Barnum - Review

Watermill Theatre, Newbury

*****

Music by Cy Coleman

Lyrics by Michael Stewart

Book by Mark Bramble

Directed by Jonathan O'Boyle

Matt Rawle and the cast of Barnum

Barnum at Newbury’s Watermill Theatre sets a very high bar for the nation’s musical theatre productions opening this summer. Blessed with a balmy evening in the theatre’s glorious garden, the cast offer up a mise-en-scene of juggling and other circus treats before curtain-up. And then, almost like a Tardis, the bijou, balconied auditorium of the Watermill becomes a 19th century American Big Top and the audience are transported into an evening not just of humbug and balderdash but of the work of a company of gifted performers delivering theatrical perfection. The Watermill has long been recognised for its outstanding actor-muso interpretation of some of the greatest shows. With Barnum, its cast are now required to be quintuple-threats with circus-skills added to their remarkable talents.

Matt Rawle leads the show as P.T. Barnum in a performance of sublime magnificence. Arguably the best Barnum this country has seen since Michael Crawford created the role some 43 years ago Rawle brings verve, wit, musical talent as well as the high-wire skills demanded of the first act’s closing number. Rawle is not just flim-flam. His pathos is heartbreakingly exquisite and the chemistry created between him and Monique Young’s Charity Barnum has to be seen to be believed. These two actors convince us of their East Coast credentials and through a clearly bumpy marriage, display a love for each other that is credible and moving. Rawle of course has the lion’s share of the songs, the tongue-twisting demands of which he smoothly masters. Young is equally vocally majestic, with the pair’s duet The Colors Of My Life evoking tears and smiles in equal measure from the audience.

Matt Rawle and Monique Young

The pair are surrounded by excellence in the show’s company. Tania Mathurin delivers a wittily perceptive take on Joice Heth, “the oldest woman in the world”, while Penny Ashmore is an enchanting Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale”. Not only an accomplished harpist, Ashmore’s soprano voice is thrilling in its power and purity. Fergus Rattigan is appropriately energetic as General Tom Thumb, while the four circus performers in the show’s ensemble, Kiera Brunton, Dan Holland, Emily Odunsi and André Rodrigues display strength, beauty and breathtaking agility in their creation of the circus-ring experience.

The creative work that has gone into this production is of the highest standard. Jonathan O’Boyle directs with flair and sensitivity paying attention to the finest details of the show’s nuanced tale. Oti Mabuse’s choreography, squeezed into the Watermill’s compact space is a delight – and a nod too to Josh Barnett who not only plays the Ringmaster but is also the show’s onstage musical director, seeing  Cy Coleman’s melodies done to perfection. Lee Newby’s designs are a treat as are Amy Panter's skills in circus direction, the whole cast and crew delivering flawless entertainment.

Head down to Newbury and join the circus!

Runs until 8th September

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Gypsy - Review

Buxton Opera House, Buxton

*****

Music by Jule Styne

Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Arthur Laurents

Directed by Paul Kerryson

Joanna Riding

In a joint production between the Buxton International Festival and the Buxton Opera House and for a ridiculously short run of 8 performances only, Gypsy’s caravan has pulled up in the Peak District’s spa town of Buxton. Drawn from the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, Arthur Laurents’ book is meticulously created, much as his West Side Story was an inspired interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Add in a young Stephen Sondheim penning the lyrics to Jule Styne’s magnificent score and the components were all there to create one of the 20th century’s finest musicals.

While Gypsy Rose may have been the stage name adopted by Louise, the younger daughter of Rose, this musical is all about the maniacally matriarchal Rose, with Sondheim and Laurents combining to create perhaps the most deliciously flawed woman in the canon. Abandoned by her mother at a young age, deserted by two husbands and with two young daughters in tow, Rose is determined to offer her girls – and older daughter June in particular – a career amidst the bright lights of showbiz. But this is 1920’s America, the Great Depression is biting and vaudeville is dying. The world is dog eat dog and Rose is eating dogfood so that her kids may at least enjoy cold leftovers. Is she a self-sacrificial stage-mum? Possibly. But halfway through the first act, as Louise on her birthday sings the solo number Little Lamb, revealing to the audience that as an evidently teenage girl she does not know her own age, we get a glimpse into the infernal cauldron of emotions that define her damaged mother.

