Pippin - Review

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester

*****

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Book by Roger O. Hirson

Directed by Jonathan O'Boyle

Genevieve Nicole leads the Pippin company

Pippin closed last night at Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre with, yet again, this Northern powerhouse of fringe theatre delivering a stunning take on a Broadway Tony-winner.

Written by a young Stephen Schwartz in the 1960s, Pippin is an improbably glorious fusion of style and philosophy. The young lad of the title was the real life son of the Middle Ages’ King Charlemagne who, in pursuit of a possibly futile attempt at social improvement, murdered his father. The show is as much about politics and tyranny as it is about a young man’s quest for himself although, in all honesty, the plot actually defies any further description.

Good musical theatre hangs on a study of the human condition, expressed through song and dance and with the story of Pippin being such a mind-boggling take on humanity, it can only really work when performed to absolute perfection. To his credit Jonathan O’Boyle assembled a wonderful company to do just that.

Genevieve Nicole put in a towering performance as the show’s Leading Player, a troubadour who drives the narrative, dancing in and out of the show’s fourth wall. Vocally flawless, impeccable in her dance and movement, and with a stage presence that redefined compelling, Nicole whipped both cast and audience into shape. Bringing a smouldering sexuality to her turn, with an aura that suggested Joel Grey’s Emcee in Cabaret, her Leading Player provided the energy that propels the show and deserves recognition in the UK Theatre Awards.

As Pippin, Jonathan Carlton captured just the right combination of bungling nervous naïveté, alongside an emerging sense of purpose and self-belief. Carlton was also handed two of Schwartz’s finest songs ever, with the first half’s Corner Of The Sky and Morning Glow - tender perceptive lyrics and swooping melodies that soar through some of the most intoxication key changes in the canon.

Jonathan Carlton

This Hope Mill company dripped with standout performances. In a coup de theatre, Mairi Barclay played both Fastrada (Pippin’s stepmother) and Berthe (his grandmother). As Fastrada, Barclay exuded a beautifully (and hilariously Glaswegian) voiced provocation to her husband’s barely controlled libido – while in playing Berthe she stole the show with her bow-legged interpretation of No Time At All. This particular song’s lyrics are the are one of the most perceptive testaments to old age and if there is but one criticism of O’Boyle it is that he axed one of its verses. If Pippin transfers to London (and to misquote Berthe, I hope that it surely does) this omission should be re-instated.

Appearing in the second half, Tessa Kadler’s Catherine took one of Schwartz’s most challenging characters (a young widowed mum who introduces Pippin to love) and offered up a perfect interpretation. The Love Song duet between the pair is a delightful interjection of carefully crafted romance amidst some of the plot’s latter quirks and quacks.

Alongside O’Boyle, his creative team have proved equally wondrous. William Whelton’s Fosse-inspired choreography is spectacular (the routine in Glory proving particularly impressive) – with fine onstage leadership from his dance captain Olivia Faulkner. Lighting the show, Aaron Dootson made imaginative use of marquee style footlights as well as neatly arrayed lighting banks that with well deployed smoke transformed the old mill into a Vaudevillian playhouse. Upstage, Zach Flis’ 9 piece band were spot on in their handling of the score.

If transfers are being considered, this production would sit beautifully in London’s Southwark Playhouse, but Pippin is over now and its players have moved on. They should however be a troupe that is very proud of what they have achieved: creating another masterpiece of musical theatre on the nation’s fringe.

Photo credit: Anthony Robling

Yank! - Review

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester


***

Music by Joseph Zellnik
Directed by James Baker
Lyrics and book by David Zellnik

The Ensemble

Manchester’s Hope Mill theatre yet again presents another powerful show with their energetic and touching production of Yank!, a show first brought to life off-Broadway in 2010.

The Zellnik brothers’ World War Two love story focuses on shy and unsure new Army recruit, Stu (Scott Hunter) and his forbidden, blossoming romance with the ever charming - and typical G.I Joe stereotype - Mitch (Barnaby Hughes).

Hunter’s performance is excellent. Despite some flaws in the book his ability to portray the journey from an unconfident and naïve teen, growing into a haunted, hardened young man through his harrowing war experiences is breathtakingly honest. His numbers are beautifully sung, but much like most of the show’s material, lack variety or range; it was clearly a choice of the composer to make an honorable tribute to the music of the era, but all the numbers sadly bleed into one another. 

Similarly, Hughes performance is strong, evidence of a deeply charismatic actor. Mitch’s inner turmoil, battling his feelings inside a highly homophobic and patriarchal society is incredibly convincing. He is the embodiment of a typical Golden Age actor, and while his character may not be as as particularly well written as Stu, his performance complements Hunter’s.

As an ensemble the company are vocally very strong, blending with ease into the space and for a cast of essentially all men, bar the ever outstanding Sarah-Louise Young, they succeed in creating a very rich and full sound.  The choreography however is inconsistent. While steps be correct, the finish is sloppy specifically in a number such as Click. This is a full company tap routine where the overall impression still remains quite rough (and this nearly a week after the opening press night) and probably nowhere near as effective as choreographer Chris Cuming might have envisioned.

