Love Story - Review

Union Theatre, London

***

Music and additional lyrics by Howard Goodall

Book and lyrics by Stephen Clark

Directed by Sasha Regan

David Albury and Victoria Serra

Following on from the extremely successful run of The Dreaming and with Girlfriends in hot pursuit, Love Story is the second in the Union's three part Howard Goodall season. Whilst it is always refreshing to see venues supporting British writing and despite its nomination for an Olivier back in 2010, one cannot help but feel that there are still some holes in this classically cheesy plot that are holding the production back.

An adult fairy tale from the 1970’s, Erich Segal’s novel, famously filmed starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw and helped in no small way by Francis Lai’s Oscar winning theme, imprinted itself upon the baby-boomer generation and in the show Stephen Clark’s book makes a grand attempt to capture the dreamy yet doomed relationship between Victoria Serra’s working class Jenny and the more patrician Oliver.

Serra’s performance is executed well, flitting effortlessly from “feisty with attitude” to the slightly more delicate young innocent, swept up in the passion of an exciting romance. She demonstrates her vocal versatility and strong stage presence almost instantly in Jenny’s Piano Song, later showing an equally impressive but far more tender side in Nocturnes, a scene that is stunningly complemented by Iain Dennis’ lighting.

In slightly awkward contrast, David Albury brings an uncomfortable harshness to Oliver. There is no doubt that both Albury's chiselled looks and singing voice are wonderful, but at times one feels that a greater sense of anger, or even heartbreak is required to truly reflect not only the story's tragic ending, but also the difficult relationship, universally recognisable, that he has with his parents.

Regan directs well. She knows her beloved space intimately, ensuring that every inch of stage is used to great effect, never more so than in the opening and closing number What Can You Say? where the full company create a splendid ensemble sound, even if there seems to be just a hint of Blackrock from Goodall’s The Hired Man creeping in to the melody.

Special mention also to the female ensemble of Tanya Truman, Grace Osborn and Ellie Ann Lowe. Their voices combine beautifully as they watch the lovers’ romance develop, providing an almost Chorus like narrative, backed delightfully throughout by Inga Davis-Rutter’s exquisite musical direction.

Bring tissues and a significant other, a visit to the Union’s Love Story makes for a great date!

Runs until 25th October 2014

Picture by Darren Bell

Backstage with The Scottsboro Boys - Feature

The Young Vic Company

As the West End welcomes The Scottsboro Boys, I ventured backstage at London’s Garrick Theatre during final rehearsals to catch up with its inspirationally committed producer Catherine Schreiber, along with one of the production’s talented US imports actor James T Lane. I wanted to learn a little more about this remarkable minstrel show, that took the Young Vic by storm last December and went on to win the (UK’s most respected) Critics’ Circle award for Best Musical 2013. 

The Scottsboro Boys was to be the final collaboration of one of the greatest songwriting partnerships, that of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Kander and Ebb were masters of that rare art of studying man’s inhumanity to man and then being able to set the wickedness to toe-tapping tunes. Who else could have written Cabaret, a show about the rise of Nazism and the impending Holocaust, that was to give Liza Minelli such a career-defining belter of a title song. 

The start of the Scottsboro Boys’ true story may pre-date Hitler’s accession to the German Chancellorship by two years and by half a world, but history has taught us that evil respects no borders. With the Great Depression gripping the nation after the stock-market crash of 1929, people hopped freight trains to travel from one city to the next in search of work when a fight between blacks and whites broke out on a train in Jackson County on March 25, 1931. The train was brought to a halt at Scottsboro and trying to avoid arrest, two women on the train falsely accused nine black youths of raping them. It was an inflammatory allegation in the Jim-Crow South, where many whites were attempting to preserve supremacy just 66 years after the end of the Civil War and it did not take too much legal process for the accusations to be “proved” and for all nine to be sentenced to Alabama’s electric chair.

