Scott Alan Greatest Hits Volume One - Review

****

In the run-up to Thanksgiving and Christmas, Scott Alan has released Volume One of his Greatest Hits. Whether you are a newcomer to the work of this talented New Yorker or a devoted fan, there is something for everyone in this 19 track pot-pourri, including a heartfelt couples of pages of liner notes from none other than our very own uber-critic Mark Shenton, a close friend of the composer.

Such is Alan’s respect amongst the performing community, that as with his live gigs, the cream of both Broadway and the West End are credited on the album. He includes a coven of former trans-Atlantic  Elphaba’s  (I counted five but am happy to be corrected) – and indeed it was Kerry Ellis singing Never Neverland (Fly Away) at London’s Pheasantry a couple of years ago that introduced me to Alan’s work. This time round it is Stephanie J. Block who gorgeously frames this paean to childhood, whilst Ellis’ Behind These Walls proves again why she is one of the UK’s leading musical theatre leading ladies.

Several tracks are a nod to Alan’s stage musical Home, that a London audience was treated to a full chamber performance of last year. Shoshana Bean’s take on the title number Home is as gorgeous a performance as you will ever hear from this woman, whilst Liz Callaway’s Goodnight perfectly captures the tragic poignancy of the show’s endgame. Other treats amongst the tracks are Willemijn Verkaik’s magnificent Watch Me Soar, whilst Brit boys Hadley Fraser, Oliver Tompsett and Stuart Matthew Price also make listening to the album a joy.

Within this set of Greatest Hits is perhaps one of the greatest recordings of recent years with Alan being never bettered than when he writes from experience. Inspirational in his publicly declared battles with depression, his Anything Worth Holding To, sung here by Cynthia Erivo, probably the UK’s brightest emerging musical theatre star and in a version arranged by Ryan Martin, is just heartbreakingly sublime.

To be fair, there is much upbeat fun recorded too. Eden Espinosa’s I’m a Star is a witty look at today’s oft-seen desperation for fame, with Espinosa giving just the right amount of punch to Alan’s pithy perceptions. 

The album makes for either an ideal gift or a personal treat and with Alan having re-arranged and orchestrated many of his numbers anew and with all pre-existing recordings being re-engineered for the occasion, this collection is much more than a cynical bundling of work to stack the aisles and the download servers ahead of the festive season. Go buy Scott Alan's Greatest Hits. The album may make you laugh and cry. It will certainly make you smile and think.

Available from Amazon and iTunes

Laura Jane Matthewson - A Star Is Born

STOP PRESS NOVEMBER 30 2014

This article was originally published on October 30 2014

Exactly one month later, Laura has won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for 2014 for her performance as Rose in Dogfight at London's Southwark Playhouse theatre. Read on to learn a little more about this sensational new talent to grace the stage...

This week the newest sensation to hit London's musical theatre scene, Laura Jane Matthewson was crowned champion of the Talent 2014 competition by Michael Ball. After winning all her heats Laura was thrilled to receive some top notch goodies plus a thousand pounds too. Not a bad haul - but for this young actress, the true spoils of her entering Talent 2014 had been gained some months ago, when heat-judge Danielle Tarento laid eyes on her for the first time and signed her up as leading lady for her London premier production of the off Broadway hit Dogfight.

Dogfight was always going to be a "marmite" musical. Tackling a troubling subject: the mysogynist, sexist and abusive antics of a group of US marines pre their Vietnam deployment, a small handful of critics hated it. But they were just a few. The morning after press night the reaction to the show was "rave" - and in the first time that I can recall for a fringe production, Matthewson  was repeatedly singled out for buckets of praise. Libby Purves formerly of The Times and now perhaps the most respected independent critic on the circuit devoted half of her review to Mathewson whilst other notable pundits such as Baz Bamigboye of the Mail and The Stage's Mark Shenton also waxed lyrical. As the ripples of amazement crossed the Atlantic, even The New York Times added their penn'orth in praise of Laura.

