The Color Purple At Home - Review

*****

Book by Marsha Norman
Music & lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray

Directed by Tinuke Craig

T'Shan Williams

In a stunning fusion of musical theatre and ingenious photography, Curve Leicester together with Birmingham Hippodrome have revived their 2019 production of The Color Purple, re-imagining the show not only for a cast that must now be socially distanced, but for a remote audience confined to a digital stream.

A couple of months ago Curve streamed their gorgeous Sunset Boulevard, in so doing giving the locked-down theatre world new ways to dream. Building on the success of that show, The Color Purple proves to be close to flawless in director Tinuke Craig’s streamed screen translation. Simply staged, deploying the Curve’s revolve, minimal props and a handful of superimposed scene-setters,  Craig relieves her actors and musicians free any supportive gimmickry, letting her company that has been cast to perfection, tell the story with their talents.

T’Shan Williams leads as Celie, making this most complex of roles, her own. Essentially a modest and unglamorous character, Celie has to thrive in the show based solely on her performer's ability to act and sing (and briefly, deliciously, dance). And in Craig's take on the show, Williams delivers her Celie with a heart-breaking strength and perception. Where typically, a musical theatre performer has to deliver to a large, distant (albeit live and present) audience, in a streamed show, much like in the movies, it's also about the close-ups too. Williams' acting – through speech, song and movement, hits the mark every time. 

Carly Mercedes Dyer

Vocally, Williams is a class act – not just in Celie’s powerful final solo I’m Here, but perfectly duetting with Carly Mercedes Dyer’s Shug Avery in What About Love. Dyer herself is but one of a cast that drips with performers chosen solely for their ability. Avery is another enigmatic woman, with Dyer capturing her magnetism and vulnerability. Also outstanding in their supporting roles are Karen Mavundukure’s tragi-comic Sofia and Danielle Fiamanya as Nettie.

Danielle Fiamanya and Ako Mitchell

Amongst the men, Ako Mitchell delivers one of the finest interpretations of Mister. Another complex character, initially the most vile and misogynistic of men who by the finale is transformed via a heroic redemption,  Mitchell brings both menace and pathos to his performance in equal measure. And credit where it is due - alongside the few individuals named in this review, there is excellence everywhere from all the performers on stage.

Craig’s creative crew are equally talented. Mark Smith's choreography is inventive and inspired, recognising the challenges of our times with movement across the show that is both thrilling and immaculately nuanced. Alex Parker musically directs the 7 piece band with his usual flair. Their interpretation of the score is a delight with a particular mention to Ben Fletcher’s work on guitars. Ben Cracknell lights the massive Curve space with a mixture of both intimacy and passion, while the video crew from Crosscut Media are fast becoming experts in this  niche field of taking live work and re-engineering it for transmission. 

Hopefully the Curve – along with the rest of the nation’s theatres – will be welcoming the return of live audiences in the not too distant future. Until then, streamed productions such as The Color Purple At Home are the pinnacle of outstanding musical theatre.

The production streams until 7 March - Tickets available via www.curveonline.co.uk

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Heathers The Musical - Review

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London


***


Book, Music and Lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe 
Directed by Andy Fickman

Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jamie Muscato

Following a sold-out run at The Other Palace earlier this year, there’s been a lot of hype surrounding Heathers the Musical, with a strong fandom out in force and social media buzzing with (mostly) glowing comments. Based on the cult 1988 film written by Daniel Waters and starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers is a dark and entertaining tale of teenage angst, love and quest for popularity and arrives at its new home at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with high expectations all round.

For many teenagers high school is a time of angst and self-doubt and that’s certainly no different for Veronica Sawyer (Carrie Hope Fletcher), a teenage nobody who desperately dreams of ditching the bullies and fitting in at Westerberg High. Thanks to her knack of forging hall passes she’s soon taken in by three of the most popular (and cruellest) girls in school, The Heathers, although she finds out that popularity is not all it’s cracked up to be. She meets new boy in town, Jason ‘J.D.’ Dean, unaware that her relationship with the outcast will have grave consequences for everyone. 

Directed by Andy Fickman, Heathers is a dark musical packed full of humour and memorable numbers, with impressive choreography by Gary Lloyd, a versatile set (designed by David Shields) and enviable costumes to whisk you straight back to the 80s. 

While there is a realism in the show’s portrayal of teenage desperation for popularity, there are moments when it all feels deeply unsettling. The narrative brushes with sensitive topics including teenage suicide, sexual assault and high school killings that sit awkwardly when contrasted with the real-life tragedy of such events.

