Close Your Eyes - Annalene Beechey - CD Review

****

Annaleene Beechey's solo album Close Your Eyes is a pleasing collection of ballads and reflective numbers, selected by the actress to include songs that have given her both employment and inspiration over the years. A soprano whose “peppermint cream” sound is closer to the demands of the musical theatre stage than the opera house, her career has taken in some of the leading roles in the canon with a smattering of Disney’s Belle for good measure. There is an ethereal quality to Beechey's sound and whilst talented sopranos abound, few have the woman/child crystal clarity that this gorgeously lilted Irish songstress presents.

Opening with No One Is Alone / Children Will Listen accompanied by a simple cello and piano, her take on the song explores Sondheim's subtleties with delicacy. Beechey chooses to lay down several vocal tracks of the song, harmonising with herself. Whilst her duet (at times trio) for one is melodically faultless, the electronic trickery that has made it happen detracts from the honest naked beauty of her voice and is also at odds with her album note “I always wanted the recording to feel like a live ‘unplugged’ performance, warts and all”. Not for next time, please.

Later in the album, Beechey gives us Perfect Day, not the Lou Reed classic, but rather the Colin Towns composition, made famous by Miriam Stockley as the theme from Peter Rabbit. Eschewing all instruments, the accompaniment on this number is entirely a capella. Its a talented sound unquestionably, though the background chanting does at times suggest Christopher Lee's followers in the 1970's cult movie The Wicker Man, rather than the raw earthy English sound that is clearly aspired to.

But credit to Beechey, the strengths of her collection are magnificent. Doll On A Music Box, already a cracking Sherman brothers classic from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is given an occasional and surprising minor-key treatment and with mournful cello work used just enough, the song is stripped of its cute saccharine charm and becomes a heartfelt cri de coeur of a trapped and lonely soul. Rarely has such a well known song been given such a remarkable and above all, valid re-interpretation.

Sailing too (and again, not the iconic Rod Stewart number but rather the gorgeous work from Lapine and Finn’s A New Brain) is another example of a musical theatre cognoscenti’s favourite, given a charmingly upbeat and refreshingly feminine touch under Beechey's treatment. Its another gem amongst the collection. 

Beechey closes the album with the Scott Alan’s Goodnight, taken from his forthcoming musical "Home" and sung by a daughter who has returned home to nurse her elderly dying mother. Alan's words and music are nothing if not sublimely perceptive and Beechey again deploys an almost cherubic effect of a wise adult who is nonetheless still a heartbroken child, tending to her mother's passing.

Some four years since its release, the album remains a sound tribute to the achievements of one of the stage’s accomplished leading ladies. Beechey is a cracking performer and I’d love to hear her second collection!

Available from www.SimGProductions.com and iTunes

Scott Alan

O2 Indigo, London

*****

Scott Alan

If you are to "judge a man by the company he keeps", then based upon last night's performance on the O2's Indigo stage, New York wunderkind Scott Alan is of the very best indeed. With a supporting cast of musical theatre (virtual) royalty, Alan took a modestly low profile through the night watching from the wings as giants of the transatlantic stage breathed life into his stunning compositions.

Early on in the set Cynthia Erivo, surely musical theatre royalty-in-waiting having sped down the Thames to the O2 direct from a matinee performance of her astonishing role in The Colour Purple, sung Anything Worth Holding Onto. Her song gave a frank and honest comment on depression and as Alan was to explain later, his own life story explains his ability to write with such a scorching insight into the illness. Erivo’s performance, her tear-stained cheeks glinting in the spotlights by the end, was one of the most moving performances to be found in London (though Annalene Beechey was to give her a run for her money after the interval). If at times the first half resembled just a tad too much of a ballad-fest, it nonethless yielded some wonderfully contrasting moments. John Owen-Jones, ever the consummate king of performance, gave a wonderful Kiss The Air, all the more remarkable for him only having had 5 days to work on the song from scratch. Owen-Jones had been at the main O2 arena the day before to see his beloved Iron Maiden perform. That gig had obviously stayed with him as there was a gloriously full on, almost metallic feel to the way he virtually (though at all times, of course, melodically) screamed his way through the song’s middle eight!

John Owen-Jones gives it his all

The second half proved a veritable treat with the first ever assembled cast performance of Alan’s musical Home, a tale of Katherine a woman returning to her Texan home to confront her own relationship with her past and with her elderly mother. Cleverly put together, the evening's ensemble of O2 women had each prepared one song from the show and with first class support from Simon Beck’s immaculately rehearsed 15 piece orchestra and Barney Ashworth on piano, witnessing Home's premiere was a privilege. Highlights included a beautiful Never Neverland, Julie Atherton’s wittily filthy His Name and another sublime show-stopper from Cynthia Erivo, the singer giving a hilarious (and disarmingly accurate) portrayal of a rebellious teenager, off her face from smoking weed. Excellence abounded, particularly in work from Siobhan Dillon and then from Shoshana Bean in her delivery of the show’s title number, but it was with Annalene Beechey’s Goodnight, a song again of profound perception and free of all mawkish sentiment, as Katherine addresses her mother's fast approaching demise, that hearts were broken across the venue. Now a young mother herself, Beechey skilfully and passionately told of an oh-so familiar scenario.

Annalene Beechey wistfully breaks hearts

Alan took to the piano to close the show. He spoke of his personal demons that had almost led to suicide at 16 and how from that point on he had vowed to celebrate and to achieve in life. Now some 20 years later, Scott Alan is an inspiring proof that life is for living. As he closed the show alone on piano with an intimate solo encore of Look (A Rainbow), tears and smiles were gloriously intermingled. A truly special night.