Brigadoon - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

****

Music by Frederick Loewe

Book & Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

In a new adaptation by Rona Munro

Directed & choreographed by Drew McOnie

Chrissy Brooke as villager Maggie Anderson

Written in the 1940s, Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon is a love letter to Scotland. In Rona Munro’s new adaptation, Tommy (Louis Gaunt) and Jeff (Cavan Clarke) are the crew of a US Air Force bomber that has crashed into the Scottish hills on its return from a bombing run over Germany in the Second World War.

It’s a tale of enchantment, conceived and written by Alan Jay Lerner, that sees the American airmen stumble across the magical village of Brigadoon that only appears through the Highland mists once very 100 years. Munro has sought to give the narrative an edgy contemporary message, but thankfully her tweakings pale into insignificance when set against a show whose core imagery is as much of a Scottish cliché as a tin of Walker’s Shortbread or a dram of a fine Scotch whisky. Back in the day, the Broadway audiences must have found it charming!

But you know what? For all of Munro's meddling, this is still a delightfully whimsical fairytale. There’s a love story that emerges (no spoilers here) along with a gorgeous treatment of some of Lerner & Loewe’s lesser known smash hits. The Heather on the Hill and Almost Like Being In Love are perhaps the show’s most famous numbers - both handled fabulously at Regents Park by Gaunt and Georgina Onuorah as the Brigadoonian Fiona. It is Nic Myers as Meg however who steals the show with her sensational take on The Love of My Life in the first act and My Mother’s Wedding Day after the interval.

Some of the cast’s Scottish accents need some work, but credit to the producers for casting a fair few authentic Scots in the show, not least the always wonderful Norman Bowman who plays Brigadoon’s patriarchal figure Archie Beaton.

Drew McOnie directs and choreographs with an array of swirling Scottish routines that are a delight. Basia Bińkowska has fashioned an intriguing stage design that cleverly suggests Scotland’s hills and streams.

There's an impressive kickstart to the evening as with an impressive backing of drums, pipers David Colvin and Robin Mackenzie skirl through the audience, setting the scene and the tone for a magical night of theatre.

Runs until 20th September

Photo credit: Mark Senior

My Fair Lady - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

*****

Music by Frederick Loewe

Lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Molly Lynch

Yet again the good people of Leicester are blessed with the most stunning festive gift from the city’s Curve theatre. This year it is Nikolai Foster’s sumptuous production of My Fair Lady that sparkles.

Molly Lynch, who is no stranger to Foster and Curve following her stunning Betty Schaefer in the venue’s Sunset Boulevard a few years back, now steps up to her rightful place as a leading lady, giving the most powerful yet sensitive interpretation of Eliza Doolitle to have been seen on these shores in years. Lynch has a voice that can capture both power and pathos. We are first treated to her excellence in Wouldn’t It Be Loverly and as her character tumbles into perfect received pronunciation with The Rain In Spain, her development is as seamless and as charming as her voice is sweet. From there it’s into I Could Have Danced All Night and on glancing around the Curve’s audience, the smiles on the audience's faces defined the joy that Lynch was bringing in her take on this, one of musical theatre’s most enigmatic women.

My Fair Lady of course revolves around the relationship between Eliza and Henry Higgins, and with David Seadon-Young’s playing the professor of linguistics the pair are perfectly matched. His is a sensitive take on the emotionally crippled academic and rarely has chauvinism sounded so charming as in Seadon-Young’s interpretation. As he implores the world to fit his view of how things should be, firstly with Why Can’t The English and later with A Hymn To Him, the range of his singing is just delightful. And then with I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, Seadon unlocks the man’s complexities and vulnerabilities with a heartbreaking depth.

Foster has assembled a company of talent to match the two leads. Minal Patel is in fine form as Colonel Pickering, while Steve Furst keeps the flame of old-fashioned sexism burning brightly with his hilarious take on Alfred Doolittle. Get Me To The Church On Time is one of the canon’s comedy highlights that sets the audience up for the traumatic ups and downs of the story's final act. Djavan Van de Fliert is a marvellously voiced Freddy Eynsford-Hill, while Sarah Moyle playing both Freddy’s mother and Higgins’ housekeeper Mrs Pearce is equally en pointe. The venerable Cathy Tyson as Henry’s wise mother brings the perfect weighting of gravitas to her small but critical role in the evening’s proceedings.

