ajhlovestheatre

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

based on the Paramount/RSO film and the story by Nik Cohn

adapted for the stage by Robert Stigwood in collaboration with Bill Oakes

Directed by Bill Kenwright

Peacock Theatre – until 26 March 2022

https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/saturday-night-fever/

“You should be dancing, yeah!” goes the oft-repeated chorus of the Bee Gees hit that loomed large in the original Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack and closes the first half of this stage version. Frankly though, I didn’t feel much like dancing after a couple of hours of this sloppily directed, patchily acted mess of an adaptation.

The lavish 1998 West End musical which made a star out of Adam Garcia in the Travolta role of Tony Manero and transferred to Broadway had it’s issues but it was a masterpiece compared to this wan effort. Arlene Phillips’s Palladium production found the natural dynamism in the disco hits and infused the songs with a potent, thunderous theatricality thanks to Nigel Wright’s orchestrations and Phil Edwards’s dance and vocal arrangements. Plus the choreography was thrilling.

Almost none of that is true of Bill Kenwright’s infinitely more pedestrian staging which may be closer in tone to the darkness of the movie but seldom if ever takes wing as a piece of dance magic. Award winning choreographer Bill Deamer comes seriously unstuck here: the moves that aren’t cribbed directly from the film are frantic, inelegant, clumsy…a long way from sexy and cool. Deamer is a master of traditional musical staging, winning his Olivier for the tap heavy Top Hat, but is a bizarre choice for this; his work here is far from inspired, except for the second act competition sections, which are closer to Strictly than Studio 54.

Any stage adaptation of Norman Wexler’s grimly hyper-realistic original screenplay inevitably struggles with reconciling the seamier aspects of the story (abortion, suicide, rape, drug abuse, the casual misogyny and racism) with the standard musical theatre requirement to send the audience out on a high, crazed with spectacle, high energy dancing and uplifting music. It’s a pretty sour tale anyway, closer to docudrama than musical fantasy, despite the banging soundtrack: and while one could argue that it’s of it’s time, it’s pretty hard, in 2022, to root for a leading male character who actually says in all seriousness to a young woman “you’ve gotta decide what you are. Are you a nice girl or a bitch.” Gross.

Richard Winsor is incredibly handsome but reads as at least a decade too old, as well as too nice and too, well, English to convince as a streetwise Italian American youngster who plays the big man with his crowd of less remarkable pals but still resides with his parents and lives for the weekend when he can release it all on the dancefloor. He isn’t the best disco dancer in the company, which is unhelpful given the plot, and only really looks terpsichoreally comfortable in a smoothly executed, more classically choreographed fantasy sequence that recalls the work of Matthew Bourne, for whom Winsor worked extensively before becoming a TV name. Elsewhere, his moves lack the requisite joy and abandon.

Olivia Fines fares better as snotty Stephanie, the upwardly mobile object of his affection. She’s hardly a sympathetic character but Fines does invest her with an inner life, plus she dances like a dream. Probably best to draw a veil over some of the other acting, but the energetic company sells the whole show for rather more than it’s actually worth. The accents are mostly dreadful (no dialect coach is credited… and it shows).

This particular production doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be: it isn’t an integrated musical, preferring instead to have a trio of game young men shuffling aimlessly on and off with falsettos and fright wigs, playing the Bee Gees singing the songs commenting on the action. Strictly Ballroom and Dirty Dancing onstage both went down similar routes, with varying degrees of success. It doesn’t make for satisfying musical theatre but at least the songs sound like the original recordings. Confusingly though, three of the principal characters then get solo numbers, à la the Palladium musical, which make little sense given that at no other point do any lead characters sing. For suicidal Bobby C’s rendition of Tragedy, Deamer’s choreo for the chorus pays homage to the Steps dance moves for that track, which is a bit weird given that their version didn’t come out until at least twenty years after Saturday Night Fever. Ah well.

Gary McCann’s set of wrought iron staircases, platforms and walkways looks like leftovers from a budget tour of West Side Story, but is undeniably enhanced by eye-catching video designs by Nina Dunn. Nick Richings’s lighting makes vivid and clear the differentiation between the garishness of the discotheque and the dullness of day-to-day life.

