ajhlovestheatre

STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS

Conceived by Cameron Mackintosh

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Directed by Matthew Bourne ‘side by side’ with Julia McKenzie

Gielgud Theatre, London – until 6 January 2024

https://sondheimoldfriends.com

There’s so much to adore about this scintillating celebration of American musical theatre genius Stephen Sondheim that it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s clearly a labour of love for everyone involved creatively, and an embarrassment of riches for us in the audience. Devised by producer Cameron Mackintosh, whose association with the maestro began in the mid-1970s with the revue Side By Side By Sondheim, staged by Matthew Bourne in tandem with Julia McKenzie (inarguably the greatest interpreter of the great Steve’s work that this country has ever produced) and choreographed by showman extraordinaire Stephen Mear, there’s no attempt to provide biographical context, preferring instead to dazzle us with the work. This is effectively Sondheim’s Greatest Hits, performed by a team of seasoned talents, whose collective Broadway and West End credits could choke a cart horse, and a couple of rising stars, and that is more than enough. Actually, it’s even better than that: this is one of the most pleasurable theatrical evenings within living memory, a soaring but elegant appreciation of a once-in-a-generation talent presented with intelligence and showbiz flair, it delivers laughter, more than a few tears, and the uplift one associates with truly great musical theatre.

First presented as a one-off concert in the wake of Sondheim’s death last year, Old Friends (it’s title is derived from the 1981 flop Merrily We Roll Along, currently previewing again on Broadway in a sold out revival starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff) is handsomely mounted in its return season, and looks built to last, despite being only scheduled to play through to early January. The cast is again led by Sondheim muse, Broadway veteran Bernadette Peters, making her West End debut here, joined by Mackintosh favourite and international star Lea Salonga, and a parade of the London stage’s finest, many of whom feature a lot of Sondheim on their c.v’s.

Janie Dee brings the house down with a breathy, hilarious version of ‘The Boy From…..’ as does Joanna Riding delivering a flawless, manic account of the panic-stricken bride in Company’s ‘Not Getting Married’, a crowdpleaser that quintessentially captures Sondheim’s mixture of ruefulness and Manhattanite neurosis (“I telephoned my analyst about it, and he said to see him Monday / But by Monday I’ll be floating in the Hudson with the other garbage”). Damian Humbley is as vocally gorgeous as he is dramatically accomplished, and Jason Pennycooke has a lot of fun with ‘Buddy’s Blues’ from Follies. If Bonnie Langford seems a little uncomplicated to really nail the devastating ‘I’m Still Here’ from that same show, she remains an effervescent, loveable stage presence.

Clare Burt’s ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ is a masterclass in acting through song, simultaneously exhilarating and discomfiting, and Gavin Lee’s waspish take on ‘Could I Leave You?’ is similarly multilayered. Amongst the younger performers, Bradley Jaden is terrific as an unusually sexy Wolf doing Into The Woods’s creepy-cute ‘Hello Little Girl’ opposite Peters’s hilariously off-kilter Little Red Riding Hood, and Christine Allado and Beatrice Penny-Touré sound and look divine as Anita and Maria in a West Side Story section.

Ms Peters is luminous, with delicate comedy timing and an extraordinary emotional acuity that remain totally unique. Although her voice, always a compellingly eccentric instrument, isn’t always secure she’s such a formidable technician that she leans into what she is capable of, and makes standards like ‘Losing My Mind’ and A Little Night Music’s ‘Send In The Clowns’ feel breathtakingly new minted and urgent. Salonga is a revelation. I’d naively thought of her as a sweet voiced eternal ingenue, but what a pleasure it is to be proved so utterly wrong. Her take on ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ is raw, dangerous and powerful, a glint of real mania behind the liquid black eyes, and her glorious Mrs Lovett opposite Jeremy Secomb’s fine, intense Sweeney is as funny as it is unsettling. She also triumphantly disproves my theory after seeing Annaleigh Ashford’s bewilderingly accented, overly-vaudevillian turn in the current Broadway production of Sweeney Todd that only British actresses should play this role.

Comparative newcomers to the blessed cult of Sondheim will appreciate the breadth and scope of the work on display here but older theatregoers may notice the magnificent ghosts that hang benignly over the whole enterprise. Not just of the man himself, but also the phantoms of earlier performances, of Peters’s own creations of the Witch in Into The Woods and Sunday in the Park With George’s Dot (both of which we get tantalising, heart catching glimpses of), of Julia McKenzie’s triumphs in everything from Company and Follies to Into The Woods and Sweeney. It’s hard not to be reminded of Sheila Gish’s Olivier-winning turn in Company when Burt cantankerously shakes her golden mane during ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ (Burt played Susan in that 1996 Donmar production) or of David Kernan, who first reframed Phyllis’s venomous ‘Could I Leave You?’ from Follies as an acidic attack from an exasperated male lover, in Side By Side By Sondheim, and is matched in sibilant bite here by Gavin Lee. Many of the current performances are every bit as fine as their predecessors but they collectively form an inspirational, intriguing homage.

Cameron’s detractors could argue that this is Sondheim filtered through a Mackintosh prism (the impresario features in a surprisingly large amount of the projected imagery that dominates Matt Kinley’s gleaming set), but with production values this elevated and the sense of affection towards both the material and the artist himself so pronounced, only a churl would complain. The music is so good -literally a selection of the very finest showtunes of the last half-century, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity- and the lyrics, by turns piercingly witty, heartrendingly moving and fiendishly difficult (for the performers that is, not for us), so brilliant, it’s almost too much: an opulent champagne shower of excitement and ingenuity where the enjoyment never lets up, even as it’s tempered at times with the most exquisite pain.

Alfonso Casado Trigo’s orchestra sounds lush, full and way larger than it is. It’s also wonderfully versatile as it negotiates Jonathan Tunick’s unsurpassable orchestrations, whether it’s the whipped cream waltz lightness of Night Music or the terrifying bombast of Sweeney. All the creatives are at the top of their game, from Warren Letton’s golden lighting and Mick Potter’s crystal clear sound to Jill Parker’s stylish costumes. The way choreographer Stephen Mear builds numbers is exemplary, finding a dynamism in the material and the performers that simultaneously showcases and illuminates: really marvellous work.

