, adept at playing the media game and seeking no dramas at all.

All the supporting cast were fine but Malcolm Sinclair was excellent as the patrician Bishop, exasperating his Dean with his thorough knowledge of social media yet mindful of the importance of the position of the church.  The female roles felt like caricatures - in particular the City lawyer and the gormless PA temp - which sat uneasily with the more nuanced arguments about church and society.  Humphries in particular had the Devil's own job making sense of the PA - one minute a comedy klutz, next minute a wise and shrewd adviser to the Dean.

But it was Simon Russell Beale who shone most brilliantly as the conflicted Dean.  His trademark delivery of waspish, needling put-downs - weighting a single word in a line so it lands with the precision of a poison dart - was thoroughly utilised but he suggested this was the Dean's way to keep the encroaching world of sound bytes and instant judgements at bay.  He made the character of the Dean totally three-dimensional, both intellectually and emotionally.

It was a surprise to find the Dean handled so sympathetically as you would expect the idealistic Canon Chancellor to be the one to be held up as having right on his side but in a moment of quiet intensity, the Dean says to him "You are a vain man" - Beale's sorrowful, pained delivery making it the emotional highpoint of the play.

As usual there was incisive directing by Howard Davies and a carefully-detailed set from Tim Hatley contributed to the production but ultimately I felt it was a play that seemed too full of ideas, more a debate on the place of religion in society today than a successful drama that built on that theory.  That doesn't however take away from the quiet desperation at the heart of Simon Russell Beale's memorable performance.

Revival Day...

Two recent theatre-trips, two revivals, two radically different results.

I was so excited when MUCH ADO was announced as it meant Vanessa Redgrave was finally going to act on the Old Vic stage, the very stage from which Olivier announced her birth to the world.  It also meant she was finally going to play Beatrice, that she was reuniting with her DRIVING MISS DAISY co-star James Earl Jones and they were being directed by Mark Rylance.  What could go wrong?

Loads.

I had deliberately not seen any reviews but heard that they weren't too complementary.  Oh well... not the first time reviewers don't get it.  What could go wrong?

Loads.

The first inkling that something was odd was Ultz' standing set - a bare brick wall set with a large wooden box-affair plonked in the middle of the stage which after a few minutes started to resemble a giant coffee-table and that thought stayed with me for the rest of the evening.  His set mock-up gives you an idea of it's... oddness.

According to the programme it's a tribute to the director Tyrone Guthrie's vision in the 1930s of setting Shakespeare plays in a non-specific setting with a single wooden structure that could suggest different places.  I am sure Guthrie would be charmed by the thought but I'm also sure he would never have wanted something which suggested a giant coffee table and did nothing to help the production but impeded it and cramped the performing space.  Maybe if it revolved, or went up and down... but no it just sat there.

Then the production started. Rylance has hit on the whizzer idea to set it in England during the 2nd World War in a town close to a US Airforce base.  I mean... how else can you explain away a black American actor and an English actress?  It took awhile to get over the poleaxing evidence of Rylance's lack of an imagination.  Then the incongruities and bad choices came, not as single spies but in battalions...



 

Ok so we all know the stage can take years off an actor but even that can't stop you thinking that Michael Elwyn is surely playing Vanessa's brother not her father, besides the hideously ugly costuming does nothing but suggest Beatrice is an old frump.  To his credit, Elwyn does actually give one of the better performances.

 

The arrival of Don Pedro's messenger also throws you completely - is the actor REALLY that tall or is he on stilts? it is one of the most preposterous stage images ever.  Enter Don Pedro's platoon of soldiers... sorry, squadron.  And enter James Earl Jones in the world's largest flying suit or, as Owen preferred to call it, his onesie.

 

 

And then the trouble REALLY started.  Now Earl Jones, aged 82, still has the voice which I'm sure made him a fabulous Othello, Lear, Oberon and Claudius.  What his voice is not suited for is comedy verse.  So the opening skirmish between Benedick and Beatrice - which should set up the larks to come - is here a confusing Fugue For Tinhorns between his rumbling and Redgrave's almost mumbled responses.  These two are supposed to be a couple who have already had a failed relationship but for all their recent experience of working together I was really surprised to find Redgrave & Earl Jones' onstage partnership so negligible, as if they were only meeting for the first time in the lift up to the rehearsal room.