Luxury casting sees Joanna Riding play Rose. There is little glamour to the role, rather the interpretation of a middle-age woman railing against the demons of desertion via song after song after song – and each one, in Riding’s interpretation, an absolute banger! From the energy of Some People, straight into the sublimely soft nuances of Small World, Riding grasps Rose’s reins, driving her character through life’s challenges and glimpsed opportunities. On stage for most of the show, Riding’s (like Rose’s) energy appears indefatigable with the actress masterfully controlling Rose’s descent into the facing of reality and recognising the impossibility of her own dream just as Louise emerges to discover her own.

Rose famously closes both acts of the show with massive solos. Riding’s take on Everything’s Coming Up Roses blithely sends the audience off for their interval gin and tonics. She ends the show however with the jaw-droppingly frantic Rose’s Turn. It is gripping to watch Riding perform and if Hamlet is famous for subjecting its leading performer to a draining swordfight in the endgame, so too did the creatives of this show make almost unreasonable demands of their leading lady when they wrote this final number and Riding is breath-taking in her portrayal of decline. 

Monique Young makes sensitive work of Louise's emergence from overlooked younger sibling to the glamour of burlesque and ultimately international stardom. There is a wry cruel wisdom to Louise’s signature song, Let Me Entertain You. The number is sung initially in the show by the young Baby June  as a novelty child-performer in a vaudeville routine.  (Credit here to Sienna May as Baby June and also to Lucy McLoughlin as Baby Louise.) By the end of the show however the lyrics are an acknowledgement of the sleazy allure of the striptease, deftly handled by Young. If there is one small criticism of the production it is that director Paul Kerryson could have made more of the young Louise’s unrequited crush on Tulsa (a young man in Rose’s performing troupe).

In another complex supporting role David Leonard is Herbie, the middle-aged, ex-agent turned candy salesman who holds a torch for Rose throughout, until he clearly sees that Rose can truly love no-one beyond herself. Leonard’s work is sensitive and well-voiced.

The second act’s brief comic respite comes from the three worldy-weary strippers that Rose and Louise encounter as burlesque beckons. Tiffany Graves (Tessa Tura), Aleisha Naomi Pease (Electra), and Rebecca Lisewski (Mazeppa) are each wonderful in their modest cameos in You Gotta Get a Gimmick. Hannah Everest puts in a fine turn as Dainty June, with Liam Dean’s footwork (alongside that of Young too, to be fair) in All I Need Is The Girl proving another treat from choreographer David Needham.

Ben Atkinson’s 13-piece orchestra make delicious work of Jule Styne’s compositions. From the opening bars of the Overture – itself one of the finest ever – their playing is lush and lavish. There is equally strong work from Phil R Daniels’ set design and Charles Cusick Smith’s costumes.

Buxton's Gypsy is one of the finest pieces of musical theatre to open in England this year. It is unmissable!

Runs until 24th July

Photo credit: Genevieve Girling

White Christmas

Curve Theatre, Leicester



****

Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin

Book by David Ives and Paul Blake

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Emma Williams, Danny Mac, Dan Burton and Monique Young

There are few shows as comforting and traditional at this time of year as Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It’s a corny old yarn for sure that sees Dan Burton and Danny Mac playing Phil Davis and Bob Wallace and two ex-trouper/troopers who team up with the Haynes Sisters (Emma Williams and Monique Young) to put on  a show in Vermont, and rescue the business of their former and much loved commanding officer General Waverly who since the end of World War 2, has been running an upstate Inn and making horrendous losses.

Strip away the seasonal feel, and the story crumbles under close scrutiny. But with Berlin’s classic numbers and in the gifted creative hands of director Foster and his choreographer Stephen Mear, the evening becomes a fabulous feel-good delight.

Foster has established form in coaxing excellence from Mac and Williams, but it is Mear who offers the lucky citizens of Leicester their biggest Xmas treat by taking Burton and Young away from his usual seasonal offering at Paris’ Theatre du Châtelet, to their native side of the English Channel and pairing them at the Curve. These two actors have seen recent years allow them to develop an intuitive connection in their dancework – they surely have to be the finest movers in the nation’s musical theatre corps, proving this again with their  phenomenal footwork in the show’s second half opener I Love A Piano.

