The Sound of Music - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

Directed by Adam Penford

Gina Beck

Chichester’s regular audience will enjoy Adam Penford’s take on The Sound of Music. Following hard on the heels of the venue’s production of Sondheim’s Assassins, a show that is likely to have made an uncomfortable or even incomprehensible impression upon many of the south coast’s venerable gentlefolk, this hardy perennial from Rodgers & Hammerstein and set in 1938 Austria delivers, for the most part, an evening of absolute delight.

Gina Beck takes on the role of Maria, the local nunnery’s wobbling wimpled postulant who learns that her heart’s desire is to be found not within the convent, but rather beyond the abbey walls and in the arms of local hero and father of 7, the widowered Captain von Trapp.

Beck is quite simply the sound of musical magnificence. Rodgers & Hammerstein wisely gave her character the lion’s share of the show's (many) big numbers, and from the moment Beck rises from a trap door, sprawled across a local mountain top and singing the title number, she sets spines a’tingling. Whether partnering the show’s (excellent) company of kids or Janis Kelly’s equally wonderful Mother Abbess, Beck’s singing is a dream and her casting is an inspired choice.

Kelly of course has the responsibility for the act one closer of Climb Ev'ry Mountain which she delivers flawlessly. Study the programme notes and gasp at Kelly’s operatic credentials, for to hear her and Beck alone is worth the price of a ticket! Equally entertaining are the wonderful Emma Williams as the Captain’s briefly-engaged fiancée Elsa Schraeder and Ako Mitchell as Austrian impresario Max Detweiler. 

If there are flaws in the show they are that Edward Harrison’s von Trapp never quite matches Beck’s excellence and equally that the production’s casting seems clumsy. When Nazis and their sympathisers are played by performers of colour, what should be the horrifically racist impact of the swastikas that adorn the show’s post-Anschluss final act, is muted. The creative team should have thought longer and harder in this regard.

Designer Robert Jones works his usual magic on the Festival Theatre’s wondrous space, his work ingeniously transforming the stage from abbey to mountain top to the von Trapp residence. Likewise, Matt Samer and his 14-piece orchestra offer up a gorgeous interpretation of Rodgers’ timeless melodies. Audiences will not be disappointed.

Runs until 3rd September

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Indecent Proposal - Review

 Southwark Playhouse, London

***

Music by Dylan Schlosberg

Book & lyrics by Michael Conley

Inspired by the novel by Jack Engelhard

Directed by Charlotte Westenra

Norman Bowman and Lizzy Connolly

Drawn from the novel by Jack Engelhard, Adrian Lyne’s movie of Indecent Proposal was a 1993 blockbuster. Fast forward 28 years and in an ambitious roll of the dice, Michael Conley re-works Engelhard’s original, moving the narrative from Las Vegas to the eastern seaboard’s Atlantic City, re-naming all the characters and stamping his own (albeit diminutive) imprimatur on Engelhard’s plot.

Conley’s take on the fable tells of Jonny and Rebecca a young married couple, deeply in love but financially on the rocks until billionaire businessman Larry offers them a million dollars if he can spend one night with Rebecca. Back in its day the movie worked for a multitude of reasons - not least the credibility of its brightly photographed Vegas, full of slot machines and tables and gluttonous greed, an environment where for the mega-rich or the deeply addicted, a million-bucks coin toss or indecent proposal was as believable as it was horrific.

But for a show (or a movie) to tell a million-dollar story, it needs a million-dollar budget and for all the abilities of this show’s talented cast, the audience’s disbelief is never truly suspended. Maybe if tonight’s stage had been the West End’s Palladium, awash with a casino’s twinkling tackiness of noise and sparkling lights, rather than the Southwark Playhouse, the illusion may well have worked. It takes a certain skill to transform south London's Newington Causeway into a sin city and although its been done before, it doesn’t happen here. Likewise if Conley with Dylan Schlosberg had maybe written just one memorable song, that too would have helped.

When the chips are down however, it is down to Charlotte Westenra's cast to turn in platinum-plated performances and they all come up trumps. Norman Bowman’s Jonny is a perceptive take on a man being forced to consider the ultimate in emasculating cuckoldry, while Lizzie Connolly as Rebecca is equally skilled in a role that demands considerable emotional complexity. Opposite them is Ako Mitchell’s Larry, a magnate who believes that everything and everyone has their price. Essentially a two-dimensional villain, Mitchell throws Larry’s amorality into a horribly plausible relief. Alongside this triumvirate is the also excellent Jacqueline Dankworth as Annie, the casino’s world-weary chanteuse who turns out to be quite possibly the most believable character in the piece.

