Around the world – part two
London is a city for which I have long had a love/hate relationship. I love the theatres, the shows, the fabulous little shops and the fact they still have CD and DVD stores. I loathe the crowds and the fact that (unlike New York) the West End is over run from Thursday to Sunday after 11pm by gangs of raging kids, drunk and dangerous. Rudi Guiliani could do some good in cleaning up sections of the west end as he did in NYC. But it’s the theatre to talk about here and this trip made me realise that some of the best nights I have ever spent in the theatre have been in London. When their shows are good, they are very very good.
London is a city for which I have long had a love/hate relationship. I love the theatres, the shows, the fabulous little shops and the fact they still have CD and DVD stores. I loathe the crowds and the fact that (unlike New York) the West End is over run from Thursday to Sunday after 11pm by gangs of raging kids, drunk and dangerous. Rudi Guiliani could do some good in cleaning up sections of the west end as he did in NYC. But it’s the theatre to talk about here and this trip made me realise that some of the best nights I have ever spent in the theatre have been in London. When their shows are good, they are very very good.
Starting from the first show, Love Never Dies. Let me jump in here and say that local production of LND and Doctor Zhivago have been lumped together as two risky ventures for Oz theatre this year. Let me say at the outset that Zhivago, very strong but still needing much work, is, at its beginning, a more developed, intelligent and complete piece of music theatre than what I saw displayed in London with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much criticised musical.
Love Never Dies is problematic. It suffers from sequelitis and it cannot move itself out from the shadow of its famed predecessor. I know the idea is for this show to be given a major make over by the Australian team. This is going to be a challenging task, as the source material is highly flawed.
When has a sequel to a hit musical ever worked I ask? I ponder what Simon Phillips and his Australian team will do to make this show work? I wish them luck and hope for the best, but what it needs is a total re write,re vamp and re think including a changed ending, also more drama and tension, and particularly finding a way to make us care for these ciphers of characters. Admittedly I saw an understudy as the Phantom, but I don’t think any of that makes much difference, everyone works very hard, some of the early sets are lovely, some of the music most haunting (especially ‘Till I hear You Sing’) but the show is exceptionally turgid. It has none of the high points of staging and spectacle which takes our attention away from the fact that the original Phantom also had a pretty lightweight book.
Unfortunately, ultimately, this is just a show about a bunch of glum, unhappy people who spend a lot of the show (especially the second act) singing about how unhappy they are. There is no real plot development, nothing has moved forward from the original and the ending (wont spoil it if you dont know it) is overwrought, unbelievable melodrama .
Having said all this, Summer Strallen is a joy to watch as Meg (at least until the character plummets into some sort of plot driven no man’s land) and Liz Robertson is a commanding Madame Giry, Sierra Boggess is adequate in the coquettish way Christine is written but the Phantom just makes no real impression at all. There is one moment when Gustav, Christine’s son, rips off his mask and wig, when he looks like an old man exposed and embarrassed and suddenly one thinks, ah yes, if the sequel could portray Phantom as this old, tragic frail figure grasping for his lost love, there could be drama here. But no, they continue to cast actors thirty years too young for the part and insist on playing him as some sort of matinee idol. This show is almost into rehearsals in Australia which makes it an important one.
Good luck Simon and lasso Mr Elton off his TV show if you can and sit him down and get him to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. As it stands compared to this, Doctor Zhivago is a work of rare music theatre art and will (and is already) much more appealing to an audience. At the night I saw LND the audience was sparse and the reaction, was, at best, tepid.
I am looking forward to the Australian production of Legally Blonde, but I didn’t enjoy the London version. This is a great little show, perhaps not with the strongest first act in the world, but high energy and enthusiasm can make up for a lot. Unfortunately, brash, commercial broadway musicals are not what they do best in the west end. I felt the London production needed a boot up its posterior, the audience were very quiet and I think I caught the cast on an off Tuesday night. Energy was lacking and there were some cast changes that have not helped the production. I am delighted this show is coming to Australia and with strong casting this show will fly, it’s a lot of fun and I would have loved to have seen this show with an audience similar to that on the live cast recording . Even with an adrenalin lacking company, some of the second act moments (‘There Right There’ and the big ‘Legally Blonde’ finish) are pure show business magic. It will fly here.
