Month: November 2015

Funny Girl (Menier)

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I have often wondered what it is about Barbra Streisand that makes it so difficult for others to play the same roles. It’s not just because she’s a legend. Liza Minnelli is a legend, and God knows there are enough revivals of Cabaret about. But Streisand inhabited the roles she played so completely (especially Fanny Brice) that it is truly difficult to imagine anyone else in them. When people try, even someone as talented as Lea Michele, it comes across as an imitation.

Sheridan Smith is an actor whose career path has been somewhat unconventional. She has broken out of the “cheerful funny working class girl” straitjacket by dint of sheer, uncontainable and blinding talent. She has been outstanding in drama (Flare Path, Hedda Gabler), comedy (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and certainly musicals (Legally Blonde, Little Shop of Horrors), to focus only on her stage work. So if anyone could fill the Streisand-shaped hole in Funny Girl, it would be Sheridan.

Funny Girl is the story of Fanny Brice (Smith), a woman who became a vaudeville star despite unconventional looks. The musical covers her rise to fame and her relationship with Nick Arnstein (Darius Campbell), a charming but crooked man who seemed impossibly sophisticated to the working-class Brice. It’s the songs that make it, however, and they are inextricably linked with Streisand. “People,” “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” etc.

Sheridan Smith smashed it. She was a wonder. Dare I whisper it, she was even better than Barbra. In the first act, she was fairly relentlessly cheerful, and showcased her excellent singing, good dancing and absolutely peerless comic timing. But oh, in the second, her astonishing dramatic talent came to the fore. Her ability to cry, sing, and act her socks off at the same time is something I have never seen before to this degree. She is really just that good. Her accent was spot-on throughout, New York but not too much so. It was in no way an imitation of Streisand but fully her own. It is a fabulous, fabulous performance and I feel so lucky to have seen it close up in the tiny Menier. It produced a standing ovation and is, I am confident, going to be a massive hit.

The rest of the cast is very good as well, with particular praise going to Marilyn Cutts as Fanny’s mother Rose, who also nailed the accent without overdoing it. Campbell was very well cast, with his height and solidness a delightful contrast to Smith’s tiny stature. He sang very well, with “Who Are You Now” a surprisingly moving duet. The ensemble produced some marvellous dancing in a very bijou space. It was most impressive.

The one fly in the ointment for me (which may be a somewhat churlish complaint in a London production) is that, with the exception of Smith and Cutts, it wasn’t New York enough for me. I know it can be done in London, as In The Heights is doing so brilliantly up in King’s Cross. The accents were generally good, but they were generic East Coast rather than Brooklyn. (Speaking of Brooklyn, it was amusing to hear them talk about Henry Street, where apartments are going for $3.5 million these days, and its contrasts with Manhattan). To put it in a New York way, the chicken soup needs a little more salt.

But that is a small complaint in what is a very good production. I cannot praise Smith enough. She is phenomenal and I can’t imagine anyone beating her to the Olivier next year. It’s sold out at the Menier but run, do not walk, to get a ticket for this at the Savoy.

The Moderate Soprano (Hampstead)

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I will warn you in advance that this review is unlikely to be objective. I adore Glyndebourne opera in West Sussex and attend several times each summer. I am also an unabashed fan of Roger Allam, and his delightfully dry sarcasm. I have, however, had my differences with playwright David Hare over the years, so was anticipating a class-based critique of Glyndebourne’s early years. (One of the not inconsiderable joys of being a foreigner in the UK is that one is outside of the class system). I was delighted to discover that the play was much more subtle than that. An elegy on art, honour and the nature of love, I found it very moving.

Allam plays John Christie, the founder of Glyndebourne opera house. The notion of country house opera seems to us now to be delightfully eccentric (and typically English) but it was considered utterly crazy in 1933 as there was simply very little opera in the UK at the time. As Professor Carl Ebert (Nick Sampson), a producer imported from Germany, rather unkindly points out, “You have no tradition!” Ebert was joined by Fritz Busch, a conductor (Paul Jesson) and charming young Austrian Rudolf Bing (George Taylor). Indeed, it took representatives from the German and Austrian traditions to build this most English of institutions.