Viewed through the modern prism of a post #MeToo perspective, the film was a period piece that treated a woman's body as a buyable commodity and in the show’s programme notes Conley makes the arrogant confession of never having seen Lyne's movie. If this musical is to go on to any form of future life it needs a major structural overhaul alongside a respectful understanding of quite what made the movie the box-office success that it then was. The show's producers and creatives should also recognise that nearly 30 years on, what makes for entertainment, has changed.

Runs until 27th November

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

The Color Purple At Home - Review

*****

Book by Marsha Norman
Music & lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray

Directed by Tinuke Craig

T'Shan Williams

In a stunning fusion of musical theatre and ingenious photography, Curve Leicester together with Birmingham Hippodrome have revived their 2019 production of The Color Purple, re-imagining the show not only for a cast that must now be socially distanced, but for a remote audience confined to a digital stream.

A couple of months ago Curve streamed their gorgeous Sunset Boulevard, in so doing giving the locked-down theatre world new ways to dream. Building on the success of that show, The Color Purple proves to be close to flawless in director Tinuke Craig’s streamed screen translation. Simply staged, deploying the Curve’s revolve, minimal props and a handful of superimposed scene-setters,  Craig relieves her actors and musicians free any supportive gimmickry, letting her company that has been cast to perfection, tell the story with their talents.

T’Shan Williams leads as Celie, making this most complex of roles, her own. Essentially a modest and unglamorous character, Celie has to thrive in the show based solely on her performer's ability to act and sing (and briefly, deliciously, dance). And in Craig's take on the show, Williams delivers her Celie with a heart-breaking strength and perception. Where typically, a musical theatre performer has to deliver to a large, distant (albeit live and present) audience, in a streamed show, much like in the movies, it's also about the close-ups too. Williams' acting – through speech, song and movement, hits the mark every time. 

Carly Mercedes Dyer

Vocally, Williams is a class act – not just in Celie’s powerful final solo I’m Here, but perfectly duetting with Carly Mercedes Dyer’s Shug Avery in What About Love. Dyer herself is but one of a cast that drips with performers chosen solely for their ability. Avery is another enigmatic woman, with Dyer capturing her magnetism and vulnerability. Also outstanding in their supporting roles are Karen Mavundukure’s tragi-comic Sofia and Danielle Fiamanya as Nettie.

Danielle Fiamanya and Ako Mitchell

Amongst the men, Ako Mitchell delivers one of the finest interpretations of Mister. Another complex character, initially the most vile and misogynistic of men who by the finale is transformed via a heroic redemption,  Mitchell brings both menace and pathos to his performance in equal measure. And credit where it is due - alongside the few individuals named in this review, there is excellence everywhere from all the performers on stage.

Craig’s creative crew are equally talented. Mark Smith's choreography is inventive and inspired, recognising the challenges of our times with movement across the show that is both thrilling and immaculately nuanced. Alex Parker musically directs the 7 piece band with his usual flair. Their interpretation of the score is a delight with a particular mention to Ben Fletcher’s work on guitars. Ben Cracknell lights the massive Curve space with a mixture of both intimacy and passion, while the video crew from Crosscut Media are fast becoming experts in this  niche field of taking live work and re-engineering it for transmission. 

Hopefully the Curve – along with the rest of the nation’s theatres – will be welcoming the return of live audiences in the not too distant future. Until then, streamed productions such as The Color Purple At Home are the pinnacle of outstanding musical theatre.

The production streams until 7 March - Tickets available via www.curveonline.co.uk

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Caroline, Or Change - Review

Playhouse Theatre, London


***


Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book & lyrics by Tony Kushner
Directed by Michael Longhurst

Sharon D Clarke and Ako Mitchell

Caroline, Or Change is a curious show that sees a 5 Star cast deliver distinctly flawed material. Set in an early 1960s Louisiana, Sharon D. Clarke plays Caroline Thibodeaux, an African-American maid employed by the (Jewish) Gellman family. Caroline is low paid and hard working and Kushner and Tesori do a fair job in sketching out the prejudiced, poverty trap that blighted the South’s African-Americans, a situation that some may argue continues to the present day.

Where Thibodeaux, we learn, has three growing children for whom she heroically and proudly provides on little more than a hand-to-mouth basis, the Gellman household is a desert of dysfunctionality. Noah (played by the confident and cool Jack Meredith on the night of this review) is 9 years old. His mother having passed away some time back sees the boy now being raised by father Stuart and step-mother Rose (Lauren Ward) . Kushner goes on to suggest an intriguing, but ultimately fragile, bond between Noah and Caroline as the child seeks and apparently (so we are led to believe) receives, emotional succour from the matriarchal maid. Noah despises Rose, leaving Stuart reduced to little more than an (oddly) clarinet playing nonentity. The reed playing offers a possible musical twist but as an easy nod to perhaps a hint of klezmer in the score, its an unusually lazy touch from Tesori. Rose rarely strays from an angst and kvetch-ridden neurotic, while the Gellman grandparents offer little more than superfluous stereotypes.