Michael Taylor’s lavish set designs fill the Curve’s vast space with height, depth and ingenuity, Mark Henderson’s lighting complements the visuals perfectly, while out of sight (apart from a delightful centre-stage cameo at the Embassy Ball), George Dyer’s nine-piece band make fine work of the classic score. Jo Goodwin's inspired choreography is at its finest in the company numbers, with Get Me To The Church On Time evolving into a spectacle of perfectly rehearsed movement.

Playing until the new year, My Fair Lady at the Curve is quite possibly the finest show to be found this Christmas. Don’t miss it!

Runs until 4th January 2025

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

London Tide - Review

National Theatre, London

*

Based on Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend

Adapted by Ben Power

Songs by Ben Power and PJ Harvey

The cast of London Tide

Like an incoming tide of the River Thames, so has London Tide, PJ Harvey and Ben Power’s musical adaptation of Our Mutual Friend, washed over Charles Dickens’ original reducing the 19th century classic to a slurry of mediocre melodrama that runs for more than a mind-numbing three hours. 

Alongside the writers, Ian Rickson’s direction is equally to blame for such an uninspiring evening. Rickson reduces the Thames’s majesty to a figment of our imagination, treating the Lyttleton’s massive proscenium space as a virtual warehouse, albeit one that has a floor that rises and falls along with undulating rows of lighting gantries - suggesting the river’s tidal flows.

Of the acting company Jake Wood is woefully underused as Gaffer Hexham a muscular, menacing Thames Boatman. Elsewhere, the actors try to make the best of this ghastly script, in a show that is not helped by Harvey’s monotonous melodies being poorly sung. The modern songs are grim and lazily written. By way of example, “London is not England, England is not London” must surely rank as one of the most inane lyrics ever to have been sung on stage.

It’s not just the wilful damage that Power and Harvey have wrought on Dickens’ writing - it’s that a sizeable slice of the National Theatre’s all too precious budget will have been consumed in this deluge of pretentious moralising.

London life has been far better served by Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady and Barrie Keefe’s The Long Good Friday, both of which portrayed the city’s gritty contrasts. When it comes to musical interpretations of Dickens, the capital can consider itself well in to be seeing the return of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! later this year.

Runs until 22nd June

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

My Fair Lady - Review

Wales Millenium Centre, Cardiff

*****

Music by Frederick Loewe

Lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Charlotte Kennedy and company

It is rare that a West End production improves on the road, but so it is with Bartlett Sher’s My Fair Lady, touring the UK and Ireland after a short summer residency at London’s Coliseum.

The show, now with Michael Xavier and Charlotte Kennedy playing Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, is a sensational take on the Broadway classic. The two leads fizz with a chemistry that fills the Millenium Centre, their complicated relationship evolving before our eyes. Michael Xavier is one of the country’s finest leading men of his generation and, aside from his top-notch vocal delivery he cracks the complex emotional dysfunctionality of Lerner and Loewe’s Professor.

Kennedy’s Eliza however is the show’s revelation. Not just in her stunning vocal presence, but in how she inhabits every song. Her transformation from cockney Covent Garden flower-girl to powerfully spoken young woman is mesmerising.  Wouldn’t It Be Loverly and I Could Have Danced All Night are long recognised as Eliza’s highlights – here however, not just smashing those all time favourites out of the park, Kennedy grasps the second act cracker of Show Me, transforming it into a fusion of rage, frustration and passion rarely seen on stage. Kennedy’s elegance and presence is equally astonishing, with her entrance just before the interval bejewelled and ballgowned (take a bow costume designer Catherine Zuber) ready for the Embassy Ball, proving literally breathtaking. There is more than a hint of Audrey Hepburn to this Eliza.

Adam Woodyatt makes the delightful transition from Albert Square to Lisson Grove as he takes on the role of Alfred P. Doolittle. Albeit a supporting role, Eliza’s father is a larger than life caricature of London’s working class and it takes a performer of massive character to play the role to its full, with Woodyatt a delight in both voice and persona. John Middleton’s Colonel Pickering makes for a faultless foil to Higgins, while Annie Wensak, stepping up to cover the part of Mrs Pearce on the night of this review is another treat. Tom Liggins as Freddie Eynsford-Hill gives an excellent performance of On The Street Where You Live that only adds to the evening’s delights.

The set design is ingenious, with Michael Yeargan’s scenery working well for a touring production. Londoners – who are often spoilt for cultural choice – have missed out on a local chance to catch this cast. Now touring the regions until April next year, Bartlett Sher’s My Fair Lady is, at last, unmissable musical theatre.

