This afternoon I finished THE FABULOUS SYLVESTER by Joshua Gamson and what a great read it was.

When I first saw Sylvester in the jaw-dropping video for MIGHTY REAL on TOP OF THE POPS back in the day (see here) I knew I had found a musical heroine. Although I never got to see him - I hate you Dawn Coates - he has always been on my walkman/portable cd/MP3 player/iPod down the years.

Gamson's sparkling biography gives Sylvester a flawless setting.
From a little boy startling the church goers with a soaring soprano to the adolescent sissy hanging with fellow drag teens The Disqotays, from his move to San Francisco and performing with the hippie commune drag gayers The Cockettes, from his frustration at their unprofessional attitude to his singing with the soul-funk Hot Band and ultimately his solo success at Fantasy Records as one of Disco's brightest stars.

Joshua Gamson sets against Sylvester's almost Hollywood movie-like rise to fame and fortune the times he lived through and more importantly the city of San Francisco which becomes almost a character in itself: the city of the late 1960s with it's radical politics and hippie communes, the early 1970s with the birth of a gay political movement and identity which transmuted towards the end of the decade into the sexual hedonist years of the baths and the clones to ultimately the Ground Zero of the AIDS pandemic in the early 1980s.

What struck me from reading the book was that throughout Sylvester's working life he was surrounded by producers and musicians who mistrusted his style - Ben Sidran, Harvey Fuqua and even James 'Tip' Wirrick who worked with him through the glory years had ambivalent feelings about the work they were doing. I am sure he could be difficult and frustrating to work with, pulling diva strokes when he hadn't earned the right to do it but his sheer joy of living and being Fabulous means it is impossible for the reader to dislike him.

Gamson also writes illuminatingly about the two waves that checked Sylvester's career: the 1980s backlash against Disco music which can now be viewed as much as being about racism and homophobia as it was to do with musical taste and the slow dawning of the cold white light of the AIDS pandemic. Sylvester's own battle with it is told movingly and his quiet dignified end watched over by his mother and sister is enough to moist any eye.

His magnificent backing singers Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes add their their voices to the book too, although sadly Izora died before the book's publication. After they left him to add their own moment in Disco history as The Weather Girls he recruited Jeannie Tracy to back him and she too continued the tradition in his life of strong women.

Joshua Gamson's style is insightful but with the right beaucoup attitude too - "there is no weapon more powerful than the right hair".
Sylvester would have been 60 this September. Would he still be performing? Who knows but his wonderful cameo in 'Diana' drag in Bette Midler's THE ROSE and the music lives on... a perfumed and painted extravaganza of joyful dance music... Go 'head on girl.

I am still kerklempt... Suralan Sugar picked Simon over Kristina in THE APPRENTICE final.
I am sure she will get a better job than the one that Simon will be heading up, developing a hotel and golfing complex near Stansted Airport.

Owenwatch:

Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlours... he's out!

I got a call from himself around 10:30 this morning - obviously not THAT well to remember I am monosyllabic till at least 3pm on a Sunday - to let me know that the physio was happy with his walking to let him go home.

After an interminable wait for a taxi we arrived back in Streatham after 3pm.

It's good to have Owen back where he belongs.

I will of course be drinking both the flutes of fizz... well, he's on so much medication....

Owenwatch:

I saw him tonight and he wanted you to know he has a new morphine machine, the last one was acting up a bit. He is at the stage where the shock of the new has worn off and the adrenalin/fear of the upcoming operation has gone... so boredom is beginning to creep into his day. Sleep has been difficult at night too. The ward bay he is in has only 6 beds and the past two nights have seen a new patient being admitted around 3am each time! Oh and the Alter Kocker in the end bed talks to himself all night.

It now looks like he won't be out till Monday, the troublesome disc has caused more internal damage than was originally thought so the surgeon wants to keep him in for a bit longer to make sure he's responding as he should.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is a big day.. he is going to attempt to stand for the first time since the op... say a prayer to your personal Jesus.

On other matters...

Just finished reading Jill Dawson's WATCH ME DISAPPEAR which is about Tina, a woman in her 40s, returning for her brother's wedding to the Cambridgeshire village where she grew up. Inspired by the Soham schoolgirl case of a few years ago the book tells of Tina being haunted by the memory of her best friend at primary school who disappeared one summer afternoon and was never seen again. She also cannot shake the gnawing fear that her own father might have the murderer.

Dawson certainly conjures up the strange sunlit world of a ten year old girl that contains the long shadows of sexual curiosity and unspoken family tension. She also captures the limbo of guilt and unresolved feelings that Tina feels at her friend - who she had recently had a falling-out with - disappearing yet being present in the newspapers and television re-invention of her personality. This all comes to a head when Tina is asked by the police to "be" her friend in a televised reconstruction of the girl's last known journey.

So there was I, being quietly gripped by the narrative and in particular the spot-on evocation of growing up in the early 1970s when suddenly there it was, staring out at me on page 195...

