42nd Street - Review

Sadler's Wells Theatre, London

*****

Music by Harry Warren

Lyrics by Al Dubin

Book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble

Directed by Jonathan Church

Nicole-Lily Baisden and the company of 42nd Street

Arriving at Sadler’s Wells for a month’s residency, Jonathan Church’s touring production of 42nd Street is an immaculately delivered five-star delight.

The fabled story of chorus girl Peggy Sawyer who gets her lucky break in a Broadway show when leading lady Dorothy Brock sustains an equally unlucky break to her ankle, is as old as the hills and as corny too. For such a yarn to suspend the disbelief of a hackneyed modern audience demands perfection from its performers - and Church, with choreographer Bill Deamer does just that, coaxing magical voice and footwork from across his company.

Nicole-Lily Baisden is Peggy. Outstanding in the recent Barbican-based Anything Goes, Baisden’s star now shines even more brilliantly. She captures Peggy’s initial frail vulnerability, and with a combination of her beautiful singing and mesmerising tap-dance skill, takes the audience with her on her fairy-tale journey.

Adam Garcia headlines as Julian Marsh, the demanding director of Pretty Lady, 42nd Street’s ‘show within a show’. Garcia’s musical theatre credentials are impeccable and he is compelling in both song and dance. As the villain of the piece (albeit with an ultimate heart of gold) Ruthie Henshall is similarly outstanding as Dorothy Brock with Henshall's singing, notably in I Only Have Eyes For You, proving a spine-tingling treat.

The shows comedy lines demand assured timing and confidence in their delivery. Les Dennis leads the line of featured performers carrying this responsibility and although Dennis’ remarkable background in stand-up and TV comedy gives him a raft of experience, he is a magnificent trouper who never overshadows Anthony Ofoegbu and Josefina Gabrielle in their contributions to the show’s gag content. Gabrielle also delivers moments of sung perfection in her role.

This is a production designed for the road with Robert Jones’ sets and Jon Driscoll’s projections providing a fine backdrop to the evening. If there is one small flaw it is that the ensemble is smaller than the script demands - but if the producers have understandably had to cut back on quantity, they score full marks for their show’s quality. The show’s music however sounds as if no expense has been spared with Jennifer Whyte’s 14-piece band making glorious work of Harry Warren’s classic melodies.

Shuffle off to Sadler’s Wells or catch the show touring until the Autumn. Either way, this take on 42nd Street makes for a fabulous night at the theatre.

Runs until 2nd July and then on tour

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Ken Ludwig In Conversation

Ken Ludwig

Crazy For You opens this month at Chichester Festival Theatre. The musical delivers a fine evening of song and dance and drawn from the composing genius of George and Ira Gershwin, one could be forgiven for thinking that the show is a classic hailing from Broadway’s Golden Age. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. While the songs are in part drawn from the Gershwin’s 1930 show Girl Crazy, it fell to Ken Ludwig (who co-conceived the musical with director Mike Ockrent) to create the book for Crazy for You some 60 years later. The show's Broadway opening in 1992 garnered 3 Tony Awards including Best Musical, with similar honours in the Oliviers a year later on its West End transfer.

Ludwig has been very busy at Chichester recently. His adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express has only recently closed at the Festival Theatre after achieving a slew of rave reviews from across the national press. He is back in Sussex again for Crazy For You and I caught up with him in a break from rehearsals to talk about these remarkable productions.

Charlie Stemp and Carly Anderson rehearsing Crazy For You at Chichester

Ludwig told me how Crazy For You was created. “Back in the early 1990s, a businessman called Roger Horchow called me out of the blue. He had invested in a couple of Broadway shows, but had always wanted to do Gershwin. He called me because I had a show on Broadway at the time called Lend Me A Tenor that was the only real comedy on Broadway at the time and he had really loved it. He told me that he had acquired the rights from the Gershwin Estate and would I write an adaptation of Girl Crazy? 

I told him that I couldn't! Girl Crazy has a terrible book. In fact it’s hardly a book at all, more a bunch of blackout sketches with some glorious songs in it: Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm, But Not For Me. So it had an amazing score, but it was hardly a story at all.

