A Confusing Carmen

My week has continued in a pleasantly South Bank-y fashion. Not the National this time, but the Royal Festival Hall, where Jude Kelly is staging Oscar Hammerstein’s Carmen Jones as her big “hello, we’re open again,” show.

The results are muddled to say the least. For a start, the setting has been twiddled with: Hammerstein's original Broadway production relocated the Carmen story to a parachute factory in the US, but Kelly has uprooted it again, swapping this Deep South setting for a vaguely Cuban-looking backdrop. For, um, reasons that never become clear. All that this change of location achieves is that it makes the piece feel rather unanchored and uncertain of itself. The set is also an oddity, sitting awkwardly in the middle of the RFH stage, with the wooden back wall of the hall very visible behind it.

The amplification was all over the place too, making it hard to decipher a lot of dialogue, and, well, I could list more little niggly negatives, but actually the show wasn’t as unsatisfying as I’m making it sound. Though the first half is distinctly shaky, the production was far more cohesive and compelling after the interval. The orchestra were excellent (Kelly has plonked them in a pit in the centre of the stage with the action playing out both behind and in front of them) and there were some standout moments, most notably that of Beat Out Dat Rhythm On a Drum.

Performance-wise there are some excellent voices amongst the large cast. But it’s impossible not to notice that both Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi, as the volatile Carmen, and Andrew Clarke, as Joe, the man she seduces, are eclipsed in terms of charisma and presence by, respectively, Sherry Boone, who plays the heartbroken Cindy Lou, and Rodney Clarke, as the boxing champion Husky Miller. Indeed the only truly bravo-worthy episode of the evening was when Boone sang My Joe, a quiveringly beautiful lament to her one-time lover; it was a quite, quite wonderful moment.

Something To See Here

Hurrah! Finally, I have been to the theatre. To the Menier Chocolate Factory in fact to see Take Flight, a new musical, by John Weidman, David Shire and Richard Maltby Jr, that interweaves the stories of the early pioneers of flying: the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart

The Menier is at its best with musicals, and while this show is far from perfect, it’s vastly more interesting and engaging than their last offering, the lumpy and unfunny All Mouth. Take Flight is about individuals who strive to do the impossible. It looks at what drives people to want to take to the air in an era where, more often than not, they would lose their lives in the attempt (or as the show’s narrator of sorts, the inventor Otto Lillienthal amusingly puts it: go ‘pfft’). Are these people visionaries, or, well, just a bit odd?

The answer appears to be a bit of both. Lindbergh is depicted as so cripplingly shy that flying solo is his only pleasure and the Wright Brothers exist in their own little nerdy world (“don’t have houses, don’t have wives, don’t have prospects, don’t have lives.”). Earhart is an independent spirit, who needs to constantly challenge herself in order to feel alive. She views the idea of settling down with her publisher husband, George Putnam with something akin to dread.

By necessity this is a musical of ideas, rather than visual spectacle. The flying scenes are simulated by the actors sitting on stepladders and jiggling about a bit (and though there’ll be a model plane going spare soon, once The Drowsy Chaperone closes, I doubt they could fit it in the Menier, so stepladders will have to suffice).

With a couple of exceptions the songs are rather samey – there’s little here that will be adding itself to your internal iPod – but the show’s sub-Sondheim style has its moments of wit and inspiration. Sally Anne Triplett’s Earhart is supposed to provide the emotional core of the piece but I was more taken with Michael Jibson’s pallid, introverted Lindberg, unfortunately his character is given little room for development.

Though flawed there is something genuinely uplifting about Take Flight if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s a celebration of what people can achieve, it’s about progress and hope, rather than the fear and apprehension about the future that seems so globally pervasive at the moment.

And, excitement of excitements, (well perhaps that’s overstating it, but still, anyway, good thing) the Menier has finally invested in an air conditioning unit! This will surely gladden anyone who sweated through The Last Five Years there last summer.