"...cutting out pictures of Clodagh Rogers winning the Eurovision Song Contest..."

OI DAWSON NO!
Clodagh RoDgers didn't win bloody Eurovision!!

I should know... I was watching the bloody thing through teary eyes.

Now over the years I have learnt to gloss over cultural references in books or tv shows where an actor or a film are muddled up - but it's hardly like Eurovision isn't well referenced on the damn internet.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

Constant Reader

I would like you to know that Owen had his operation at lunchtime today. I saw him this evening and he seemed a lot more 'together' than I was expecting. I am sure the fact that he had a handheld button that released morphine into him when he felt any pain had absolutely nothing to do with it. The surgeon sees him tomorrow to assess how he is doing but it looks like he may have to stay in until maybe Sunday.

Don't worry I filled him in about Emilygate on BB. Did we watch it tonight?
A total riot - loved Shabnam trying to find out what had been said while Charlie and Emily were both telling her to drop it, Shabnam saying she totally wasn't interested anymore...... "But what did you say though?" - all talking over each other - a hoot n a half.

And the clever way Charlie didn't want anyone to know what had happened. So proceeded to tell everyone in the bedroom that someting happened but she couldn't discuss the really really bad thing that Emily had said to her and not to ask her. No she couldn't discuss it, it was between her and Emily so don't ask her. About what Emily said to her. 'Cos she wouldn't tell them. No.

This pleading denial was topped only by the response from Ziggy saying "Ohhhh I know, yeah.... she fancies you, right?"

That was me on the deck.

Two more blokes are being released into the house on Friday instead of the eviction. Dear lord let them have a bit more spunk about them. As t'were.

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?

In August of this year I will celebrate 25 years of proper theatre going. How is it possible that GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre was 25 years ago? I have stayed loyal to Theatreland through those years, now it's the only art form I look forward to going to... no matter what the production.

And now see how the West End is repaying me... with stage versions of two of my favourite films.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER is to be staged at the Old Vic in September. To sweeten the pill allegedly Pedro Almodovar will have final script and casting approval with talk already that Lesley Manville is up for the role of Manuela, played luminously in the film by Cecilia Roth.

And even more destressing, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN: THE MUSICAL is pencilled in at the Gielgud in November. Among the producers are Old Vic Productions.

Remind me to pop a note though to bloody Kevin Spacey.

The ...SUSAN musical - perish the thought someone in the West End have an original though - will be set to the back catalogue of Blondie which I guess fits in with the New York scene of the 80s. I can just see it... Roberta dreams of Susan's life singing (I'M ALWAYS TOUCHED BY YOUR) PRESENCE DEAR or chasing her round Manhattan to the strains of ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

Yeesh.

But just to show potential disasters are a two way street... Tim Burton's screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD is due to finish principal photography soon.

The role of Sweeney has in the past taxed the vocal limits of such actor/singers as Len Cariou, George Hearn, Alun Armstrong and Denis Quilley and is now to be immortalised on the big screen by... Johnny Depp who by his own admission has a voice like "the mating call of a rutting stag".

And as Mrs. Lovett which in the past has been played wonderfully by such greats as Angela Lansbury, Sheila Hancock, Julia McKenzie and Patti LuPone?

Helena Bonham-Carter.

Yes.. THAT Helena Bonham-Carter.

Who just happens to be Tim Burton's girlfriend.

Pass me the razor when you're done with it Sweeney...

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE?

Quite by accident the two films I watched over the weekend both dealt with real-life women whose names have becomes infamous.

I finally caught up with Channel 4/HBO's LONGFORD starring Jim Broadbent as the eponymous Lord and Samantha Morton as Myra Hindley. I remember back in the early '70s the furore when it was revealed that after years of prison visits, Lord Longford was pressing for the chance of parole for Hindley, mainly I think because it was the first time I had heard what The Moors Murderers had actually done. I also remember Longford appearing on the current affairs programme Brass Tacks with the mother of Lesley Ann Downey which certainly made for gripping tv - they have even included it in the film with Broadbent as Longford cleverly spliced into the real broadcast.










It's a natural for screenwriter Peter Morgan who is making a speciality of scripts which feature confrontations between real-life characters - David Frost & Richard Nixon, Tony Blair & The Queen, Tony Blair & Gordon Brown - but the film could have done with maybe a more insightful director than Tom Hooper as it's pace eventually seemed a bit plodding. Longford was also painted whiter than white - his recorded homophobia could easily have been brought in to the few scenes showing his anti-pornography campaign.










What made the film watchable were the excellent performances - Jim Broadbent was superb as Longford, it's hard to think of another actor who could have made his strange, old-fashioned, demeanor sympathetic. He was matched by a fascinating performance by Samantha Morton - not an actress I usually care for - as Myra. Like Longford you are thrown at her first appearance in a prison visiting room, not the blonde from the famous police photo but a dark-haired mousy woman hunched over a corner table. Her watchfulness broken only by occasional shots of impatience she makes a convincingly supplicant trying hard to atone.