So - as Matthewson was only last week preparing for her competition final and as Sunderland FC had just been thrashed 8-0 by Southampton, (though albeit a proud Wearsider, she did confess, in a shrimp-like state of embarrassment, a total ignorance of that humiliating score-line, explaining that "football's not her thing") I grabbed the opportunity to ask her a few questions.

The reviews of Dogfight predominantly described you as a newly-graduated (from the Royal Academy of Music) arrival on the professional scene. Was that an accurate description?

Actually it's a bit far from the truth! Whilst I was certainly new to the London stage, for the last five years (in fact ever since winning The Panto Factor) I have had regular professional roles. My first part was in a Sevenoaks pantomime, opposite former EastEnders star Leslie Grantham (who was an absolute delight to work with) and since then I have done panto every year along with numerous TIE gigs and other out of town productions.

"Dog" is a vile description of a woman. At the core of Dogfight is how a group of young men get their kicks out of debasing women and labelling them as ugly. Putting the show's politics aside, how humanly challenging was it for you to play such a role?

It's never written anywhere that Rose (my character) or that any of the women in the show are ugly. Within the parameters of 1960's America they are required to to be perceived as unconventionally attractive. For Rose, the breakdown said that the role needed somebody a bit overweight and as I have never been a stick-thin leading lady anyway, that's fine. She is somebody "quite plain and reserved but with heart", a phrase that I loved.

Rose almost has a light from within. The more that you get to know and like her, the more that she becomes attractive, which is sort of what happens with everybody in real life. You know when you meet somebody that looks beautiful and then they turn out to be a horrible person and immediately become less attractive? I don't think that the Rose is an ugly girl, she is just not "stick-thin Miss America" and neither am I.

The show stirred up a hornets nest of reactions amongst some critics. Tell me about that.

I completely agree with one of the cast members, Ciaran Joyce who played a marine, one of the marines who said he didn't  understand why people were coming to see the show and complaining about the misogyny, suggesting it was like going to see Les Mis and then complaining that it's set in France.

I feel that Rose comes out as triumphant. The show doesn't condone the dogfights - it simply acknowledges that they exist amongst some of the armed forces, and continue today. A serving US serviceman saw Dogfight and commented on its authenticity.

What was it like to read the reviews of Dogfight and find some of the harshest critics in the land raving about your performance.

Before the show I didn't really care that much what people were going to say. I was already in love with the entire project and what Matt Ryan (the director of Dogfight) was doing with the show and I think that even if the reviews had been less favorable, it would have just gone over my head.

To have that praise though was like the cherry on the cake. I was feeling  like I'd won the lottery and I'd think that this is just hilarious that they think I'm this good! I would never be naïve enough, because of the five years that I have spent leading up to this,  to think "This is going to last forever" or "This is my big break. I have made it now" or "This is", because above all, I know that these moments come but that they can also disappear overnight. When the New York Times mentioned me in an article I thought"This is perfect. Thank you!", but really, as the notices came in I was like, "That's so lovely... I'll share that on my Facebook... My Dad will be dead proud."

And what for the future?

Dogfight has really opened doors for me and in addition to musical theatre parts I am now being considered for film and television work.

This sounds cheesy, and so often what I say sounds like a cliché, but I was thinking this the other day, about the appreciation I have for this job.  I was remembering some of the TIE I did, in particular a show about the history of Olympia. We were going around schools, doing three shows a day and setting up the set ourselves and taking it back down. There was one day, when I was with a cast of four people, where we all had to get changed in a Maths cupboard behind the stage. The central heating was on full blast and we were sweating and disgusting, and I was having the biggest laugh ever and I was like, "Guys, how lucky are we that we are being paid to do something that we love? This is just amazing."

I just think that just sums it up. If you can be happy doing that, then everything else is a bonus. Those reviews were like winning the lottery.

Skyfall - Review

On general release, certificate 12A

****

Skyfall is the 23^rd film in the James Bond franchise and as has been widely reported, is released to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of  Dr No, the first in the series. It’s a dark movie, featuring a Bond who, in the words of director Sam Mendes is a “combination of lassitude, boredom, depression [and] difficulty with what he's chosen to do for a living”.