The intelligence of the way that the show is put together means that the individual numbers, although out of context, preserve their power and impact, be it comic, tragic, or usually a combination of both. Interestingly there’s nothing from the fascinating Pacific Overtures, perhaps one of the trickiest from which to extrapolate individual songs, which is all the more reason to get to the Menier Chocolate Factory for the rare revival happening there this winter. In the meantime, this is a ravishing collage of Sondheim, and an enthralling smorgasbord of musical theatre magnificence that will be talked about for years to come. Please don’t miss it.

MLIMA’S TALE

by Lynn Nottage

Directed by Miranda Cromwell

Kiln Theatre, London – until 21 October 2023

https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/mlimas-tale/

Any London theatre season that features two UK premieres by double Pulitzer winner Lynn Nottage, arguably the finest African American female playwright at work today, is cause for celebration. Nottage is a wonderful writer, an impassioned, socially aware, astonishingly versatile artist with fire in her belly and on her keyboard, a bold sense of the theatrical, and a command of language that can turn from elegant to raw as required. The Donmar will present her 2022 Tony nominated Clyde’s later in the autumn, but first up is Mlima’s Tale, first seen at New York’s Public Theater in 2018 and now here at the Kiln in a starkly effective staging by Miranda Cromwell.

In a number of ways, Mlima’s Tale forces us to evaluate what a “play” actually is. Part ritual, part docudrama, part lecture, it’s an angry, intermittently poetic examination of the black market trading in elephant ivory, that serves as a critique of human greed and selfishness and a wake-up call with regards to the dwindling elephant population. The text also revels in the spiritual afterlife of those magnificent pachyderms, and eschews linear storytelling in favour of a series of scenes, sketches almost, and dance-heavy moments that coalesce into a bigger picture longer on symbolism than on dramatic tension.

There’s little humour, but then again there’s nothing funny about humankind exploiting the natural world to the point of permanent damage, and most of the characters are little more than sketches rather than fully rounded creations. This may well be Nottage’s point -that humans are only a small part of the overall picture- but it doesn’t help that Cromwell’s production hasn’t, as yet, found the right tone for some of the sections. Despite the pithiness of the writing, it isn’t always clear just how grotesque or how sincere the trio of ensemble actors (Gabrielle Brooks, Pui Fan Lee and Brandon Grace) are supposed to be as they glide between gender and racial boundaries as a succession of people, some corrupt, some wracked with guilty, others simply indifferent, all embroiled in some way in the clandestine global ivory trade.

Natey Jones is very effective as the nearest thing the play has to a human protagonist and finds convincing layers to Geedi’s anguish and uncertainty. The production’s biggest asset is the astonishing central performance of Ira Mandela Siobhan as the titular Mlima, a fifty year old elephant prized, sought after and then murdered for his tusks, before becoming an omnipresent figure for the play’s duration (although he lingers in your mind long after that), watching, judging, bearing witness. As choreographed with sublime sensitivity and imagination by Shelley Maxwell, his supple, finely honed black body larded with more and more swathes of white emulsion like so much contamination as the performance progresses, this Mlima is a riveting, magnetic combination of grace and power. Transforming from a physically beautiful example of humanity to the dignity and gravitas of the elephant by bending his torso forward and crooking his arms just so, he is miraculous to behold, moving with a liquidity that simultaneously suggests the sheer size of the creature and an ethereal otherness. Vocally, he is commanding, whether howling in pain or bellowing in righteous indignation. This is a unique, unforgettable interpretation, and should to be a major boost to this fine actor’s rapidly ascending star.

Femi Temowo’s evocative musical score runs throughout, above and alongside Nottage’s words, and the physical production (Amelia Jane Hankin – design, Amy Mae – lighting, and Emma Laxton – sound) has a simplicity that amplifies the urgent messages of the text. This may not be a great piece of drama, but it’s heart is emphatically in the right place, and Cromwell’s production has numerous takeaway moments that stay with you long after the ninety minute duration.

POLICE COPS – THE MUSICAL

Based on an idea by Police Cops

Book and lyrics by Zachary Hunt, Nathan Parkinson and Tom Roe

Music by Ben Adams

Southwark Playhouse Borough – The Large, London – until 14 October 2023

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/police-cops-the-musical/

Police Cops is the name of the company behind this zany belter of a musical as well as the title of the show, which was seen in a drastically different earlier version at the New Diorama in late 2021. Zachary Hunt, Tom Roe, and Nathan Parkinson have become award-winning darlings of the comedy and fringe theatre circuit with their signature brand of athletic improvisation, keen-eyed parody and breathtaking invention, and on the basis of this piece of inspired lunacy, it’s not hard to see why.

Police Cops The Musical arrives at Southwark by way of Edinburgh, with new music courtesy of Ben (A1, Eugenius!) Adams, and is a leaner, more coherent beast than that earlier iteration, and the new songs and choreography (Olivier winner Matt Cole, judging exactly the correct amount of tongue to be left in cheek) are genuine upgrades. Crucially though, the anarchic spirit, ruthless observation and sense of often eye-wateringly bad taste fun, remains utterly irresistible.

“Is it shit theatre-making or is it inspired? You decide!” bellows Heath Ledger lookalike Tom Roe, traversing the stage wearing a hollowed-out TV set on his head having just been playing a news reporter, and it’s probably as good a summation of this utterly bonkers, hilarious musical as anything one can write about it. It definitely errs on the side of inspiration though, as it affectionately sends up the American TV cop shows and bombastic pop-rock of the 1970s and 1980s (“I’m an AmeriCAN! Not an AmeriCAN’T!”).

Back in the unreconstructed later decades of the twentieth century, men were men, women lacked agency and nobody batted an eyelid at some fairly horrible attitudes to anyone who wasn’t white (but especially Hispanic people), and the macho posturing and strong jawlines of the fictional police heroes belied the fact that most of them were seedy as hell. Probably the only way to contemplate such reactionary fare these days is through a veil of satire, and the musical treatment (cue much beatific staring into the middle distance while belting out the money notes) further ups the hysteria ante.