These scenes of intellectual seduction are shattered when Longford receives a letter from Ian Brady, played in a malevolently evil performance by Andy Serkis. In three short scenes Serkis revels in his role, toying with Longford each time until he delivers news of Myra's duplicitous nature. It is after the last of these scenes - when Brady announces that he will talk to the police about the two missing victims - that Morton has her best scene. After letting Longford prattle on Myra interrupts him to tell him she too will admit to the killings and that a new lawyer has advised her to drop Longford like a hot potato. Morton's cold reading of the scene is perfectly matched by Broadbent's utter devastation. An invented scene of them meeting again a year before their deaths is unnecessary, giving the film a neat button that it really doesn't need. If you haven't seen it though I recommend it for the three excellent central performances.

My other femme fatale was in the 1931 MGM film of MATA HARI starring Greta Garbo.

Although 89 minutes it's hard to sit through now without wincing. Although Garbo is never less than watchable, several times she appears to be in a silent film, her responses are so broad. Amazingly it was one of her most successful films. This despite a clunky script, a truly bizarre storyline and now laughable performances by co-stars Ramon Navarro - playing a Russian in his thick Mexican accent - and Lionel Barrymore chewing the expensive scenery. It's odd that despite two silent films and later ones starring Jeanne Moreau and Sylvia Kristel no one has yet taken the plunge and made a film of the real story behind Mata Hari.

Margaretha Zelle was born in the Netherlands and at 18 she married a naval officer who was then posted to Java where Margarethe bore a boy and girl. In the first bizarre twist in her life the son was poisoned by an ex-employee. Divorced a few years after and back in Europe she moved to Paris working as a circus act, an artist's model and finally becoming an 'exotic' dancer under the Javanese name Mata Hari claiming to be an Eastern princess. She was soon the talk of Paris and naturally took the next step in becoming a courtesan of men in high places. When WWI broke out, being neutral Dutch, she was able to pass easily over borders which eventually aroused suspicion. When interviewed by British military intelligence when travelling via London she informed them she was employed by their French counterparts, which the French vigorously denied. No firm evidence has ever been found to say she was or she wasn't so perhaps she was simply embroidering the truth as she had done before.

In 1917 a coded message was sent from the German army in Spain to Berlin commenting on the success of a French double agent named H-21. The code - which the Germans knew had been cracked by the French - also pointed to the identity being Mata Hari. A month later she was arrested in Paris and put on trial at a time of great demoralisation about the progress of the war and the huge death toll of troops. Again no lasting proof has ever been found as to her guilt but she was found guilty and shot in October of the same year aged 41. So was she the deadly spy of legend, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of soldiers or a fantasist over her head in dangerous times, tried as much for her sexual mores as for any alleged treason?

What I do know was her real life is a damn sight more interesting than the one cobbled together for Garbo - exotic mantrap spying for both the Russians and Germans falls in love with a young Russian pilot, shoots her Russian spymaster as he is about to indict her lover as a traitor and is arrested for his murder. Her lover is blinded in a plane crash, she is sentenced to be executed for treason, but not before being visited in the condemned cell by her blinded Russian who is led to believe he is visiting her in a hospital where she is about to go and have surgery!! She goes to her death smiling at finally having known true love.

Believe me there are times one should be grateful they don't make them like that anymore!

Sunday Night Is Pet Shop Boys Night

I have been so busy with theatre-going and work shenanigans that I hadn't had to time to work myself up into a suitable state of PSB excitement. I was getting a bit worried that even with ten minutes to go I was still in a resolutely un-excited mood - despite buying merch, being in a nice central position and standing in the Hammersmith Apollo stalls with the seats all taken out - all live venues should have such a precipitous rake even if it's eventually killing to the small of the back. But all was put to right when the lights went down!

The last time I saw them was at Brixton Academy in 2002 on their RELEASE tour when they eschewed the lights and costumes and were performing as a 'straight' band. I had heard nothing about this tour so was a bit worried that they might still be into their 'unplugged' vibe but luckily no! The setting was a neon square surrounded by dark curtains and a keyboard on a neon stand to one side. After a tease of having first two backing singers then two dancers come out dressed as Neil and Chris, the real ones appeared and it wasn't long before the neon square was shown to be neon poles that went up and down or expanded to a 'cinemascope' screen with projections behind to fill the stage with glorious pulsing colour.

It wasn't long before full PSB service was fully resumed with the appearance of the magnificent Sylvia Mason-James to provide her soaring backing vocals so missing on the RELEASE tour. Neil was in good voice, Chris even smiled a few times and the crowd were suitably in good voice. The only dodgy aspect of the show were the two body-popping hip-hop stylee dancers who certainly added to the onstage traffic but who didn't add much to the show artistically.