The first part of the play (there is no interval) looks at Christie’s motivation for establishing the opera house and the assembly of the artistic team. We first see Allam as a rich autocrat, but his determination and seriousness are enhanced as the play develops. His battles with Ebert and Busch (and to a lesser extent, Bing) over control are enjoyable, and Allam relishes the opportunity to throw his (metaphorical) weight around.  There is some very funny ruminating on Mozart’s virtues (or lack thereof) and Christie’s decided preference for Wagner. Ebert, Busch and Bing were very well played, with the actors clearly relishing the required accents. Their explanations of the reasons why they had to leave Hitler’s Germany were very affecting.

The play deepens, however, when Christie’s relationship with his wife, the soprano Audrey Mildmay (Nancy Carroll, breaking my heart as usual) is considered. Mildmay had been a member of a touring company before meeting Christie, and (as she puts it) had resisted marriage fiercely before giving in. The scenes where she acknowledges that she must audition for the role of Susanna in the opening season and where she shyly asks Rudolf for the outcome of the audition are poignant. Carroll displays naked vulnerability and yet wisdom, as Mildmay acknowledges what she has given up by marrying Christie. Her touring career may not have been prestigious, but it was all hers. Christie describes her “moderate soprano” as being one that is especially versatile, but it is made clear that she had a small voice but immense charm and an artist’s soul.

The play alternates between the early years, when Glyndebourne was in its infancy, and the postwar period when first Mildmay and then Christie suffered from various ailments. Allam’s portrayal of Christie’s love for his wife is love at its most uncompromising. His resentment at Busch (who refused to cast her in a production in New York during the war, when she was living in Vancouver and badly needed money) is fierce and palpable. His description of how all happy marriages end badly (since one of the parties must leave the other in the end) was incredibly affecting.

I will end where I began, on the notion of class and privilege. In the postwar scenes, Mildmay asks her husband why “they” hate “us,” as a trust was established to assist Glyndebourne (as was not uncommon in the postwar period). It is made clear that Christie is an aristocrat, who thinks that tickets should be expensive and that people should dress up and take the day to experience the opera in order to properly appreciate it. And this is, indeed, a privilege. Modern Glyndebourne has made welcome efforts to provide discounted tickets to younger people and that is, of course, desirable and necessary. But I hope it does not make me an unthinking privileged person to note that the formal dress and all day experience help to make Glyndebourne such a very special place. A delightful play and more thought-provoking than anticipated.

 

The Winter’s Tale (WE)

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The Winter’s Tale is a play of two very different halves. The first half, dour and serious, filled with darkness, jealousy and vengeance, and then the second half, lighter and happier, complete with peasants, dancing and dénouement. Branagh’s approach did not deviate from this, but the first half began with a pleasant sense of gemütlichkeit, cosiness and contentment, which made the ensuing poison of jealousy and despair that much more effective. Christopher Oram’s set was beautifully cosy and reminiscent of the Nutcracker, with velvet fabrics, Victorian costumes, a Christmas tree and some atmospheric snow. It was the least Sicilian Sicilia I have ever seen, but it worked very well in November in London.

I have long been a fan of Kenneth Branagh’s, since his elegant films of Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing brought a clear, somewhat abridged version of Shakespeare to the wilds of my local multiplex, many years ago. His tabloid exploits and youthful arrogance, vilified in the press on this side of the pond, largely passed me by. I always enjoy seeing him on stage, and his performance as Leontes was no exception. Initial reports indicated that he was overacting somewhat, but I did not notice this. I thought his interpretation was as clearly voiced and interpretively generous as usual. His interactions with Miranda Raison’s beautiful (if somewhat chilly) Hermione were well done, and the creeping sense of jealousy that invaded his senses was done gradually and did not feel inevitable. As the atmosphere turned colder and Leontes turned against Hermione, the anguish was palpable. Pierre Atri did extremely well as Mamilius, in a difficult and lengthy role for a young person to memorise.