The acting in Skyfall is outstanding. Whilst Daniel Craig continues to refine and define his interpretation of 007 the film introduces the elite of Britain's performing talent, the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear, Naomie Harris and Ben Whishaw, to the various echelons of Judi Dench's MI6. Noted theatre critic Mark Shenton tweeted on seeing the film of the legacy owed to British theatre by world cinema. He is not wrong. Shenton further points out that several of these names have already gone so far as to have reached the pinnacle of playing Hamlet within their stage careers. In the current climate of public spending cuts Mendes is clearly leaving this Government department very ably staffed, pending the next Bond instalment. To witness the interaction between these performers, including Javier Bardem as the villain and even a cameo from Albert Finney towards the film’s conclusion, sees the movie mirror the stellar casting that the Harry Potter franchise has consistently attracted over the years.

Whilst the script is biting, witty and sharp, the plot disappoints and to describe the story in even the remotest detail risks spoiling. The evolution of this yarn has had a chequered path as MGM’s finances wobbled during the film’s development and it shows. The plot ultimately evolves into a British based version of Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner's The Bodyguard, an unquestionably well acted but nonetheless unfulfilling narrative.

For the fans, the classic ingredients of Bond are all there. The lines, THAT tune, and an outstanding opening sequence filmed in Turkey are all an absolute delight. Bond’s women are stylish and sexy as well as being thoughtfully fleshed out as characters, though perhaps the film could have cut back on some of the topless nudity. There is only so much of Daniel Craig’s chest that one can bear to watch over the course of two plus hours.  The film also largely plays out in London and the UK and again it is pleasing to see so much of the capital city and the nation's landscapes being exploited by Mendes in this 50^th anniversary tribute.

Whilst the photography and the performances shine, some of the action sequences and visual effects disappoint. Relatively early in the movie when a prominent London building is the target for a terrorist explosion, the Bond special effects team fail to deliver a convincing blast. It has also been widely trailed that the film features a tube train crashing. When this moment occurs, the visual effects involved in capturing the destruction of the (clearly model) train carriages are poor. The producers need to bear in mind that modern audiences have sophisticated tastes. They are accustomed to, for example,  both the excellence of the Harry Potter visual effects and also the outstanding work of James Cameron, so when in 2012, the audience is presented with a crashing Underground train that looks as authentic as Spielberg’s shark from the 1970’s, they are entitled to feel cheated. At the risk of being accused of pedantry, a minor point of location credibility also extends to the actual tube trains used. A journey in the movie through Temple tube station on the District Line is being made by a deep “tube” train, rather than the more “rectangular” stock that actually serve that line. The film is of course being marketed at a global audience, many of whom will not have the faintest idea of what carriages run on which London Underground lines. But some of that audience will be Londoners and they will watch those scenes with some part of their suspended disbelief (essential for all story telling) being gradually brought back down to earth. And when filmmakers choose to play fast and loose with even the most basic elements of consistency and respect for location, they insult  their audience's intelligence and it can leave a temporarily unsatisfying taste. On a positive note, Bond's on-foot chase of a villain through the foot tunnels of the tube station is the best such sequence since John Landis' An American Werewolf in London including an impressive and much envied slide down a deep Tube escalator. 

The climax of the movie, without revealing anything, is a shoot out between the good guys and the bad guys that relies too heavily on silhouettes machine-gunning each other and lobbing grenades and sticks of dynamite. For this sequence, less would have been more, and again a model of the final building in flames was visually disappointing.

Whilst the opening and closing chapters of this Bond tale are truly striking moments of quality cinema, it is a disappointment that the intervening narrative lacks depth and credibility. Notwithstanding, Mendes and Eon Productions have crafted a worthy and watchable adventure that demands to be savoured on the big screen before it is swallowed up for broadcast on the Sky 007 channel, if only to gasp in amazment at the opening sequence of Bond grappling with a villain on top of a moving train. A classic action movie sequence, captured brilliantly by Mendes and his crew.

James Bond is a very modern icon of very traditional British culture and this film is gloriously British. Mendes however has had his creditable turn at the wheel of this Aston Martin of the movie business. He should park the car and give the keys to Danny Boyle.