Girl Crazy was loosely about an East Coast guy heading West. Well, I ended up keeping that bit of the story so that I could use a couple of the songs as book songs, like Biding My Time and Could You Use Me, but otherwise I threw it all out and started from scratch. I came up with a story, not entirely unlike Lend Me A Tenor, if you think about it, which is someone who in their heart wants to be in show business, but can't quite make the leap. In the case of Lend Me A Tenor, it’s somebody who is an assistant to a producer. In the case of Crazy For You, he comes from a banking family. His parents force him to be a banker, but he just wants to tap dance and that's Bobby in Crazy For You. So, I wrote the idea, came up with the story, and then Mike Ockrent joined in, we found Susan Stroman to choregraph and we built the musical.”

The company rehearsing Crazy For You at Chichester

I asked Ken to tell me more about Susan Stroman. “Well, Stroman is remarkable. She started out as a choreographer, and was rightly acclaimed for Crazy For You and went onto do other Broadway shows. And then, late in the day, she started directing. She and Mike Ockrent who directed Crazy For You got married and they were doing some shows together, and in fact were hired to do The Producers together, when Mike contracted leukaemia and tragically died so young. And then she took over The Producers and directed that on her own.”

And of course it is Stroman who will be making her much anticipated debut at Chichester this year, as she directs and choreographs this revival of Crazy For You!

Chichester hosted the UK premiere of Murder On The Orient Express earlier this year before a planned transfer to Bath. I asked Ken about his ingenious adaptation of the Agatha Christie classic.

“The Christie Estate came to me and said, "We'd like you to take any one of her novels and put it on stage.  I was very flattered and I said, "Of course I'd be honoured to do it." I chose Murder On The Orient Express without rereading it. I hadn't read it in years. I'd seen the great (1974) Albert Finney movie, but I knew the title was such an iconic title. And I thought, well, in itself it's so romantic, the title's romantic and it's exotic and ought to translate to the stage well.

Then I read the novel soup to nuts and realized this is going to be tricky. It's all virtually, all on the train. So to dramatise it, to make it fun to watch on stage and exciting, and a cliff hanger, I changed two things from the novel.

Firstly, I made the murder happen a great deal later in the piece than it is in the book. If you think in a way that's counterintuitive, as it's the murder that gets the story started, but it's really not. As a dramatist I wanted us to meet the characters and get invested in all those characters on the train, so that we cared about who did it, because until the very end w don't know who did it. Jonathan Church, who directed it so superbly, turned to me at one point and said, "Ken, the murder isn't happening till 45 minutes into the play, are we going to be okay?" And I said, "Well, just hold tight. I think we'll be all right." And it ends up being just that and it works.

The other major change I made is that in the book there are 12 suspects and someone even makes a remark about that and says, "Oh 12, like a British jury." I cut that down to eight suspects because there were just too many people to get to know in the compressed stage time.”

One of the standout features of the play was the set design, and I asked Ken for his thoughts on seeing a play that is, for the most part, set on a train stranded in the Alps, physically brought to the stage.

“When the play first ran in the States there was a beautiful set by Beowulf Boritt who in fact I've worked with several times since, and he's doing Crazy For You here at Chichester now. For the play here, a whole different concept emerged between the two geniuses that I had to work with, who were Jonathan Church and his designer Rob Jones. 

Rob had conceived a whole imaginative way to view the train with the locomotive at the back of the stage and pallets that came on and danced around the stage. And, as you saw, they formed the dining car and then formed the car with all the bedrooms. And so we had to imagine ourselves into the setting in a different way. 

It was all in our mind seeing the pieces of it come together and it was, I have to say, the most beautiful, dramatic set I think I'll ever have in my life. And it helped spur me on to write the new pieces, parts of it that I did, because it was so glorious. Rob’s design, from the early design-box stage, made me think about how that would affect Poirot and the big entrances for Mrs. Hubbard, who is very flamboyant American, and all the characters, little Greta Olson, who's afraid of her own shadow. And it inspired me to rethink the dramatic way to tell the story.

Henry Goodman as Hercule Poirot

And of course Henry Goodman (as Hercule Poirot) was a delight. I have known of Henry’s work for a long while and I find his attention to detail is remarkable. He thinks through the character in depth from the beginning of the play to the end of the play. So when we start working, even when we started on the first day and he was practising the first scene, he knows where he wants to end up emotionally, because he's thought about it so much. He's a real intellect. And his skillset is incredible. So he brings both this remarkable intelligence to every role he does and then is able to embody it, because he has such a great set of acting skills and such a good voice too.”

Crazy For You commences previews in the Chichester Festival Theatre on 11th July, where it runs until 4th September. For tickets click here.  