Ben Adams’s tunes are catchy as hell, and are partnered with some brilliantly pithy lyrics. I reckon Sondheim would have approved of the act two opener, a cri de cœur soft rock ballad where a woman working in a Mexican orphanage (Melinda Orengo, brilliant) laments full throatedly that there must be something more fulfilling than helping underprivileged children. Much of the humour is similarly sick (in both senses of the word). It’s the sight gags (of which there are many, and some of them are astonishing in their lo-tech ingenuity), the multiple running jokes, and the bravura performances that linger longest in the memory.

Zachary Hunt is rookie cop Jimmy Johnson, destined for a life in the Force after making a death bed (well, death pavement actually) promise to his sister (Natassia Bustamante, stunningly versatile) after she was mown down in a drive-by shooting. Hunt brilliantly maintains an air of baffled seriousness even when the plot, such as it is, goes into ever more outlandish territory, that makes it far funnier than playing it for laughs. That’s also true of Roe, gruffly delightful as his gravel-voiced sidekick, a disgraced police officer with a guilty secret. Nathan Parkinson is hilarious in a variety of roles, most notably as a Mexican arch villain with a penchant for dressing up like a cat.

Andrew Exeter’s lighting and neon-augmented grubby Stars’n’Stripes set are spot on and choreographer Matt Cole has a field day, creating work for this sublimely talented quintet who are as good as movers as they are comics. His work reaches a joyful apotheosis in a competitive hoe down number (you have to see it for yourself) and again in an audience participation section where the power of dance conquers racism (yes it does).

If this all sounds a bit scattershot, well, it is, and the overriding silliness may prove too much for some, but Police Cops The Musical frequently reaches that marvellous point where it is impossible to stop laughing. The universally lauded Operation Mincemeat, which it sometimes resembles and which also made the journey from the New Diorama to Southwark, has ended up in the West End. For Police Cops The Musical to follow that trajectory, it could do with a little tightening up in the second half, but it’s a rollicking two hours. The cast are as adorable as they are energetic, and work their socks off.

Seldom has a show compounded it’s clichés so effectively: from the dated tropes of last century television to the cheesily emotional excesses of musical theatre, it’s all observed with devastating accuracy, and served back up with sparkle, invention, energy and some serious belly laughs. A recently deceased corpse breaks into backing vocals, Mexican orphans wrestle, babies ping across the stage, sheets of perspex are waved around to create a rock video ‘wind’ effect, the hero repeatedly bursts out of his shirt for no good reason and a chorus of backing singers get stroppy and tell the lead vocalist to eff off… as I said, this is a bonkers evening. I loved it.

CHITA – A MEMOIR

by Chita Rivera, with Patrick Pacheco

Published by Harper One

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chita-Memoir-Rivera/dp/0063226790/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VD9J15NW8ZAK&keywords=chita+rivera+book&qid=1694562731&sprefix=Chita+rivera%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-1

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chita-chita-rivera/1141864330?ean=9780063226791

“I’m not nearly as nice as people think I am” states Broadway icon Chita Rivera at the beginning of this delightful autobiography. It’s probably the only thing that readers won’t agree with when they complete this memoir, co-authored with Emmy-winning arts journalist and commentator Patrick Pacheco and suffused with love, humour, humanity and fascinating backstage stories. What emerges most strongly is the picture of Chita, or Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Montestuco Florentina Carnemacaral del Fuente to give her her full name, as a thoroughly decent, well-rounded human being, albeit no pushover and certainly prone to some beguiling eccentricities, as well as a consummate professional and an authentic showbiz legend. But yeah, she’s not so much “nice” as utterly irresistible.

As anybody with an interest in musicals will know, Chita Rivera was the original Anita in the Bernstein-Sondheim-Laurents-Robbins masterpiece West Side Story, so was the first person ever to perform such classics as “America” and “A Boy Like That” on any stage anywhere. She subsequently reprised her Broadway role in the West End premiere, a feat she repeated with Rosie Grant, the lead in Bye Bye Birdie. She lost out on both roles in the film versions of those shows, to Rita Moreno and Janet Leigh respectively, something she writes about sanguinely here, but was unforgettable as one of Shirley MacLaine’s hard-boiled, big-hearted sidekicks in the movie of Sweet Charity.

With remarkable equilibrium, Rivera acknowledges that her friend and colleague Gwen Verdon (who created Charity Hope Valentine onstage for Bob Fosse, and who was Roxie to Chita’s Velma in the maestro’s original 1975 Chicago…and the whole section on that is unputdownable) had similar experiences to herself when it came to transferring, or rather not transferring, a Broadway role to the silver screen. It’s commendable but also deeply lovely how Chita remains loyal to her magical stage colleague while never trashing MacLaine’s performance on celluloid. Referring to her own experience, she writes “people often ask me if I feel ownership of the roles I have created on stage….Hell, ya!” but then, in imitable Rivera style, concludes “To the actors inheriting these parts, I say ‘Blessings. More power to you!’”

Learning first hand about the creative processes and tribulations behind shows that are part of the fabric of Broadway lore from somebody who was actually there, and who recounts her memories with a beguiling combination of humility, wonder and honesty, is a rare treat for theatre enthusiasts. The book is gossipy too, but never salacious – Chita is way too classy for that – but she touches upon some of the demons that haunted Sammy Davis Jr, with whom she had a personal relationship and shared a stage in the Broadway tuner Mr Wonderful, and Liza Minnelli, her co-star in Kander and Ebb’s The Rink, the show for which Rivera won her first Tony award (she actually has three); she recounts these issues with compassion but zero sensationalism, judgement or sentimentality, and there is a sense of a certain naivety in her outlook that, alongside once-in-a-generation talent, formidable work ethic and being a human that is generally a joy to be around, may help to account for her long term survival in a brutal industry.

Strong women are a recurring theme here: there’s her beloved mother Katherine, simultaneously a cheerleader and an anchor for the budding star, then her daughter Lisa Mordente, a terrific performer in her own right and, as depicted here, a total force of nature, also her first dance teachers Miss Jones and Miss Haywood, disciplinarians who envisioned a multiracial world of ballet beyond its (at the time) entirely Caucasian constraints. Then there’s Dolores….