The best screen-to-stage adaptations, from The Producers to the musical of The Full Monty, and including several of the Disney shows, work because they legitimately add something else to the story by placing them in a theatre. That just isn’t the case here, although it’s always fun to hear these disco classics done live. Ultimately, this is a lethargic, dispiriting evening capturing very little of the excitement of the film, the disco scene or the vibrant city in which is set: sadly, it’s more Birkenhead than Brooklyn.

AN EVENING WITHOUT KATE BUSH

created by Sarah Louise Young and Russell Lucas

Soho Theatre – until 26 February 2022

https://sohotheatre.com/shows/an-evening-without-kate-bush/

You don’t have to be one of the Fish People (the collective noun for the community of Kate Bush fans, as well as the name of one of the beloved yet elusive diva’s albums) to enjoy this glorious one woman show: part cabaret, part tribute act, part mythology, wholly theatre. But you’ll definitely come out of it a fan of Sarah Louise Young, the shape-shifting artist who embodies and comments upon La Bush, as well as co-creating (with Russell Lucas) this cracking little show.

When Young first appears – dimly lit, shrouded in black, in a gloriously outré headdress halfway between antlers and wings, with a slight whiff of Regina Fong (that’s a person, not a fragrance: look her up if you’re young) – it seems like we might be in for a bit of Kate Bush parody: absurd, slightly self indulgent yet weirdly compelling. Bush’s combination of mystery, camp and thunderously good tunes always felt ripe for theatrical treatment and comic lambasting. What follows is more satisfying and interesting than any of that however.

In a well nigh miraculous case of having your showbiz cake and eating it, An Evening Without Kate Bush succeeds in embracing the bizarre concoction of accessible, unknowable and just plain bonkers that was always at the heart of Bush’s output while acknowledging the madness of it, sending it up, yet loving it deeply. That’s not easy to pull off. What comes across very strongly is just how haunting and so damn good these songs are: The Man With The Child In His Eyes, Babooshka, Cloudbusting et al crop up and provide thunderous and/or poignant pleasure even while you’re never quite sure what length of tongue Kate was leaving in cheek. Wuthering Heights comes up (as it must) but with a little twist. It helps that Sarah Louise Young – whether singing as herself or unerringly recreating Bush’s screechily enchanting vocal timbre – is equal to, and then some, the unique grunge/soprano demands of the songs.

Young isn’t merely a skilled Kate Bush impersonator who gets the ethereal warbles and shrieks, and loose-limbed dance moves down to a T; she is a warm, self-deprecating stage presence with a formidable physical and vocal technique. When she relates the effect that the singer songwriter had both on her own life and that of the multitude of fans she has encountered, the mood goes from gleeful to tearful to joyously celebratory before you’re even aware of the change. The section where Young strips down to bare essentials and physically interprets Running Up That Hill is genuinely moving: it becomes less about Bush’s version of the classic and more concerned with the effect it has/had on our leading lady and, by extension, all of us. As I said, it’s real theatre.  

Being a Bush fan will help with some of the references of course (Young and Lucas have more than done their homework in terms of Kate’s back catalogue) but Young brings such a joie de vivre and ability to connect with an audience that nobody feels excluded. This is one of those rare occasions where audience participation feels more like a pleasure than a chore for any but the most gregarious in the crowd, and it becomes a surprisingly moving paean to community and human connection.

Ultimately, An Evening Without Kate Bush is a bit of a triumph, as clever as it is enjoyable, and capturing the compelling mix of menace, grace and camp that makes Bush so unique in British popular music: a remarkable, eccentric talent paying tribute to another remarkable, eccentric talent. In the words of one of the divine Kate’s biggest hits….WOW. Go see, and prepare to howl.

THE GLOW

by Alistair McDowell

Directed by Vicky Featherstone

Royal Court Theatre – until 5 March 2022

https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/theglow/

The word ‘astonishing’ gets bandied about a lot, not least by me, when describing pieces of theatre, and it can sometimes feel a little like hyperbole. That is emphatically not the case with Alistair McDowell’s haunting new piece. McDowell is a playwright who repeatedly demonstrates a commendable unwillingness to fetter his imagination to the constraints of realism or what is normally represented on stage: Pluto-set outer space thriller X and his Manchester-on-steroids saga Pomona spring immediately to mind.