Murder on the Orient Express - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Agatha Christie

Adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig

Directed by Jonathan Church

Henry Goodman

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH HENRY GOODMAN HERE

Murder on the Orient Express is one of the most beloved murder mysteries of recent decades. Committed to the screen 4 times and with its grand scenes of Istanbul, steam trains, and treacherous mountain blizzards all framing a cast of glamorous characters from across Europe and the USA,  the romance, intrigue and above all deception have long combined to give Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth, the challenge of his detective career.

Equalling that challenge is the task that Chichester’s cast and creative team have faced in taking their audience on a two-hour journey across the Alps to watch as Henry Goodman’s Poirot cracks the case. And much as Poirot stylishly delivers his unravelling of the train’s gruesome murder, so too has Jonathan Church’s ensemble delivered an outstanding interpretation of this ripping yarn.

Ken Ludwig’s adaptation has skillfully filleted Christie’s novel into a two act play that threads the essential elements of the plot into a well crafted tale. There are melodrama and shocks a’plenty with just a hint of wit and humour too, all thrown in with some serious moral anguish in the endgame. Pure theatrical class.

The audience’s disbelief is first suspended by Robert Jones’ stunning set. Like Steven Spielberg’s shark in Jaws, the eponymous steam train is kept out of sight for quite a while as with an ingenious use of sliding arches and simple scenery, Jones transports us to Istanbul for the story’s opening. Then, as the journey commences and those brilliant arches start to slide the locomotive is revealed, a glorious fusion of steel, smoke and light that frames the murderous tale. It is not often that a scene change receives its own round of applause - Jones’ work is sensational and enhanced by Mark Henderson's lighting, the coup de theatres are magnificent.

Many actors have waxed that famed moustache and by his own admission Goodman acknowledges that he “is standing on the shoulders of giants” as he tackles literature’s most famous Belgian, but he unquestionably makes the role his own. On stage for virtually the entire show and with an accent deliciously cod, Goodman probes his suspects with a combination of sensitivity and vigour that is never less than convincing. When the play’s finale sees him wrestling with his conscience, he commands our sympathy. With two Olivier Awards already under his belt alongside countless other nominations, Goodman should garner another gong for his Poirot.

His fellow passengers are all delightful caricatures. With numerous suspects to flesh out in 2 hours, there is not a lot of time to allow each character much depth. The skill therefore in bringing them into relief, as with all drama, lies in the brilliant economies of Ludwig’s script blended with the company’s fine acting and some absolutely gorgeous costume work and millinery (with a shout out here for Sean Barrett’s stunning hats, created for Joanna McCallum’s equally stunning Princess Dragomiroff). Sara Stewart as Helen Hubbard and Laura Rogers as Countess Andrenyi were perhaps the most memorable of the bunch, but there is fine work all round.

Murder on the Orient Express is unpretentious, brilliantly crafted theatre of the finest standard. The horror is not too bloody, nor the scares too scary nor its arguments too complex, with Adrian Sutton’s music (albeit not as majestic as Richard Rodney Bennett’s 1974 movie score) providing an enchanting backdrop to the intrigue.

Chichester have a hit on their hands that deserves a London transfer. Unmissable!

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH HENRY GOODMAN HERE

Runs until 4th June, then tours to Theatre Royal, Bath

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Singin' In The Rain - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

   

                Kevin Clifton, Adam Cooper and Charlotte Gooch

Music by Nacio Herb Brown

Lyrics by Arthur Freed

Book by Adolph Green and Betty Comden

Directed by Jonathan Church

One of the two classic tales that defined the impact of the ‘Talkies’ on Hollywood (the other of course being Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard) Singin’ In The Rain is an unashamedly joyous celebration of talent in both song and dance.

The story is an age-old fable. Silent movie Lina Lamont finds herself overtaken by the trend towards sound recording, and where Lamont may have the looks of a screen-goddess, her voice of course is an unbearable screech.

It takes the genius of Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown to spot the hidden talents in studio-hand Kathy Selden and as everyone knows, the dubbing skills of Selden go on to save the day with Selden herself being finally recognised for the vocal star that she is.

The story is simple, timeless and an endearing tribute to the triumph of good over evil. The show’s title of course derives from Lockwood’s deliriously happy discovery of both Selden’s voice and his own feelings for her – and while the title number has little impact upon the story’s arc it is a Broadway and Hollywood classic and here, under Jonathan Church’s deft direction, the front rows of the Sadlers Wells’ stalls are appropriately drenched in watery appreciation

Church and his choreographer Andrew Wright have reunited to recreate their 2011 Chichester triumph and they have been given a platinum cast to work with. Even more so in the fact that ten years ago it was Adam Cooper who starred as Don Lockwood and it is Cooper who returns to Sadler’s Wells.  With Kevin Clifton and Charlotte Gooch  as Cosmo and Kathy respectively, the trio are an unbeatable combination. Vocals and footwork are breathtaking in their pinpoint accuracy with even Faye Tozer’s squawky Lamont proving a further flawless joy.