The Scottsboro Boys' plight gripped the nation, galvanising liberals in the North as their champions and proving a significant keystone in the foundations of the nascent Civil Rights Movement. Their case lurched precariously through the Alabama justice system and whilst this article will not reveal how the story ends, the whole musical focusses acutely upon the key tenet on which justice and decent society depend. That of individuals telling the truth. 

l-r David Thompson, Susan Stroman, Catherine Schreiber, John Kander
photo credit Paul Kolnick

Together with London's Young Vic and fellow New Yorker Paula Marie Black, Schreiber is Lead Producing the Garrick show, but the passion for both telling this tale and championing its cause is clearly in Schreiber's DNA. Following The Scottsboro Boys' off-Broadway premier at New York’s Vineyard Theatre (a production that gave rise to the only currently available Cast Recording, though Schreiber hints, intriguingly, at a London recording possibly being released) she worked hard to bring the show to Broadway, where it only was to last a disappointingly short run. Away from the stage and at home, her lawyer husband shares her passion for racial equality. He served his training clerkship with Thurgood Marshall, the man who was to become the first USA Supreme Court justice of African American heritage

Today, Scottsboro's The Scottsboro Boys Museum is curated by Shelia Washington and Schreiber’s eyes welled up (and to be honest, so did mine) as she spoke of having worked alongside this formidable woman, as the Broadway show (and beyond) evolved. Washington has laboured tirelessly for the Boys’ guilty verdicts to be revoked by the State of Alabama and her efforts remind us not only of the power of human endeavour (hers) in fighting for a cause, but also of quite how frighteningly recent and contemporary this whole episode has remained. It was not until April 2013 (that’s last year!) that the Scottsboro Boys were all finally exonerated by Alabama at a ceremony where Schreiber, already honoured with the key to Scottsboro, gave the keynote address.

Sat next to Schreiber, and with the assuring air of a performer who knows his material inside out, James T Lane exudes a gorgeously relaxed yet finely balanced poise as we talk. No stranger to the trans-Atlantic showbiz commute, this gifted hoofer not only wowed the crowds at the Young Vic with The Scottsboro Boys’ London debut, he had already spent most of that year at the London Palladium playing Richie in the acclaimed revival of A Chorus Line. His extensive experience, both on Broadway and across the USA belies his youthful 36 years and I for one would have loved to have seen his Tyrone in Fame, as the man’s voice and movement are simply astonishing.

James T Lane

As an African-American, Lane brings his own experiences to the show. Our discussions range across the racial prejudices experienced on both sides of the Atlantic, though whilst Britain is a multi-cultural nation that is still in pursuit of a more harmonious society, this country has only welcomed significant numbers of non-white immigrants since the latter half of the 20th century. America’s Statue of Liberty may well represent the open arms of a melting pot too all, but the African-American legacy that pre-dates the Civil War and stretches back to periods of horrendous slavery, provides a far more complex, painful history. 

My opening paragraph referred to The Scottsboro Boys as a minstrel show, but remember that it was this black-slapped buffoonery that dominated America’s theatres during the 19th century, promoting its insidiously acceptable culture of acceptable racism. Shamefully, it was only as late as 1978 that the BBC were still broadcasting The Black And White Minstrel Show across Britain in a primetime Saturday night slot. That The Scottsboro Boys spectacularly lampoons the minstrel genre, with a beautifully weighted gravitas from British white veteran actor Julian Glover as the show’s Interlocutor (think of a Variety Hall’s Chairman) only adds to the show’s painful poignancy.

Lane also remarks on the joy, of instead of going “up against” his African- American competitors in auditions, often pursuing the same opportunity, how The Scottsboro Boys has provided an opportunity for him to work (brilliantly, I might add) with some of his closest friends in the business. 

But Lane is only one of a number of Americans who have travelled back to the UK with the production. As well as having performed his roles in the Broadway show (and he plays, with remarkable conviction, one of the falsely accusing white women, Ruby Bates) he is joined by other Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo, all three of whom created their roles way back in 2010 at the Vineyard. Dixon’s Hayward Patterson is the show’s lead character whose struggles with the abuse of truth prove to be the show’s emotional fulcrum, whilst McClendon and Domingo play the minstrel-show regulars of Mr Bones and Mr Tambo, adopting all manner of acutely observed satirical characterisations.

The Young Vic Production

Whilst a five-star show has to deliver perfect performances from its actors, it is the creative talent behind the show that inspires the excellence and the pedigree of The Scottsboro Boys' team is faultless. As well as Kander and Ebb’s compositions that are structured around David Thompson’s book, it is Susan Stroman, the wunder-talent of recent years in musical theatre who has remained the director and choreographer of the show from the Vineyard to the Garrick. Hers is a remarkable commitment, for on the simplest of stages (this show has no techno-gimmicks whatsoever) the movement that she extracts from her company has to be seen to be believed.

