It's not a good week for tawny-heads... it was sad to hear of the death today of Malcolm McLaren.

Love him or hate him, you couldn't ignore him.

It appears he has been ill with cancer for some time but it had been kept quiet.

His ex-partner Vivienne Westwood has said "When we were young and I fell in love with Malcolm, I thought he was beautiful and I still do. I thought he is a very charismatic, special and talented person. The thought of him dead is really something very sad"

From New York Dolls to The Sex Pistols, from Bow Wow Wow to Boy George, from bringing the underground sounds of hip-hop and Vogue house to a wider public to mixing electro beats to classic opera... he had an unerring knack for seeing a new area for discovery then moving on as soon as it was spotlighted.

His confrontational behaviour won him enemies - and it's a shame that his Situationist activities ostracised the very people he had put in the front line, but the world will be a poorer place for his absence.

He had said in January "‘I have concluded that this is the year that pop culture has finally become a crumbling ruin. No matter where I look and listen, the ruins are all I am beginning to care about. I believe in the ruins."

It has crumbled a bit more with today's news.

Amid the ballyhoo over the called election was the news that Corin Redgrave died today aged 70.

Much is made of sister Vanessa's politics and the effect on her acting career but Corin's promising acting career in the 1960s was the one that took the biggest knock as he concentrated more on outside interests, working for the Worker's Revolutionary Party and later taking on the care of his father Michael when his Parkinson's Disease became more advanced.

His early work on screen always seemed a bit colourless, a bit unformed. In the 1970s his screen work slowed down during the decade and in the 1980s he only appeared in two films and two tv projects. But with Michael's death in 1985 and the fading away of the WRP, he found a new interest in performance and slowly started to re-emerge as a strong stage actor - particularly in late-Shakespeare roles - and also carved out a new career as a character actor on screen, ironically usually as upper-class roles. He was of course still a political activist, passionate on the rights of political prisoners and in attempting to get Blair impeached for the Iraq War.

I was lucky to see a few of his stage performances. Among his regular appearances at the Young Vic and National Theatre I saw him at the former in Ibsen's ROSMERSHOLM with Francesca Annis and at the National I am remembering his unfaithful husband opposite Eileen Atkins in HONOUR and the brutal prison warden in the early Tennessee Williams play NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES which won him the Olivier Award and a Tony nomination in New York.

He also appeared at the National in a revival of Pinter's NO MAN'S LAND as a supercilious Hirst and at Greenwich in a revival of Clifford Odets' THE COUNTRY GIRL in the role of the alcoholic leading man that his father had originated in the London premiere in 1952.He also appeared twice with his older sister in recent years - at the National he was a masterly Gayev, pampered and snobbish, opposite Vanessa's Ranyevskaya in Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD and at the Gielgud, they played the combative ex-lovers in Coward's SONG AT TWILIGHT. His performance as Hugo Latymer, a man made to confront the memory of his dead gay lover, was marvellously nuanced and ultimately very moving. It must have been strange to play the role bearing in mind he knew that Coward and Redgrave had been lovers when they were younger.

Corin had been aware of his father's bisexuality for many years and while the secret was still kept when he helped write Michael's autobiography, after his father's death he wrote a memoir of their life as father and son as well as making a powerful Omnibus profile on their relationship. It revealed Corin as a man seemingly at ease with himself and the legacy that had passed to him and this I think informed his performance.
Like his father, his later years were filled with cameos and supporting roles in films - he was particularly effective as the pompous Sir Walter Elliott in Roger Michell's 1995 adaptation PERSUASION and as the icy interrogator in Jim Sheridan's IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER.

Corin had suffered a serious heart attack in 2005, coming a few years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and the last time I saw him - in 2008 at an early evening talk being interviewed with Vanessa about their family on the stage of the Lyttleton Theatre - he was still obviously frail. He appeared for the last time on stage last year at the Jermyn Street Theatre in a play about blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo at the same time as his niece Natasha Richardson was killed. His last screen role was in the television adaptation of Henry James' THE TURN OF THE SCREW which was broadcast last Christmas. Again ironically, Michael had appeared in the 1961 screen version THE INNOCENTS.

