Carousel - Review

Birmingham City Academy, Birmingham

*****

Music by Richard Rodgers 
Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom as adapted by Benjamin F Glazer
Directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones

NYMT's Carousel

In the most inspired and gorgeous of site-specific settings, the National Youth Music Theatre’s (NYMT) production of Carousel is presented on, and around, an actual fairground carousel! With the audience seated in three tented enclosures around a thrust stage, this traditional, historic, steam-powered fairground attraction creates a stunning backdrop to the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic musical.

For all sorts of reasons Carousel is a mountain of a musical to be scaled, with its dark and complex themes presenting a challenge to any theatrical company, let alone a cast where the performers’ ages range from 10 through to their early 20s . Along with a handful of some of the most exquisite songs in the canon and some gorgeous love stories, the show also offers troubling takes on suicide, loss and, when presented to a 21st century audience, an uncomfortable perspective on domestic violence.

Josephine Shaw and Amie Shipley get the vocal work off to a fine start as Julie Jordan and Carrie Pipperidge respectively. Shipley is gifted most of the show’s (rare) comedic moments that she masters with assured timing and a delightful delivery. Shaw’s delivery of Julie Jordan however is heartbreaking in its excellence. Her soprano voice is as strong as it is fine, and as the narrative evolves she brings an astounding maturity and heartbreaking pathos to her performance that belies her age. Shaw's delivery of What’s The Use of Wond’rin? was a tear-filled joy to listen to. Billy Bigelow is played by Maximus Mawle who alongside his strong baritone voice, also captures his ultimately honest love for Julie. As Mawle’s Bigelow looks down from heaven on the pain of his daughter Louise’s life, his acting is top-notch. Daniel Langford completes the quartet of leading lovers with an assured performance of herring tycoon, Enoch Snow.

There are other notables in this fine young company. Sean Cosgrove’s Jigger Craigin is an absolute delight, with Cosgrove nailing his character’s despicableness with wit, confidence, braggadocio and a superb singing voice. Athena Florence Mensah as Nettie Fowler gets her vocal chops around You’ll Never Walk Alone with equal splendour. 

The Ballet sequence is always a focal point of Carousel and in this iteration Marianna Micallef as Louis smashes the role sensationally. Her dance routine that lasts a jaw-dropping 15 minutes is stunning as, with minimal dialogue, she tells of Louise’s troubled life through exquisitely choreographed movement. And on the subject of dance, a massive nod to choreographer Adam Haigh. Not just in Ballet, but his company routine in Blow High, Blow Low was bold, ambitious and breathtakingly successful.

Alexandra Spencer-Jones has directed the show with perception throughout, a particularly neat touch being the deployment of a cohort of the company’s younger members as the show’s heavenly troupe.

NYMT’s orchestras always impress, but under Flynn Sturgeon’s baton, Carousel’s 30-strong ensemble make marvellous work of the score. With a heavy strings presence, the music is a lush delight and from the opening bars of the Carousel Waltz there is not a note out of place. It is a rare treat these days to enjoy such a lavishly orchestrated musical.

And finally, a mention to the carousel itself, a gloriously integral component of Libby Todd’s design work for the show. The carousel’s revolve is used sparingly throughout the piece, such that when it does start to turn, the impact is phenomenal. As a gentle revolve is started half way through Micallef’s Ballet, the effect is stunning, and when it slowly turns in the show’s finale to transport the celestial characters back to heaven, just wow!

Only on until tonight, Carousel maintains NYMT’s long established standard of first-class musical theatre!

Runs until 30th August 

Mandy Patinkin Live In Concert - Review

Lyric Theatre, London

*****

Mandy Patinkin

Here for a brief 8-gig London residency, Mandy Patinkin Live in Concert is a 90-minute audience with one of musical theatre’s most gifted and versatile performers.

Accompanied by the equally talented Adam Ben-David on piano, Patinkin took his audience on a whirl around the American Songbook that included a delicious detour through Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody too.

The evening’s setlist was an ingenious series of segues that saw numbers from writers including Loesser, Sondheim and Rodgers and Hammerstein fused into medleys that Patinkin’s perfectly weighted baritone delivered deliciously.

Patinkin’s interpretations and acting through song was on point throughout - not least in Marc Anthony Thompson's heartbreaking composition My Mom and a thrilling Soliloquy from Carousel. His partnership with Ben-David is clearly well grounded, the musical synergy between singer and pianist being one of complete connection and the evening's penultimate number Being Alive proving sensational.

In a gig peppered with anecdotes, Patinkin spoke in equal measure of both his glittering Broadway career and his deeply valued Jewish heritage. Nothing however could have prepared the audience for Patinkin’s encore that he introduced simply as a song with a tragic background, written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. While such a build-up may well have led the packed Lyric Theatre to not unreasonably expect Somewhere Over The Rainbow, to hear the Homeland star perform the song in Yiddish, a mournful yet brave and proud celebration of his Jewish identity, was a moment in theatre that will live forever. Unmissable.