A particularly memorable member of of the company is Kris Marc-Joseph as the boisterous and loveable Czechowski. Though an ensemble number, his comic timing is impeccable and what moments he does have, in numbers such as Betty and Your Squad Is Your Squad are hilarious. 

Overall Yank! is a moving story that touches its audience’s heart. Notwithstanding its flaws, the show is enjoyable, with James Baker again highlighting some beautiful talent currently to be found in the British theatre Scene.

Runs until April 8th

Reviewed by Charlotte Darcy

Photo credit: Anthony Robling

Parade (at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester) - Review

Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester


*****


Music & lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Book by Alfred Uhry
Directed by James Baker

The company of Parade

As musicals go, Jason Robert Brown's Parade is a tough gig. His Tony-winning score is an immense fusion of the sounds of America’s South, tackling a monstrous story of love in adversity and the utter depths of man's capacity to hate. The Leo Frank trial in the early 20th century split America, laying bare the racist core of the Confederacy. 80 years later, Brown's show was to become a troubling piece that held a mirror to its country’s soul - a mirror that to this day a large part of that nation still resolutely refuses to look in.

One of the first productions to be mounted in this newest of Manchester's venues, the old mill building lends itself well to Parade's disquieting storyline. Tough shows however require a strong cast and in this ensemble James Baker has assembled a company of standout performers. The show opens with the uncomfortably stirring The Old Red Hills Of Home and playing the Young Soldier, Aidan Banyard sets spines tingling within the first 30 seconds. As the show unfolds Banyard's vocal magnificence is found to be replicated throughout the entire cast.

Any production of Parade has to rest on strength in its leads of Leo and Lucille Frank. Tom Lloyd shines as the unfortunate Jewish accountant who finds himself framed and racially persecuted for a crime he did not commit, the rape and murder of a 13yo. Lloyd captures Frank's stubborn indignity perfectly, his slight frame metamorphosing into a performance of utter litheness in Come Up To My Office, before slumping back into quiet and purposeful, pleading, principle within It's Hard To Speak My Heart.

More than a match for Lloyd, Laura Harrison's Lucille brings a stunningly voiced maturity to the Southern belle that is Frank's troubled wife. Her initial uncertainty as to his innocence, that slowly forges itself into a righteous defence of her innocent husband is one of the finest female turns seen this year. Brown has written Lucille some spectacular numbers and Harrison brings an especially beautiful resonance to You Don't Know This Man, alongside the heartbreaking irony of her powerful duet with Leo, All The Wasted Time.

There is not a weak link in this cast. Memorable for their multi-role excellence are Matt Mills and James Wolstenhome. The sole black man in the cast, Mills has to pick up all of the parts that demand an African American male - and in playing wily convict Jim Conley, Mills displays a sublime mastery of the blues. There is an unsettling insouciance to his manner that only adds to the show's momentum. Mention too, here, for Shekinah McFarlane's Angela with a performance that more than suggests Cynthia Erivo's style and presence in its pedigree.

Wolstenhome however is simply a chameleon of performing excellence. It is hard to believe his Governor Slaton is played by the same man who also plays the (sometimes gutter) journalist Britt Craig, with his take on Craig's big number, Real Big News proving flawless, shocking and exhilarating.

Andrew Gallo's manipulative prosecutor (and Governor in waiting) Hugh Dorsey brings just the right amount of deviant corruption to the politics of his game, likewise Nathan Summer's portrayal of the evil Tom Watson. Spewing racist bile through the medium of hymn, Summer chills as he taps into the South's collective frustration at their racial purity being defiled,

The show's staging is inspired, with Baker using the mill's full space alongside William Whelton's clever choreography, to jar our attention. If one or two of his directions have wandered slightly off-piste it's no big deal - the strength of this show lies in the stripped-down excellence that Baker coaxes from his actors.

Musically, Tom Chester directs a 9 piece band that pays magnificent service to Brown's musical maelstrom. And in a nod to the trio of Chester, Baker and producer (and local girl) Katy Lipson, Manchester is unlikely to have seen many fringe performances assembled to such a high standard of production value. If you're coming from afar, the show is well worth the train fare. If you live in the North West, Parade is unmissable.


Runs until 5th June
Photo credit: Anthony Robling


Click here to read my foreword to Parade.

My Thoughts on Jason Robert Brown's Parade

As Jason Robert Brown's Parade opens at Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre this week, I was invited to write the Foreword for the production's programme.

With the producers' permission, my article is reprinted below. 

It is a tremendously exciting event for Manchester's newest theatre, Hope Mill Theatre, to be staging the city’s première of Parade, a show that is both inspirational and yet deeply troubling. The musical is a complex, true and thrilling story that touches upon some of the worst aspects of humanity while celebrating a love that flourished in the most desperate of circumstances.

Jason Robert Brown’s Tony-winner kicks off during the 1913 Confederate Memorial Day Parade in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil War had been fought (and lost) some 50 years earlier and it is the aftermath of that defeat that powers the context of this show. 