Dolores is, to all intents and purposes, the alter ego of Chita. Dolores is who comes out when things are not going well, productions are failing due to incompetence or carelessness, when Ms Rivera suffers a professional slight or, as Lisa Mordente so memorably puts it, “when Mom goes Puerto Rican”. In a sense, she’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card for when Chita needs to behave like a diva. It’s an intriguing prospect and Dolores is a frequent, and highly entertaining, presence throughout the narrative.

Not as entertaining as Chita herself though; her turn of phrase is idiosyncratic and frequently hilarious. Reading the text, it’s impossible to get her witty, smoke-infused purr of a voice out of your head. Anybody who can come out with lines like “Boris Karloff, the sexiest man alive. Always. When he was alive, that is” or “in Bernarda Alba, my costume was a black mourning dress and I wore clunky shoes that made me look like a truck driver” is someone I want to spend time with. There’s a keen, quirky wit but also a wild imagination at play here: for instance, when taking about Antonio Banderas, with whom she co-starred in the 2003 Roundabout revival of Nine, she writes “I imagined Antonio as a golden bird climbing into the sky with all this power coming from his tail feathers. I saw myself hopping on his back for the ride. Okay. I’m not sure what a psychiatrist would say about that. Probably plenty. I’m not one to analyze myself.” Glorious.

She’s sensitive too, as she talks about AIDS decimating the world of theatre during the 1980s (she was a true ally to the gay community long before it became fashionable, or widely accepted), and very moving when she pays to tribute to her beloved co-star, English classical actor Roger Rees, who died midway through the run of her most recent Broadway show, Kander and Ebb’s powerful, unsettling, death-fixated The Visit. As lifelong friends, as well as creators of some of Chita’s most acclaimed roles as well as her near-legendary night club act, John and Fred loom large in the book. They, along with Harold Prince, were also responsible for her memorable return to the West End stage after an absence of several decades, in Kiss of the Spider Woman, another tuner obsessed with mortality as Rivera freely admits she herself is too, in the dual role of Aurora/Spiderwoman for which she would end up winning another Tony when the show went to Broadway. The chapter on that show is particularly interesting.

All in all, this is a great read for anybody interested in theatre, but specifically Broadway musicals and their sometimes rocky road to the stage. Showbiz enthusiasts will love spotting the famous names Chita worked with and befriended (or not) and anybody starting out in the industry will get a sharp, but kindly, lesson in just how hard it can be, even when you’ve got a cv like Ms Rivera’s, and the importance of acknowledging and appreciating the people who help you. Another major takeaway I had from Chita – A Memoir is that she is living proof that it is possible to be a roaring, unassailable talent and enjoy the acclaim and rewards that brings, and a true survivor, while still being a damn good person. That’s pretty special, like Chita Rivera.

GOD OF CARNAGE

by Yasmina Reza

translated by Christopher Hampton

directed by Nicholai La Barrie

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 30 September 2023

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/god-of-carnage/

A major hit in the West End and even more so on Broadway over a decade ago, partly due to starry casting as the quartet of urban sophisticates whose glossy veneer of civilisation devolves into savagery when challenged, Yasmina Reza’s boulevard comedy-meets-angsty melodrama has not aged well. In Christopher Hampton’s potty-mouthed but only intermittently witty English version, these wealthy, successful couples, forced together because one of their sons has attacked the other, come across as precious, out-of-touch and pretty much insufferable as they bang on about everything from Africa to fine art to whether or not a clafoutis is a tart or a cake.

For this gossamer thin material to work, it needs to be played at a lightning quick pace, with a side order of acid and a lightness of touch that can shade into the seriously macabre when the text demands it. This unfortunately doesn’t happen in Nicholai La Barrie’s leaden production which is neither funny nor stylish enough, and suffers from the bizarre decision to have Lily Arnold’s elegantly minimalist set revolve for the entire interval-less show at a snails pace, which means that there is, at least if you’re sitting in the stalls, always a lamp or a sofa or an actors back blocking your line of vision. This would matter less if the selfish characters were more sympathetic and their eclectic views were worth listening to. They need as much help as they can get to feel remotely relatable or entertaining, but instead this production alienates us from them with every turn of the revolve.

The performances are no less frustrating. Each of the actors has fine individual moments but it feels as though they are striking individual attitudes and poses but with zero connecting dramatic tissue from one sequence to the next. Accordingly the characters feel less like real people and more like a series of shouty, sweary mouthpieces. Considering that they’re supposed to be married couples, none of their relationships feel credible, so busy are the actors bowling their individual bits of shtick at the audience.

La Barrie’s staging has a multi-racial cast but, unlike in Jamie Lloyd’s brilliant new take on Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, currently at the National, the text hasn’t been adapted to reflect that. That doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but it feels a bit strange to have a particularly nasty racial slur bandied about when there are two Black actors onstage, and it goes pretty much uninterrogated. It also doesn’t help that half of the cast seem to have almost no comedy chops whatsoever, either playing the material with deadening over emphasis or throwing it away.

Dinita Gohil excels as the bilious (literally) wealth manager appalled at the social shit-show she is unwillingly cast into the middle of, and makes lovely work out of her drunken last speech evaluating what a “real man” is. Martin Hutson pushes a bit hard initially as over eager host Michael but finds some real comic gold amongst all the bellowing. Freema Agyeman brings a lot of energy to his stroppy partner, and Ariyon Bakare works hard as a lawyer who’s in constant thrall to his mobile phone. None of these characters seem particularly plausible though, and personally I was longing for them all to shut up way before the ninety minutes running time was over.

Ultimately, the biggest problem here is Reza’s text, which is irredeemably shallow, and never as funny or clever as it thinks it is. Without the magnetic brilliance of, say, Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott, who did some major heavy lifting in Matthew Warchus’s original production, God Of Carnage comes across as pretentious, self-congratulatory and, frankly, tedious. The concept of civilised behaviour being a thin veneer over roiling baseness isn’t an original one, and the descent from brittle comedy to vicious farce is handled here with an uninspired abruptness.