For an evening of unqualified delight, this production of Singin’ In The Rain has to be one of the best shows in town.

Runs until 5th September, then tours, with tickets available here

Mack and Mabel - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman
Book by Michael Stewart
Directed by Jonathan Church

Anna-Jane Casey leads the company in a spectacular Tap Your Troubles Away

There is much about Jonathan Church’s Mack and Mabel at Chichester that displays the very best of modern British musical theatre talent. Amidst a tale of humour and tragedy, the production frames a collection of performances and creative work, much of which is flawless.

Michael Stewart’s book, revised by his sister Francine Pascal, famously tackles a complex history. Telling the true story of the love between movie director Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand, the star he discovered, is a challenge. The show charts Normand’s rise from deli delivery girl, to the heights of Hollywood fame, before an early death hastened by addiction and scandal – and all played out against a collection of numbers that blend melancholy with the madcap farce of Hollywood’s silent slapstick golden years. It is a combination of tableaux that has longed proved a challenge to its (stage) directors.  

Michael Ball plays Sennett in a performance that imbues the Hollywood director’s vision and ruthless singleness of purpose with a magnificent stage presence and masterful vocals. Ball is arguably unmatched in his abilities – and his range: imperious in Movies Were Movies and perceptively tender in the beautifully crafted I Won’t Send Roses defines his place in the musical theatre pantheon.

Broadway import Rebecca La Chance makes her UK debut as Mabel – and it’s a tough ask. If her performance lacks the impish defiance that her opening number Look What Happened To Mabel demands, she makes up for it with a powerfully scornful Wherever He Ain’t. La Chance’s work in act 2 impresses as she captures Normand’s capricious management of fame alongside a drug-fuelled decline. Her final solo Time Heals Everything (set in the 1920’s and with La Chance clad as a gorgeously shimmering flapper – great design work from Robert Jones) offering a scorching torch-song in its interpretation.

Stephen Mear’s choreography is as inspired as it is ingenious. The little touches that include a trio routine that kicks off Wherever He Ain’t are a treat – whilst the big ensemble numbers all impress. Hundreds Of Girls wittily combines projections with dance (as well as some eye-watering work with beach balls) whilst Hit ‘Em On The Head weaves a Keystone Cops yarn into a routine whose technical excellence suggests David Toguri’s ground-breaking work at the National Theatre more than thirty years ago.

Act two’s penultimate number Tap Your Troubles Away has long been the show’s big dance routine and in a revelatory move, Mear intricately links Normand’s addictions with the flamboyant splendour of his  tap-dancing company. It’s all black waistcoats / basques and red shoes, led by the jaw-dropping Anna-Jane Casey’s Lottie whose feet become a blur of brilliance. Mark Inscoe’s William Desmond Taylor is an elegantly competitive cad to Sennett, whilst Jack Edwards’ Fatty (Arbuckle) similarly adds a convincing layer.

Robert Scott conducts his 15 piece ensemble (heavy on brass and reeds) gorgeously – setting the scene with one of the finest overtures in the canon.

The show runs until September before embarking on a nationwide tour. With Jerry Herman’s classic melodies, Michael Ball’s peerless performance and Stephen Mear’s dance work it’s well worth catching. 

Runs until 5th September and then tours.

To read my review of Mabel's Wilful Way, a Mack Sennett two-reeler and watch the film itself on YouTube, click here

Taken At Midnight - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, Londom

****

Written by Mark Hayhurst

Directed by Jonathan Church

Penelope Wilton

Taken At Midnight is a carefully researched commentary on Germany during the early years of Hitler’s Chancellorship. The story based on true events, plays out through the eyes of Irmgard Litten whose lawyer son Hans, in 1931, successfully prosecuted Hitler for the thuggish pre-election behaviour of his Nazi Brownshirts. The play opens with Hans’ arrest two years later, on the night that the Reichstag was burned. Hitler is now in power and the arrest is revenge.