To Show Off No More

Hmm, I appear to be Not At The Theatre again. A state I fear will continue until some time next week as, after the blip of Bath, work has returned to its usual state of workiness and also I have relatives visiting from abroad so am using my evenings for a bit of familial catch up.

But none of that is very interesting. So, um *twiddles with jewellery, cleans bit of fluff from keyboard* ooh, I see that The Drowsy Chaperone is to close on August 4, after a run of only a few months. I am rather surprised by this. I did not love this by any measure, but I certainly did not hate it anywhere near as much as some. I thought it was a sweet, frothy piece of theatre – a one joke show for sure, but a joke that kept me reasonably entertained for its running time, which is more than I can say for other things I’ve seen this year. And in Bob Martin’s performance there was a genuine nugget of pathos and humanity at its centre. True, I didn’t think it was destined to last long in London but I find the swiftness with which it is disappearing really unexpected.

With A Song In My Hart

After the bitter wallow of The Pain and The Itch I felt in need of something a little lighter, something altogether more lacking in marital discord and genital scabs for my next theatrical outing. This something turned out to be From The Hart at the New End Theatre, an anthology show that celebrates the life and work of lyricist Lorenz Hart.

The show itself is a simple thing, a breezy run-through of 32 classic Rodgers and Hart songs performed by an engaging five-man cast. It managed to provide some interesting nuggets about Hart's life, whilst acting as a superb showcase of the man's astute and intelligent lyrics.

Hart was barely five-feet tall and gay, and the show suggests that he held a life-long unrequited passion for his very heterosexual creative partner Richard Rodgers. He was also very conscious of his perceived unattractiveness, saying: "If I wanted perfection I had to look outside myself. If I wanted love, I had to invent it." He descended into alcoholism that would eventually contribute to his death from pneumonia at the age of 48. But despite the almost text-book tragedy of his life, the show does not wallow in pathos, far from it; instead it keeps exposition to a minimum and allows the songs to do the talking. And since these songs include Have You Met Miss Jones, The Lady Is A Tramp, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, My Romance and Blue Moon (which Hart apparently hated for being far too lyrically twee and obvious) it's not like you need anything else.

John Guerrasio plays Hart with a cigar in hand, trousers hitched high and a thick New York drawl. His performance holds the show together and gives the songs a necessary framework, however this is an ensemble piece and everyone involved pulls their weight in what is a slight but sweet evening's entertainment.

On an unrelated note, the New End Theatre was apparently originally built as a mortuary, a fact that rather delighted me when I found out, possibly more so than is normal.

A Musical Treat

With a tagline like: “Putting the Gin in Original”, I couldn’t very well not go and see it, could I? So on Wednesday, I did traipse over to the Novello Theatre to see The Drowsy Chaperone, though I was unsure, as someone who, in the main, doesn’t really ‘get’ musicals, whether a musical about someone who is obsessed with musicals would be quite the thing for me. But actually, despite a few reservations, yes, yes it was.

The show begins in darkness with a man's voice bemoaning how theatre can so often let you down; muttering about how so many shows these days are overlong and over-hyped and destined to disappoint (for some reason I found myself thinking of hobbits at this point). And then the lights went up and the man was revealed to us – a slight chap in a baggy cardigan and corduroy slacks, sitting in a cluttered apartment beside a stack of beloved LPs of musicals from the 1920s. One of these albums is for a show called The Drowsy Chaperone, which he proceeds to play while talking the audience through it, scene by scene, song by song, and feeding us tid-bits about the personal lives of the actors (the actors in the made-up musical, that is - keep up) and making little post-modern asides about breaches of the fourth wall.

This show-within-a-show is a slim thing indeed, much concerned with weddings and whatnot. It features a leggy starlet, a toothsome groom, a comedy Italian who appears to be wearing Pepe Le Pu on his head, and of course, Elaine Paige as the gin-happy chaperone of the title. Her part is a surprisingly small one (in every sense – her diminutive stature is gently mocked throughout), she only gets one song to herself.