Director Vicky Featherstone employs a similar cinematic technique staging The Glow as she used on X, also on the main stage of the Royal Court: extraordinary, fantastical things are illuminated but briefly (Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting is thrilling) before disappearing into the dark leaving us as audience members uncertain that we’ve just seen what we thought we saw. It’s unsettling and entrancing, enhanced further by Nick Powell’s frequently eerie sound and music score, and Merle Hensel’s stark, contracting set which is blank enough to convincingly represent periods of history from prehistoric through Roman, Medieval and Victorian times to almost the present day.

If Featherstone’s accomplished, enjoyable production feels wildly imaginative, it’s only matching McDowell’s script which when in the cold light of day might sound overly fanciful and manipulative, but is, when you’re in your theatre seat, a gripping couple of hours. McDowell’s starting point is ‘The Woman In Time’, a semi-forgotten early twentieth century book by scholar Dorothy Waites that suggests that across a panoply of artistic endeavours, creatives have repeatedly used the exact same female figure as a running thread across the ages, as a social and historical commentator. Preposterous as it may be, the “what if” factor is sky high and fascinating, and that’s what McDowell goes to town with in a piece that even when it requires suspension of disbelief remains deliciously engaging and thought-provoking.

Ria Zmitrowicz’s unnamed Woman is first discovered in the darkest recesses of a Victorian asylum by spiritualist medium Evelyn Lyall (Rakie Ayola) who takes her on as a new assistant, much to the chagrin of her discomfited son (Fisayo Akinade). It pretty soon becomes clear that the Woman is possessed of powers that Lyall can only dream about, and the action of the play hurtles and ricochets through time and history as the elemental, essential nature of this Woman is revealed. McDowell’s dialogue is salty and bleakly humorous, transforming an undeniably riveting tall story into something more troubling and challenging.

Zmitrowicz and Ayola are magnificent, the former negotiating the transition from bluntly inarticulate distress to roaring, implacable divinity with exquisite power, while the latter contrasts the crisp, slightly insensitive Lyall with a moving portrait of a kindly retired nurse in the 1990s who takes the Woman in and forms a real, rare friendship with her. The men are equally fine: rising star Akinade is always exciting to watch and often very funny in a number of roles, and Tadhg Murphy makes something memorable and touching out of the Knight who goes from being the Woman’s captor to her companion in the mid 1300s.

Poetic and rambunctious, sorrowful but transporting, brutal yet tender, this is a rattling good yarn. It also potently suggests the loneliness of feeling ‘other’ from the rest of humanity, and perhaps that is it’s greatest accomplishment. If ultimately it’s too far fetched to be fully convincing, for two magical hours you may find yourself wishing it was all true. Like many a good story, it stays with you long after it’s over. I loved it.

MOULIN ROUGE!

Book by John Logan

Music arranged by Justin Levine

Based on the Twentieth Century Fox motion picture written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce

Directed by Alex Timbers

Piccadilly Theatre – open ended run

https://www.moulinrougemusical.co.uk/

Well, it’s finally here….and it’s a big fat solid, crowd-pleasing commercial hit. Apart from Cabaret, this was the most eagerly awaited West End musical opening of the last year, although it got off to a rocky start with Covid causing the cancellation of multiple previews then in turn pushing back press night not once but twice. Still, it’s ensconced now at the Piccadilly, probably for the foreseeable future and it’s a true extravaganza, almost completely lacking any restraint (even a tragic death is enacted amidst a shower of glitter dropping from the heavens) but also with very few moments where you’ll be inclined to look at your watch. Put simply, Moulin Rouge is great entertainment.

Or at least it is if you’re after an all-out assault on the senses, and you’re not looking for any kind of subtlety or complexity in your BIG musical night out. Sondheim this ain’t. Hell, it’s not even & Juliet, with which it suffers slightly in comparison: that Max Martin confection is another stunningly designed fantasia set in a European never land that anachronistically uses banging pop tunes to punctuate a tragi-comic romantic plot, but with more endearing characters and considerably more wit.

The Moulin Rouge plot wasn’t exactly demanding in the original movie, and nor is it on stage: boy meets girl then loses girl to dodgy wealthy benefactor and chronic lung disease, in a sort of mash up of Camille, Pygmalion and La Boheme. On screen the story and most of the characters were subservient to Baz Luhrmann’s luridly fanciful visual aesthetic, and so it again proves in director Alex Timber’s opulent, thrillingly OTT theatrical interpretation.