Corin's generous and humanitarian spirit will be missed both on and offstage.

April the 3rd was Screen Diva Birthday Central!

Happy birthday to Doris Day - seen here as Ruth Etting in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, one of her greatest films who is 88 today! I hope she had the puff to blow her candles out.

A big ¡Feliz cumpleaños! to the marvellous Marisa Paredes, my second-favorite Almódovar screen siren who was 64 today.

And finally... how on earth is Sally Thomsett 60????

On Monday Owen's period of birthday celebrations finally came to an end with us attending SISTER ACT at the London Palladium that I had bought us tickets for! It was an enjoyable experience to go to the Palladium as I never go there too often as the productions always seem to be more family-orientated - says a lot about me I guess! It also tells you that I enjoyed the theatre more than the show. Oh I enjoyed the two hours-plus traffic of the stage, don't get me wrong... I just found the show vanishing from my mind as I watched it.

The trouble is the source film - okay the musical premise is fine for a story about a group of nuns being taught how to sing by someone hidden in their convent on a witness protection scheme - but the actual plot is thin, thin, thin - and it really can't bear the strain of a musical plonked on top of it. The inconsistencies in the story are too exposed on the wide expanse of the Palladium's stage.It was packed with coach parties and group bookings so the place was well buzzy... which is always a nice atmosphere to enter - just as long as they shut their gobs during the show. Sadly the teenagers behind Owen were not told this. However it is the kind of show that you really don't need to worry about missing any of it's subtleties.

A lot of money has been spent on the show but the script - surprisingly from two producer/writers from CHEERS - is a bit pedestrian. Alan Menkin has showed that he has an uncanny ear for a pop pastiche - most notably in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS as well as his Disney cartoon scores - and here he turns in a couple of 70's old school soul numbers - oddly though only for the male supporting performers: the villain's three henchmen get the best with a Floaters-style LADY IN THE LONG BLACK DRESS, the desk-job cop who secretly loves the heroine sings I COULD BE THAT GUY with blink-and-you-miss-them costume changes into a Travolta white suit and back, and the villain gets the comic WHEN I FIND MY BABY - sadly they, along with the rest of the score, are lumbered with Glenn Slater's uninspired lyrics. The big production numbers are loud, rollicking and well-sung - it's just a shame they are a bit unmemorable - maybe the score duties should have been given to HAIRSPRAY's Marc Shaiman who has a genuine ear for a good, memorable tune.Patina Miller plays Delores, the lounge singer who witnesses a gangland killing and is hidden in a convent, and she has a fierce belt of a voice that does indeed lift her songs to dizzying heights. Sadly her non-singing performance is a trifle samey - I wasn't sure if it reminded me of Tina Turner doing a Bette Midler impression or vice versa. The one attribute she lacked was a genuine warmth.

Sheila Hancock played the role of the Mother Superior with a nice air of testy impatience but ultimately I wearied of her role which ultimately gave her nothing to do but come on and off the stage with a frown and a resigned not-too-funny putdown. I guess I just wanted maybe a LITTLE depth to these roles. To be honest, most of the time I was remembering Hancock was London's first-ever Mrs. Lovett in SWEENEY TODD.

In fact I found myself thinking occasionally of other shows - how Patina Miller would be good as Deena in DREAMGIRLS.... how it's about time we saw DREAMGIRLS on stage... how the aisle would be a good one for Mama Rose to barge down at the start of GYPSY... when are we going to see GYPSY in London again... OH I HAVE TO CLAP AGAIN!!

The cast certainly put their all into the production, a little too much really - there was an ensemble number for the nuns to tell Delores how they joined up which they belted out to the back of the balcony. The next scene has Delores taking them in choir practice - and guess what? None of them can sing. Like... duh.

The sets were lovely however! Whether using the famous Palladium revolve or with the use of sliding screens to give us ever changing vistas of the Convent, Klara Zieglerova's set was a constant pleasure as were Lez Brotherston's absurdly OTT frocks.