Only on for 20 weeks The Scottsboro Boys will make you laugh and cry and the West End reviews will be out soon. Until then, these are my thoughts on the Young Vic production. The show truly is unmissable. See it and be humbled and amazed.

Runs at the Garrick Theatre until Saturday 21st February 2015

Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse - Review

Forge & Co, London

****

For the next two weeks at Forge, one of London's newest co-working and event spaces, the cultural anti-icons that are the Modern Toss stable of characters are on display. The exhibition also ties in with the launch of an impressively weighty tome, Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse marking the first ten years of this phenomenon of the modern art world.

The exhibition is simply mounted reflecting the anarchic wit that Jon Link and Mick Bunnage have committed to both paper and animation over the years. Actually, anarchic flatters the pair, for whilst their work is gloriously crude and almost subversive, all of their material is fashioned from the words of Britain's everymen and women. Link and Bunnage take the ideas that many of us think but are forbidden from ever uttering because we lack the confidence, or it might cost us our job, or to say out loud what these guys create, might simply be the most outrageous breach of public decency.

Comprising artwork around the hall, a loop of some of Modern Toss' funniest filmed work and the chance to experience what it's actually like inside a Modern Toss cartoon with The Living Cartoon, the exhibition will lead to your crying with guilty laughter. And never has an exhibit been more interactive than the Periodic Table of Swearing' - a four-legged talking table you can operate like a demented organist piping out swear words based on the chemical elements.'

Best of all - the whole thing is free. There's the opportunity to buy stuff of course, including signed prints and on various dates Link and Bunnage will be there in person to sign books.

If the likes of Alan, Mr Tourette Master Signwriter or Business Mouse have ever tickled your funny bone then this exhibition is a must-see. Whilst the event is most definitely not for children, it appeals to the child in us all and as Link and Bunnage themselves comment: "Never in the field of human communication has so much, been said by so many, with so much of it being bollocks". They are not wrong. 

Modern Toss: A Decade In The Shithouse 

Celebrating Ten Years Of Modern Toss

at

Forge & Co

154 - 158 Shoreditch High Street

London E1 6HU

Until October 19th

Teh Internet is Serious Business - Review

Royal Court Theatre, London

***

Written by Tim Price

Directed by Hamish Pirie

In 2011, a small group of hackers affiliated with Anonymous and calling themselves ‘LulzSec’ (a contraction of ‘laughing at security’) embarked on a short reign of mischief  targetting the websites of Fox, Sony, PBS and eventually the FBI and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency. At the heart of Teh Internet is Serious Business is the tale of LulzSec's youngest members – teenagers Jake Davis and Mustafa Al-Bassam – as they are slowly drawn into an online world that seems to free them from the mundanity and struggle of reality.

But this is no conventional narrative drama. Without a computer or untidy bedroom in sight, Hamish Pirie and designer Chloe Lamford have re-imagined the dark underbelly of the internet as the protagonists themselves see it: a kaleidoscopic big-kids’ playground, complete with multi-coloured ball pit and bristling with anarchic energy. The world of the internet chatroom is literally brought to life, ‘Condescending Willy Wonka’ dances around with ‘Grumpy Cat’ and Rick Astley appears through a trapdoor any time someone is ‘Rickrolled’.

How well this central conceit works probably depends to a great extent on the audience’s familiarity and sympathy with internet culture (beginning with the in-joke of the misspelt title). Despite a handy glossary in the programme of hacker terminology and online memes, I’d have thought much of the piece would still be utterly baffling to a large number of people and indeed both directly in front of and behind me in the audience were people aged 50 and over, neither group returning after the interval.

For those more versed in the culture, the necessary spoon feeding of various concepts and conceits felt a touch episodic at times. The first half, in particular, feels more like a series of sketches – Memes! Pirate Bay! Anonymous! Trolling! – and after the audience has got over the initial bursts of energy there is a danger that ‘acting out’ every last chatroom post and hack can start to have a slightly simplistic feel to it. 

The fifteen strong cast are uniformly excellent, but the nature of the piece leaves most dealing in stereotypes and clichés. Whilst the onstage madness does a wonderful job of representing the anarchy of the internet, it offers little chance to invest in any of the characters. Kevin Guthrie and Hamza Jeetooa bring warmth and humanity to the two teenage hackers and Sargon Yelda is excellent in a variety of roles – the best as a man whose life is turned upside down by hackers and who, in the play’s funniest song, is mocked for using the same password for every online account.