In concert until 19th November

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

The Sound of Music - Review

Festival Theatre, Chichester

****

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

Directed by Adam Penford

Gina Beck

Chichester’s regular audience will enjoy Adam Penford’s take on The Sound of Music. Following hard on the heels of the venue’s production of Sondheim’s Assassins, a show that is likely to have made an uncomfortable or even incomprehensible impression upon many of the south coast’s venerable gentlefolk, this hardy perennial from Rodgers & Hammerstein and set in 1938 Austria delivers, for the most part, an evening of absolute delight.

Gina Beck takes on the role of Maria, the local nunnery’s wobbling wimpled postulant who learns that her heart’s desire is to be found not within the convent, but rather beyond the abbey walls and in the arms of local hero and father of 7, the widowered Captain von Trapp.

Beck is quite simply the sound of musical magnificence. Rodgers & Hammerstein wisely gave her character the lion’s share of the show's (many) big numbers, and from the moment Beck rises from a trap door, sprawled across a local mountain top and singing the title number, she sets spines a’tingling. Whether partnering the show’s (excellent) company of kids or Janis Kelly’s equally wonderful Mother Abbess, Beck’s singing is a dream and her casting is an inspired choice.

Kelly of course has the responsibility for the act one closer of Climb Ev'ry Mountain which she delivers flawlessly. Study the programme notes and gasp at Kelly’s operatic credentials, for to hear her and Beck alone is worth the price of a ticket! Equally entertaining are the wonderful Emma Williams as the Captain’s briefly-engaged fiancée Elsa Schraeder and Ako Mitchell as Austrian impresario Max Detweiler. 

If there are flaws in the show they are that Edward Harrison’s von Trapp never quite matches Beck’s excellence and equally that the production’s casting seems clumsy. When Nazis and their sympathisers are played by performers of colour, what should be the horrifically racist impact of the swastikas that adorn the show’s post-Anschluss final act, is muted. The creative team should have thought longer and harder in this regard.

Designer Robert Jones works his usual magic on the Festival Theatre’s wondrous space, his work ingeniously transforming the stage from abbey to mountain top to the von Trapp residence. Likewise, Matt Samer and his 14-piece orchestra offer up a gorgeous interpretation of Rodgers’ timeless melodies. Audiences will not be disappointed.

Runs until 3rd September

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Oklahoma! - Review

Wyndhams Theatre, London

***

Music by Richard Rodgers

Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs

Directed by Daniel Fish

Patrick Vaill

"You’re doing fine Oklahoma!” goes the title song but truth be told, the transfer across the Thames from the Young Vic to the Wyndhams has not proved an easy passage.

Daniel Fish’s production (originally reviewed to acclaim last year) was a groundbreaking interpretation which when set in the Young Vic’s versatile space, stunned with its bold and innovative take on the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. Moved to the Wyndham’s proscenium confines however and Fish’s wizardry evaporates into mist, much like the billowing cloud of haze that fills the West End auditorium for the Dream Ballet that opens Act Two.

The cast is almost the same troupe as played at The Cut last year. The notable absentee is Marisha Wallace whose Ado Annie was accurately tipped for Olivier recognition - she is missed.

Huw Evans’ band remains magnificent - a nine piece strings, accordion and percussion combo that give the memorable melodies a vigorous interpretation - equally, the singing is perfect across the cast. But it remains Patrick Vaill as the complex loner Jud Fry who steals the show. His Lonely Room is the evening’s vocal highlight and only Vaill truly manages to stamp a distinctive artistic impression on this West End transfer.

The ending of this show is gruesome - with a special effect that worked in Waterloo but is clumsy here. Stage management need to address the hole located centre stage, that’s clearly bloodstained from previous performances and which fires the gore into the cast.

Marie-Astrid Mence energetically dances the Dream Ballet. Again, this was enchanting at the Young Vic but on the Wyndhams’ stage, the cascade of cowboy boots that fall upon her from the rafters seems little more than the work of pretentious cobblers.

Booking until 2nd September

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

South Pacific - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan

Directed by Daniel Evans

Julian Ovenden and Gina Beck

Transferring from its acclaimed revival at Chichester last year and returning to the London stage a decade after the Barbican last staged it in 2011, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific has opened for a month’s glorious residency at Sadler’s Wells. 

Daniel Evans has retained his lead performers from a year ago, with the chemistry between Julian Ovenden’s Emil de Becque and Gina Beck’s Ensign Nellie Forbush still vibrant and vocally stunning. Likewise, the love that grows between Lt Joe Cable (Rob Houchen) and the Polynesian Liat (Sera Maehara) is equally well defined. Of course, what sets this show apart is the United States’ racist culture that Rodgers and Hammerstein sought to challenge in their musical adaptation of James A. Michener’s original story.