Mear of course delivers excellence from across his ensemble, with strong performances from Garry Robson as Waverly and from Wendy Mae Brown as Martha Watson, the General’s much put upon, (but ultimate) sweetheart and, on press night, the cutest turn from Georgia Stewart as his young granddaughter Susan.

A seasonally busy Jason Carr has done beautiful work arranging the Songbook classics, while the seven piece band, under Neil Macdonald’s direction, take the packed Curve houses all the way back to the 1950s – heck, the snowblowers even deliver a venue-filling blizzard as the audience delight in a singalong of the title number.

White Christmas maybe as cheesy as a fine old stilton, but it’s still first-class festive fayre!

Runs until 13th January 2019

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Singin' In The Rain - Review

Theatre du Châtelet at the Grand Palais, Paris

*****

Music by Nacio Herb Brown

Lyrics by Arthur Freed

Book by Adolph Green and Betty Comden

Directed by Robert Carsen

Dan Burton

Fittingly, the reviewing year has ended in the grandest of styles at Paris’ Grand Palais to where the city’s illustrious Theatre du Châtelet have temporarily decamped, reviving their 2015 production of Singin’ In The Rain. A "Grand" venue demands an equally grand show to fill it, and with their sensational company Robert Carsen and choreographer Stephen Mear have done just that.

The musical’s story is a 1952 movie classic that was only ever brought to the stage some 30 years later by Tommy Steele at the London Palladium. But with a libretto crammed with American Songbook greats, an evening here feels like revisiting a masterpiece that’s straight out of Broadway’s Golden Age. The plot is as heartfelt as it is corny, set in the 1920s as silent movies are on the wane. The demand for talkies engulfs Hollywood and Lina Lamont, Monumental Pictures' starlet silent siren finds herself challenged by her ghastly squawking voice, a sound that is completely at odds with her stunning physical beauty. Monumental's leading man Don Lockwood fortuitously meets the beautifully voiced Kathy Selden who agrees to dub Lamont’s vocals. Scheming shenanigans famously unfold, for the most part inspired by Lockwood’s cunning musical accompanist Cosmo Brown, until a happy ending prevails with Selden and Lockwood falling blissfully in love.

Monique Young and Dan Burton

If a show with such a slight and clichéd story is to speak to a 21st century audience, then its production values can be nothing less than flawless and (by implication) expensive. With the Mayor of Paris happily associated with the show, it appears that the budget has been substantial. Not only has Tim Hatley’s scenery been beautifully designed for the show, the stage itself has been created within the vast, glass dome of the Grand Palais (google the place, you’ll thank me) and it is a credit to both Hatley and the show’s (uncredited) sound designer that the acoustics are perfect. Likewise, Anthony Powell’s costumes are just sumptuous, dripping in period-perfect Flapper-glamour and crafted with minute attention to detail. Wielding the baton, Gareth Valentine (another Châtelet regular) makes magnificent work of Brown’s melodies.

Dan Burton leads as Lockwood. Returning to the role from 2015, Burton is clearly Stephen Mear’s “go to” triple-threat performer. This website has long praised Burton’s talent and in a role that sees him onstage for most of the show Burton makes the most intricate of moves seem effortless, with mellifluous vocals transforming 70-year old tunes into fresh delights. And when it comes to the famous title number, both the Châtelet company and Burton deliver magnificently. The water cascades onto the stage as Burton pays heartfelt homage to Gene Kelly’s immortal routine. A nod too to Jo Morris, who has worked with the company to faithfully recreate Mear’s choreography of two years ago.

Kathy Selden is played by Monique Young who wowed this Paris audience last year as Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street. In another display of triple-threat magnificence, Young defines Selden’s tender strength. Her takes on You Are My Lucky Star and Would You? mark her out as a gifted performer of classic numbers, while her footwork (notably stunning in Broadway Melody) is a blur of brilliance.

Emma Kate Nelson

Playing one of the more challenging roles in the canon, Emma Kate Nelson is Lina Lamont. This nasty-girl character could barely be shallower, yet Nelson transforms her into a completely credible creation. Lamont’s one solo number, What’s Wrong With Me, can be a beast to sing for a trained performer trying to preserve her voice as she squawks. Nelson makes it a delight in another example of perfect casting.