The show ended on a high after a rather truncated climax but what I remember most was the total lack of surprise in the show, nothing surprised, nothing original. It was all very well constructed but it was all quite soulless. If I had written this earlier in the week I might have been a bit more generous to it but in the meantime we went to see AVENUE Q at it's new home at the Wyndhams. Everything SISTER ACT labours for, AVENUE Q manages effortlessly.

Genuinely funny with memorable songs across a range of styles and when needed, lip-smacking bad taste as opposed to mere tackiness.

Where SISTER ACT goes out of it's way to make it's line-up of nuns endearing - salty nun who takes to rapping, fat jolly nun, young nun who is not sure of her calling - and failing because they are so paper-thin, AVENUE Q's line-up of felt and fur characters get you rooting for them with no effort at all!

It was good as well to see Delroy Atkinson in the cast of AVENUE Q as the hapless Gary Coleman. He gave a fine performance in the Ray Davies musical COME DANCING at Stratford East as the young Jamaican musician Hamilton and here he delivers in all his numbers.

Let the SISTERs ACT, get yourself to AVENUE Q if you haven't already - or even if you have!

On Saturday afternoon Owen and I made a trip to the Menier Chocolate Factory to see one half of their new season of plays by Willy Russell, SHIRLEY VALENTINE.

This and the accompanying production of EDUCATING RITA of course trail the memories of the big screen versions - neither of which I was particularly keen on. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't all that struck on SHIRLEY VALENTINE the first time I saw it with Pauline Collins back in the day at the Vaudeville Theatre.

I remember laughing every so often but I found the comedy a bit too pat, a bit too sit-com in style, a bit obvious. There was no denying the excellence of Pauline Collins and she certainly gave a real star performance which deservedly won her a raft of awards along with the rare honour of being allowed to immortalise her performance in the film, not always a given.
So I was vaguely curious to see how it holds up 22 years later. Actually I found that history was repeating, while I found the first act still playing like a vaguely amusing sit-com, I was won over by the inspired casting of Meera Syal as Shirley. I had hugely enjoyed her performance in RAFTA, RAFTA at the National a few years ago and was interested to see how she would respond to the challenge of a one-woman show.We saw only her second performance in front of an audience as Shirley so the occasional stumble could be forgiven and she negotiated her way through the first two scenes well.

We all know Meera Syal is an accomplished actress as well as writer so it's no surprise she can multi-task on stage too - during the first scene she cooks as she acts! Yep them are real chips in the deep fat fryer and eggs scrambling away in the frying pan - dangerous smells to have wafting around you with an empty stomach just after lunchtime. A helpful generous squirt of air-freshener was dispensed during the scene change!
Syal nailed the laughs that are to be had in the script but more than anything, she managed to find the sadness in the character and in the moments when Shirley realises that life has reduced her to being just someone's wife and someone's mother, she has you despairing with her. The second half, where Shirley goes to Greece and finds her long-lost self, was by far the best part of the show and Meera Syal rose to the challenge of giving us a character that it was a pleasure to spend a few hours with.
She also coped well with an ominous snap under a raised part of the stage masquerading as a sand dune. Looking at the bottom of her shoe she said "Oops I think I killed something" and successfully rode out her own and the audience's laughter to continue on. A fine example of including the audience in 'on the joke' but also knowing when to get our broken concentration back on track.

Director Glen Walford directed the show's first-ever outing in Liverpool in 1986 so knows the play inside out and charted the character's progress to self-realisation well. Walford is herself a fine performer and I remember well her tough-as-nails performance as a Soho clip-joint manageress in LOVE ON THE PLASTIC at the long-gone Half Moon Theatre.

On Friday it was time to get all unnecessary at the thought of seeing Alphabeat live, this time at the Islington Garage.Their first album was such a lifesaver in the dark days of Borehamwood that they really can do no wrong in my eyes - but the idea of seeing them live always fills me with an odd fear. Maybe I am waiting for the time when I don't 'get' it anymore?

The gig was free entry - thanks to pre-ordering the album through HMV, winning competitions etc. We were told that guaranteed entry was up until 8pm so I made sure we were there nice and early.Actually it was my first visit to The Garage and, despite the lighting turned down to full-on MURK it seemed ok. We stood towards the back by the bar and waited for the doors to be taken off the hinges at 8pm with the crush of first-come, first served entrants. And we waited...