The Lyric Hammersmith has, with Accidental Death of an Anarchist (just about to close at the Haymarket after a triumphant transfer), The Good Person of Szechuan and the gorgeous School Girls, or the African Mean Girls Play, given me some of my best theatrical nights out in 2023. I guess nowhere can have a 100% strike rate, but this one is a real dud.

FAREWELL MISTER HAFFMANN

by Jean-Philippe Daguerre

translated by Jeremy Sams

directed by Lindsay Posner

Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath – until 23 September

https://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/events/farewell-mister-haffmann/

I’m not sure which is crueller: the unexpected volte face that derails the anxious but compelling supper party scene in Nazi-occupied Paris, that is the centrepiece of this riveting drama, or the play’s final moments, which provoke sniffles and gasps from a gripped audience, where the characters tell us the conclusions to their stories. It’s a moving ending, only slightly marred by the realisation that only two of the figures depicted were actually real people.

Either way, watching Lindsay Posner’s meticulous, thrillingly acted production, it makes sense that Jean-Pierre Daguerre’s 2017 piece has become a long running staple of the French theatre scene (over 1000 performances in Paris and winner of four prestigious Molière awards). Adieu Monsieur Haffmann has been translated into umpteen languages and presented internationally, and is a study text in French schools.

What’s perhaps more of a surprise is that such an engrossing and timely play has taken this long to get an English language version. It’s set during a historical period that has social and political divisions that worryingly resonate in the present day, it has tension, humour, humanity, psychological acuity, and it speaks to the idea that evil proliferates when good people are prepared to blur the edges of what’s acceptable and right. It tackles anti-Semitism head on, and rams home the uncomfortable fact that much of France already had a shameful attitude towards Jewish people even without the input of the Nazis. Jeremy Sams provides a crisp, well-turned adaptation that crucially sounds like a new play that happens to be set in 1940s Paris, rather than a translation.

Childless couple Isabelle and Pierre Vigneau (Lisa Dillon and Ciarán Owens, both heartbreakingly good) agree to hide Jewish jeweller Joseph Haffmann (Nigel Lindsay, powerfully understated and emotionally accurate) in the basement of his own house while Pierre takes over his business, at a time when the Nazis are rounding up Jews and sending them away while seizing their art works and wealth. As if that wasn’t tense enough, the price Vigneau demands from Joseph is that widower Haffmann impregnates his wife in return for his safekeeping. I’m not sure I completely bought this plot strand, although the acting is so good it went most of the way towards convincing me, but it does allow Daguerre to sensitively explore the sadness of a youngish couple unable to conceive, and the irrationality of jealousy. I suspect the trio of actors invest the characters with more inner life than was written for them; Dillon in particular imbues Isabelle with a fascinating mixture of vulnerability and steel.

Posner’s production is full of striking moments – the sight of Lindsay’s Haffmann tentatively placing his outstretched hands then his whole body into the sliver of sunlight that reaches as far as his basement is almost unbearably moving, as is Owens’s increasingly frenetic tap dancing as he tries to keep his gnawing jealousy at bay – but really catches fire with the climactic dinner party and the arrival of German ambassador Abetz and his colourful wife. To further up the ante, and once again the performances go a long way to papering over the cracks in the play’s plausibility, Haffmann decides to attend the dinner, pretending to be Pierre’s restauranteur brother Jean (and of course the main dish is suckling pig, cue jokes about this being the best pork “Jean” has ever tasted).

In the dramatic equivalent to the devil having all the best tunes, the Abetz’s are fabulous theatrical company. Alexander Hanson plays Otto Abetz as witty, urbane, charming….until he isn’t. It’s a brilliant portrayal, all too credible, especially chilling as he makes profoundly nasty anti-Semitic sentiments sound like civilised social small talk. By contrast, Josefina Gabrielle makes his glamorous but ghastly wife Suzanne transfixingly vivid, but with an undertow of something else: she’s boozy, bracingly rude, often very funny, and almost entirely inappropriate, but Gabrielle intriguingly suggests a core of desperate sadness. It’s an outrageous, utterly satisfying performance.

These dinner scenes, with tensions threatening to boil over at any second, the discovery of Haffmann’s true identity a constant possibility, paroxysms of social awkwardness and a major revelation during dessert, play out like an elegant mash-up of Ayckbourn at his most mortified with a wartime thriller. It feels urgent, and familiar but fresh; genuinely gripping entertainment.

The spare but atmospheric design by Paul Wills, complemented by Tim Mitchell’s lighting and Giles Thomas’s haunting sound and music, adds to the suspense and sense of finely tuned melancholia. The play carries a real, and perhaps unexpected, emotional wallop in its penultimate scene that does make me wonder if the final, direct address section, where each character tells us what happened next, is really necessary. Despite that, this is a memorable, first rate piece of theatre, magnificently acted, and I hope it has a further life after this Bath season.

NEXT TO NORMAL

Music by Tom Kitt

Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey

Directed by Michael Longhurst

Donmar Warehouse, London – until 7 October 2023

https://www.donmarwarehouse.com

It has taken fourteen years for Next To Normal to reach the UK, despite winning several 2009 Tony Awards (including Best Score, although not Best Musical, that honour going to the Broadway version of Billy Elliot), and certain songs becoming staples in cabaret and audition rooms. Watching Michael Longhurst’s enthralling Donmar production, you can sort-of see why this didn’t traverse the Atlantic with the same speed as, say, Memphis or The Book of Mormon or Moulin Rouge! even as one marvels at its audacity and ambition (it’s also one of only a small number of musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize). For one thing, it’s a harrowing, if sometimes simplistic, look at mental health, specifically bipolar disorder, that carries enough trigger warnings to fill a whole sheet of A4.

