La Cage Aux Folles - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

****

Music & lyrics by Jerry Herman

Book by Harvey Fierstein

Based on the play by Jean Poiret

Directed by Timothy Sheader

Carl Mullaney

In a beautifully created revival, Jerry Herman’s La Cage Aux Folles played under a (thankfully) balmy summer’s evening at Regents Park.

Billy Carter plays Georges and Carl Mullaney, Albin, in the famed story of family, identity, sexuality and love. Harvey Fierstein’s book is given an intelligent treatment by Timothy Sheader in his swansong at the Open Air Theatre. The comedy is immaculately timed and the moments of powerful pathos, sensitively handled. As the evening’s twilight darkens across the stage, Colin Richmonds’ evocative set is brought into a gorgeous relief by Howard Hudson’s lighting plots. Equally, Ryan Dawson Laight’s costumery of both the dancers at the La Cage Aux Folles nightspot, and the surrounding characters is delightful.

The strengths of this show however lie in its outstanding performances. Carter and Mullaney are magnificent in their middle-aged, decades long romance, with the act one treats of Carter’s Song On The Sand and Mullaney’s I Am What I Am proving sensational. Both men imbue their numbers with sensitivity, in the case of Mullaney’s first-half closer, a perfectly weighted power too. As the (albeit implausible) plot plays out, there is an outstanding turn from Debbie Kurup as restaurateur Jacqueline.

Aside from the show’s magnificent vocal work, Stephen Mear again turns in a marvellously choreographed dance creation. The imaginative moves, perfectly drilled, are a joy to behold. Craig Armstrong was called upon on press night to cover the role of Edward Dindon and did so with finesse. Ben van Tienen conducts Herman’s score with verve, his 9-piece upstage band offering a musical treat to accompany the evening.

There is much to enjoy in La Cage Aux Folles, one of London’s most enchanting nights of musical theatre.

Runs until 23rd September

Photo credit: Mark Senior

 

Jesus Christ Superstar - Review

Open Air Theatre, London


*****

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Directed by Timothy Sheader

Tyrone Huntley and Declan Bennett

In what is unquestionably a Superstar for the 21st century Timothy Sheader's Jesus is no long haired prophet. In an electrifying performance that captures both Christ’s charisma and his flawed vulnerability, Declan Bennett's Messiah is a powerfully charged hipster. Played out against Tom Scutt's rusted-steel framed set (that interestingly evokes the Angel Of The North in its unpretentious simplicity) and with hand held mics throughout, this production places the emphasis as much upon Andrew Lloyd-Webber's rock-driven score, as it does upon its sensational cast.

Bennett brings an energy to the title role that is moving and credible. Vocally he is perfect and as act one sees a momentum gather, it is in the second half with his remarkable Gethsemane (opened beautifully by Bennett himself on acoustic guitar) that the actor soars. His performance is as harrowing to watch as it is probably exhausting to perform. We flinch at the Trial By Pilate / 39 Lashes and during his crucifixion, the extent to which Bennett subtly underplays his agony makes it all the tougher for the audience to watch - and all this alongside Scutt's ingenious interpretation of Calvary, itself a scenic triumph that must surely rank amongst the capital's finest this year.

Next to Bennett, Tyrone Huntley's Judas is sensational. His opening take on Heaven On Their Minds displays an intelligence and energy that has been carefully honed during his already impressive career. Gifted several stunning solos, he closes the first half with Blood Money and a neat theatrical take on the "pieces of silver" that won't be revealed here. Throughout, Huntley offers a clever interpretation of the complex dissolution of his friendship with Jesus. When the Oliviers are being handed out this year, both Bennett and Huntley deserve to be on the list.

There is imaginative excellence across the company. With both Everything's Alright and I Don't Know How To Love Him, Anouska Lucas's Mary is a thing of beauty, the actress highlighting not just Mary's damaged frailty, but also the inexplicably wondrous love that she feels towards Jesus. David Thaxton's Pilate is another treat and as he sings Pilate's Dream, leading on electric guitar, the background acoustic work of Bennett and Joel Harper-Jackson (who plays Simon Zealotes) offers another layer to the song's troubling spirituality. Peter Caulfield's Herod, truly as camp as Christmas, is a blast, (and wonderfully costumed too), whilst Cavin Cornwall's imposing Caiaphas offers a baritone that has to be heard to be believed.

Shearer has surrounded himself with a top-notch creative team. Under Tom Deering's direction Lloyd Webber's score thrills, with the show evolving into a celebration of the guitar in the modern musical, as much as a biblical interpretation. Drew McOnie's choreography makes fine use of the ensemble and the multi-level space with his movement evoking not just a seething biblical crowd but also the febrile tensions of the times. 

Lee Curran's lighting adds dimension too. The rock-concert style of the evening piece lends itself to smoke - and as the park’s daylight finally succumbs to night over the crucifixion, so to like Longinus' spear, do Curran's shafts of light pierce the darkness.

This is beautiful brilliant theatre. Don't miss it.

