Midnight Cowboy - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

**

Music & lyrics by Francis'EG' White

Book by Bryony Lavery

Based on the book by James Leo Herlihy

Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston

Max Bowden and Paul Jacob French

James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel Midnight Cowboy presented a bleak take on America. A land of hustle and exploitation that saw an unlikely friendship develop between Texan cowboy Joe Buck and the polio-riddled New Yorker Rico Rizzo, both men desperately lonely souls and each in pursuit of their own American dream. Buck by making his fortune as a stud and Rizzo with his dreams of reaching the sunshine state of Florida. John Schlesinger directed the triple Oscar-winning movie in 1969 and now Herlihy's famed fable has been reduced to a musical by Bryony Lavery and Francis 'EG' White. 

Paul Jacob French as Joe Buck possesses the required statuesque attractiveness - but is not allowed to come close to exploring the complexities of his character. Max Bowden’s Rizzo is a more rounded construction. Bowden goes some way to unlocking the crippled man’s tragic destitution in a sensitive interpretation that is filled with pathos. Both leads are also given a solo chance at the same number. Bowden wraps up the first half with the haunting Don’t Give Up On Me Now, as French gets his chops around the song to close the show. The tune was worth a repeat as it proved the evening’s only decent new composition.

In a moment of prematurely tantalising delight the show's musical money-shot, Harry Nilsson's Grammy-winner Everybody's Talkin', taken from the movie, was sung by French as the evening's prologue, but from then on it was downhill. To be fair though, the show also included frequent nods to the movie's haunting motif of a melody that had been scored by John Barry - a welcome respite as it transpired, from much of White’s mediocre new music. As a side comment, although the legendary lyricist Don Black had nothing to do with Midnight Cowboy, to see him in the audience at this musical's press night forged a strong connection with Barry, a man with whom Black had penned numerous movie classics.

Lavery’s book does not match Herlihy’s original and when one considers how much of the Midnight Cowboy movie’s magic came not just from its harrowing tale and its towering central performances, but also from its stunning photography and direction, one realises the extent to which this production does not do justice to the story’s famed previous iterations. The narrative demands a physical staging more inspired than Andrew Exeter’s set - projections onto a translucent screen are an ambitious conceit at the best of times. Throw in a 45 degree viewing angle for this reviewer and the projected backdrops become a distraction, with their intended scenic depictions becoming nigh-on invisible.

Midnight Cowboy demands scenes of a sexual nature that should trouble us with their tawdry casualness. In this production the intimacy is clumsily faked and so is the story's class.

Runs until 17th May

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Born Free - Review

Certificate U, 1966


****

Based on the book by Joy Adamson
Screenplay by Lester Cole
Directed by James Hill

Born Free, one of the most successful British films of the 1960s has just been released on Blu-Ray. Acclaimed for capturing the true stories of Joy and George Adamson, Kenya-based naturalists from the UK who raised a lioness from cub to fully grown maturity before eventually managing to release her back to the wild, the story is a passionate tale of belief and commitment.

The movie is remarkable, even more so viewed from the prism of 2017, some 50 years after its release. James Hill’s photography of lions in the Serengeti is, for the most part, breathtaking in its un-retouched honesty. There's no CGI here and neither is the treatment Disney-fied. The film’s opening shot is of lions feeding on the carcass of a freshly killed zebra.

While the film's sexual and racial politics were very much of their time and aside from the excellent if dated performances from Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as the Adamsons and Hill’s gorgeous imagery, it was Born Free's double Oscar-winning title-song and score that were to seal its place in the pantheon.

It was Don Black who penned the winning lyrics and he recently spoke to me about the number.

"Before the movie was released, Carl Foreman [credited as a "presenter" but in truth one of Born Free's producers] wasn’t impressed with John Barry's writing, describing it as too syrupy. Foreman also had little love for my lyrics that had been recorded for the film by Matt Monroe and demanded that the song be cut from the final print before the movie’s release.