By the time the 'beaters came bouncing on the stage, we had moved down towards the stage and the floor was just over three-quarters full. At least it gave me room to dance but it was a bit depressing that they could not pull a bigger crowd. I concur with what D.A. Harvey had to say later that people are wary of free entry gigs - one always assumes that they will be mobbed so it's easier to stay away.

It wasn't long before I was in my own little Alphabeat world - the new songs sounded so much better live than on the over-tweaked album and I was singing, clapping and dancing along as they cantered through ALWAYS UP WITH YOU, THE BEAT IS..., THE SPELL, D.J. (my favorite track off the new album after THE SPELL), HOLE IN MY HEART, CHESS, WHAT IS HAPPENING and 10,000 NIGHTS. Something however didn't seem to be firing with Anders SG and Stine, a reticence, a feeling of peddling. It was then that Anders announced that they were sorry but they would be curtailing the show as Stine was feeling poorly - NOOOOO!

They did come back after a lengthy chant of AL-PHA-BEAT! and launched into the fabulous, long-intro'd live version of the glorious FASCINATION which had us all singing and riding the Alphabeat love wave. Then it was over... a group bow, waves and leaving the stage with Stine coughing and holding her chest.

It was disappointing but I was so happy to have spent time in their pop heaven. Soon come the Koko gig....

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Yesterday was Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday!Last night he attended a special preview of the show SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM at Studio 54 which stars, among others, Broadway legend Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams, Tom Wopat and TABOO's Euan Morton.
Sondheim joined them on stage for the curtain call and the obligatory singing of Happy Birthday. They were then joined onstage by James Lapine, Sondheim's collaborator for SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, INTO THE WOODS and PASSION.

He announced that the Henry Miller Theatre on 43rd Street will be re-named the Stephen Sondheim Theatre when the current Dame Edna show finishes it's run there.
Finally! This is a fantastic tribute from a community whom his works have sometimes appeared to work counter to the box-office interests of - but who have been enriched by his constant exploration of the form of musical theatre, as we all have.Sondheim also appears to have been blown away by the news....

Last night Owen and I took a walk on the wild side in Waterloo. It's not that difficult to be honest but this was at the National Film Theatre - I refuse to call it the absurd BFI South Bank - to see BEAUTIFUL DARLING, James Rasin's revealing documentary on the Warhol Superstar Candy Darling.

I remember the first time I became aware of Candy.
I had bought John Willis' Screen World at the start of 1975 - it was an American-published annual listing every film that had been released during the year in America - and while browsing through the obituary section at the back I was gobsmacked to see a head & shoulders portrait of a beautiful young blonde actress Candy Darling who had died early in 1974.

Now I knew my filmstars, I bought all the film magazines... how come I had never seen this actress before? Of course my jaw fell open when I read the obit properly and saw that she had been born James Slattery. When one's experience of cross-dressing is based on the obvious bloke-in-a-frock typified by Danny la Rue, the utter femininity captured by Peter Beard's photograph was a revelation.Of course after that I learned that the 'Candy' in Lou Reed's WALK ON THE WILD SIDE was none other than Miss Darling and that, by and large, has been my knowledge of her. So BEAUTIFUL DARLING was quite a revelation in exactly what Candy managed to achieve - and at what cost.