Runs until 27th August

Photo credit Johan Perssonn

Lord of the Flies - Review

Churchill Theatre, Bromley


****


Written by William Golding
Adapted by Nigel Williams
Directed by Timothy Sheader

Lord of the Flies

The Churchill's curtain rises, revealing a crashed plane in a jungle-esque setting. To a deeply reverberating score plied with ominous overtones, the stage is set for this darkest of tales.

Lord of the Flies, studied at schools across the country, is one of the great British novels. William Golding, an English teacher, once allowed his class to conduct a classroom debate and when verbal and physical mayhem ensued, had to intervene to calm things down. The episode was to inspire the premise of his text - that the evil capacity to descend into savagery exists inside us all. 

Golding's chilling novel is aptly staged by Regent Park's Open Air Theatre. John Bausor's excellent set is ingeniously adapted to the Bromley floorboards and with Nick Powell's carefully composed score, the cast of young actors has an ideal environment in which to explore themes of governance, decency and humanity.

Director Timothy Sheader and co-director Liam Steel do an outstanding job in amplifying the uncomfortable truths buried within Golding's story. Whilst the performances across the board may be variable, the well established chemistry between the actors is undeniable, resulting in a seamless and believable interpretation of Nigel Williams' script.

Anthony Robert's Piggy, Luke Ward-Wilkinson's Ralph and Matthew Castle's Roger are all immensely comfortable in their characters' skins and their performances are probably the most natural and riveting. However it is the youngest member of the cast, Benedict Barker as Perceval, who steals the show. With a beautifully executed vocal and physical delivery Barker is at home on this stage and he makes an impressive professional debut.

Building towards the horrific denouement, the directors do a fine job focussing on particular elements, slowing down the action to ensure nothing is missed by the audience. True to form, the ending is abrupt after a much heightened climax, leaving the audience stunned and one actor still racking with sobs as the cast takes a bow. To say this production has punch would be a gross understatement. 

Closing the end of its UK tour at Bromley's Churchill Theatre, this show marks the triumphant finale of a masterful production.

Runs until 19th March

Reviewed by Bhakti Gajjar

Photo credit: Johan Persson

The Gershwins' Porgy And Bess - Review

Open Air Theatre, London

****

By George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Book Adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks 
Musical Score Adapted by Diedre L. Murray
Directed by Timothy Sheader

Nicola Hughes and Rufus Bonds Jr on opening night

The amphitheatre at Regents Park is dominated by a massive backdrop of beautifully buckled burnished copper. As the sun goes down and passions rise in Timothy Sheader’s inspired take on this North Carolina fable, the design reflects the light. lending its metallic nuances to the palette. Gold becomes red, becoming moonlit pale or a terrifying stormy blue. Katrina Lindsay’s stage design is breathtaking before the band have even struck up.

Sheader sets out a bold stall in the Overture. In a solo routine Bess emerges, clad only in a slip and in a lithe sensuous dance, slides into a sizzling red dress slit to the hips. Truly one of London’s Leading Ladies, Nicola Hughes owns the stage in a performance that defines her character’s complex combination of iressistible sexual magnetism with profound vulnerability.

If Hughes represents the best of British, then she is well matched against the trio of trans-atlantic talent, flown in under the UK-USA Equity deal, whose characters vie for Bess’ attentions. Cedric Neal reprises the coke peddling Sporting Life from his Broadway performance two years ago. His elegant peacocked flamboyance defining the fatally attractive evil of the drugs he supplies. In a show crammed with The American Songbook greats, Neal’s act two opener, It Ain’t Necesssarily So takes this most familiar of numbers and makes it sizzle with a thrilling interpretation. Phillip Boykin, also over from the States, nails the muscular menace of Crown. A man as large as his booming baritone, Boykin imbues Crown with the purest of dark violence. Rufus Bonds Jr completes the set of imports, starring as Porgy. Bond gives a pathos and a power to the role that makes our hearts bleed for his crippled character. His voice and presence is inspirational, defining goodness as he craves a shaft of Bess’ love to light his crippled world. Against three such stunning performers, Hughes more than rises to the challenge. “Frailty, thy name is Bess” could define her character, desperate to be a good woman, but unable to sustain a loving commitment or resist her addictions.

The company work is flawless. Sharon D Clarke’s Mariah is a performance of wisdom and presence. Golda Rosheuvel’s Serena is a role of subtle humility, yet when this actress mourns her husband with My Man’s Gone Now, her voice as if from nowhere, fills the open-air space, tingling spines. A nod too to Jade Ewen’s Clara, the diminutive Sugababe who masters the show’s signature Summertime, with a perfectly weighted poise.

Amidst such a classy company, the use of ramshackle tables and chairs as improvised scene-setters is a distraction. Excellent performers demand an excellence in staging and the frequent shifting of tacky furniture suggests low-budget fringe rather than a production that frames world-class talent. It also remains a disappointment that a show, so steeped in the troubled, racist, tenement history of America’s South plays to a London audience that is overwhelmingly white. It deserves packed houses that reflect a broader cross-section of the capital’s melting pot.