In their portrayal of the African-American characters however, the writers soar. Caroline listens to the radio - itself embodied by three beautifully soulful singers, while the bus that she takes to and from her work, is also given a living soul. And one only needs a moment’s recollection of Rosa Parks to recognise the clunking symbolism of the bus in the narrative.

Technically it is not just Clarke who is award-winningly magnificent. Ako Mitchell as The Dryer and The Bus is, as ever, on fine form, while Abiona Omonua as Caroline’s daughter Emmie is another vocal star.

But taking a step back, one can see that Kushner and Tesori, possibly burdened by their white privilege, have deified Caroline and her community, while monstering America's Jews on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line. In Rose’s petty fussing over Noah’s inability to recognise the value of even the smallest amount of loose change, she embodies one of the oldest anti-semitic tropes in the book: that of the Jew as mean and penny-pinching. It is (thankfully) not often that such a potentially hate-filled stereotype is played out on stage. 

In his musical Parade, Jason Robert Brown offered a passionate yet dignified exploration of the South’s capacity to hate both Jews and people of colour. Kushner lacks that dignity offering us instead his own personal expiatory, prompted possibly by a personal conflict with his Jewish heritage? In today's world of increasing hatred Kushner might have done better to have worked his issues out in the therapist’s chair, rather than impose them upon the theatregoers of Broadway and the West End.

Booking until 6th April 2019

Ragtime - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London


*****


Music by Stephen Flaherty
Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens
Book by Terrence McNally
Directed by Thom Southerland

The Company of Ragtime

Yet again director Thom Southerland has assembled a virtually flawless cast and crew in his revival of Ragtime, a show that is probably Flaherty and Ahrens' finest collaboration. Terrence McNally's book, itself drawn from E.L. Doctorow's opus, casts a panoramic gaze over the USA at the turn of the 20th century and the communities that formed the melting pot of modern America.

Ragtime's narrative fills a vast canvas, though neatly focuses on three protagonists - Mother who is a fine and magnificently dignified WASP, Coalhouse Walker an African American whose gift for the piano transports him through different layers of the show's Eastern seaboard setting and Tateh, a Jewish immigrant escaping Europe's pogroms for the New World. Ostensibly their three lives are disparate and disconnected but it is the sequence of events and the interplay of the major figures of the time including Henry Ford, Emma Goldman and Harry Houdini that through imaginative (and to be fair, arguably improbable) chance and coincidence lead the lives of all to become interwoven. 

The lead performances are sensational. Ako Mitchell's Coalhouse exerts a captivating presence from the get go. Powerfully voiced and with a glint in his eye, Mitchell is as inspiring as he is moving. Gary Tushaw deftly avoids cliché as he nails the charming chutzpah of Tateh, determined to advance himself and make a life for himself and his young daughter.

Anita Louise Combe simply redefines the role of Mother. In an evening of all round excellence, two of the most stunning musical moments involve Combe - her duet with Tushaw, Our Children, is exquisite, while her take on the show's eleven o'clock number Back To Before is just spine-tingling. West End star Earl Carpenter playing Father, her husband, brings an equally mellifluous magic to his role. 

Southerland's vision remains masterful. In an actor-musician production, he creates space even amongst the full company numbers. Tom Rogers and Toots Butcher have created a set that cleverly wraps around into the old music hall's balconies, allowing a staging that is well complemented by Howard Hudson's carefully plotted lighting and Ewan Jones' ingenious choreography. Jones' routines evoke both style and period and are peppered with explosive moments of classic Vaudeville dance. 

Credit too to Mark Aspinall's orchestrations and Jordan Li-Smith's unbelievable musical direction. At times being wheeled around the stage, Li-Smith manages to play the two onstage upright pianos - which in themselves form perhaps the most imaginative car ever seen on the London stage – ingeniously, as throughout he maintains a perfectly nuanced grip on the melodies being played by his cast. Actor-muso shows are a challenge to pull off well and Li-Smith just makes it look so easy.

As the Charing Cross' Artistic Director, Ragtime marks Southerland's second stint at the helm and it is evident that his continued and longstanding creative partnership with co-producer Danielle Tarento continues to flourish. Truly, musical theatre does not get better than this.

Runs until 10th December

Photo credit: Annabel Vere & Scott Rylander