The real star is the narrator, played by Bob Martin, whose role it was on Broadway and who also co-wrote the show. His is an endearing, warm performance, sweet and affecting, and one that helps considerably in skimming over some of the show's patchier moments. His nerdy enthusiasm for the show he's describing is such that you can't help but share it (even when the show itself seems rather unworthy of his adoration – there’s only one song that sticks at all in the memory: the hilarious Show Off). His portrait of a lonely man, revelling in his obsession with old musicals that he's never seen, only listened to, is also surprisingly poignant – it gives the show a heart, a hook, and keeps you involved.

So, OK, it’s not going to make me become a musical fan of Lisa’s calibre (our flat regularly vibrates to the sound of show tunes and she has seen Wicked three whole times) but I did enjoy myself, despite being slightly mentally traumatised by the American man with the World’s Scariest Facelift, who was sitting a couple of rows in front of me in the stalls.

PS: Every time Ms Paige did grace the stage, the words “Write It Down” kept popping into my head. These chaps have a lot to answer for.

Tradition!

After Tuesday’s Adventures in Noh, Wednesday night saw a return to more conventional West End fare, as I had tickets to see the Sheffield production of Fiddler On The Roof at the Savoy Theatre.

I took my mother, as it’s one of her favourite musicals, so no bribes of wine or promises of young men in tight white sailor suits were required to coax her up out of the suburbs.

Lindsay Posner’s production is a conventional one that retains most of Jerome Robbins’ original Broadway choreography. And if you take it on those terms, if you’re not expecting it to twiddle with the text in any way or do anything particularly new with the material, it makes for an enjoyable evening. Reliable. Solid. (It's perhaps not surprising then that Lyn Gardner liked it not so much). Henry Goodman makes a decent Tevye, though he rather dominates the other cast members and relies a little too much on silly voices and panto double-takes for my liking. Even so both my mum and I enjoyed it considerably – though we both thought they rather fumbled the (much shorter) second half, when the big familiar musical numbers give way to darker ground. The emotional kick that the destruction of the village and the family’s separation should deliver was rather lacking.

Our experience was also slightly tainted by the family behind us, who midway through the (admittedly long) first act began to unpack a Pret a Manger bag stuffed with crisps, flapjacks and fruit pots – a veritable picnic – which they started to consume well before the interval. Now I’ve spent evenings in Richmond Theatre, home of world-class handbag rummagers and ice-cream spoon twiddlers and ‘Oh hello Gladys, I haven’t seen you in months, why don’t you tell me all about your new granddaughter, right here during this pivotal moment of play’, so I understand that complete silence in the stalls is probably asking to much, especially during a big, popular show such as this, but this takes the (Pret A Manger carrot and walnut) cake. There was also a chap a few seats along from me, busy subjecting his girlfriend to a kind of Judaism 101 all through the show: “that’s a mezuzah”, “that’s a prayer shawl”, “look, they’re going to smash a glass now,” which was sort of sweet, but again this went on all through the show, so no, bad. Grumble.

Hot In Here?

If you live in London, you may have seen the posters on the tube. Four podgy cartoon women doing high-kicks beneath the strapline Menopause The Musical. You may have seen them, chuckled a little and/or sneered, and filed them away in the back of your brain as something you will never, ever be going to see ever – which is pretty much what I did too.

But then I found myself thinking that I am a woman and the menopause is something that will one day happen to me, and it isn’t something to be scared of or ignored. In fact maybe it is worth singing about, why not?

I mentioned I was going to my mother, because being, you know, a woman whose 50th birthday was well behind her, I thought she might be interested and want to come with me. However she looked slightly alarmed at the prospect and declared rather too quickly that she already had plans for that night. Even though I know for a fact these plans involved uncorking a bottle of Merlot and watching House, I thought it was telling that she preferred this to watching a musical about hot flushes. Would actual menopausal women want to watch such a thing?