 

And so the first act progressed. Earl Jones rumbled away, saying all the words but with absolutely no sense of meaning behind them, the supporting performances seemingly being spoken as if they were still blocking the scene, a bland Claudio, an insipid Hero, a laughably non-threatening Don John and Vanessa occasionally hinting at the performance I was willing her to give.  Was she hidebound by Earl Jones' performance? 

 

 

Three times, thankfully, she delivered - I loved her playing of Beatrice's lovely lines "but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born" stopping after 'danced' and blowing a kiss up to the chandelier above the stalls.  It felt like an acknowledgement of her birth and that auditorium.  I also liked her surliness in the scene when she bids Benedick to come in for dinner, and she also had fun with her speech after the gulling scene, the start of which she directed to a member of the front row, culminating with a joyous "And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand".  I wish I could say the same for Earl Jones.  He rumbled through his speech making no sense whatsoever and when he said "No, the world must be peopled" I am sure I was not the only one thinking "Love, you're 82!"

 

The wedding scene was a bit of a disaster - and not just for Hero.  I have written before about the inherent flaw in this scene as directors always have Margaret onstage during it and as it was she who Don Pedro and Claudius saw standing at Hero's window being seduced by Borrachio, why doesn't she just own up while she is seeing her mistress' marriage going upsy-dutch?  Maybe she had lost the power of speech when she caught sight of the SHITEOUS frock that Vanessa was in.  When she dramatically threw aside her dressing gown to reveal it my first thought was of Dame Edna Everage.

 

 

The wedding scene did have one saving grace in Peter Wight's performance as Friar Francis.  We had just seen him as the bumbling arse Dogberry but here he was, slowing the pace and speaking his lines - Stop The Press - as if he understood what he was saying.  A shout-out too to Penelope Beaumont as Ursula whose several lines also showed that she knew what they meant.  Needless to say, now that Benedick suddenly becomes serious and confronts Don Pedro and Claudius with their wrong, Earl Jones finally - briefly - came into his own.  For all of ten minutes he justified being there.

 

Sadly it couldn't last, we had the bizarre finale to come.  The news of Benedick and Beatrice's marriage - and his command of "Strike up pipers" - was the cue for someone to crank up the onstage record player to play a swing tune so the cast could start a half-hearted jitterbug while Earl Jones and Redgrave sat upstage on two chairs hidden behind an open newspaper.  I shitteth you not.  The curtain call consisted of a company bow which parted for Redgrave and Earl Jones to get up out of their chairs and join them in a bow and exit upstage, with Vanessa waving to the audience behind the by-now shuffling Earl Jones.  You know there is something very wrong with a production when the actors playing Beatrice and Benedick don't get a solo bow.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I didn't hate it.  It just left me bemused and frustrated that it was allowed to be presented as such.

 

Especially as I then saw a production which was the polar opposite: focussed, free of directorial conceits, designed to fit the stage requirements of both the actors and the piece itself and acted with a unity of performance and purpose.  But then, not every director is Richard Eyre.

 

Working from his own adaptation, Eyre's production of Henrik Ibsen's GHOSTS at the Almeida Theatre is a stunning achievement which keeps you gripped from the start.  Even scenes which in past productions have seemed to tread water are here played with an urgency which is forever pushing the characters toward their destinies while stirring up secrets from the past.

 

Tim Hatley's shimmering, translucent set design is the perfect illustration of a house which has kept too many secrets behind closed doors and Peter Mumford's exquisite lighting design from a grey, rainy afternoon to the blackest night to the blazing glory of a new day, so ironical after what we have witnessed.

 

 

I have seen productions where Ibsen's use of repeating images and motifs are clanged like a deafening bell but here the repeated references to parents and children, of the sins of a previous generation being visited on the next, and the stymied chances of renewal slowly build up until they really are the ghosts of the title, haunting the rooms of the Alving house.

 

As I said, Eyre's translation is lean and powerful - although I must admit than an exclamation of "Bollocks" at one point was a bit of a surprise.  He also has cast five performers who act as a real ensemble, keeping the intensity going relentlessly throughout the entire 90 minutes.

 

 

The sometimes sticky role of Jacob Engstrand is slyly played by Brian McCardie, slippery as an eel and always thinking a few steps ahead of whoever he is in dispute with to gain the upper hand.  Charlene McKenna was a spirited, feisty Regina, sure of her future with her employer's son and determined to rise above her place in life.  The savageness of her fury at the shattering of her dreams was well played.