Every time I see Judi Dench on stage, I am reminded of just how wonderful she is. I have seen her in bad plays (Madame de Sade comes, wincingly, to mind) but I have never seen her give even a mediocre performance. Her Paulina was wise and every word she spoke perfectly timed. She speaks iambic pentameter as though it were prose. Long may she grace our stages. Michael Pennington was a beautifully voiced Antigonus and John Shrapnel an affecting Camillo.

It was a pleasure to see Hadley Fraser (Polixenes), Adam Garcia (Amadis) and John Dagleish (Autolycus) in Shakespeare (as opposed to their usual musical theatre). Fraser played it straight in the first half and his explosion in the second in the confrontation with Florizel was genuinely frightening. I knew Dagleish was funny, but his performance as Autolycus revealed hidden skills, such as his ability to switch accents on a dime and his ability as an excellent physical comedian.

The second half brought, as always, lightness and relief. Jimmy Yuill’s Shepherd was funny and again beautifully timed. There was wonderful chemistry between Tom Bateman’s earthy, lusty Florizel and Jessie Buckley’s exquisitely voiced Perdita. Rob Ashford choreographed some delightful dancing, which I could have watched for much longer than it went on. The climax of the piece was acted with great delicacy of feeling by Branagh and narrated with perfect timing by Dench. I had rather hoped for a traditional dance to finish off with, as I had enjoyed the Bohemian dancing so very much. It was a wistful, poignant ending to a very enjoyable production of the play. A good start to the Branagh Company’s season.

Hamilton (Broadway)

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It has been an extremely difficult and physically and mentally demanding couple of weeks, involving much travel and more emotional trauma. I cancelled pretty much everything and changed all plans to spend as much time in Canada as possible, so I had about 12 very sickly hours in New York. But I was determined to spend 3 of those hours watching Hamilton (and trying, desperately, not to cough).

It has been the most-hyped new musical of my memory. I really wondered if anything could live up to the almost hysterical praise it has received. It was not a perfect musical, but it was a great leap forward. Its clever word smithery and use of hip hop, combined with outstanding choreography, pared down costumes, effective acting and generally beautiful singing meant that I felt that I was witnessing the birth of a new art form. I felt as the audience must have done in New York in 1949, watching South Pacific for the first time and knowing that the world of musical theatre would never be the same again.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece here can be anticipated in his work in In the Heights. His use of melody, inventive mixing of musical genres and (it must be said) very short scenes that ensure that a modern audience never loses focus were previewed there. The transitions, in particular, are extremely well done. But the subject matter here is deeper, richer and more meaningful. I have never explicitly been taught US history of the relevant period, but have absorbed it by osmosis through my studies and wider reading. Miranda expertly explains who all of these people are and gives them distinct personalities, very quickly and effectively. The story cycles rapidly from the revolution, to the birth of the nation in 1776, to the constitutional conventions, to the elections of the early 19th century, and then the ultimately fatal duel (if nothing else, this musical demonstrates very effectively why duelling was a horrific waste of life and should have been outlawed sooner than it was).

The casting also deserves special praise. As I saw a Sunday matinee, I saw Javier Muñoz as Hamilton rather than Miranda himself. Muñoz was clever, handsome, a beautiful singer and an emotionally devastating actor, especially in Act 2. He gave his all to the performance. I must admit that I could not say the same of all the cast, although I could not point to any particular person who was slacking. There just seemed a general tendency to mark and to hold back a little emotionally. This was, however, decidedly not the case for Philippa Soo’s exquisite Eliza, who played the ingenue beautifully in the first act and then blew me away with her depth of feeling in the second.