There were so many great songs although they did relatively few from the new album FUNDEMENTAL. We got "West End Girls", "Opportunities", "Suburbia" (with an enormous twitching lace curtain behind them), "Paninaro", "Shopping", "Rent", "It's A Sin", "Heart", "Left To My Own Devices", "Domino Dancing", "Always On My Mind" (against huge cut-out heads of themselves), "Being Boring" (and yes I did get moisty-eyed), "Where The Streets Have No Name", "Can You Forgive Her?", "Dreaming Of The Queen" (wonderful, against grainy film of Diana's funeral car driving through a rainstorm of flowers), "Go West", "Se A Vida E", "Home And Dry", "Flamboyant", "Integral", "I'm With Stupid", "Numb", "Minimal" and "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".

I hope it's not 5 years before seeing them again.

Owen supplied the nice photos!

Tonight was the last of mine and Owen's marathon theatre-going month and, like THE ENTERTAINER, I finally got round to seeing a famous play I had never seen on stage or film... Peter Shaffer's EQUUS at the Gielgud Theatre. In the front row yet!

As Mr and Mrs World knows it stars Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang, a 17 year-old boy who has blinded 6 horses with a spike and Richard Griffiths as Martin Dysart the psychiatrist assigned to his case who is determined to understand what brought him to doing it. In the course of his interviews with the taciturn teen he uncovers the boy's fixation with horses, seeing them as all-seeing and god-like.

Premiered by the National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1973 the play was a huge hit both in the West End and Broadway - and certainly had a huge effect on someone I could mention (hi Suzanne!). in 1977 Sidney Lumet directed Richard Burton and Peter Firth in the film version. Amazingly this production directed by Thea Sharrock is the first London revival since then.

I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. The play might have one or two niggling faults: under-developed supporting roles; the boy's parents are rather too obviously textbook cases being stern Atheist father / emotional religious mother while the ultimate question posed by Dysart - should he 'cure' the boy thus rendering him ordinary and neutered or does his fixation and passion lift him out of ordinary experience - is a bit woolly. But one and the same it is still a fascinating piece of writing and a powerful theatrical experience.

The original designer John Napier revisits the play and gives us a haunting dark space with shadowy horse stables surrounding the central raised platform while above two rows of audience seats on the level of the dress circle give the impression of a courtroom or old operating theatre.

Napier's design masterstroke however is the horses, six tall actors dressed in brown, hands clasped behind them, wearing metal platform-hooves and wrought metal horse's heads. They are led by the marvellous Will Kemp who plays not only Nugget the horse the boy most reveres but also the horseman who gives him his first experience of touching horseflesh. This scene in particular was nerve-jangling as it involved Kemp giving Radcliffe a piggy-back then racing around the stage - a tribute to his upper-body strength if nothing else. Napier's design, John Hershey's atmospheric lighting and Fin Walker's choreography combined to make them fully believable as Alan's objects of worship and desire.

Richard Griffiths seems an odd choice for Dysart bearing in mind some of his predecessors - Alec McCowan, Colin Blakely, Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Perkins, Burton - but he certainly made the psychiatrist a humane man all too aware of his own failings.
Jenny Agutter is inspired casting as the Magistrate who elects to send the boy to her friend Dysart as in the film she played Jill the stable-girl. However she was only fitfully impressive and in her major scene in the second half, arguing with Dysart as to what the boy needed from those in authority, frankly it was hard to believe she has over 30 years stage experience. Admittedly it's a thankless part, only ever appearing so the Dysart character can voice his concerns about his life. In the two tricky roles of the boy's parents, Jonathan Cullum was fine and Gabrielle Reidy was particularly moving - her Irish brogue making the character's devoutness believeable. Joanna Christie was also good in the role of Jill the stable-girl who unwittingly is the catalyst for Alan's horrific action.

Which leads us to Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang. I suspect the role is a bit like Juliet - difficult to cast exactly to age as it's a rare actor who can have the stagecraft required at that stage in their career. But on the whole I was impressed with his performance. Certainly as some reviews have pointed out he does not have a particularly wide vocal range but then he IS playing an emotionally-damaged teenager! He certainly has a presence however and bearing in mind the production's publicity is all centred on him and not Griffiths - despite his recent Tony Award - he is obviously an actor who can draw a crowd. It will be interesting to see where he goes with his stage career now.

Of course all the press has been about the scene towards the end of the play where Alan strips off to have sex in the stable with Jill. All I can say about this is what a lot of fush about - ah - nothing.

Clash of The Divas!

I'm in Theatre Queen heaven.... Vanessa Redgrave and Angela Lansbury - in the same photograph!!! - at a press junket for the Tony Award nominees in New York. *swoon*

Went to the Roundhouse tonight (Thursday) with Owen to see Patti Smith and she was in majestic form. Somehow we managed to have tickets in the back row of the circle but it's only about 6 back and we had a good face-on view of the stage between two of the columns.