The garishly beautiful design elements here (set by Derek McLane) are key to the shows appeal: entering the Piccadilly’s auditorium now is to be transported into another world, an Aladdin’s cave of louche glamour with undulating swags of scarlet fabric, glittering chandeliers, cherub-festooned gilt, and neon light, complete with a giant blue elephant sculpture and a turning windmill; it’s gorgeous and vaguely unsettling. When the cast appears, Catherine Zuber’s costumes prove to be a similar mix of off-kilter elegance and extravagance, and the whole thing is lit with bravura intensity and invention by Justin Townsend. Make no mistake, this is one of the most head-turningly good-looking productions you’re ever likely to experience.

It’s so head-turning in fact that, at least on a single viewing, it’s almost possible to overlook the lack of chemistry between the two leads or that some of the song choices don’t really suit their allotted place in the story… or that the show as a whole looks a little hemmed-in at the Piccadilly. Anyone who has seen the more lusciously expansive Broadway version is likely to spot this last issue immediately however: Sonya Tayeh’s enthralling, eclectic dances don’t explode across the stage with quite the same fiery abandon that they do on the other side of the Atlantic, although that is certainly not a fault of the gloriously athletic West End ensemble, all of whom work their socks off and some of whom manage to project distinct, individual performances through all the glitz. The act two opening sequence -a feverish, joltingly exciting splice-together of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ and Britney’s ‘Toxic’ with a bit of Soft Cell, White Stripes and Eurythmics hurled in- remains an exhilarating, heady stunner: sinuous bodies divebomb centrestage from various directions, in moves that go from jagged to fluid in a matter of seconds, then congregate into a human phalanx of attitude, abandon and potent sexuality. It’s as if Jerome Robbins had lived to choreograph an especially raunchy pop video. Totally breathtaking, this number is almost worth the price of a ticket all by itself.

One aspect of Moulin Rouge London that may actually be better than the Broadway original is in the choice of leading lady. Liisi LaFontaine’s Satine is an absolute knockout. Sexy as hell, with a disarming warmth and satisfyingly steely edge, she fields a belting voice that still finds colours of sweetness and vulnerability, and mines the humour and emotional investment in a role that could so easily be played on one note. Watching her fall in love despite herself is extremely affecting, and her final doomed scenes with Jason Pennycooke’s terrific Toulouse-Lautrec (another improvement on the original) are authentically heartbreaking. Of the four stage Satines that I’ve experienced, she’s the only one who goes on a wholly satisfying journey, and also the only one who convincingly signals the physical frailty of the woman from early on. It’s impossible to take your eyes off her, which is really saying something in a show this spectacular.

Certainly she doesn’t get much competition in the romantic scenes from Jamie Bogyo’s gormless male lead. A decent singer but a stilted actor, at least as directed in this role, recent drama school graduate Bogyo is mystifying casting as ardent young American abroad Christian. He’s quite sweet but it does feel like there’s a bit of a vacuum near where the centre of the show should be. It may be a performance that works really well at close quarters or in the rehearsal room, but at present very little is coming across the footlights.

Clive Carter plays the crowd like the seasoned pro that he is as the MC and club proprietor, but also brings a gritty truth to his off stage scenes: he’s marvellous. So is Elia Lo Tauro’s impassioned Argentinian Bohemian artist.

The frantic melding together of songs from numerous genres and decades of popular music occasionally threatens to get a bit much but Justin Levine’s arrangements truly snap and sparkle. Peter Hylenski’s sound design is rather brilliant, making sure that the lyrics, moods and orchestrations really register and don’t just become so much aural soup, which can be a problem in jukebox musicals.

For eye-poppingly lavish escapism, head to the Piccadilly… the whole may be less than the sum of its parts but you’ll definitely be able to see where your ticket money went. As long as you haven’t got a migraine or a hangover, this showiest of shows is a glittering diamond of entertainment.

HABEAS CORPUS

by Alan Bennett

Directed by Patrick Marber

Menier Chocolate Factory – until 27 February

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/Online/default.asp

Sex and death: two of the primary motivators of human existence. Joe Orton understood this: his Loot and What The Butler Saw are loaded with them. He had been dead six years when Alan Bennett’s 1973 Habeas Corpus made it’s West End debut in a production starring Sir Alec Guinness, but there’s undeniably something Orton-esque in this farcical melange of lust, longing, humiliation, epigrammatic wit and occasionally breathtaking bad taste.