Runs until 26th November and then on tour

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

My Fair Lady - Review

Coliseum, London

***

Music by Frederick Loewe

Lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Harry Hadden-Paton, Amara Okereke and Malcolm Sinclair

The plot of My Fair Lady sees Professor Henry Higgins set himself the challenge of transforming a poor Covent Garden flower girl into a passable member of England’s aristocracy. So it is with director Bartlett Sher, who defines his own challenge by having staged this famously satirical take on Edwardian England in his 2018 Broadway revival and then 4 years later transplanting that production into London’s Coliseum. It was in Guys and Dolls that Nathan Detroit sagely observed that “you cannot interpolate Chicago dice in a New York crap game”. The same is true of musical theatre, where Sher’s New Yorker’s take on this show fails to interpolate into a London venue. 

Harry Hadden-Paton’s Henry Higgins (for whom hurricanes hardly happen) and Amara Okereke as Eliza lead the cast and both are sublimely talented performers. But Hadden-Paton barely evolves from his Old Etonian caricature and Okereke, in the show’s opening scenes, fails to convince as an impoverished Cockney from Lisson Grove. From there on, the complex crucial chemistry between the pair is doomed. Only in her second act duet Show Me, with Sharif Afifi’s Freddy Eynsford-Hill, does Okereke - whose singing vocals are magnificent throughout - truly display Eliza’s passionate emotional potential.

The scenic design is curious - ranging from a meticulously created revolving interior of Higgins’ Wimpole Street home, through to economically designed exteriors that are dwarfed on the Coliseum’s cavernous stage. Sher appears to have set Get Me To The Church On Time in little more than a box-ticking version of Berlin’s Kit Kat Club and as for his enigmatic ending to the show, make of that what you will.

Malcolm Sinclair’s Colonel Pickering and Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs Higgins offer up delicious work in support and for those who have missed the magnificence of Loewe’s score, the ENO Orchestra give those wondrous melodies a sumptuous treatment.

Runs until 27th August

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Camelot - Review

London Palladium, London


****


Book & Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Music by Frederick Loewe

Freddie Tapner conducting the LMTO

Camelot in Concert, a one night only delight at the London Palladium, celebrated lyricist Alan Jay Lerner’s would-be 100th birthday with a musical not seen on the West End for some thirty years but, as noted with the large turn-out and standing ovation, one which has certainly not been forgotten. To be expected for the winner of four Tony Awards!

The simple set up for the wonderful London Musical Theatre Orchestra and podiums for the cast of ten allowed the music, story and classic but often naughty lyrics to really shine in the Palladium. As with Lerner’s classics Brigadoon and Gigi, the script for Camelot paints a picture without the need for elaborate set and costume, a testament to the rarely heard show and making it perfect for a concert arrangement.

Olivier Award winner David Thaxton is brilliant as the unexpected King Arthur, a jack the lad with a heart of gold and wholesome ambition for Camelot thanks to Merlin’s fortune-telling advice and shape-shifting lessons. As Arthur grows into the king who envisions and implements the legendary Knights of the Roundtable, Merlin loses his powers thanks to the spellbinding song and spell ‘Follow Me’ from Nimue, enchantingly sung by Dutch singer Celinde Schoenmaker. This early exit - and vital plot point - seemed to be a waste as Clive Carter’s Merlin certainly brought the humour home (“and Wort… remember to think!”) but thankfully Carter continued to milk the quirks of his characters as King Pellinore, the ever gleeful and unwittingly wise member of the roundtable. Savannah Stevenson brings Arthur’s Queen (Ginny) Guenevere’s naivety, sweetness and sass to life with ‘The Simple Joys of Maidenhood’ and ‘The Lusty Month of May’, driving the drama from hopeful to tragic thanks to her ill-advised affair with Lancelot. The booming Charles Rice is that Sir Lancelot du Lac, who brought laughter with the très cocky ‘C’est Moi’ and, in Act Two, tears with the exquisite ‘If Ever I Would Leave You’. Matthew McKenna (aka Bananaman) is a highlight from the rest of the table as ever so Scottish, kilt-wearing Sir Sagramore and the concert was solidified by the ensemble who appeared downstage for crowd scenes, each offering an enthusiastic and energetic performance.

Bravo to Freddie Tapner and his remarkable LMTO. Events like this one highlight the enduring nature of a stand-out show like Camelot. A rather flat and undefined performance from the antagonist didn’t detract from the joy of the piece and there was very much the hope a full revival is forthcoming.

Reviewed by Heather Deacon