Sure enough about 8:15 the band materialised on stage and there she was in her regulation skinny-leg jeans, boots. long white shirt and dark jacket, a big grin on her face and waving waif-like at the crowd. She stepped up to the mike and sang "Jesus died for somebody's sins.... but not mine" as we looked at each other saying "Eeeeeeek" and the audience roared. After G-L-O-R-I-Aing our way through that it was onto a very loose skanky REDONDO BEACH and the first song from her new 'covers' album, Jimi Hendrix's ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? I was a bit unsure of TWELVE when I first heard it but listening to it again at Owen's on Sunday it seemed to come together more and all of the songs she did tonight from the album fitted in easily with her own classic songs.

In an exciting two hours she powered through great versions of PRIVILEGE (SET ME FREE), FREE MONEY, AIN'T IT STRANGE, PISSING IN A RIVER, BENEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS, WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU (I can feel Owen almost pop with excitement she included this) and SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT. A long, loopy story about the British Museum led into WHITE RABBIT and she threw in for us that little-heard song from her back-catalogue BECAUSE THE NIGHT. While happily joining in with the chorus it suddenly struck me that I was doing the same thing roughly 29 years ago up the road at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park.
Me and my girl Patti go way back.

And she sang FREDERICK. I've never heard her do this live and watching her dancing along with the Godlike Lenny Kaye during the instrumental break - like a shy pupil and a geography teacher at the school disco - it suddenly occured to me that this was a great unclaimed Disco classic - suggested no doubt by Jay Dee Daugherty's powerhouse thumping drum beat! Oh and I also realised I had tears in my eyes from pure pleasure.

The encore was a rather free and easy EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD - she came in early on the first line and late at the end - and I thought what an odd unassuming song to pick for the encore. But I had underestimated wor Patti who started riffing on the theme of bastards who do indeed want to rule the world and how you must never be like them... better to be free... outside of society.. yep after a snarled "You're not afraid of a fuckin' pop song are you?" to the front row she ripped the ring-piece out of ROCK N ROLL NIGGER - it was fantastic.

And after trying to get my head around climate change these past few years, Patti managed to explain it with "Mother Earth.... she is screaming... I am dying.... come and help me... or I'll take you down with me".

The woman is a genius. It's an honour to see her.

Now is the Monday of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of Nokia!
Yes Tuesday found a nice man at the front door delivering my new moby. Now don't get me wrong I ain't putting the diss on my Sony Ericsson which is a lovely little phone but the navigation joystick really wasn't made to last 18 months... and it did have an annoying habit of connecting to the Internet willy-nilly so now I have this shiny sleek number. I am enjoying getting to know the way around it and all it's uses but already am missing the Sony Ericsson's extra-bright light - so handy for reading labels on the poster tubes at the bottom of the piles at work - and also this new phone leaves a big border all around the pictures chosen as wallpaper. Pah.

It is also a bit pissy that a phone that revels in it's music-playing and photo-taking possibilities does not come with a USB cable to facilitate same. Mrs. Vodafone is sending me one for an extra £10. The knobbers.
Later that evening the walking miracle that is Owen and my own self went to the Old Vic to see the 50th anniversary staging of John Osborne's THE ENTERTAINER. Now thereby hangs a tale...

When I heard it was to be revived with Robert Lindsay and Pam Ferris I thought that's one I can happily avoid but then my GUYS AND DOLLS hero John Normington was cast in the role of Billy Rice and I badgered Owen into getting tickets for later in the run. Two days after booking them John pulled out of the production for the remainder of it's run due to an undisclosed illness. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was, especially as he had received some of his best ever notices when it opened (here he is with the rest of the main cast).
I was in two minds whether to go or not but as I had never seen it before - either on stage or the film - I thought I might as well. I must admit to not being a big Osborne fan. LOOK BACK IN ANGER in particular has always left me cold and suspect that the further we get away from 1956 and the impact that play had on British Theatre the less his plays will be performed.

THE ENTERTAINER is by far a better play than LOOK BACK.. with at least some depth given to the female roles. Robert Lindsay takes on the main role of Archie Rice the bankrupt - morally and financially - fading star of a tatty Music Hall show playing to half-empty houses in his own home town at the time of the Suez crisis. His children are all affected by the war, his daughter Jean (Emma Cunliffe) who lives in London has returned to stay a few days after arguing with her stuffy fiancee about her attending an anti-war rally, his son Frank (David Dawson) is drifting since serving a jail sentence as a conscientious objector and his other son Mick is being held prisoner by the Egyptians. Also living in the cramped flat is his doddery querulous father Billy (now David Baron) who was a genuine Music Hall star in it's glory years and his boozy rattled wife Phoebe (Pam Ferris). Like the married couple in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Archie's family don't so much live together as inhabit the same cage.