Fletcher lives up to expectations, delivering a misguided Veronica who is endearing yet flawed. Her performance is strong throughout in both acting and song, especially when she belts out Dead Girl Walking. Equally impressive is Jamie Muscato as the dry-humoured, troubled psychopath J.D, and the pair have great chemistry, as evidenced during their duet Seventeen. They’re both supported by a strong cast including Jodie Steele, T’Shan Williams and Sophie Isaacs as Heathers Chandler, Duke and McNamara respectively. Despite the cruelness of their characters, the trio are given one of the show’s catchiest songs, Candy Store. There is memorable work too from Jenny O’Leary as Martha, Veronica’s kind-hearted childhood best friend, with her sweetly sung number Kindergarten Boyfriend sure to tug at heart strings.

Despite its flaws, this is a technically well delivered show that is likely to be popular amongst die-hard fans and newcomers alike.

Runs until 24th November

Reviewed by Kirsty Herrington

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

The Life - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

*****

Music by Cy Coleman

Lyrics by Ira Gasman

Book by David Newman, Ira Gasman, and Cy Coleman

with additional material by Michael Blakemore

Directed by Michael Blakemore

Charlotte Reavey and Cornell S. John

Cy Coleman has a fine track record of taking an acerbic view of iconic American cities. With City Of Angels his score parodied a film noir view of Los Angeles - and here, with The Life, he peels back the fairytale of New York to reveal the truer uglier side of 42nd Street and Broadway that persisted throughout much of the last century.

It is hard to believe that this same city location fuelled the narrative to Frank Loesser's Guys And Dolls. Coleman and Ira Gasman pitch their show uncompromisingly on the streets around Times Square in the 1980s, when crime and sleaze were endemic to the area. But where Loesser's Joey Biltmore or Big Jule may well have been looked on as lovable rogues, The Life's villains are terrifyingly monstrous.

And yet - amongst the filth and destitution of its city setting, The Life's story, fuelled by Coleman's richly flavoured score, moves us all in depicting the fragile shoots of hope and humanity struggling to survive.

T'Shan Williams leads the show as young hooker Queen - desperate to make enough money to break away from vice and build a new life with her boyfriend Fleetwood (David Albury). We know their love is doomed from the outset - he's a drug-dependant Vietnam vet, battling PTSD and for whom Queen will always take second place to his addiction. It is Williams’portrayal of Queen's self-belief that drives the show. Her relative youth belying an ability to play a desperately damaged, vulnerable woman who's struggling to make her life work. Vocally Williams is a dream too, holding sensational notes with a range that is at times spine-tingling.

Williams is more than matched by the powerhouse that is Sharon D. Clarke. Playing Sonja, a compassionate ageing woman who's only known life as a whore, Clarke is majestic and compelling. Her duetting with Williams offers some of the finest musical theatre performance to be found, the spirituality of You Can't Get To Heaven being an electrifying glimpse into the bond of humanity that spanning the decades between them, unites the two women. Living in a world of profound ugliness, they display a dazzling inner beauty.

There's impressive womanly work on stage not just from Clarke and Williams but from a striking ensemble of street-hookers, who frequently suggested (to this reviewer at least) that if one were to take back the mink and the pearls from Loesser's Hot Box Girls, then what Coleman and Gasman have created is so much closer to a far harsher reality.

There's a cracking turn too from Joanna Woodward as the (apparently) naive Mary, straight off the bus from Duluth and quickly hustled. Woodward's Easy Money routine offering a polished glimpse into the truth of the tawdry sleaze of the strip scrub - in a routine that again defines so much more dismal honesty than the glossed over burlesque of Louise's strip routines in the closing act of Styne and Sondheim's Gypsy.

The Life shines in its diversity. Not just in a cast that is unequivocally multi-racial, but rather one which is refreshingly spread across a range of ages and body sizes that don’t conform to the conventionally clichéd tropes of beauty.

Where the show is unashamedly partisan however is in its treatment of men. By the final curtain, we've learned that every man on stage is ultimately a deceitful, exploitative scumbag.

Notwithstanding their characters' moral vacuity, the guys on stage are, to a man, outstanding actors. John Addison sets the stage as Jojo a middle ranking hustler, whose Use What You've Got defines his oleaginous duplicity. There's classy work too from Jo Servi's bartender Lacy, who in a small but critical moment defines the malicious misogyny permeating the streets. It is however Cornell S. John as Memphis, the city's prime pimp who both stuns and horrifies. John has a presence rarely encountered in Off West End theatre. With magnificent understatement he oozes an abusive, fearful force, which when played alongside his striking vocal resonance in both Don't Take Much and My Way Or The Highway, proves as chilling as it is compelling.