Teh Internet is Serious Business is at times very funny, wonderfully energetic and even genuinely poignant. There is, however, the slight suspicion that the overall concept, brilliant and ingenious as it is, leaves some fascinating and moving human stories only half told.

Runs until 25th October 2014

Next Fall - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

****

Written by Geoffrey Nauffts

Directed by Luke Sheppard

Mitchell Mullen and Nancy Crane

Set in Manhattan, Next Fall is a carefully written exposition of faith, sexuality and denial, played out across the cultural chasm of the Mason-Dixon Line that even today, still fractures the United States.

Martin Delaney is Luke, a gay Southerner, committed to his Christian faith and who has been unable to come out to his long-divorced parents.  The play opens with his having sustained life-threatening injuries in a car crash, and as he lies offstage on a ventilator the drama plays out through flashbacks and real-time, as the jigsaw pieces of his life slowly fall into place.

Luke's lover Adam is an atheist New Yorker, stymied by Luke's shielding of his sexuality from his parents and desperate to be able to express his love for Luke as the younger man’s life hangs by a thread. Charlie Condou plays Adam, on stage for almost the entire play and injecting a passion into his performance that never once slips from excruciating credibility.

All the performances in this meticulously researched piece are top notch, with Mitchell Mullen's Butch, Luke's redneck father, a brilliantly crafted study of a man who has lived his life believing that gays and blacks should be lynched, now having to cope with the consequences of having denied to himself his son's sexuality. In a performance that ranges from rage to heartbreak, Mullen is masterful.

The Judaeo-Christian fusion of the North Eastern metropolis is in stark contrast to the bible-bashing prejudice of the South and Naufft's carefully constructs his drama around the painful paradoxes of faith. There are moments in the second half when the characters' back stories tend to drag, yet the drama is never more intense than when Adam grapples with wanting to tell Butch all, whilst at the same time the old man is having to contemplate the agony of agreeing to organ donation, should Luke succumb to.his devastating injuries It makes for brilliant theatre.

There is good work all round, Sirine Saba's Jewish Holly proving to be the glue struggling to sustain the damaged people around her and who all love Luke for different reasons. Nancy Crane is Luke's manic yet fragile mother Arlene, in a performance that perceptively combines a mother's agony for her wounded child, with a desperate lurch into the welcoming arms of anti-depressants.

David Woodhead's design with Howard Hudson's lighting makes clever work of The Little's compact space, efficiently suggesting changes in both time and location, and Luke Sheppard has done well on capturing the nuances from his talented troupe.

Next Fall is one of the more impressive productions of gay theatre in recent years. The performances are perfect and the play makes for a troubling and thought provoking night.

Runs until 25th October 2014

Sweeney Todd - Review

Twickenham Theatre, London

****

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by Hugh Wheeler

Adaptation by Christopher Bond

Directed by Derek Anderson

David Bedella and Sarah Ingram

Twickenham is the newest of fringe theatres to open in the capital. Perched above a pub, little more than a stone’s throw from the train station it’s a pleasantly accessible suburban venue and with Derek Anderson’s entertaining production of Sondheim’s bloodiest work, Twickenham has laid down its marker for quality.

There’s a steampunk feel to the piece. Amidst dripping pipes and a smoke filled gloom creating the infernal grime of Mrs Lovett’s bakehouse, David Bedella and Sarah Ingram breathe life into the doomed couple. Bedella’s Todd is callow, drawn and hungry for vengeance. Controlled understatement defines his crafted performance though vocally, on press night at least, it felt that he could be giving more. In two of Sweeney’s biggest numbers, My Friends and Epiphany, Bedella is magnificent, though he and the cast are not helped by clumsy sound design throwing voices in and out of amplification depending upon proximity to static mikes.

The treat of the show however is Ingram whose buxomly decolletaged Mrs Lovett is at once a fusion of Carry On’s Hattie Jaques, Oliver’s Nancy and Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Ingram nuances the menace of her character perfectly, The Worst Pies In London being a comic treat whilst By The Sea blends her romantic desperation with Sondheim’s remarkable understanding of English banter. Ingram could slow down just a tad in A Little Priest, some of the gags are garbled.