For another, it requires a leading lady, in the role of stricken suburban housewife Diana Goodman, who can belt like a diva but with the acting gravitas of a tragedian, a gift for sardonic comedy also being a plus. It’s a big ask -certainly one of the most demanding female leads in modern musical theatre- that could potentially send somebody’s career into the stratosphere (the role’s originator Alice Ripley won every award going in NYC) but also runs the risk of exposing any faultlines in their technique and stamina. In all honesty, several of the other leading parts in Kitt and Yorkey’s angst-tastic bangerfest aren’t far behind her in terms of vocal and dramatic demands, but Diana has an emotional arc that can’t be easy to replicate night after night. When I saw Next To Normal on Broadway, Ripley’s acting was strong but she sounded so vocally exhausted that one wondered if she was going to make it to the end of the show.

Longhurst has struck gold for this London premiere, casting Broadway star Caissie Levy (previously seen here as the original Molly in the Ghost musical, and leading the last big West End revival of Hair) who gives the sort of career-redefining performance that reputations are built upon. We all knew she was a vocal powerhouse (she was the first stage Elsa in Disney’s Frozen: her skyscraping take on “Let It Go” is iconic) and her singing doesn’t disappoint, a soaring clarion that sounds as though it’s being pulled from her very soul, fusing rock, blues and a melting sweetness with moments of breathtaking power. Dramatically, she’s equally devastating, exploring every colour in Diana’s troubled life, while also making her intensely likeable. She’s raw, witty, haunted, fragile yet implacable, capturing with painful precision the manic vitality then the bone-weary blankness, the jagged catapulting between despair, euphoria and terror that can be part of a bipolar person’s existence. She also finds a warmth in Diana I haven’t seen before; it’s almost impossible to tear your eyes away from her.

Diana’s husband Dan Goodman (and the name is no mere coincidence -“good man”- any more than are the names of her psychologists, Dr Madden and Dr Fine – both played by a dynamic, swaggering then sensitive Trevor Dion Nicholas) isn’t so much acted as embodied by Jamie Parker, who matches Levy in emotional commitment and blazingly fine technique. He draws an unforgettable portrait of a human driven to limits of himself that he didn’t even know existed, sinews, veins and muscles straining as he tries to keep his family together. If there are moments where Parker’s singing also seems a little strained, that entirely works for a man all too aware that he and the people he loves are constantly on the brink of the abyss. These Goodmans read as younger than in the original version, which adds to the tragic urgency of their plight.

There’s stunning work too from Eleanor Worthington-Cox and Jack Wolfe as the Goodman’s teenage children. Worthington-Cox, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Levy, conveys all of Natalie’s prodigious intelligence (“my daughter, though a genius, is a freak”) and the maturity she unwillingly embraces due to her mother’s condition, also her isolation and awkwardness; it’s a profoundly accomplished performance. There’s also a subtle hint that Natalie carries around a fear that she may be headed in the same direction as the mother who will always be more in thrall to her sibling than to her.

If Wolfe has less to work with as Gabe, there’s a very good reason why he’s less defined as a character (no spoilers here). On Broadway, Aaron Tveit played him as a sunny, shiny, all-American jock but Wolfe delivers something altogether more ambiguous and intriguing, a manipulative, wry, needy cross between an angel and an emo rock star. Jack Ofrecio is delightful as the stoner kid who falls for Natalie and might just be her lifeline out of dysfunction.

Tom Kitt’s tuneful, galvanising rock music is reminiscent at times of the equally bleak but more user-friendly Rent and the all-out nihilistic fervour of The Who’s Tommy. It’s also infused with sections of Brecht and Weill-adjacent spikiness, and an aching, shimmering loveliness during more tender moments. Chief among these is the bittersweet ballad “I Miss The Mountains”, given a heart-catching rendition here by Levy, Brian Yorkey’s lyrics conveying with a piercing accuracy what’s lost as well as gained by the use of medication in the treatment of mental illness.

The structure of the score is probably closer to modern opera than a conventional musical, with the use of recitative and snippets of melody and lightning fast changes of tones sitting alongside complete numbers. There are a couple of moments where the flash and crowd pleasing bombast come close to trivialising the subject matter, and Yorkey’s sometimes overwrought lyrics don’t help: “I’m no sociopath, I’m no Sylvia Plath….I’m no princess of pain”. The universal attitude to mental health has, thank goodness, evolved considerably since the beginning of this century when Feeling Electric (the original title) was being workshopped and indeed since Next To Normal opened on Broadway, and inevitably the show occasionally feels dated as a result. Ultimately though, it remains deeply moving, refreshingly bold, and the score, the characters and many sequences in Longhurst’s staging linger long in the memory.

Rock in a small theatre can be tricky -have the volume too low and the music lacks balls, have it too high and you risk inflicting actual physical discomfort upon your audience- but sound designer Tony Gayle has pretty much got it right here. The score thrills as it should but it’s possible to really enjoy the harmonies, the glorious voices and Nigel Lilley and Alessandra Davison’s band, arranged on the upper level of Chloe Lamford’s pristine house set like a series of floating musical ghosts. This production wisely retains Michael Starobin and Kitt’s Tony-winning orchestrations: there’s a particular melancholic magic to the sound of a rock band augmented by classical strings.

Next To Normal isn’t flawless (although this cast and production pretty much are) but it’s likely to haunt you after seeing it for much longer than many more conventional tuners, and the courage to tackle this sort of subject matter in a musical, and the unwillingness to tie it all up in a neat, pretty bow is pretty remarkable. A cathartic triumph, likely to be talked about for years to come. Upset has seldom been so uplifting; take tissues.

A MIRROR

by Sam Holcroft

directed by Jeremy Herrin

Almeida Theatre, London – until 23 September

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/a-mirror/

Bold, unsettling and shockingly entertaining, A Mirror feels like an authentic theatrical event. There’s a specific thrill when something happens in theatre and you realise that you could only experience that particular moment ‘live’, as opposed to being at the cinema or watching it on TV. Jeremy Herrin’s hair-raising staging of Sam Holcroft’s darkly funny new play at the Almeida is full of such moments. This is a veritable cornucopia of coups de theatre, culminating in a real jawdropper, ultimately as exhilarating as it is deeply disturbing and dislocating.