However.... over in the States Roger Williams had released Born Free as a single where it topped the Billboard charts for 6 weeks. The song’s popularity prompted Foreman and co. to re-instate Monroe's version over the end credits, allowing the song (in addition to the already qualifying score) to be considered by the Academy. After I'd received the Oscar from Dean Martin, later that evening at the after-party, Foreman begrudgingly admitted that the song "grows on you"."

The rest, as they say, is history, with 1966 proving to be a very good year for Black and Barry (and incidentally for Frank Sinatra too, whose song It Was A Very Good Year also reached #1 that February)

Born Free is a beautiful piece of musical and cinematic history and if you haven’t already seen it, go grab the Blu-Ray and enjoy.

To view the trailer click here

To order from Amazon click here

DUAL FORMAT SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Stunning High-Definition presentation
• Uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Isolated score track
• Audio Commentary with Film Historians Jon Burlingame, Julie Kirgo, and Nick Redman
• Spirit of Elsa – a featurette on the Born Free Foundation's work in Kenya
• Elsa the Lioness 60th Anniversary – a short featurette about Elsa, the lioness whose story is the basis for Born Free
• Promotional featurette, generously provided by the Born Free Foundation
• Original Theatrical Trailers

Movie Classics For Valentine's - Review

Barbican Hall, London


****


London Concert Orchestra
Conducted by Anthony Gabriele

I have written before of conductor Anthony Gabriele’s love affair with the movies. The Italian has an innate understanding of matching the nuance and tempo of a score to performances played out both on stage and screen. So to turn up to the Barbican Hall on February 14th and see Gabriele conduct the London Concert Orchestra in a Valentine’s Evening concert of Movie Classics, was quite the romantic treat.

Gabriele’s programme spanned most of the 20th Century. A nod to the pre-war great movie composers saw the evening open with Tara’s Theme from Max Steiner’s Gone with the Wind and what was to become immediately evident was that opening up these legendary scores to the full acoustic treatment of a live symphony orchestra, imbued them with a passion and a texture that only enhances their music. 

The evening’s pieces were segued with carefully researched introductory comments from the Maestro, telling us for example that Steiner along with Erich Korngold and Alfred Newman were the three composers responsible for establishing the cultural bedrock of movie scores. The programme referenced them both with Korngold’s Love Scene from the 1938 Errol Flynn classic The Adventures of Robin Hood and Newman’s timeless Cathy’s Theme from the Laurence Olivier starring Wuthering Heights (1939).

The first half closed with Mei Yi Foo performing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor. Gabriele had previously explained that the “Rach” has been used in scoring no less than 8 feature films to date – however his evening of Valentine’s romance chose David Lean’s take on Noel Coward’s timeless and quintessentially English romance from 1945, Brief Encounter. It’s a movie that is well worth the (re-)viewing – Celia Howard and Trevor Johnson capturing the essence of love through masterful acting. Though a further revelatory (even if culturally mundane) moment in the Barbican Hall came half way through the concerto’s second movement, when I realised that the Adagio sostenuto was in fact the inspiration for Eric Carmen’s All By Myself, covered by Jamie O’Neal and then, briefly, on screen by Renee Zellweger, in the multi-franchised Bridget Jones’s Diary.

The concert would not have been complete without a nod to Italian influences and hence the inclusion of Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso. The movie’s melody is exquisite and one can only long for the day when Gabriele and his friends at Raymond Gubbay assemble a night of film music dedicated to l’italianità.

Amongst other romantic gems on offer, were a double header of John Barry, truly one of the UK’s greatest film scorers with Gabriele conducting Somewhere In Time and Out Of Africa and Henry Mancini’s mellifluously mellow Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s – with marvellous alto-saxophone work from Chris Caldwell. Similarly, Philippe Schartz trumpet work in Francis Lai’s Love Story was hauntingly wonderful, while Nigel Bates’ non stop work on the snare drum for 15 minutes (yes, 15!) was a feat that was as much a display of stamina as of musical excellence and proved a stunning climax to the evening’s programme – before the thunderous applause demanded a much deserved encore of Craig Armstrong’s theme from Love Actually.

Musical movie magic throughout!