I was fascinated to see Michael Ball as one of the producers of a new “small” musical Love Story. Recently transferred into the West End after a successful season at trhe Chichester festival, this is a new musical based on Erich Segal’s famed novel which was in turn made into one of the iconic movies of the early seventies of the same name.
Billed as an intimate musical I immediately thought of the amount of small Australian companies hungry for small two handers like this to produce. Not so, a cast of 12 actors and seven musicians adorn this “little” show, which is odd as the story is still essentially about the two young lovers and their respective fathers. Everyone else (doctors, friends, other relatives) could probably be played by three actors. So maybe some entrerprising Australian producer may look carefully at this as a possible future import. The show is charming enough, director Rachel Kavanagh has done a fine job creating the world of these two mismatched young lovers whose brief romance and marriage ends in the sort of tragedy very popular in sentimental movies of the early seventies. The music played by the largish on stage orchestra is semi classical, lilting and unobtrusive and I found many weeping audience members around me at the end of the night.
I am not sure where to start with the National Theatre’s commercial transfer of War Horse. This piece is so all encompassing and brilliant, epic, moving and deeply theatrical that it almost needs a whole column to write about it. Rumours have abounded for some time that Australia will see an imported version of this glorious translation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s story of a boy and his horse and their separation when the horse is recruited into the army during world war one. Unless you intend to soon go to London or New York (where it is about to open and will no doubt take home a swag of Tonys this year). I would say light candles and pray this show will get to Oz. It is life enriching. With life size horse puppets brilliantly created and acted by members of the Handspan Puppet Theatre, a full orchestra, a lilting score of new songs and atmospheric music, staging so epic it takes a theatre the size of the New London to handle the epic battle scenes, this is true genius.
War Horse is the sort of theatre that changes lives. I immediately thought of the first time I saw Nicholas Nickleby in London, this is that sort of once in a lifetime theatre experience. I defy anyone not to be a blubbering mess by the end. Stephen Spielberg is mid way through making a movie based on the same book, but even if the movie comes out and wins a heap of Oscars, it wont have the epic theatricality which was what moved me so much. This is as good as it gets theatre wise, I feel blessed to have had the privilege of seeing it.
Finally to two more great pieces of theatre; a superb revival of Lillian Hellman’s old dramatic chestnut The Children’s Hour. An all star cast will ensure a sell out season for this solid reworking of Hellman’ sometimes dated story of two teachers accused of “inappropriate” sexual behaviour by a lying, deceitful little student. The melodrama is rich especially in the second act of the show, but the cast – what a cast – deliver such powerhouse performances that the play delivers a punch one would not expect in this day and age. Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss (of Mad Men fame) as the two teachers, Ellen Burstyn as the interferring and naive grandmother and Carol Kane as the crazy theatrical aunt of one of the women. To watch Knightley and Burstyn go head to head in the closing moments overcame any of the more overwrought elements of the script. Knightley is brilliant in only her second stage appearance, Moss a natural for the role of the troubled best friend and teacher and Burstyn, well just to see a living legend on stage such as this, made this a true night to remember.
I had met Tracie Bennett when she co starred with Hayden Tee in Les Miserables a few years ago and also enjoyed her Olivier winning turn as Jacqueline in “La Cage:, but nothing prepared me for her performance as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow. This is a play with music by Australian Peter Quilter (set in a hotel room and on stage) during the last months of Garland’s tumultuous life. I quite enjoyed it when Caroline O Connor did it in Oz some years back, but this is a whole different matter. Tracie Bennett is the very first person I have seen who actually embodies and becomes Garland.
No impersonators, no Judy Davis, no one has given Garland on stage and in life to us the way Bennett does. This is an earth shaking performance that should be seen all round the world. Bennett captures Garland’ sharp, sassy bitchy wicked wit, her pain, her neurosis and especially her on stage persona. Also the budget for this version of the show is incredible. The back wall goes up and suddenly we have a super fully fledged talk of the town orchestra (where Garland’s performance, her last in London, is set) belting out with Tracie the great Garland classics. I have bemaoned the fact that wonderful as so much of London theatre is, the audiences, unlike New Yorkers, don’t like to give standing ovations (even at the end of the amazing War Horse) but as Ms Bennett walked on stage at the end, the audience was on their feet. This is a rare, triumphant performance, one the world needs to see. Finally performing Garland’s life is no longer treading sacred ground, thanks to this remarkable actor. She ploughs the depths and it hurts to watch, but boy, are the rewards something else.