Curtains

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Carly Stenson, Jason Manford, Rebecca Lock

The first thing to say is that it is much better to see this show in a proper theatre. Enjoyable as it was at the Landor Theatre on 1/9/2012, it becomes much easier to follow on a big stage where the crew can properly alternate between the backstage view and view from front of house. It also meant that production numbers such as “Thataway”, “Kansasland” and “A Tough Act to Follow” could get the space they need. It is a charming musical with an intricate plot that riffs on all sorts of musical theatre cliches and a clever score. It is hard to know how much of the lyrics were written by Ebb before his death but it is fun to speculate that the sharp and witty, offbeat numbers such as “What kind of Man?”, “He Did It” and “It’s a Business” came from his pen: they seem to have the same DNA as “Money”, “Cabaret” and “All that Jazz”.

It is a whodunnit but of course the detection only takes up a fraction of the stage time. It is a tribute to the “let’s put on a show” musical, an affectionate parody of musicals such as “Oklahoma” or “Calamity Jane”, complete with a fraught mother/daughter relationship as in “Gypsy”, a stage-struck detective, a warring husband and wife team as in “Kiss me Kate”, and a former star forced by circumstances into making a comeback.

As the lyricist-cum-star Georgie Hendricks, Carley Stenson has the unenviable job of having to demonstrate her stardom in a glorious ballad, “Thinking of Him”. Jason Manford is a revelation as the detective who solves the crime, fixes the show, reconciles the warring lovers as well as the mother and daughter, and at the same time romancing Niki Harris, the ingenue. His razor sharp comic timing perfectly brought out the wit and humour of the script. Samuel Holmes is wonderfully camp and catty as the director, who always wants to take credit for everything that happens, even the murders. As Carmen Bernstein, the co-producer and forceful mother, Rebecca Lock seems to be channelling her inner Judy Garland but you cannot fault the brassy way she tears into “It’s a Business”. I would also like to comment on the enthusiasm and enjoyment communicated by Martin Callaghan in the role of the backer, Oscar Shapiro. he seems to be having a whole load of fun, which is all the better for the audience.

The Roar of the Greasepaint – the Smell of the Crowd (June 2011)

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Anthony Newley, Leslie Bricusse

Anthony Newley’s strange love of allegory was apparent in Stop the World where he played the role of Littlechap.  In Roar, he took it up another level but thankfully did not go as far as he would do in his strange film about Hieronymus Merkin.  In that film, he seemed to depict an allegory of his life that was an odd blend of self-congratulation, self-flagellation and self-aggrandizement, without any of the charm that was so evident in his appearances on TV shows or in interviews.  The grandiosity of that film was thankfully not present in Roar.  The allegory here is confined to a rather weak analysis of politics, where the put-upon Cocky states an ambition or goal and tries to attain it in a game against Sir, who invents and changes rules as necessary in order to win each game and humiliate his adversary.  The Negro comes along and shows that it is possible to win simply by ignoring or defying Sir’s capricious rule-making.  Cocky sees new possibilities and starts travelling the world in search of new games, taking along his unwilling Sir.

As an analysis of the human condition it is weak, maybe embarrassingly so.  However, Bricusse and Newley were a great song writing partnership at the height of their powers and there are enough wonderful songs to make the storyline almost redundant.  Among the numbers that have taken on an independent life are Who can I turn to?, The Joker, Feeling Good and A wonderful day like today.  There are two very strong power ballads that could easily become standards – This Dream and My first love song.  As if this is not already enough, the score is also sprinkled with good, solid, variety-type songs: With all due respect, Where would you be without me?, What a man!, Nothing can stop me now! 

The show stands or falls on the calibre of its performers.  Newley’s songs always tended to be powerful and emotionally charged, which is why they tended to attract open-hearted singers such as Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett.  The original cast of this show had Norman Wisdom as Cocky.  Sure he had the emotional openness and could handle the pathos but did he really have enough of the necessary charisma, assertiveness and swagger to counter-balance?  The role was surely, as David Merrick recognised,  made for Newley and his assumption of it must explain why this odd, simplistic, naïf allegory of the British class system was successful in the USA.  Matthew Ashforde had the unenviable task of taking on a legendary performer in one of his greatest roles.  Inevitably, there was a lot of Newley in his performance but he did eventually manage to make the role his own, to claim it for himself.  As Sir, Oliver Beamish was the necessary blend of supercilious roguishness, hypocrisy and sheer spiteful malevolence.  As the Kid, Lucy Watts was the strutting, assertive but basically likeable brat so often played in British films of the 50s by the likes of Harry Fowler and Newley himself.   Louisa Maxwell was a gorgeous, glamorous girl for Cocky to serenade with his love song.

One of the most important and appealing elements of this show is the gang of urchins who act as a kind of chorus, introducing, participating in and commenting on the action.  They always seemed fully involved in the production and really helped to focus it.  I might perhaps single out Elizabeth Rowden as the performer who drew my eyes most often, thanks to the commitment she showed, but that is no criticism of the rest of the group.  Ian Judge and Tim Goodchild worked a miracle to scale the show into such a small space and make it so lively and energetic and involving.  At the end, the lady sitting beside me agreed that it was a great production and said that she was going home to listen to the cast album.  My reply was that I was going to do exactly the same.

She Loves Me (May 2011)

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Harnick, Lubitsch

One of the really good things about this musical is the fact that it stays so true to the Lubitsch style. The Shop Around the Corner is notable for the way that it lurches into bitterness and tragedy before finally resolving on a happy ending – the key this time being the poison pen letters we do not yet know about that Ladislav sends to Mr Maraczek that inexplicably darken the atmosphere. The fact that we do not know about these letters only heightens the fact that the audience is in the privileged position of knowing who the anonymous correspondents are in the main stream of letters that fuel the plot – it is a play about the power of letters to express and influence moods and emotions and how important it is to know exactly who is writing before you can really assess what is happening. People can abuse power behind a cloak of anonymity.
For a Broadway show of its era, the emotional gamut is wide and yet believable. It is deft, literate and witty. The main characters all come across as interesting people: we care about everyone apart maybe from Kodaly the serial womaniser. We watch their lives unfold. As Georg, Joe McFadden brings a lot of the raw, naïve enthusiasm meshed with brooding intelligence of James Stewart. Dianne Pilkington has something of the emotional intensity and throbbing voice of Judy Garland, who played this role in The Good Old Summertime, the musical remake of the Lubitsch film. Jack Chissick as Mr Maraczek has the florid face of someone living on the verge of apoplexy. Not many musicals have a suicide attempt that is so real, not played for comic effect in any way.
The score is full of witty numbers that advance the plot seamlessly. “Sounds while selling” is a classic example of something that montage can achieve in film but which is so hard in a play – condensing the whole atmosphere of a shop, the customers, the merchandise, the different personalities of the sales-staff. “Days Gone By”, perhaps the stand-out number, is poignant, rueful, nostalgic, triumphant. “A Trip to the Library” is hilarious. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick filled the score with interesting songs, even if most of them only exist within the confines of the show.
The production design was wonderful – really conveying the style of art nouveau Budapest. But it is the shifts of mood – that blend of irony, tragedy, comedy, melodrama, love, despair, elation, sleaze – that make this such a fine show. It remains true to Lubitsch and yet, thanks to the music, finds a style of its own, something sassier but still graceful and lyrical.