Hercules - Review

Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London

**

Music by Alan Menken

Lyrics by David Zippel

Book by Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah

Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw

Luke Brady

Rarely does a show descend from the pantheon of animated Hollywood class to the underworld of live-action West End mediocrity, but so it is with the legend of Disney’s Hercules that sees a gloriously witty movie regress into an evening of overpriced tedium.

It is hard to know where to rest the blame for this Herculean disappointment. Does it lie with Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah for their luke-warm, cliche-riddled book? Or with Casey Nicholaw for sloppily helming an overly camped-up show that is riddled with wardrobe and prop malfunctions? Or with James Ortiz and Dane Laffrey’s designs whose clunky depictions of beasts and monsters appear to have learned nothing from the puppetry genius of The Lion King? Or with Jeff Croiter’s lighting design that incredibly (for a stage as large as Drury Lane’s) dispenses with follow-spot operators, relying instead on pre-programmed lighting plots that frequently fail to illuminate their subject? 

Mostly the acting is strong - Luke Brady goes the distance in the title role, looking and sounding dutifully divine. Mae Ann Jorolan as Meg makes fine work of her solo numbers, while the five Gospel-infused Muses are a blast. Trevor Dion Nicholas reliably turns in a decent shtick as Phil, Hercules’s guide on his path to godliness.

The biggest casting disappointment however lies in Stephen Carlile’s Hades. James Woods’ 1997 voicing of Disney’s original Hades was an inspired delivery of the sharpest satire and to be fair, a devilishly tough act to follow. Carlile emasculates this most infernal of bad-guys, reducing him to a poorly performed pantomime villain. 

Alan Menken’s two strong compositions, Go The Distance and Zero to Hero support act one. The second half offers nothing that’s hummable, in a show that (almost) takes Disney’s Hercules from hero to zero.

Booking until 28th March 2026

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

The Prince of Egypt - Review

Dominion Theatre, London

**

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Book by Philip LaZebnik

Directed by Scott Schwartz

Luke Brady

The Bible has not always had an easy relationship with musical theatre. Two notable exceptions being Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ, Superstar and that  perennial favourite Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Each of these casts a contemporary take on the scripture and features a through-sung score. A modern oratorio. At about the same time US composer Stephen Schwartz gave us Godspell, a whimsical take on the Gospels that proved just as successful and gave us memorable hits such as God Save The People and Day By Day. What Godspell lacked was staying power and major revivals have been few and far between. His musical Children Of Eden, also based on episodes from the Bible, failed to take off in 1991, despite development from the RSC.

A few years later, Schwartz scored a  hit with an animated version of the story of Moses from DreamWorks Animation, The Prince Of Egypt. It’s probably nowhere near the classic movie that the publicity would have you think, despite the noble line-up of actors providing the voices.  However Schwartz hit pay-dirt with the Academy-award winning anthem When You Believe, recorded for popular release by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

Move forward another 20 years and Schwartz has shifted the story to the stage, adding further musical numbers to the score and a book by the author of the original screenplay Philip Lazebnik. All the familiar key points are in place. There are bulrushes, a baby in the basket and a burning bush. Lazebnik’s storytelling technique manages to cram many plot points into a relatively short running time. Yet for all this speed it still manages to drag, only ever really springing to life in the musical numbers. And boy, do we pray for some of the whimsy that made Godspell so appealing in its day. Instead we get a story that’s both too leaden for family audiences and too simplistic for adults.

Kevin Depinet’s set design works on certain levels, with the projections and variegated screens capturing the burning desert or the majestic temples of the Nile with some sense of scale. However bearing in mind that this is a story steeped in mysticism and miracles, there’s very little magic on show. Sean Cheesman’s relentless choreography offers us the Twelve Plagues of Egypt via interpretative dance, which would be fine if this was Sadler's Wells or the Union Theatre. I personally want a little spectacle from a West End production, especially as the hand of God was supposed to be behind it. Instead we get polystyrene building blocks and a couple of magic tricks that wouldn’t impress a ten-year old, let alone a Pharaoh. To add to the disconcerting simplicity of the special effects and set, Ann Hould-Ward's costumes managed to look both cheap and unsettlingly anachronistic.

Schwartz has padded out the original with ten additional numbers, none of which really have the impact of When You Believe. The song Dance To The Day is given to Christine Allado's Tzipporah the captured Midian to establish her pride and independence. This turns out to be one of the best numbers in the show, proving a highlight for Allado and a shoo-in for this year’s Eurovision entry. Thankfully a woefully underused Alexia Khadime as Miriam and Allado do justice to When You Believe but it’s a long wait for this edifying anthem.

It’s good to see Gary Wilmot back in the West End in trousers, rather than his regular star turn as Dame at the Palladium panto. Wilmot has a natural warmth on stage and his musical number as Jethro, offers a little light relief from the rather worthy, soul-searching anthems that populate the score. The focus of Lazebnik’s story is, understandably, Moses played by Luke Brady and more pointedly his relationship with Rameses, the boy who would be Pharaoh, played by Liam Tamne. There’s oddly little chemistry between the two, although this may be down to Lazebnik’s script, which struggles to fashion a credible tone and ends up as conflicted bromance. Brady and Tamne each get to strut their stuff vocally, both proving they have quality singing voices but there’s little here to help establish them as West End leading men.

Schwartz appears to have added to his collection of problematic Bible-based musicals with The Prince Of Egypt, but director Scott Schwartz’s cheap and often confused looking production doesn’t actually help matters. It cuts too many corners, dumbs down Moses’ relationship with God and beefs up the one with Rameses. Who knows, in years to come a fringe theatre may manage to hit the right tone. In the meantime, this production could do with a little more creative flair and re-write.