The men all had lovely voices, great energy and lots of presence. As an alumna of Mr Jefferson’s university and a person who is morally conflicted about the man himself (as, frankly, we all ought to be) it was a treat to see him played by Daveed Diggs, who was six foot something of pure charisma. He was a delight as Lafayette in the first half, but his appearance at the beginning of the second half as Jefferson reenergised the show and made me sit up a little straighter every time he came on stage. His mic drop rap battles with Hamilton were one of the highlights of the show, including phenomenal lines such as, “A civics lesson from a slaver.  Hey neighbor/Your debts are paid ’cause you don’t pay for labor.” The show is full of such rhyming gems spat out at breakneck speed. I may have to download the cast album just to pick up on the nuances of the text.

A hero of the show (and of the Founding Fathers) for me was George Washington, beautifully and authoritatively played by Christopher Jackson. We forget that the notion that a president’s term ought to come to an end was by no means a given, especially in the late 18th century. Andrew Rannells’ very funny George III (which reminded me of Hugh Laurie’s fabulous Prince Regent in Blackadder) explains this in the most direct way possible. Jackson’s portrayal of Washington reminded us of the essential dignity and nobility that he demonstrated by standing aside, the simplest and most profound act he could do. Leslie Odom, Jr as Aaron Burr, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, Okieriete Onaodowan as Mulligan and Madison, and the rest of the cast were also very, very good.

My criticisms may seem very nit-picky, but I think are important. On the more petty side, I don’t think anyone with any sense would have described New York in the 1770s as the “greatest city in the world.” It wasn’t even the greatest city in the colonies, as Boston was much bigger and more sophisticated. On the more significant side, it must be noted that the British abolished slavery much earlier than the Americans, and the musical dances around this fact quite a lot, seeming to criticise the British for what would ultimately be the original sin of the southern states.

That said, it was truly inspiring to see a very diverse cast paying homage to the men who founded their country. Most of the founding fathers would not have looked this cast in the eye. But the founding fathers, human though they were, were inspired by something greater than themselves, something greater than even they knew (ahem, Scalia). When they said that “all men are created equal,” they didn’t mean the men on that stage. And they didn’t mean women. But they created an ideal that has inspired the best in some very talented people for centuries. And it has inspired a piece of art that could not have been created in any other country on earth. I salute it, and I’m so glad that I saw it (and, by mainlining pre-unwrapped lozenges, I managed not to cough). A guaranteed Tony-winning smash.

People, Places and Things (NT/Headlong)

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I booked this not knowing anything about it, but just because I tend to book everything the NT has on offer these days, and I skip anything that seems to sink without trace (ahem, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire). I was enthralled from the first, when Denise Gough’s Emma (or is she) made an indelible impression in the waiting room of a rehabilitation facility. From there, Duncan Macmillan’s play manages to make rehab interesting, exciting, and naturally harrowing.

In rehab (for alcohol and pills) Emma, a somewhat unsuccessful actress, meets a doctor and a therapist who resemble her Mum, all played and strongly differentiated by Barbara Marten. Alistair Cope’s Foster is a fellow addict who now works for the facility, and the other inhabitants include Nathaniel Martello-White’s Mark, who is cynical and clever, and Scottish Paul (Kevin McMonagle) who also plays Emma’s Dad.

At first, Emma resists fully. She does not want to be there and sabotages treatment at every possible opportunity. An atheist, she rejects the concept of a higher power and considers herself too bright and well educated to surrender to any irrational concept. At one stage, she recites the plot of Hedda Gabler as her life story, thinking that no one would spot it. The play explains very well the dilemma of many an intelligent addict – how on earth can I get through life, which is essentially meaningless and frequently painful, without a little purchased relief? And why am I unable to stop at a little relief, but must pursue a lot of it?