The answer is yes, oh yes, they would. I haven’t seen such predominantly female crowd since I went to see Dirty Dancing. There were only about three men in the auditorium and I wondered what they had done wrong recently to warrant being dragged along to this.

The show has been a huge global success, and since 2001 it has played in cities all across America and Australia; now it has arrived in London, to the Shaw Theatre, which has to be one of the most charmless venues in London, tucked away in the Novotel near Euston Station – an utterly anonymous space. This did not bode well. The set was cheap-looking and covered with Marks and Spencers logos in the most overt display of corporate sponsorship in the theatre that I’ve ever come across.

The show itself consisted of four intentionally stereotypical women, a housewife, a business women, an aging actress and a Per Una wearing hippy type, singing familiar songs from the 1950s and 60s that had been slightly reworked to include references to night sweats and elasticated-waist trousers. And that was pretty much it. For two bloody hours. And yet the majority of the audience loved it, they lapped it up, to the point where their enthusiasm became a little infectious.

But after a while I found myself becoming quite dispirited with the whole thing. This was the laughter of recognition, not anything more. The message was that, yes, women have hot flushes and it can be embarrassing but it can also be quite funny, however there were no ideas to engage with beyond that. It was patronising and simplistic, pretty damn dismal in fact. The emotional impact of the menopause, of seeing society’s view of you as a woman shift as you got older, was not really touched upon at all and any tricky issue, like HRT or loss of libido were also brushed aside. Instead the production veered dramatically in the other direction with a penultimate number which involved Su Pollard singing a song that was in essence an ode to wanking herself off (now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d type).

I felt disappointed both for, and a little bit in, the other women in the audience, yet in the main they seemed to be loving it, with a large number dashing on stage to join in with the final dance number. I left the theatre feeling more than a little confused, distinctly unclean and oddly desirous of an M&S sandwich.

Feed Me, Seymour

Met Sarah B after work on Thursday for a large, much-much-much-needed glass of Merlot and a hasty spot of dinner before heading to the Duke Of York’s Theatre to see Little Shop Of Horrors.

This is another transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory who sent Sunday In The Park With George to the West End last summer. The Menier is also the place where Laura and I slowly expired from heat exhaustion during a sauna-like performance of The Last Five Years, but I'm learning not to hold that against it. I don't hold grudges, no, I swallow my hate, I bottle it safely away. Far healthier.

Anyway their version of Little Shop itself was great fun, slick and witty, silly yet endearing. If you don't already know the play, it's based on a 1950s B-movie, a Roger Corman film about one of life's losers, a weedy chap called Seymour, who works in a florist - and the killer plant that promises him good fortune in exchange for food (and we're not talking Baby Bio here.) The Menier's production is hugely entertaining, hitting just the right kitsch tone, and boasts fantastic performances from everyone involved, particularly Sheridan Smith as Seymour's breathy love-interest Audrey, who managed during one number, to simultaneously sing and weep - quite a difficult thing to pull off, I’d imagine.

However I did think the production's centre-piece, the blood-thirsty plant Audrey II, - though superbly voiced by Mike McShane - was a bit of a let down. I remember a lot of talk, when the show opened at the Menier, of all the money they’d spent on it, changing the design, making it properly scary, so how come it still looked like a big green dustbin with teeth? Was that really the best they could come up with?

The only new additon to the cast since the transfer, is Alistair McGowan, the long-faced impressionist guy of the telly; he was great fun as Audrey’s vile dentist boyfriend Orin (a part memorably played by Steve Martin in the 1980s film version). A minor prop malfunction, in the scene where he has Seymour in the dentist’s chair, almost caused him to corpse – but he pulled himself together quickly and fortunately it’s the kind of show where the odd involuntray giggle just adds to the charm. The shoo-wopping three-girl chorus who sing back-up on all of the songs were also superb, perhaps the best thing in it. Not only did they have great voices but spot-on comic timing as well. So, yes in short, 'twas a brilliant evening, very entertaining – and the perfect antidote to a monumentally crappy day at the office.