The Southern States had fought the North in a desperate, bloody struggle to hold on to their right to enslave African Americans. Slavery was (and is) de-humanising and barbaric and yet, to a majority of folk in the Confederacy, it was not only acceptable, it was desirable. Southern racism was ingrained and the Confederate flag remains a chilling emblem of the white supremacists.

As that 1913 parade passed by, Mary Phagan a white 13 year old girl from Marietta, just outside Atlanta, was brutally raped and murdered in the city’s pencil factory where she worked. Amid a hue and cry for justice, it didn't take Atlanta’s Police Department long to be conveniently pointed in the wrong direction, accusing Leo Frank, the factory superintendent. Frank may have been white, but he was a Yankee from the North and worse, a Jew. 

Parade explores how Frank was subsequently framed and how he and his wife Lucille, fought back. Child abuse and murder may not be regular subjects for a musical theatre treatment, yet from this dark core, composer Jason Robert Brown has fashioned one of the finest musicals to have emerged in the last 20 years.

Parade succeeds on so many levels. It has a finely crafted score and libretto, it's a history lesson and a towering love story. Brown won a Tony for the score; listen out for the traditional melodies of the South, carefully woven into his work. There’s Gospel, Spiritual, Blues and Swing in there, with the composer saving perhaps one of musical theatre’s finest coups for his Act One Finale. As Parade’s narrative reaches a horrendous turning point, Brown has his citizens of Atlanta launch into an exhilarating cakewalk. Where Kander and Ebb brought Cabaret’s first half to a troubling close with ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, Brown’s cakewalk juxtaposes jubilation with injustice. Rarely has an array of swirling Southern petticoats and frocks been quite so stomach churning.

As a history lesson, Parade is up there with the best. The opening number ‘The Old Red Hills Of Home’ hits the audience with an unforgiving staccato percussion that soon includes a funereal chime alongside discordant strings, before evolving into a chilling yet (whisper it not) discomfortingly stirring anthem. The song is remarkable in that between its opening and closing bars, Brown tells the entire story of the South’s Civil War. A young and handsome Confederate soldier sings the opening lines, who by the song’s end is a gnarled and crippled veteran. Wounded and bitter, the old soldier dreams of the ‘lives that we led when the South land was free’. 

Brown also kicks off the second half with a punch. While Parade is famously about anti-Semitism, ‘A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’ is sung by two of the Governor of Georgia’s African American Domestic Staff, both well aware that while the Frank furore is gripping the nation, their lot hasn't significantly changed, even after the abolition of slavery. Riley, the Governor’s Chauffeur has a line ‘the local hotels wouldn't be so packed, if a little black girl had gotten attacked’ that should prick at America’s collective conscience even today, while his killer lyric a few bars on, ‘there’s a black man swingin’ in every tree, but they don't never pay attention!’ has a devastating simplicity.

Parade also beats to the drum of a passionate love story. Early on we find Leo and Lucille questioning their very different Jewish lifestyles. He’s from Brooklyn, a ‘Yankee with a college education’, while she is a privileged belle about whom Frank observes ‘for the life of me I cannot understand how God created you people Jewish AND Southern!’. There is a cultural gulf between the pair which, upon Leo’s arrest, only widens. How Alfred Uhry’s book and Brown’s lyrics portray the couple’s deepening love, is a literary master stroke. 

While the show was to receive numerous nominations in both Broadway’s 1999 awards season and later in 2008 on its London opening, the Opening at New York's Lincoln Centre disappointed, running for barely 100 performances. Variety magazine called it the ‘ultimate feel-bad musical’ and the crowds stayed away.

It was however, to be at London’s modest Donmar Warehouse, directed by Rob Ashford who had been the show's original Dance Captain on Broadway, that the show was to soar. So much so that Brown took the Donmar production back for a successful run in Los Angeles, with Lara Pulver, the Donmar’s Lucille, still in the lead. Thom Southerland’s fringe production a few years later at London’s Southwark Playhouse received similar plaudits. 

So why was Parade loved in London, yet shunned in New York? Wise theatre heads have suggested that perhaps Americans have little appetite for a musical that focuses upon such an ugly feature of their country’s history.

100 years on, what has been the legacy of the Frank case? For good, it served to spawn the Anti-Defamation League, America’s anti-fascist organisation. However the episode also re-ignited the burning crosses of the Klu Klux Klan. I recently visited Marietta to see for myself where Leo Frank’s story ended. Sadly, even if un-surprisingly, the site isn't marked amidst what is now a busy road intersection and if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never know you've been there.

And think back to last year, with the horrific massacre of 9 Black Americans, shot as they prayed in a South Carolina church, by a man who was pictured proudly waving the Confederate flag. Incredibly up until last year, a handful of States still flew that flag from government buildings, with Mississippi still including the Confederate emblem as a component of its state flag to this day. 

The Leo Frank trial and its aftermath ripped a nation apart, re-opening fault lines that to this day have barely healed.

© Jonathan Baz 2016 All rights reserved

Parade opens at the Hope Mill Theatre on 18th May and plays until 5th June. 

For tickets, click here