By far the most appealing of the Warhol trans stars, the film charts the early life of James, growing up in the arid normality of Queens and Long Island, caught between a doting mother and an abusive father. Unsurprisingly an escape into the world of 1950's Hollywood led him to a fixation with the Baked Alaska personality of Kim Novak and his role model was set in place, especially after she sent him a heartfelt letter with a signed picture. The template for his look was set...In the film Candy declaims - it would be unfair to call it acting - two speeches of Novak's from PICNIC and JEANNE EAGELS. What I was curious about was how the dark-haired 14 year old Slattery would have reacted to Kim's exceptional performance in Hitchcock's VERTIGO, where her enigmatic and soulful blonde Madeline is revealed to actually have been an invention - especially as her 'real' self is the brunette and streetwise Judy. Reinvention which drives a man to distraction - even if it leads to tragedy.The film certainly tries to provide an in-depth look at the person behind the glamour-on-a-budget persona but ultimately she is a mystery. Differing views are given of her by friends and acquaintances but one suspects that this is viewed through the glow of time and I'm sure that she could be as maddening as any of her colleagues - forever broke, forever on the cadge. Reminiscences are provided by, among many others, Holly Woodlawn, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, Julie Newmar - WOW!, Paul Morrissey, Jayne County, Helen Hanft, Bob Collacello, Taylor Mead and Pat Hackett.
The film also tells of her relationship with Jeremiah Newton, a friend younger than Candy with no noticeable means of support but who appeared to be more grounded than she was and who seems to have devoted his life since her death to keeping her flame alive. The film follows his arranging for Candy's ashes to finally be interred in a quiet cemetery - along with his mother's ashes and with a space for him too. It sounds vaguely creepy but he appears to be a kind soul and his devotion to his friend is touching. Again, one wonders what the years have allowed to be forgotten.After Candy's death Jeremiah went to see her mother who gave him permission to take away the old diaries and possessions she had saved. With promises that he could come and collect the rest, Jeremiah left with what he could carry. A few weeks later he contacted Candy's mother about another visit - to find she had burnt everything. She had been worried about her homophobic new husband finding out about her Jimmy. It never ends....
Luckily Jeremiah had these diaries as they provide the real voice of Candy among the conflicting views of her. Read by Chloe Sevigny, the excerpts provide a surprisingly perceptive voice to the endless photographs - and make you realise how self-aware Candy was and how even during the manic, busy years when she was a New York face, she was aware of the strange dichotomies that the glamour was hiding.Who knows what the world lost when Candy succumbed to Lymphoma all those years ago? What we do know was lost was the inspiration for a few Lou Reed songs, a fascinating persona that was the inspiration for some great photographs taken by the likes of Beaton, Mapplethorpe and Scavullo and an actress who, according to Julie Newmar - WOW! - had the possibility of being nurtured into being a fine performer given the right director and project - Candy had after all appeared in the 1972 debut production of Tennessee Williams' SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS in New York. Indeed this was only one of several off-Broadway productions she appeared in, such as starring in a Jackie Curtis play in 1968 supported by a 25 year-old Robert de Niro!Oddly not addressed in the film is the conjecture that Candy's illness was exacerbated by the dodgy hormones she had taken for years. There is a passing reference to what she used to take but it is lost in the mix.

Towards the end of the film, the rostrum camera pans up some photos of the teenage Jimmy Slattery taken in a photo booth and in the top one he has drawn a full flip hairdo over his own hair... it's undeniably poignant especially coming so soon after the famous photographs of Candy dying in hospital - playing the role till the end.
If the film gets any sort of distribution I would urge you to see this fascinating and thought-provoking elegy to friendship and the courage and tenacity it takes to be your own special creation.

There are some dramatists I seem to veer more towards than others. This struck me in the week when we went to see the latest revival of George Bernard Shaw's MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION at the Comedy Theatre.

In all I have seen three of his plays: MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION, HEARTBREAK HOUSE and SAINT JOAN.
Three out of forty five is not a good batting average. However I do a bit better with film versions as I have seen five of them - CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, SAINT JOAN, THE MILLIONAIRESS, PYGMALION and MAJOR BARBARA.

In truth I have always found Shaw a little 'sticky' - more often than not, the play is not the thing, that hectoring tone is never far away.

However, MRS, WARREN'S PROFESSION is less of a theatrical debating room as it was written in 1893 while he was still finding his theatrical voice. In fact more than anything, it shows the influence of Ibsen on his early writing and the opprobrium that greeted MRS. WARREN was similar to the critical revulsion to GHOSTS or A DOLL'S HOUSE. Indeed, it's first production in New York in 1905 resulted in the entire company being arrested. Since then the play has been staged regularly, constantly providing actresses with two rattling good roles.Vivie is a confident girl, flush from her recent success at Cambridge, whose blue stocking attitude is rocked by her discovery that her comfortable life and college education have been bank-rolled by her mother's profession as a high-class brothel-keeper in several cities of Europe.