I have always found Robert Lindsay a strangely unlikeable actor so this part is tailor-made for him but his larger-than-life personality seems to also work against the role, his scenes onstage cracking lame gags and supposedly dying on his arse were met by huge laughs and large rounds of applause. I also couldn't believe that Lindsay's Archie had the character's self-awareness of his own artistic mediocrity and so the famous last lines "You've been a good audience. Let me know where you're working tomorrow night and I'll come and see you" had none of the curdling sarcasm they deserve.

Emma Cunliffe was also a bit of a worry playing the troubled daughter Jean with an emphasis as if aware that her projection wouldn't make it to the Dress Circle. She did get better towards the end though. Sadly David Baron played Billy with a deliberate stageiness too, at times he seemed to be playing him like an old brigadier-colonel. I was watching him but imagining John in the role and I know he would have not been afraid to play up Billy's unlikeable traits and brought a shabby, cantankerous, needling quality to the character.

More of an impression was made by David Dawson's Frank, flinching every time Archie moved towards him and obviously more damaged by his stint in prison than anyone around him can recognise. But the real star of the show is Pam Ferris who makes Phoebe a tragic cartoonish mess. Knocking back the gin as sedately as she thinks she can get away with, forever on the verge of hysterical laughter or maudlin tears, she delivers several memorable moments - sudden bursts of volcanic anger, first at a perceived slight from Jean and then at Billy for daring to touch the cake she has bought specially for Mick's return; her reminiscences of Archie's more refined brother who always said her name so exquisitely and finally, in the middle of a drunken nerve-frayed party for the absent Mick she sings "The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery" with a tender simplicity that she diffuses with a shrug and a return to the gin bottle.

Sadly director Sean Holmes' pace is fairly pedestrian and in particular the main second act scene of the party to celebrate Mick's imminent return home seemed to have no motor to it despite the many arguments and plot revelations. The end of the scene, Frank's anguished announcement that Mick has been killed, would suit most dramatists but Osborn gives us a further act which given the further dramatic events within it still seems to drag. A pity really as at times it was easy to imagine just how disturbing the play must have been 1n 1957 a year after Suez.

So what can you say about a weekend that involved:

• rain
• being threatened with physical abuse by one of Maximo Park's drunken mong fans
• rain
• your Other Arf getting a phone call from the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital on Sunday morning telling him that his recent MRI scan was the worst the surgeon had seen and he was to be there on Monday morning to be operated on

Oh and a Monday that involved a nervous and tense Other Arf being made to wait 50 minutes before being told he was being operated on in 2 and a half hours, that they had lost the all-important MRI scan and all his notes, being warned about the potential dangers of the surgery - and then abruptly sent home and told to come back in 2 weeks?

No I don't know what to say about it... all I know is I never want a weekend like it again.

I guess it was only a matter of time...

The New York Post reported today that the Broadway stage musical of John Waters' CRY-BABY will open next March after a premiere in California at the end of the year.

After the huge success of HAIRSPRAY, now in it's 5th year on Broadway, I guess this was bound to be next.

The book will be written by the HAIRSPRAY writers and the score will be by Adam Schlesinger of the band Fountains Of Wayne and lyrics by David Javerbaum who was head writer for Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. The press blurb states that Waters has taken a more active hand in this production and chose the songwriters.

I wonder when they'll get round to PINK FLAMINGOS?

Owen and I had a double dose of musicals to end the week off, one small, one big, both Broadway legends, one better than the other.

On Friday we went with Angela to see the new revival of SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM at the Venue Theatre. Somewhere I saw it billed as the 30th Anniversary production but any fule kno it was first staged in London in 1976 at the Mermaid Theatre with the unbeatable cast of David Kernan, Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin and with Ned Sherrin narrating. It transferred to the Wyndhams where it started a run of nearly two years (transferring down the road to the Garrick during that time) before the original cast took it's coals to New York for a run of nearly a year.

The idea for SBSBS came to David Kernan while appearing in the original London cast of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. He thought that Sondheim might be a worthy successor to recent compilation shows such as COWARDY CUSTARD and COLE. It is widely accepted that this show was the one that first made UK audiences see just how gifted a composer and lyricist he was. One has to bear in mind that of the six shows he had composed music and lyrics for when SBSBS was written, only three had been seen in London. There have been quite a few Sondheim compilation shows since but this is the one that has been most revived - last seen at the Donmar in 1986 - even though it has never been re-written to include songs from the seven Broadway shows he has written since.

I wasn't too keen when I heard a revival was due. Although I liked Alasdair Harvey as the vulgar Boatman in the Menier's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE I had not heard of Abi Osman or Josie Walker so was unsure of their abilities. Well I know 'em now and they, I am happy to report, were excellent.