Booking until 31st October

Reviewed by Paul Vale

Photo credit: Matt Crockett

Sweeney Todd - Review

Adelphi Theatre, London

*****

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Hugh Wheeler

Adaptation by Christopher Bond

Directed by Jonathan Kent

Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball

Sweeney Todd at the Adelphi Theatre is a rare production these days. Having received critical acclaim in Chichester in 2011, the producers brought it to the West End for 6 months only, and when its residence on The Strand ends this week, that’s it. The show’s over.  No formulaic production here, complete with instantly recognisable logo or slogan, that can be replicated around the world, and re-cast every 12 months as necessary. Neither are there any gimmicks apart from a rather gruesome barber’s chair and pints of stage blood. This Sweeney is most definitely cast-specific, and it shows.

Jonathan Kent has set Sondheim’s work in an unspecified era with Anthony Ward’s design being darkly evocative, bleak and stark. This deliberate blurring of the time boundaries  (The Judge and Beadle predate Robert Peel’s police force,  yet Pirelli drives a petrol powered trike) adding to the production's sensation of disquiet and enhancing the slightly supernatural aspect of Todd’s persona. The feel of the production is almost as cold as steel itself. It is harsh, industrial, and gritty. A steam sirens blasts, heavy doors clang shut and even the massive set piece that bears Todd’s barber shop, is stored behind a noisy steel roller shutter door when not in use. The one item striking item of garish colour on the set is the neon sign ( again, a time-warping design feature ) promoting Mrs Lovett's Pie Shop. The neon is of course ghoulishly ironic, beckoning customers to enter and unwittingly feast on their fellow man.

Michael Ball plays the barber with calculating vengefulness. His smiles are always insincere, his purpose always focussed as he uses any means he can to avenge his wife’s supposed death, his daughter’s abduction and his false imprisonment. Rarely is a murderer so convincingly sympathetic and Ball explores the full depths and complexities of the troubled man as we follow his journey. Sondheim’s lyrics and melodies are not easy, nor is the show easy-listening. The words are fast and harsh, and the harmonics frequently in complex minor keys, yet 6 months into the show’s London residency, Ball remains both fresh and comfortable in the role, without in any way slipping into lazy over-confidence. His comic moments are few, often being a straight man to Mrs Lovett’s effusiveness, yet they shine. In A Little Priest, his understated irony is perfect, whilst his armchair sardonic attitude towards the clearly besotted Mrs Lovett, in a parlour scene leading up to By The Sea, has distinct echoes of Michael Robbins’ Arthur, from 1970s TV’s On The Buses.

Without question, Michael Ball is one of the country’s musical theatre stars. Since creating the role of Marius in Les Miserables, his performances have nearly all involved lyrics as well as prose. By contrast, Imelda Staunton who plays Mrs Lovett, herself one of the country’s top actresses, does not have such a popularly recognised reputation in musical theatre. Yet, when the Chichester casting was announced in 2011, the decision to pair Staunton with Ball, was deservedly greeted with universal acclaim. Lovett is a down trodden, poor, woman of the people, as well as being arguably the (second) most evil character in the show and Staunton plays her definitively. Her character is complex: cunning, compassionate, caring, comic but above all, lonely. Staunton’s performance portrays all these aspects and then some more and does so with a breathtaking clarity of speech and melody of voice.  Maybe one day Sondheim will write the story of what happened to Mr Lovett. As and when he does Imelda Staunton should reprise her remarkable creation. Both Staunton and Ball are professionals who are at the pinnacle of their careers and whose ability to act through song cannot be surpassed. They quite simply provide a masterclass in musical theatre. 

Adding a further comment with regard to Staunton, this reviewer witnessed her as a Hot Box Girl in Richard Eyre’s Guys and Dolls some 30 years ago and devotedly followed her progress within that show over time, until she was rewarded with the lead role of Miss Adelaide. It is interesting to note that with both Miss Adelaide, and now Mrs Lovett, Staunton has taken iconic women from two seminally New York and London inspired shows, both of whom, coincidentally, had been memorably and famously performed by Julia McKenzie, and given each her own unique and powerful interpretation.

The supporting cast are typically outstanding to a man. John Bowe is a nauseatingly perverted Judge, whose lust, first for Todd’s wife and then for the barber's young daughter is flesh-creeping. And it speaks volumes for the pedigree of this show that an actor of the calibre of Peter Polycarpou was lured to take the modest role of Beadle Bamford. As the young lovers, Lucy May Barker and Luke Brady play their parts in the story with passion and conviction.

All these outstanding performances however are hung on the framework of creative excellence that is Sondheim's talent with words and music. A New Yorker, his eye for the pulse of a city is cleverly worked into his rhythm and words and coming from across the pond, his is a rare talent that can compose lyrics and dialogue that have an authentic London feel. His cockney writing has more to do with Lionel Bart's Oliver, than Disney's "Mockney" that the Sherman brothers foisted on Mary Poppins' Dick van Dyke.

It is both sad but also absolutely correct , that Sweeney Todd should bring the curtain down this weekend. The inspired brilliance of the pairing of Ball and Staunton is not likely to be replicated soon on a London stage, and it would be a travesty to deliberately re-cast this union with fresh actors. If you have not seen the show yet, you have five more days and seven more performances to catch it. Not to be missed!

Runs until September 22 2012