Penelope Wilton is Irmgard Litten in a performance that defines her as one of the greats. Committed to liberating her son from being drawn ever deeper into the belly of the Nazi beast, her journey is one of remarkable devotion. She plays the most lovingly committed of mothers, a woman who is simultaneously proud of her son’ principled resistance to the Nazis and at the same time desperate for him to betray his beliefs and lie to the regime, to save his skin. The paradox of her drama could not be more stark nor brutal and Hayhurst gives one of our finest actresses some of the most richly structured dialog of recent modern plays. Wilton’s performance alone demands that the play be seen.

As Hans, Martin Hutson is heartbreaking in his defiance. His performance sees his character be degraded from a presentable professional man to a concentration camp inmate wearing both the yellow star of the Jews, (his father was Jewish) and the red triangle of the political prisoners on that terrible striped camp uniform. From an able bodied man sustaining his beatings, through to a cripple, body broken yet mind intact, Hutson movingly plays out Litten’s destiny.

Hayhurst tells us about much of the everyday detail of the Nazi regime. John Light is Dr Conrad, the Gestapo captain responsible for Litten’s arrest and subsequent incarceration. His clinical detachment in executing his orders is as chilling as would be expected, but what disturbs even more is the chance meeting between him and Irmgard one sunny afternoon in a local park. Out of uniform the charming, chivalrous and refined Conrad offers Irmgard an ice cream, making for a powerful exposition of how the Nazi regime had become so woven into much of German society. Away from the park-bench though, Conrad's teeth are bared when later in the play he venomously expresses his hatred of the half-Jewish Hans. In another gem of a performance, David Yelland's Lord Clifford Allen economically represents Britain’s moral vacuity during its pre-war period of German appeasement.

There is no happy ending to Taken At Midnight, with Hayhurst’s work being historically brilliant even if a little pruriently melodramatic in some of the early torture scenes. The acting is riveting and Church's direction of this Chichester Festival Theatre production is on point throughout. Top notch theatre.

Runs to 14th March 2015

Amadeus

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer
Directed by Jonathan Church

Rupert Everett as Antonio Salieri

Chichester’s newly restored Festival Theatre is sumptuously graced with chandeliers and a baroque arch. It's a lavish touch from designer Simon Higlett that sets the scene for an exhilarating production of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's intriguing commentary upon Vienna’s Kappellmeister Antonio Salieri whose jealousy of the genius of his young contemporary Mozart tormented the Italian composer throughout his life.

This production is one of those rare trinities of excellence in writing, performance and stagecraft. Rupert Everett, barely offstage throughout, plays the tormented Salieri who we first encounter  infirm and at the end of his days, dementedly raving that his devious machinations some 35 years earlier had led to Mozart's untimely death, impoverished and racked with disease. Everett seamlessly slips between the years of his now senility and the conspiratorial times of his younger self. His is a maestro of mediocrity in a performance that carries the DNA of a latter day Francis Urquhart, cross bred with Shakespeare's Claudius and Iago. One feels no sympathy for Everett’s philanderous Latin, yet we are awed at the persona that he creates.

He has his match in Joshua McGuire's Mozart. Shaffer's research is meticulous, portraying the gifted Austrian as a scatologically obsessed immature with behavioural difficulties. McGuire captures the manic frustration of Mozart's genius, being so bafflingly snubbed at every turn, though as the narrative unfolds we see his resolve harden as he suspects Salieri as the phantom of his operas. McGuire skilfully references the complexities of Mozart’s relationship with his father and in some fabulous scenes defines his desperate, even if deceitful, love for his ever tolerant wife Constanze (another standout performance from Jessie Buckley). Alongside, Jonathan Church assembles a stellar supporting cast that includes Simon Jones who subtly suggests the well-meaning yet inept buffoonery of Austria’s Emperor Joseph II, with John Standing as his shrewd yet meddling censorious courtier Count Rosenberg.   

The re-constructed auditorium is a tribute to all that is excellent in modern theatre. The sightlines and acoustics are perfect, whilst the semi-circular thrust, stepped for this production, allows for an exciting 360° use of the space. Church draws upon a world-class team of creatives for the show. Fotini Dimou's costumes are a confection in themselves that would truly win Salieri's discerning approval, whilst Danuta Barszczewska's wig work is faultless. Amadeus is nothing without its musical backdrop and Matthew Scott’s musical direction (and wonderful fortepiano playing) together with Stephen Mear’s subtly staged choreography complete the journey back to the Age of Enlightenment.

Amadeus is, yet again, a Chichester show worthy of a London transfer or a wider tour. Church and his company provide an unmissable interpretation of one of the 20th century’s greatest English plays.

Runs until 2nd August 2014