Sondheim's songs offer such rich material to work with that the three performers all displayed a wide range of emotions and styles. Abi Osman's sweet soprano was used to good effect in "Another Hundred People" and "Barcelona" from COMPANY and she later stepped up for a wrenching "Losing My Mind" from FOLLIES - the second in as many weeks as Petula Clark sang it in concert. Alasdair Harvey was great, particularly fine with the ballads "I Remember" from the 1960's tv musical EVENING PRIMROSE , MARRY ME A LITTLE dropped during try-outs of "Company" and the title song of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. He turned in a blistering "Could I Leave You" from FOLLIES but the staging of him singing it at a wincing Abi O pulled the focus away.

By far the star of the evening was Josie Walker, a quite remarkable performer. She mastered the difficult speedy patter of "Getting Married Today" from COMPANY with ease, turned "I'm Still Here" from FOLLIES into a great Eleven O'Clock number - tho' in FOLLIES it's more like a Nine Thirty - and her spare and rueful "Send In The Clowns" from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC had both her and me wiping away a quick tear at the end! Christopher Cazenove handled the narration with his easy charm amid the odd mispronunciation.

Hannah Chissick's production zips along but the Adam Cooper choreography is at times intrusive and seems somewhat unnecessary for this particular show. On the whole tho' I loved it - and of course it made me want to see all the individual shows again particularly GYPSY.

Then onto bigger if not necessarily better things. On Friday we saw the English National Opera's production of ON THE TOWN at the Coliseum. Some time ago I saw a production of this at the Guildhall by the final year students - among them was Alistair MacGowan playing the various club MCs in the second act - and of course I saw the film yonks ago. There are several songs I really like in the score but I've never felt the urge to splash out on a cast recording. I still don't think I want to as I'm afraid this production by the inexplicably well-thought-of Jude Kelly left me a trifle becalmed.

The simple story of three sailors on a 24 hour furlough in New York should, by the very nature of the story, zip along through their frantic attempts to find fun, sightseeing and girls - not necessarily in that order - but this production seemed to be strangely ponderous and took forever to get warmed up. The production was designed by Robert Jones whose central motif was iron girders moving around the stage to form parts of the scenery as well as standing sets trucked on from the sides. In all this I never got a sense of New York which after all is almost a character in the show itself. The choreography by Stephen Mear was certainly effective in the three large dance/ballet numbers but I finally got to thinking that maybe you can have too much of a good thing.
The performances too varied wildly - Caroline O'Connor as the man-hungry taxi driver Hildy, while popular with the audience, was guilty of more shameless mugging than Brixton on a bad night. It's the best part in the show which has been reflected in the previous casting of the role - originally played in 1944 by Nancy Walker (later famous as Valerie Harper's screen mother in RHODA), in the two unsuccessful Broadway revivals since it's been played by Bernadette Peters (1971) and Lea DeLaria (1988). Here O'Connor dominated every scene she was in but not always to best effect.

Unsurprisingly it was just over halfway through the first act when June Whitfield appeared as the soused music teacher that I perked up. Finally a performer who simply inhabited the role without signalling like mad to the auditorium and who seemed totally comfortable on stage. Sadly she and Janine Duvitski as Hildy's flu-ridden flatmate were in very small roles. Of the three sailors the only one who made any impact was Joshua Dallas as the love-lorn Gabey, his nice singing voice and warm personality really selling LONELY TOWN and LUCKY TO BE ME. When it comes to Leonard Bernstein musicals give me WEST SIDE STORY any day. I must say however the orchestra at the English National Opera made the score sound fantastic.

Another day another play... On Friday Owen and I went to see Tennessee William's THE ROSE TATTOO at the Olivier Theatre. I was a bit worried bearing in mind Owen had hated the last two plays we saw that after about 15 minutes he would shriek and run out of the seat but happily he stayed.

This was again a play I had never seen onstage but had read it and of course had seen the 1954 film starring Burt Lancaster and the force of nature that was Anna Magnani in her Academy Award-winning role. The play was last staged in London during 1991 with Julie Walters and Ken Stott and it's relative rarity is probably due to the fact it needs a fairly big cast as well as an actress of particular power who can carry the play for two-and-a-half hours.

Set in the Sicilian community of a village outside New Orleans, Serafina (played here by Zoe Wanamaker) is the proud seamstress wife of a truck driver who is smuggling drugs in his truck for the local mafia. She remains blind to this, only aware he is earning enough to better their circumstances as befits his origins as the son of a Baron in the homeland. She is delighted to be in the early stages of pregnancy and despite a visit from a glamorous woman who shows a particular interest in his photograph and wants a shirt of rose-coloured silk made for her Sicilain lover, Serafina is eager for his return home. Then she hears the news the neighbours are too scared to tell her... her husband is dead, shot by the police chasing his truck.

Serafina spirals into a mournful depression that lasts for three years, rarely leaving the house distancing the women of the town who disapprove of her slovernly appearance and fiery temper and the local priest for having her husband cremated and keeping the ashes. She is also driving her daughter Rosa to despair just as she discovers the joy of love with the sailor brother of a schoolfriend much to Serafina's disgust.