Despite the rather ephemeral male characters who are there to show up the hypocritical standards of the male world - and ergo provide most of the humour - the play comes into it's own with the two confrontation scenes between the mother and daughter. Unlike most playwrights, Shaw doesn't allow us the privilege of siding with one against the other - both characters have valid points to make but emotionalism is the downfall of both of them - too much on the mother's side, not enough on the daughter's.What still rings true down the years is the great speech Shaw gives Mrs. Warren to explain her choices in life - which of course meant no choice. Refusing the lead factory that killed her half-sister, the 'respectable' choices are a life in service or as an under-paid barmaid. That is until her long-lost sister Liz appears in the bar dressed to the nines with money to spend.

In the text - and as Brenda Blethyn played it in the Peter Hall production I saw a few years ago - Mrs. Warren reverts back to a cockney accent during this speech but here director Michael Rudman has Felicity Kendal play the scene straight and indeed played thus, and with Kendal's conviction, there is no need for such a device.

I liked Kendal's performance, the only trouble being that in moments when she has to rant and rave, her vocal range doesn't allow for it. However what she does capture well in the final scene is Kitty Warren's obvious maternal emotionalism slowly giving way to clear-eyed anger.

Lucy Briggs-Owen gave no ground as the modern Vivie nicely playing the character down the line with no attempt at making her sympathetic.

David Yelland gave a suave and stylish performance as Sir John Crofts, Mrs. Warren's titled business investor who can fight as nasty as any streetfighter and I also liked Max Bennett as Frank, Vivie's erstwhile boyfriend. A self-confessed slacker, he appears to be there for comic relief but ultimately shows that he is as much of a realist as the others.As I said, Michael Rudman's production only seemed to galvanise itself in the big confrontation scenes while Paul Farnsworth's set, while charming with it's design of faded images of country fields and garden flowers, stopped any momentum due to the length of the scene changes.

That should do me for Shaw for a while!

On Thursday evening I went with Owen and Angela to the minuscule Jermyn Street Theatre to see a new production of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, the legendary 1964 flop musical written by Stephen Sondheim. It was thought-provoking but for all the wrong reasons.To set the scene: Sondheim's first score was for the musical SATURDAY NIGHT which was ready to be staged in 1955 but was scrapped when the leading backer suddenly died. He was then the lyricist for two shows which are now considered classics WEST SIDE STORY in 1957 and GYPSY in 1959 - he had hoped to write the full score for GYPSY but Ethel Merman coalboxed that idea as she wanted a proven composer so Jule Styne was brought on board. Finally in 1962 he wrote music and lyrics for a Broadway show - A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Although it was successful and won the Tony Award for Best Musical, his score was largely overlooked and wasn't even nominated for Best Score. So, teaming up again with Arthur Laurents, the writer of WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY, he started work on ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.Laurent's would-be-satire is set in an American town bankrupted by the corrupt mayoress and her cronies. They fake a 'miracle' - a rock that spouts water - to get the tourists flocking. There is uproar when the inmates of the town's insane asylum or 'Cookie Jar' escape into the crowd while visiting the shrine - a situation made worse when a stranger is assumed to be the new head of the 'Cookie Jar' who wins the public over with his theory that we are all mad and all authority is to be mistrusted. Hapgood is labelled an undesirable by the corrupt politicians and has to fight off the romantic attentions of the mayoress as well as the equally mysterious "Lady From Lourdes" who has come to investigate the miracle.He soon guesses she is in fact the idealistic head nurse Fay who refuses to hand over her 'cookies' to the authorities. Their love is compromised however by Fay's inability to be able to live for the moment, to "whistle". The show ends with the corrupt politicians still in power, the 'cookies' under the control of a new strict doctor, Hapgood exposed as a 'cookie' and Fay finally able to "whistle".