I find it difficult to articulate precisely why Denise Gough’s performance was so extraordinary. It is a physically demanding role and she throws herself into it. But more than that, she simply takes you inside the mind of an addict with laser-sharp precision. Addicts lie, and Emma lies, right up until the end of the play. We’re never sure whether what she is telling us is the whole truth. She’s a narcissist, like many actors and all addicts, but with the curse of low self esteem thrown in (again like all addicts). Much has been made of the fact that Emma is an actress, but this seems to me to ignore the fact that all addicts are actors. They have to be. They’re all pretending to be someone else, someone who doesn’t need chemical help to get through life. What makes Gough’s performance so utterly amazing are the depths of emotion that are so clearly reflected on her shattered face. It is the finest performance I have seen on stage this year, and I hope that she wins every award going.

The other members of the cast are also very good. Martello-White’s Mark in particular is a realist who knows that he has done awful things in the grip of his addiction. He knows that making amends is a much more difficult thing to do than its benign name suggests. Not all of Emma’s peers in rehab successfully beat their addictions, and the look on Gough’s face when she discovers this will not soon leave my memory.

This is getting a West End transfer and it very much deserves to be seen by a wider audience. It is not a morality tale; it is finer than that. Those who can have one drink and leave it at that should see it, in order to understand the mentality of those who cannot. An absolute triumph.

Medea (Almeida)

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Medea is one of those plays that I generally enjoy seeing, as despite its goriness, it is an opportunity for our greatest actresses to show us the full range of their skills. Helen McCrory’s astonishing performance of a couple of years ago will have a long life in my memory. I have always enjoyed Kate Fleetwood’s performances (most recently in a very different role in High Society) so it was with a pleasant sense of anticipation that I set off for  Islington.

The Almeida’s Greeks season has been, to my mind, an unqualified success. Oresteia was stunning and Bakkhai pleasantly memorable (although there was far too much of the chorus). This version of Medea was the most radically changed from the original of all of the Greeks season plays. I enjoyed it and thought it enormously effective, but I do not anticipate a long life for this, as it is vividly and determinedly tied to life in London circa 2015.

Fleetwood’s Medea is an immediately recognisable North London type: beautiful, not in the first flush of youth and very conscious of that fact, and deeply despairing of where her life and energy have gone. Jason (a diffident and frustrated Jason Salinger) has left her for a younger, richer woman, and this is destroying her. She is reevaluating her life and her decision to have children, as many women do (but of course never admit it). She focuses, increasingly, on that part of her children that comes from Jason, and the love and hate for him are transferred to the children in the end. This, again, seemed very realistic to me. It is only natural to respond most strongly to the elements in your children that come from yourself, and to react negatively to those elements that come from your partner and which you don’t particularly like.

This soul-searching is reinforced well by the chorus, transformed into a group of North London yummy mummies, who make it clear that Medea’s questioning does not fit in with the herd. This again rings very true, as I understand that those who have children are often shocked by the conformity required at the school gate. If one doesn’t fit in, life becomes very difficult. Michele Austin added a welcome dose of reality as the Brazilian cleaner who doesn’t have the luxury of ennui enjoyed by the North London privileged brigade. It was interesting to make Richard Cant’s Aegeus a gay man contemplating having children with his partner via surrogate, but it did not add much to the play beyond expanding the discussion of parenthood and felt rather detached and academic.

Andy de la Tour’s outstanding performance as Creon was anything but dry and academic. He now controls Medea’s finances, her lifeline to the outside world. In one devastating scene, he lays bare all of the insecurities that many 40-something women feel, from the loss of their looks to becoming invisible to more intimate physical changes. It was like having one’s soul exposed to the world by a particularly vicious London taxi driver. Rachel Cusk has outdone herself with this play, navel-gazing though it may appear.

Fleetwood’s performance is, of course, outstanding. You truly felt her love, her rage and her anguish. I have never felt such lack of sympathy for Jason, and I have never felt the inevitability of the end of the play more strongly. I am still not sure whether it was a truly extraordinary version of the play or it only seemed extraordinary because it was set so close to my own milieu, but it was, undeniably, gripping and beautifully acted. Closing soon, but highly recommended.