On the day of her daughter Rosa's graduation ceremony Serafina is confronted with the life she has tried to hide from. When she upbraids a customer for being common the woman lashes out with the fact Serafina's husband was sleeping with the glamorous woman who called the night he was killed. Serafina attacks them and the police are called. A cowed Serafina is visited by Rosa and her sailor boyfriend but rouses herself to make him swear in front of a statue of the Virgin that he will not lay a hand on Rosa. But it's when her home is invaded by the macho presence of Alvaro Mangiacavallo, a truck driver hurt in a fight on her doorstep that Serafina realises life may not be over.
It was great to finally see this on stage although it wasn't a perfect production possibly due to the fact that the original director Stephen Pimlott died after only one week's rehearsal and was replaced by Nicholas Hytner. At two and a half hours the production seemed sometimes more than a little padded, there seemed to be lots of extraneous business during scene changes involving children and the village women - to say nothing of a real-life ram, chased around the apron of the stage during two scenes - poor bugger. Some of the other supporting roles were a bit wooly too with vocal coaching seemingly by Blanche from The Golden Girls and it was sad that their was no bigger role for the multi-talented Marilyn Cutts other than as a head-shaking villager. But Zoe Wanamaker was remarkable as Serafina. Seemingly playing against type, she was voluble, comic, broken, loud, tragic and bursting with energy. Although he was truly awful in the Vanessa Redgrave HECUBA at the Albery a few years ago, Darrell D'Silva brought great life and comic vitality to the bumbling Alvaro.

On Thursday Owen and I made the perilous journey to the southern outpost of Croydon to see the one and only Petula Clark.

I am sure the home of Kirsty MacColl - and she couldn't wait to get out! - has many charms but all my trips there have been for entertainment - hard to believe I know - twice at the Warehouse Theatre and the Fairfield Halls once.

The Fairfield Halls sadly isn't the most atmospheric of auditoriums - it's like the years of James Last and Daniel O'Donnell concerts have left a heavy musk of resignation in the air so it's got to be a special performer to liven it up a bit... luckily our Pet has been doing concerts for - WHAT??? - 64 years????? A radio star at ten, she made her concert debut at the Royal Albert Hall the next year - no pressure then!

From an early age I was aware of Petula Clark - we had her number one single SAILOR at home and she was a staple on shows like Radio 2's Family Favourites at Sunday lunchtimes. However I had never felt the urge to see her before - her home counties appeal and difuse career always made her a hard personality to concentrate on. I saw her in the short-lived 1990 American Civil War musical she also co-wrote SOMEONE LIKE YOU at the Strand and squirmed all the way through it and I know I saw her around the same time on one of the innumerable Terrence Higgins Trust benefit nights.

But a few years ago I started listening to my Greatest Hits double cd more closely and apart from knowing the songs almost word-perfectly I found myself playing them over and over again. Perfectly produced for her voice her mid-60s hits DOWNTOWN, I KNOW A PLACE, YOU'D BETTER COME HOME, YOU'RE THE ONE, A SIGN OF THE TIMES, DON'T SLEEP IN THE SUBWAY and my favourite and one of the best British pop singles of the 1960s I COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOUR LOVE are fantastic records which need a serious re-evaluation. So when Owen suggested going to see her the time had come!

An Epsom girl by birth she was duly welcomed like a Homecoming Queen but the audience - a heady mix of suburbanites, feebs and mature homosexuals - were a bit slow at first to give her something good to bounce off of. She certainly proved how diverse her catalogue is. She revisited two major theatre successes, as Mrs. Johnson in BLOOD BROTHERS on Broadway and as Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOULEVARD in London and on a US tour which lasted nearly two years. She also sang Stephen Sondheim's LOSING MY MIND from FOLLIES which made me wonder how good she might be in a production of it. She also sang quite a few songs at the piano which she composed herself, another string to her bow. By the encore of I COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOUR LOVE - of course I sang along! - she was given a rapturous and well-deserved standing ovation.

She has a few more dates in her strangely-plotted tour - Skegness and King's Lynn - then she's back over to the US to play Ohio and Pennsylvania then back in September playing Hayling Island and Cricket St. Thomas!! You can't say she doesn't bring it to the fans. Maybe that's her appeal to her undeniablely large fanbase? Unlike Julie Andrews (younger than Petula by three years) and who also had a similar start in the 1940s as a singing juvenile radio and stage performer, Clark never capitalised on her 1950s film career - possibly due to her father who strictly managed her career up until her marriage in 1961. She did of course star in two major musicals in the late 1960s FINIAN'S RAINBOW and GOODYE MR. CHIPS but these were in the last years of the big-budget studio musicals and could not equal the success Andrews had with MARY POPPINS or THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Maybe that is why she has the aura of being 'our Pet' and not the legendary status her longevity would suggest.