There's excellence too from Daniel Crossley’s Cosmo Brown. Cosmo’s comic responsibilities are critical to the narrative and Crossley’s timing in both physical and spoken humour is spot-on. Make ‘em Laugh and a wealth of other moments all contribute to comedy gold. There are other gems that lurk within this company as Jennie Dale (playing dialogue coach Miss Dinsmore) earns a rapturous whoop of applause for her deft display of tap dance in Moses Supposes.

Daniel Crossley, Jennie Dale and Dan Burton

Theatre du Châtelet have a deserved reputation for excellence in their annual presentation of a classic English language musical - they simply set out to hire, and to produce, the best in the business. If only a UK producer were to one day ship a Châtelet show back across the Channel......

Runs until 11th January

Photo credits: Vincent Pontet and Marie-Noëlle Robert

42nd Street - Review

Theatre du Chatelet, Paris


*****

Music by Harry Warren
Lyrics by Al Dubin
Book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble
Directed and choreographed by Stephen Mear

Dan Burton and the Company

There can be few more impressive openings to a musical than Stephen Mear's treatment of 42nd Street. With the orchestra (magnificent under Gareth Valentine's baton) having played the overture’s first few pages the curtain rises teasingly, just a yard or so, to reveal a stage full of dancing feet tapping out the show's melodies. With a company numbering nigh on 40, the sight and sound of this unexpected treat, performed with pinpoint, perfectly drilled precision, is simply breathtaking. Rarely has a show set its stall out so impressively in the overture and then gone on to exceed expectations as the evening plays out.

The story behind 42nd Street is a classic, corny even, meta-musical fairytale. It is 1933 and Peggy Sawyer, a young and gifted dancer from Allentown, Pennsylvania who has no showbiz experience wants to be cast in the new Broadway show Pretty Lady. Its genius but tyrannical director Julian Marsh is on his uppers after the Wall Street crash and in desperate need of a hit. Marsh overlooks Sawyer, and casts Dorothy Brock, a leading lady of years gone by as his star because Brock's sugar-daddy boyfriend has bankrolled Pretty Lady's production costs.

As love rivalries smoulder amongst the cast, Brock breaks her leg at the last minute. As Marsh is about to close the show, the ensemble persuade Marsh him to choose the talented Sawyer as Brock's replacement and of course she and the show become an instant hit.

Whilst the story may be corny, Mear who directs and choreographs has demanded production values that are anything but. Emerging talent Monique Young plays Sawyer and she brings a coquettish insouciance to the role matched only by her sensational footwork, handling her vocal solos with a confident charm and magnificent poise.

Sharing the honours as the show's other leading lady is Ria Jones' Brock. Mear knows Jones well (she famously understudied Glenn Close in his Sunset Boulevard earlier this year) and his understanding of the woman's gift has delivered yet another example of on-stage excellence. Jones hams up Brock wonderfully when she has to, yet shows off the full Rolls-Royce potential of her vocal majesty with her interpretations of I Only Have Eyes For You and the act one closer of the show's title number. As an aside, Jones is one of those occasional performers on London's cabaret scene who truly merits the description "unmissable".

Dan Burton who plays Sawyer's love interest Billy Lawlor is another of Mear's regular ingénues, last seen in the West End's Gypsy. Arguably the best of his generation in musical theatre dance, Burton has a grace in his movement that has to be seen to be believed alongside perfectly pitched, mellifluous vocals. Alexander Hanson's Marsh completes the quartet of key roles and he brings a believable gravitas to a part that can so easily become a cliché in less talented hands. Elsewhere in this magnificent company, Jennie Dale (yet another Mear regular) shines in support as Maggie Jones.

Dan Burton and Ensemble

It’s not just the cast that make this production quite so special. Valentine's orchestra is lavishly furnished, while Peter McKintosh's sets display an imaginative detail that can all too often these days be reduced to an economy of projected images, but here at the Theatre du Chatelet, are displayed in fabulous constructions of steel and backdrops.

And then of course there's the show's famously big numbers. Keep Young and Beautiful, We're in the Money and Lullaby of Broadway are done to a perfect turn. Mear fills McKintosh's stagings (and Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, complete with massive working clock stuns on its own) with a plethora of bodies that define flawless synchronised harmony.

The Chatelet’s producers have lavishly and tastefully invested a fortune in their cast and creatives and it shows. If you can beg, borrow or steal a ticket to Paris, go. This production of 42nd Street is quite simply musical theatre perfection - there's no better show to be seen this side of the Atlantic.

Runs until 8th January 2017