Standing at the Sky's Edge - Review

Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

***

Music and lyrics by Richard Hawley

Book by Chris Bush

Directed by Robert Hastie

The cast of Standing at the Sky's Edge

Transferring to the West End from an acclaimed run at the National Theatre, Standing At The Sky’s Edge charts three occupancies of a duplex home built in Sheffield’s Park Hill estate. The show’s timeframe runs from the estate’s opening as a massive social housing project in 1959, replacing a significant proportion of the city's slum accommodation, then through a period of neglect and dilapidation and finally to the estate's gentrification in the early 21st century and transition into private ownership. Park Hill was a massive development and to this day remains the largest listed work of architecture in Europe. A prominent feature of Sheffield’s cityscape, the estate's history offered a bold conceit for the musical’s narrative.

It is a disappointment therefore that Chris Bush’s book is little more than a thread of cliched agitprop observations of the duplex's three occupying households. From a newly wed steelworker and his bride escaping poverty, through to refugees fleeing civil war in Liberia and ultimately, a comfortably middle-class professional running away from London and a failed relationship, Bush shoehorns in as many passing nods to Sheffield’s social landscape of the last 60 years as she can. The collapse of the steel industry, the miners’ strike, Thatcherism and even Brexit are all acknowledged with shallow passing references, though one can only speculate as to why the child grooming scandals that also tarnished so much of the South Yorkshire region during this period, fail to get a mention.

Richard Hawley’s songs are musically beautiful but lyrically lazy - the tunes land gorgeously on the ear but their frequent repetitions of phrases suggest a lack of creative wit behind the songs’ otherwise powerful foundations. The cast, as is to be expected on a leading London stage, are all magnificent with standout performances from Laura Pitt-Pulford, Rachael Wooding and Lauryn Redding. Ben Stone's stage designs together with Mark Henderson's lighting are equally impressive.

40 years ago Willy Russell's Blood Brothers offered a far sharper musical take on the impact of Thatcherism on England's north and of attempts by planners to rehouse a city's poor. Perhaps in a site-specific venue on the estate, Standing At The Sky's Edge may have packed more of a punch. The musical opened in Sheffield in 2019 where regional ticket pricing would have made it affordable to many of the city’s residents. In the capital however, where ticket prices are comparatively eye-watering, agitprop has been replaced by champagne-socialism.

Booking until 3rd August

Photo credit: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg

Crazy For You - Review

Gillian LynneTheatre, London

*****

Music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

Book by Ken Ludwig

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman

The company of Crazy For You

Susan Stroman’s Crazy For You was sensational when it opened at Chichester last year. Incredibly, her production has matured with time and on its opening night at the Gilllian Lynne Theatre proves itself as without question the finest musical in town.

This fabulous fusion of the Gershwins’ songs, Stroman’s vision (what that woman can conjure out of rope, pickaxes and corrugated iron defies description!) and a cast led by Charlie Stemp and Carly Anderson creates an evening of flawless musical comedy.

Ken Ludwig’s story, co-created with the late, great Mike Ockrent is a confection of whimsy and fairytale that crisscrosses the United States, defying both rhyme and reason. But fairytales and fantasy are the cornerstones of musical theatre, with Stemp’s Bobby and Anderson’s Polly playing the star-crossed lovers who against all the odds fall for each other, and who are perhaps the most perfectly cast lovers to be found on stage today.

The tunes are the American Songbook’s finest, with classic after classic cascading down from Alan Williams’ loftily perched 17 piece orchestra. Embraceable You, Slap That Bass and But Not For Me are just a handful of the gems on offer, with the jewel in this production’s crown being the first-act closer of I Got Rhythm, which leaves the crowd open-jawed at Stroman’s inspired choreography that reaches new heights with each repeated verse of the song. As at Chichester, the show’s first half ended with a spontaneous standing ovation, such is the overwhelming joy that this show elicits from its audience.

Ludwig’s script is packed with zippy one-liners that all hit the spot - with Tom Edden’s reprisal of his hilarious take on Broadway impresario Bella Zangler proving the evening’s comedy highlight. There’s not a weak link in the cast, with unexpected treats such as Natalie Kassanga’s Naughty Baby defining the depths of talent that Stroman has had to work with.

Beowulf Boritt’s original designs have translated well to the West End and a nod too to Ken Billington’s Broadway-infused lighting, that bathes the production in a rare, rich illumination.

On until January - musical theatre does not get better than this.

Booking until 20th January 2024

Photo credit: Johan Persson

The Lehman Trilogy - Review

Gillian Lynne Theatre, London

**

Written by Stefano Massini

Adapted by Ben Power

Directed by Sam Mendes

l-r Hadley Fraser, Nigel Lindsay, Michael Balogun

As a tour-de-force of theatrical skill, the National Theatre's The Lehman Trilogy, now revived at Covent Garden's Gillian Lynne Theatre has to remain one of London's highlights. The 3hr 20min opus, reflecting the transition of the american dream into a nightmare is a sublime presentation of acting skill and technical genius. Stepping into the roles of the three Lehman brothers are Nigel Lindsay as Henry, Hadley Fraser as Mayer and Michael Balogun as Emanuel.

And of course what makes this production quite such a Herculean effort for its actors is that not only are they playing the three immigrant brothers, setting up in Montgomery Alabama in the 1840s, but they are playing every other supporting role too.

Notwithstanding the actors’ excellence, matched by Es Devlin’s ingenious stage designs that have translated well to the Gillian Lynne Theatre together with Luke Halls' mesmerising video projections, the play is profoundly flawed both in its literary construct and even more so, in this particular iteration.

The Lehman Trilogy opens with scenery being constructed out of dozens of cardboard 'Bankers Boxes', items that are synonymous with the collapse of the Lehman Brothers merchant bank in the 2008 financial crisis, when news broadcasts streamed images of hundreds of the bank's employees pouring out of its offices in Canary Wharf and Wall Street carrying their personal belongings in those boxes, images that came to define the impact of the 2008 meltdown on the world's financial centres. Equally, the play’s opening presents us with the three leads, clearly dressed as observant patrician Jews, one by one getting off the boat and heading for Alabama. The three never leave the stage throughout, nor change their costumes as the years roll by. Likewise, the cardboard boxes are also on stage from start to finish.

The message is clear, an insidious antisemitic conflation permeating the entire play, that visually links Jews with sharp financial practice and corporate collapse. That this trope of an association is even then factually inaccurate, given that the Lehman brothers’ descendants lost their last familial connection with the bank in 1969 and therefore had no connection whatsoever with the Lehman corporation at the time of its collapse, is treated by Stefano Massini as little more than an inconvenient truth.

Where this production compounds racial insensitivity even further is in the casting of Michael Balogun as Emanuel Lehman. Alabama in 1844 was a slave state in the heart of America’s south. A place where, especially in the play's first act, Balogun plays a person of self-made privilege. This of course was an opportunity not afforded to Alabama’s black population at the time and in his casting, the production’s creatives and producers have shown scant acknowledgment of Alabama’s desperately troubling history of racial oppression.

The Lehman Trilogy’s 21st century stagecraft may well be state of the art and its performances, arguably, the best in town. Its ethics however, are mired in the Dark Ages.

Runs until 20th May 

Photo credit: Mark Douet