75 years on from when the show premiered on Broadway many will find its handling of the racism of America’s Southerners and WASPS, problematic. Equally, the comparative youthfulness of Liat’s character does not stand up to close scrutiny in the post-MeToo era of the 21st century. It is however important that from a cultural perspective, the show should be recognised as a wonderfully curated museum piece. It was written for its time and should be enjoyed in that context.

Musically this production of the show is as wonderful as it was by the seaside last year! The songs are classics and to hear them sung, in a venue as acoustically fine as Sadler’s Wells and by voices such as these is a delight. The surprisingly powerful and unexpected melancholy that Joanna Ampil’s Bloody Mary brings to Happy Talk is one of the production’s more haunting highlights.  Another notable performance comes from Douggie McMeekin as the loveable Luther Billis, providing excellently timed comic relief.

Peter McKintosh’s set, paired with Howard Harrison’s lighting, are incredibly imaginative and make you feel as though you are right there on a sunny Pacific island. This alone is worth the visit to Sadler’s Wells as well as to regale in the show’s beautiful music and dance. It really will be some enchanted evening.

Runs until August 28th

Photo credit: Johan Persson

South Pacific - Review

 Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan

Directed by Daniel Evans

Sera Maehara

“Most people live on a lonely island

Lost in the middle of a foggy sea

Most people long for another island

One where they know they will like to be…”

In his haunting lyrics to Bali Ha’i, Oscar Hammerstein II could have been writing of our world today, tenatively seeking to emerge from the pandemic and longing to re-ignite its cultural heartbeat, so cruelly suspended in springtime last year. So it is that Daniel Evans’ take on South Pacific offers an evening of classic musical theatre, staged to perfection.

Much has been made of the show’s political narrative resonating with our times. In some ways this is true and in seeking to avoid spoilers, it is unquestionably uplifting to see Ensign Nellie Forbush (stunningly played by Gina Beck) achieve moral redemption as she spurns the racist foundations of her Little Rock upbringing. Likewise, as we witness Lt Joe Cable’s (Rob Houchen) inner turmoil as he battles his love for the Polynesian Liat, against his knowledge that she will never be accepted within his Princeton-steeped heritage, we can see that Rodgers and Hammerstein were brave in recognising the racial intolerances of their USA. The sadder reality of course is that nearly 70 years later, many of the show’s themes are as relevant today as they were then.

But on close inspection, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s moral compass is flawed. While planter Emil de Becque (Julian Ovenden) will happily reject the requests of the US Navy to go on a spying mission for them in enemy territory while Nellie Forbush is in his life, the moment he realises that she could be leaving his island, he signs up for Uncle Sam with barely a thought at all for his two young children who he risks making orphans should the mission fail. Hypocrite or what? Maybe de Becque’s ultimate vacuity as a responsible parent is an inconvenient truth - but it is sufficient to cast a significant fault line across this classic show’s conscience.

This criticism however is to be levelled at the show’s book alone, for what is unquestionable at Chichester is that Evans has assembled an outstanding company who deliver musical theatre excellence. The famous numbers are legendary making spines tingle and amidst an immaculately socially distanced audience in the Festival Theatre, toes tap too.

Ovenden’s de Becque makes glorious work of Some Enchanted Evening, so frequently reprised that it becomes the  show’s signature motif. Smouldering with a chiselled gravitas, it is simply a delight to listen to him coax the song’s passion and majesty into the limelight.

As regards Gina Beck, Evans has previous form in coaxing flawless magnificence from his leading lady. This website was wowed in 2015 with Beck’s turn in Evans’ Sheffield Showboat and there is a clear chemistry between the/ pair that sees her glide through songbook classics with an assured brilliance that makes the songs seem as new as they are familiar. Evans doesn’t disappoint with the show’s stock numbers either. I’m Gonna Wash That Man right out of my hair - second only to to Hitchcock’s Psycho for a cracking shower scene - is led magnificently by Beck, while her solo moments elsewhere in the production fill the auditorium with vocal gorgeousness.

Elsewhere, the cast are gems. Keir Charles as Luther Billis captures his character’s comic complexities to a tee - no easy task - while Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary is another stunner. Ampil’s role also comes with some challenging moral ambiguities that are mastered by this talented woman. She takes Happy Talk into a troubling lament, discovering hidden depths to the song.

Likewise Houchen masters Younger Than Springtime and the cautionary duet of You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught - itself another number that resonates alarmingly with the present day.

Production values are magnificent throughout with Evans and designer Peter McKintosh making fine use of Chichester's massive revolve. Ann Yee’s dance routines, including some inspiring solo balletic routines from Sera Maehara’s Liat are just divine, while high above the stage Cat Beveridge’s luxuriously furnished 16-piece band makes fine work of David Cullen’s new orchestrations of Rodgers’ classic score.

Some enchanted evening? Not ‘arf!

Runs until 5th September

Photo credit: Johan Persson