It's taken twenty odd years for Michael Blakemore, who directed the show's Tony-winning Broadway premier to bring it to London and his maturity and wisdom is evident in this carefully nuanced production's impact. Slick movement matched with a simple design motif of sliding parking-garage doors that slide to reveal the scenic trucks, and all staged underneath visionary projections of New York (the projection of the Hudson River's ripples is inspired), combine to create an ingenious treat.

Above the stage, Tamara Saringer conducts the first 11 piece band to play Southwark coaxing an exquisite treatment of Coleman's soaring score. Yet again, Joe Atkin-Reeve's work on the reeds is sensational - as Coleman's compositions range from ballsy brassy belting numbers to ethereal Gospel and heartbreaking ballad. 

The show marks Broadway and West End producer Catherine Schreiber's welcome arrival into leading a team of producers (co leads Amy Anzel and Matthew Chisling) on London's fringe. Together they display a commitment to production values throughout the show that rank alongside the sector’s best.

Scorchingly unmissable, The Life is one of the finest shows in town.

Runs until 29th April

Picture credit: Conrad Blakemore

T'Shan Williams talks about The Life at Southwark Playhouse

T'Shan Williams

Set in and around the sleaze of Times Square in the 1980s, Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman’s The Life garnered Tony and Drama Desk awards when Michael Blakemore directed its opening on Broadway in 1997. Twenty years later and with Blakemore again at the helm, the gritty musical crosses the Atlantic to open at the Southwark Playhouse next week.

The story focusses on Queen, a young woman of proud, principled intention who let down by the man she loves finds herself drawn into the complex criminality of prostitution. Sonja, an older and wiser hooker takes her under her wing… 

T’Shan Williams plays Queen and we spoke during a break in rehearsals. 

Update: To read my 5* review of The Life, published after its Opening Night, click here

JB:     Tell me first of all - What excites you about playing this role?

TW: Oh, the fact that Queen is not born into life that you see in the show. She's come from out of town, from a different area in the States and she’s moved to New York with dreams and aspirations. She's quite optimistic about what her life could be.

It just so happens that in the part that you see in the show, she has had to put her dreams on hold as she is sucked in to a mess that she didn't agree to.

JB:      What are the complexities of your character that you're having to explore and discover?

TW:     She has a certain sense of naivete because she didn't expect this to happen. She kind of got herself into a relationship where it just didn't work out right, so, it's basically I guess, her trying to be independent.

She's got a drive to be a better person, yet she's in a relationship where her partner is just quite happy with the situation they've ended up in.

So she is forced to choose between wrong and right, between love and a better life, that kind of thing, which is really quite hard for her.

What makes her such an appealing character though is the continuous optimism that she has, which is actually so inspiring and uplifting.

JB:     I was lucky enough to be invited to your rehearsal last week and see a glimpse of the show up close, in particular duetting with Sharon D. Clarke who plays Sonja. What is it like working alongside Sharon?

TW: Oh, absolute pleasure. She's so amazingly talented, and Cornell S.John too. I'm learning new things from them everyday.

Sharon’s like a big sister. She's got such a powerful energy in the rehearsal space. It's such a lovely time working with her. The whole cast too, they're all just so talented.

Sharon D. Clarke and T'shan Williams

JB:     Tell me about working with and being directed by Michael Blakemore.

TW: He's just such a gent, a charming man. And, I've never worked with such a director before that's just so detailed. He doesn't miss a beat. Of course, this is kind of his baby, because obviously he directed it originally on Broadway. The show really has a place in his heart and it's just such a pleasure to be in the room with him.

JB:     You are coming to The Life after a year in Book of Mormon. Have you worked in any off-West End productions before this?

TW: Yeah....ish! I did a season at the Arts Theatre in Leicester Square over Christmas and Ive toured But, that's kind of where my journey has been so far.

I only graduated in 2015 from drama school, so it has all been quite recent. But I've been lucky and had a good run in contracts so far. I love fringe theatre and I've always wanted to perform at the Southwark Playhouse because it's so intimate.

JB:     That's great to hear. The rehearsal that I saw was electric - I'm looking forward to your press night next week.

The Life will run at the Southwark Playhouse from 25th March until 29th April.

Photo credit: Simon Turtle