David Shrubsole coaxes a jazz-infused delight from his lavishly furnished 15-piece band and with few finer companies in town, The Open Air Theatre’s Porgy And Bess is unmissably incisive and thrillingly provocative.

Runs until 23rd August 2014 

All My Sons

Open Air Theatre, London

****

Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by Timothy Sheader

Tom Mannion and Brid Brennan

Challenging perceptions of right and wrong and forcing us to question personal choices, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, his 20th century scorching classic on lies, deceit and integrity, is given a powerful revival by Timothy Sheader at the Open Air Theatre. The Regents Park setting suits the play, with Lizzie Clachan's simple set of a square lawn underpinned by long mangled roots being dominated by a huge Norman Rockwell image of a ‘perfect’ 1940’s post-war smiling family. The irony is profound.

Tensions rise as we encounter the Keller family, seemingly close and still grappling with the loss of son Larry some three years after his death. Surviving son Chris sensitively portrayed by Charles Aitken wants to move on with his life but is thwarted by a mother who refuses to accept that Larry is dead and by his father Joe who doesn’t want to rock the boat. Chris seeks inspiration and something beautiful to come home to, whilst Joe (a finely tuned performance from Tom Mannion) just wants something tangible to pass on that will have marked his existance. But soaring around this family are guilty secrets and a history of hideous compromises. With a nod to Greek tragedy and a grim inevitability, Miller skilfully weaves the threads that will lead to Joe Keller’s destruction. This is a harrowing production of a devastating play.

Brid Brennan’s powerful, intense matriarch Kate, grief stricken and in deep denial, tries to hold her family together as the overhead roar of Heathrow bound jet planes adds an unexpected layer of poignant pain to the events on stage. Powerful work too from Amy Nuttall as girlfriend Ann, harbouring her own devastating secret and also from Andy McKeane as her brother George.

Nick Powell’s atmospheric music is ominous throughout, complementing Sheader’s interpretation, with the evening proving to be coruscating theatre.  Effective productions of Miller should never be easy to watch and this production is as harrowing as it is brilliant.

Runs until 7th June 2014

Barnum

Festival Theatre, Chichester

***

Music by Cy Coleman

Lyrics by Michael Stewart

Book by Mark Bramble

In a Revised Version by Cameron Mackintosh and Mark Bramble

Directed by Timothy Sheader

This review was first published in The Public Reviews.

There has rarely been a venue more site specific than the sumptuous Big Top that Chichester Festival Theatre have erected to stage their 2013 season’s flagship show, Barnum, the Coleman and Stewart take on America’s 19th century circus legend who came up with The Greatest Show On Earth.

The tent is stylish, air conditioned and comfortable. A pre-show read of the thoughtfully designed programme finds praise heaped upon producer (and co-reviser of the book) Cameron Mackintosh and numerous references to Jim Dale who created the role on Broadway in 1980 (though strangely, for such a thoroughly historical essay by book writer Mark Bramble, no mention of Michael Crawford who was to premiere the role in London one year later). So before the lights go down, expectations are set to high.

The opening movements of both acts are spine-tingling with suggestions of spectacle along with company work that is superb. These wow moments however turn out to be rare and short lived. Leading man Christopher Fitzgerald is an American actor of excellent drama pedigree and gifted with extraordinary credentials in movement and circus abilities that include the famous tightrope walk that closes the first half. But as a musical theatre Leading Man he struggles. His voice, albeit melodic and tuneful lacks punch and presence and fails to expand to fill the cavernous tent. In Museum Song, arguably one of the toughest lyrical tongue twisters penned, speeding up scarily through the stanzas, the final verse written to be sung at ridiculous speed has Fitgerald blurring, slurring and crashing his words. His character has a line in the song Black And White “Nobody does show-business better than me”. Sadly, not here and not now. Whilst that adage could even recently have been applied to Mackintosh, the legendary producer who certainly knows what makes for a stunning image has apparently lost his casting mojo. Technical improvements are required too. Sat in Row U, some big-number lyrics are barely audible, whilst the lighting plots often leave dancing members of the ensemble in virtual darkness.

Tamsin Carroll is an adequate Chairy Barnum in perhaps one of the weakest roles for a female lead in the canon, though Aretha Ayeh’s Joice Heth and Anna O’Byrne’s Jenny Lind both deliver performances that are as vocally magnificent as they are entertaining to watch. It’s a shame that both their cameos are so modest. Credit too to Adam Rowe’s 15 piece band, heavy on the brass, whose work is a treat throughout. 

The real star of this show though is the company. Sheader together with co-choreographers Liam Steel and Andrew Wright have extracted brilliance in the ensemble’s dance and movement. The footwork is impressive with an amazing routine in Thank God I’m Old and a finale that dazzles with circus skills and flying people. It would have been lovely to have seen more circus themed direction throughout, especially during the tedious dialogues between Barnum and Chairy that cry out for more pizazz.

Mackintosh is unquestionably one of the world’s greatest showmen, but on this showing he’s humbugged the good people of Chichester.

Runs to August 31 2013