The acclaimed Islington playhouse has been transformed into a wedding venue, all pastel coloured balloons, chocolate box-y floral displays and an abundance of fairy lights, while half of the stalls seating has been replaced with the sort of buttock-challenging plush-covered metal structures we’ve all endured at hotel and civic hall ceremonies. It’s kitschy but enchanting (designer Max Jones, lighting by Azusa Ono); look closely at the walls though and between the fake ferns and roses you’ll see disturbing signage. “Do you know how to report illegal cultural activities?” demands one, while another invites us to participate in helping to “stamp out treason in the Motherland”. The ante of unease is further upped when an almost unrecognisable Jonny Lee Miller takes the mic and thanks us all for being here, and acknowledging that we’re putting ourselves at risk, before asking us to stand to welcome the bride and groom.

A Mirror is an act of social, political and artistic rebellion that interrogates the nature of free speech and the liberty of artistic freedom, and by being present, we are all complicit. Holcroft, Herrin and team have created an all-too-recognisable alternative universe where creative voices are silenced if they don’t fall in line with the values and opinions of the ruling regime, and it’s not hard to find parallels in the UK at the moment (remember when the arts organisations that received government hand-outs during Covid lockdowns were required to express their thanks across all social media platforms?). The othering of people who don’t look and think like us is a theme here with another unwelcome resonance.

The title might suggest a reflection of our own society, or at least where it could be heading, but also invokes a hall of mirrors, as scenes play out then get discussed, discarded or expanded upon, and you find yourself questioning what is real and what isn’t. It’s tricky to describe without spoiling it for anybody who already has tickets (the Almeida run is sold out, but this screams West End transfer as long as they can retain a similar intimacy in a central venue) but if you can envision a swirling together of Pirandello, Kafka, Orton and Pinter, with maybe a sprinkling of current West End smash The Pillowman, you’ll have some idea of the tone.

Director Herrin manages it all brilliantly, giving the humour and the nastiness full measure, but also honouring the humanity pulsing under the fear and lunacy. The entire performance is punctuated by Miriam Wakeling’s live cello playing, beautiful but unsettling, another character in itself.

Holcroft’s dialogue is wonderful: elegant, witty, on edge and, when it needs to go there, absolutely brutal. From a dramaturgical point of view, the play and the whole concept are so unusual that it’s hard to work out if the storytelling is ingenious or a bit messy. I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt as, like the aforementioned The Pillowman, part of the point of A Mirror is the power and importance OF storytelling, and this mostly feels like world class creatives at the absolute top of their games.

This is especially true of the acting. Jonny Lee Miller is terrific as the government man, trying his best to stick rigidly to the rules while unable to fully contain an innate humanity and child-like enthusiasm for theatrics. He’s simultaneously sinister and sympathetic, all mirthless laugh, uncomfortable body language and fragile pomposity. Micheal Ward as the writer who appears to be the major thorn in his side is compelling and disarmingly natural. Geoffrey Streatfeild nails unerringly the preening flamboyance of another writer far more in sync with State thinking, but gives him an intriguing marbling of kindness and decency.

Tanya Reynolds excels as a new recruit to the sinister ministry, who becomes an unexpected, unwilling epicentre for the male machinations. When she claps back, it’s extremely potent: she points out that when a woman is listening, wrapt, to a much more powerful man, it’s usually due to fear rather than adoration. Reynolds is an extraordinary stage presence, gawky yet in control, vulnerable but tough. Aaron Neil appears only briefly at the end but is a funny, troubling figure who focuses and revitalises everything we’ve already seen.

This is a piece of theatre that is simultaneously deeply serious, maybe a warning, but also a lot of fun. A Mirror exists to be both. The wedding set-up felt like a bit of a gimmick initially but by the end of a two hour interval-free performance, intense but also intensely entertaining, it felt like an absolute essential part of the overall experience. Chilling, thrilling stuff: it’ll be worrying me for a long time I suspect.

Of course, everything I’ve just told you could be a lie, and you won’t know unless you see A Mirror. That’s not a spoiler. Or is it?

THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL

conceived by Tina Landau

book by Kyle Jarrow

based on the Nickelodeon series by Stephen Hillenberg

directed by Tara Overfield Wilkinson

Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre London – until 27 August 2023 then touring to Plymouth and Newcastle

https://www.spongebobstage.com

As happened previously with the now indispensable musicalisation of the Shrek animated movie, there was some surprise that SpongeBob turned out to be an unexpectedly decent tuner when it hit the Broadway stage in 2017, courtesy of doyenne of the avant garde NYC theatre scene Tina Landau. That gargantuan original staging, stuffed to the gills (pun intended) with quality pop songs written for the project by everyone from Waitress’s Sara Bareilles through Cyndi Lauper and Aerosmith to John Legend, turned the cavernous Palace Theatre on Times Square into an underwater wonderland.

From the moment you walked through the foyer doors you were immersed in all things Bikini Bottom, the happy-go-lucky, garishly coloured ocean floor hamlet where the bonkers cartoon is set, and a live foley artist dressed as a pirate punctuated every moment of the show from an elaborate booth set up in one of the boxes. It was astonishing, and deflected attention from some of the storytelling plot holes in Kyle Jarrow’s zany, often very funny but not always coherent, script, something that a slightly more modest staging like this one can’t quite manage.

Still, if Tara Overfield Wilkinson’s joyously caffeinated touring production, decked out in suitably vivid designs that marry objects aquatic with environmental awareness and sci-fi (Steve Howell – set, Sarah Mercadé – costumes) and choreographed to within an inch of its life by Olivier nominee Fabian Aloise, doesn’t match the Broadway level of extravagance, it captures precisely the combination of lunacy and benign anarchy that defines the cartoon franchise. It may not be as visually overwhelming as Landau’s – and that foley booth is reduced to an inconsistently used solo microphone on the edge of the false proscenium – but it still has an awful lot going for it.

Principally, there’s the performance of rising star Lewis Cornay in the title role, nailing the distinctive vocals – somewhere between a kazoo and a gurgle – that will be required by fans of the original, while investing the beloved, endlessly optimistic sea sponge with an impressively athletic, angular physicality, real heart and oodles of off-beat charm. It’s a winning central turn, impossible not to warm to, and when he lets rip with the songs it’s pretty thrilling stuff.