The show's three stars all made their musical debuts - Lee Remick as Fay, Harry Guardino as Hapgood and Angela Lansbury as the corrupt mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper. After a troubled try-out tour - one of the main supporting actors died on stage! - they opened to mostly bad reviews and the show closed after a mere 9 performances. And that should have been that.However Sondheim's score was immortalised by a cast album, recorded as the tradition had it then, on the first Sunday after opening night.
Goddard Lieberson was not only the President of Columbia Records but also produced the cast recordings of the period and although he could have passed on the option to record the show, he felt it was intriguing enough to warrant being kept for posterity. Thank God he did as, although not the full score, it saves the vocal performances of Lee Remick - heartbreakingly wistful in her two ballads - and of course Angela Lansbury who punts her numbers ME AND MY TOWN and A PARADE IN TOWN into greatness.So ANYONE CAN WHISTLE joins Jerry Herman's MACK AND MABEL in being a show that closed early but that has gained it's popularity and a cult following from it's recorded score. However what only becomes evident when you watch these shows in performance is that the book is far-from-memorable.

Such is the case at Jermyn Street - added to a production which seems to misguidedly pursue an artistic vision which the slight book can't sustain.

First the venue. Now I am all for spaces being reclaimed for performance but c'mon - the playing area here is about 7 foot deep so any show that has a large dance element - and there are two long numbers in ANYONE CAN WHISTLE that require a lot of stage traffic - is compromised by the choreography having to be curtailed to a stage the width of a tube train - this was also made glaringly apparent where we were seated at the side of the stage. Although the seats are ok, I was always aware of my surroundings - and by the fact that the Stygian witches have found gainful employment as front-of-house attendants. A smile costs nothing ladies...

Now to the production. The director Tom Littler obviously has a vision as to what the show is REALLY all about which is the rise of fascism. So the show is set in 1930 for no other reason than the town is going through a depression and twice during the second act the show stops dead for no other reason than for one of the 'peasants' to daub an anti-Cora message on the auditorium's wall by torchlight - only to have it converted later into the symbol the ministers are wearing on their armbands - again by torchlight, again s-l-o-w-l-y.

The finale is the real jaw-dropper. Instead of Fay and Hapgood finally embracing while the water from the rock reappears only this time by magic - ergo a happy ending - we have the lights all go red, the music turning into a military beat and Cora and her ministers all appear stern faced and facing us with a clenched-fist martial salute - ergo unhappy end.

Now it's up to Littler if he wants to do a revisionist take on the show - as Sam Mendes then Rufus Norris did with CABARET - but trying to tack this onto Laurents' hopelessly twee book of ham-fisted political satire where the insane are always given the cutesy 'cookie' name and the final round-up of 'cookies' include people such as Agnes Brecht, Brian Kirkegaard, Hyacinthe Engels etc. is really giving it a poe-facedness that beggars belief.

Be warned - this is a production where the music is played by the supporting cast - I am hoping they play the score in so squeaky and Brechian a way due to the general air of misery that the production is aiming for and not due to their inept musicianship. May I state again - I loathe this approach to musical staging - if you can't afford a band then don't do the damn show! It's not a stunning new reinterpretation of the score - it's cheap and half-arsed.
The best performances were given by Issy van Randwyck - once on the books of the actor's agency I worked for - as Cora and Alistair Robins as the venal Comptroller Shub. Rosalie Craig and David Ricardo-Pearce were ok as Fay and Hapgood as were the rest of the supporting cast - apart from the cast-member who plays her character as Catherine Tate's nan who should be ashamed of herself.

This is now the second time I have seen the show - the equally financially-challenged Bridewell Theatre staged it in 2003 with Paula Wilcox singing the role of Cora in the key of Yale but at least they had a band from what I remember.

If anyone wants to do a new production I will see it again if they drastically re-write the unworkable book - otherwise I will be at home with Lee and Angela on my cd player.

In closing, last night I watched Julien Temple's REQUIEM FOR DETROIT? a fascinating and disturbing documentary on the lingering death of what was once America's fourth largest city and is now half-deserted with old car factories literally crumbling to nothingness and being consumed by trees and vegetation - a fine example, Mr. Director, of how with a little imagination this show's setting could have been made relevant to today.