 

The other potentially sticky role is Oswald, the artist son who has returned from a libertine Paris life to confront his mother with his own secret.  In some productions I have seen him played as less of a character and just a collection of symbolist metaphors but Jack Lowden played the role with a real humanity which made his sudden descent into a living limbo all the more affecting.

 

 

Will Keen, while not entirely banishing memories of Tom Wilkinson in the role, was a squirm-inducing Pastor Manders, full of self-righteous hypocrisy and sanctimonious smugness in a brilliantly conceived performance.  He also managed to give Manders a humanity which made it possible to imagine why, when younger, Mrs. Alving ran to him to escape her tyrant of a husband.

 

I have seen Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench and Jane Lapotaire play Mrs. Alving but it struck me while I was watching her that Lesley Manville's was the most humane I have yet seen.  Expertly paced, she first appears as a woman happy to explore new ways of thinking and confident in her future now she is free not only of the physical presence of her drunken lecherous husband but, thanks to her action of building an orphanage in his name out of his money, also free from any ties to her from beyond the grave.

 

 

But her attempt at freedom, like Regina and Oswald's, is soon unravelling as Captain Alving's actions do indeed reach back from the past, and Manville's horror that although she has deliberately squandered her husband's financial claim on their son, some inheritances are beyond her control was palpable and real.

 

Her distress at the realization of Oswald's future built and built until I was left poleaxed by the intensity of it all.  I stumbled out into the Islington sunshine breathless from the tension and wondering how she would regroup to do that again for the evening performance.

 

The production plays until the 23rd November and although sold out, there are day seats released at 11am at the box office.

 

Well Constant Reader what can I say? I was so entertained by the two Noel Coward one-act plays that I booked for the last performance of the National Theatre's production of his comedy (and whopping star vehicle) PRESENT LAUGHTER.

Coward wrote the play in 1939 but it's premiere was cancelled as it was due to start the week war was declared and had to wait until 1942 before it was staged. Over the years it has been revived frequently with actors who lean towards the showy - O'Toole, Sinden, Callow, McKellen - and now it was the turn of Alex Jennings. After having been impressed with his performances in THE ASTONISHED HEART and STILL LIFE I was curious to see him in the blazing star role that Coward wrote for himself of Garry Essendine, an unashamedly self-centred West End leading man.

It's a very strange role, a character that it is difficult to like but very easy to enjoy as he shamelessly manipulates all around him. Essendine is always 'on', even in an empty room you suspect he would play to the mirrors and framed photographs. The two people whose eyes he cannot pull the wool over are his no-nonsense, seen-it-all secretary Monica and his ex-wife Liz, both of whom handle him with the resigned air of a parent with a sulky child.


The play opens with him once again having to declare undying love for yet another starstruck deb who has stayed the night just so he can get shot of her to prepare for an upcoming tour of Africa (of all places). News that his leading lady has pulled out means that he is saddled with the only available option: having to appear opposite Joanna, the predatory actress wife of his manager (who he knows is also having an affair with the manager's business partner).

The next night while alone at home, Joanna appears and after a quarrel where they both show their dislike for the other... yes you guessed... she stays the night. And she makes it plain she is *not* about to be given the heave-ho in the morning. If this wasn't enough, Garry is also having to fend off the stalkerish attentions of a young playwright whose avant-garde play he has turned down.

 

I suspect one's enjoyment of the play rests squarely on the lead actor and luckily Alex Jennings was excellent. He had the timing of death and the perfect style for Coward, seriously frivolous. He showed glimpses of the real Garry behind the theatrical posturing and outrageous damands, a man aware he is becoming his own creation.

There were fine performances too from Sarah Woodward as Monica the brusque secretary (although I have seen her play that sort of role before) and Sara Stewart as Liz his practical and knowing playwright ex-wife. The other performances were ok but were easily overshadowed. Lisa Dillon as the scheming Joanna had some good moments but could have done with shading the character more as Coward stacks the play fairly well against her.

A spectacular set by Tim Hatley filled the Lyttleton stage (see Owen's sneaked photo here) and Jenny Beavan's evocative costumes held the attention when Howard Davies direction seemed to simmer rather than percolate.