Then there’s Aloise’s glorious, rousing choreography, which combines trad Broadway moves (look out for the second half tap number for Squidward and a troupe of über-camp anemones) with street dance and the constant ripple movement of undersea currents. Other pleasures include Irfan Damani, adorable as Patrick Star, SpongeBob’s endearingly clumsy starfish sidekick who suddenly develops an ego the size of a house thanks to the adoration of a school of sardines, and Richard J Hunt as the robustly mercenary crab restauranteur Eugene Krabs, more preoccupied with making a buck than preserving the common good. Hannah Lowther is great fun as a villainous sentient computer (called Karen because, you know, this is Bikini Bottom), and the diverse ensemble of kookie eccentrics are a hardworking, multi-quick changing bunch of superb singer-dancers. The production is lit with flair and invention by Ben Bull.

It’s typical of Overfield Wilkinson’s crazy but witty vision that the tallest person in the cast is playing the tiniest character on the ocean bed (the statuesque and authentically fabulous Divina De Campo clearly having a ball as Bikini Bottom’s nemesis, the spiteful single celled organism Sheldon J Plankton). At the performance I saw, associate director Blair Anderson covered, rather splendidly, for Tom Read Wilson as lugubrious mollusc Squidward Q Tentacles, and I enjoyed Chrissie Bhima’s powerfully sung, if overly manic, scientific squirrel Sandy Cheeks. Her costuming is puzzling, giving little indication of being permanently in a diving suit (the friend I saw the show with assumed she was a jellyfish until there were references to her being a land mammal).

Enjoyable though most of it undoubtedly is, the whole enterprise suffers drastically, at least in this London tour stop, from a truly ghastly sound system that renders a minimum of fifty per cent of the words completely unintelligible, flattens the harmonies and generally makes the music pretty underwhelming. That’s such a shame as this eclectic, dynamic score, ranging from rap to glam rock, from disco pop to country, there’s even a joyous sea shanty for a bunch of disgruntled pirates at the top of act two…, is full of absolute bangers, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that from the way they sound here. It’s simultaneously muffled and never quite loud enough, as though the whole thing were taking place, well, underwater.

It may be that the Queen Elizabeth Hall just isn’t a suitable space for musicals (Dolly Parton’s Smokey Mountain Christmas Carol and Bring It On! both felt occasionally underpowered in here): there’s no theatrical atmosphere, it’s extremely wide (the SpongeBob set occupies far too little of the space, rendering huge portions of the side seating blocks as restricted view) and the acoustics are deadening. I wish I had seen this in a traditional venue, more sympathetic to a show which relies so heavily on deranged charm and throwaway humour, such as either of the Theatre Royals of Plymouth or Newcastle where SpongeBob is travelling to in September.

Those reservations aside, this remains a highly original, delightfully flamboyant piece of musical theatre. It’s apocalyptic premise (SpongeBob, Sandy and pals are in a race against time to save Bikini Bottom from complete extinction following a forecast eruption by an underwater volcano) felt rather more far fetched in 2017 than it does now unfortunately, but the gallery of weird and wonderful characters, the refreshingly uncynical belief in the power of friendship and the dynamite collection of songs (if only we could hear them properly) ensure that this is still predominantly a feel good night out. If it sometimes feels a bit relentless, that’s a reflection on the source material, but it remains a well cast, potentially migraine-inducing, high camp spectacle with a satisfying balance between sentimentality and comic nuttiness, and several memorably inventive moments.

BLOODY ELLE

written and performed by Lauryn Redding

directed by Bryony Shanahan

Soho Theatre, London – until 29 July 2023; then Edinburgh Fringe Festival – 8-13 August 2023

https://sohotheatre.com/events/bloody-elle/

https://www.traverse.co.uk/whats-on/event/bloody-elle-festival-23

Even if the individual elements of Lauryn Redding’s captivating solo show aren’t particularly original – first love, coming out, class divide, gig theatre – they are whipped up into a fresh, funny confection that showcases a singular talent while sweeping the audience along on a tide of affection, poignancy and genuine exhilaration. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.

Redding plays Elle (full name Danielle, but only her Mum calls her that), a mouthy but loveable and mostly self aware young woman working in a fast food joint up North and songwriting and gigging on the side. Her world is turned upside down by the arrival of Evelyn, from a wealthy family and marking time with a temp job amongst the chips and dips they’re serving before heading off to University. Plot wise, that’s pretty much it, apart from a conclusion that feels predictable even though it provides a satisfying emotional button on the whole ninety minute show.

The real pleasure here (and there’s a lot of it) is in watching Redding morph like a chameleon into the different figures in Elle’s world, from her raucous mother, her monosyllabic but unexpectedly heroic male co-worker, another who is a swaggering, womanising jerk, their patient but eccentric Welsh boss, and of course Eve herself, a posh kid with “eyes the colour of guacamole” who could so easily become a one-note caricature but never does. Redding is a brilliant physical comedian and vocal impressionist, and her rapport with an audience is a thing of immediacy and joy.

Then there is her singing. She has a voice full of guts, soul and sweetness, somewhat reminiscent of the hallowed Adele, with an extraordinarily wide range. There are times when it sounds as though it’s being ripped out of her very soul, and it is spellbinding. The songs, and fragments of songs, have a haunting, insistent quality, as they throb with longing or joy-filled uplift, and work in perfect counterpoint to, and in tandem with, the salty, enjoyable, rhyme-heavy text.

Gritty yet enchanting, Bloody Elle is a winning combination of storytelling, standup, outstanding actor-musicianship (Redding is a superb guitarist) that unerringly captures the sugar rush of new romance and the greyed-out disillusion that can sometimes follow it. If the difference in social strata that Elle and Eve originate from is painted in somewhat crude brushstrokes, the principal characters, as embodied by Redding under Bryony Shanahan’s immaculate, energised direction which sees her ricocheting around a bare stage before stopping for sudden moments of exquisite, riveting stillness, are so irresistible it barely matters.

Bloody Elle is a total delight. At the performance I saw, a young woman near the front yelled “we love you” just as the show was drawing to it’s close, and it wasn’t clear if she meant Lauryn or her alter ego Elle: doesn’t matter, that audience member was speaking for all of us.