Elsewhere there is excellence from Genevieve Kingsford making her debut in the desperately challenging soprano role of Johanna. She sings exquisitely in Kiss Me and Green Finch And Linnet Bird. Mikaela Newton’s Tobias is touchningly convincing whilst Mark McKerracher is appropriately old enough to make his misogynistic lust for his young ward as disgusting as it should be, though his moment of self-flagellation is distractingly feeble.

The staging is simple with Rachel Stone’s design generally working well. Sweeney’s chair is an ingeniously low-budget affair but it serves its purpose, shuttling the slaughtered carcasses off the stage. The fake blood flows in torrents, turning most of the show’s murders into moments of comedy-horror, though too often the blood squirting nozzle is visible on the “victim”. If the mechanics behind an effect are visible, it is no longer “special” and an audience’s suspended disbelief can lurch dangerously south.

Benjamin Holder’s four piece band tackle Sondheim with aplomb. The two keyboards in particular maintain an almost orchestral backing to the show and are a constant reminder of the outstanding performance values to be found in London’s Off West End. I won’t be the only critic to say this, but make the trip to Twickenham’s Sweeney Todd. It’s a bloody good musical.


Runs until 4th October 2014

The Return Of The Soldier - Review

Jermyn Street Theatre, London

****

Music by Charles Miller.

Book and Lyrics by Tim Sanders

Directed by Charlotte Westenra

Stewart Clarke and Laura Pitt-Pulford

There was a group of students from Mountview Drama School attending on the same night that I reviewed The Return Of The Soldier and they could not have chosen a finer master-class to demonstrate their pursued craft, for this tiny company, five strong, drip with excellence. Charlotte Westenra's production that premieres this troubling WW1 musical, marks another theatrical tribute that respects the centenary of the outbreak of "the war to end all wars".

Laura Pitt-Pulford, an actress whose name on any bill guarantees a classy performance, is Margaret, a barely happily married woman, whose feelings for a past flame of her youth are re-kindled when the dashing former beau inexplicably starts sending her love letters. Stewart Clarke plays Captain Baldry the gloriously moustachioed and patrician officer who captured her heart all those years ago. The tale unfolds and we learn that Baldry has long since married Kitty, a frightfully snobbish debutante, socially way above the common barmaid Margaret and that the Captain has just been sent back from the Front suffering from shell-shock (or PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) The PTSD has erased any memory of his marriage from his conscience, leaving him only to recall and yearn for his long lost love for Margaret. Rebecca West's novel, adapted by Tim Sanders is ripe for the grand sweep of a musical treatment. Pitt-Pulford's layered Margaret is a masterclass and we feel for her character's emotional dilemma, drawn back to the Baldry house (invited actually, by Kitty) to act almost as a "tethered goat" to try and re-kindle the injured officer’s cognisance of the present.

Making her second foray this year into the theatre of The Great War, Zoe Rainey, recently seen in Stratford East's revival of Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lovely War! evokes both our contempt for her despicable treatment of Margaret, yet also touches a profound note of sympathy as she grapples with a husband who no longer not only recognises her, but burns with desire for his former love. Alongside Pitt-Pulford, Rainey's work is of the highest standard.

Clarke's Baldry is further evidence that this gifted young actor remains one to watch, whilst doubling up as Margaret's humbling bumbling husband William, as well as the manipulative psychiatrist Dr Anderson, Michael Matus is, as ever, excellent. There is a scene in act one where Margaret kneads dough as she talks to William and casting directors take note: a future Sweeney Todd that pairs Matus with Pitt-Pulford would be sensational.

Whilst the talent that visionary producer Katy Lipson, together with Guy James, has assembled is flawless, the same does not hold true for Miller and Sander’s writing. The melodies often fail to satisfy (notwithstanding several moments of pitch-perfect close harmony) whilst the ironic wit of Dr Anderson’s solo number Head Master lacks the incisive bite of Littlewood's near-perfect collection of war satire. As the story’s endgame plays out we learn of childrens' deaths. To lose one toddler in a plot is forgivable, to learn of two such fatalities is downright careless and notwithstanding the ending’s poignancy, the infant mortalities muddle the emotional thrust of the work, detracting from the raw brutal horrors of trench warfare and PTSD.

Flaws notwithstanding, The Return Of The Soldier is a fine piece of chamber theatre, with the cello and piano work of Simon Lambert’s band proving exquisite. In the tight confines of the Jermyn Street’s cockpit it remains an utter privilege to be able to see and scrutinise such an exceptional cast at work.

Runs to 20th September 2014