It seems dated now (something director Patrick Marber doesn’t try to cover up, with his use of 70s pop music, Vaudevillian clichés and Richard Hudson’s decidedly retro costumes) but the richness and subversive free form nature of the writing as it veers between verse, crudity and cruelty, then back again, mark it as a true original, and a forerunner of the Alternative Comedy that transformed the genre a decade later. The problematic yesteryear trope of an ageing GP desperate to get his end away with a nubile young patient has not worn well, nor is it funny in itself. What sets Habeas Corpus apart from, and lifts it above, the dodgy sitcoms and farces that it riffs upon, is the delightful rhythm and absurdity of Bennett’s language -still sparklingly fresh after all these years- and the dark undertow. Death is everywhere: in the doctor’s uncomfortable descriptions of decaying human flesh, in the frequent references to World War Two, in the running theme of a neglected patient constantly trying to commit suicide, and in the shiny black coffin that constitutes most of Hudson’s elegantly spare set (lit with painterly precision by Richard Howell).

The cast is brilliant, each of them cleverly negotiating the sometimes abrupt gear changes between saucy postcard-made-flesh comedy excesses and real humanity with a lot at stake. Jasper Britton is manically funny as the priapic Dr Wicksteed but is authentically chilling in the final moments where a lifetime of casual unkindness and sexual impropriety seems to be catching up with him, like a middle aged East Sussex Don Giovanni. Catherine Russell finds a sadness and desperation in his permanently disappointed wife that touchingly belies the shrill but often hilarious battle axe persona she initially presents.

Similarly, Kirsty Besterman gives a poignant account of his perpetually single sister, forever fending off the advances of Matthew Cottle’s riotously named cleric Canon Throbbing (“together we will be at the forefront of Anglican sexuality!”) in favour of Dan Starkey’s enjoyably vicious senior medical specialist. Cottle even does a spot-on Bennett impersonation at one point. I also really loved Thomas Josling as the Wicksteed’s sweatily inept, perennially hypochondriac son, and Katie Bernstein as Felicity Rumpers, the stunning young woman who might deign to fall in love with him, but only if he really does have the terminal illness he thinks he’s got.

Ria Jones is a gorgeous comic gem as the all-seeing char lady Mrs Swabb, the only character who isn’t carnally obsessed (“I leave sex to the experts”) and Caroline Langrishe is great fun as Felicity’s British Colonial Grande Dame of a mother, forever bemoaning the loss of her privileged earlier life in Addis Ababa.

While one couldn’t make a convincing case for this being one of Bennett’s better plays (there’s very much a sense of hurling everything at the wall and seeing what sticks), it’s too bracingly original and too clear-eyed in the way it depicts the twin grips lust and mortality have on individual’s lives, to be written off merely as a period piece. It’s often laugh-out-loud funny and Marber’s fine production and terrific cast polish it up to an irresistible comic sheen. It’s naughty and not always nice: I think Joe Orton would have approved.

Photo by Alessio Bolzoni

SPRING AWAKENING

Book and lyrics by Steven Sater

Music by Duncan Sheik

Based upon the play by Frank Wedekind

Directed by Rupert Goold

Almeida Theatre – until 22 January 2022

https://almeida.co.uk

I’m not sure even the greatest admirers of this 2006 Broadway smash will be prepared for the emotional and visceral impact of this jaw-droppingly fine new production by the Almeida’s artistic director Rupert Goold and his team of visionary theatrical magicians. To have this playing on the London stage at the same time as Rebecca Frecknall’s astonishing new take on Cabaret is truly wonderful.

The only chastening thing is trying to work out how many times one can conceivably get to Islington before this (far too) short season ends in late January. A West End transfer is far from a given, especially in these Covid times, and also considering how the 2009 London production fared: a replica of Michael Mayer’s stunning Broadway original, it got raves and sold out performances at the Lyric Hammersmith before dying a brutally swift death upon its transfer to the West End’s Novello, possibly not helped by an advertising campaign featuring the young cast (which included future stars such as Aneurin Barnard, Iwan Rheon, Natasha J Barnes and Evelyn Hoskins) that looked more like it was for a vintage clothes outlet (a period Gap perhaps?) than one of the most extraordinary new musicals of its generations.

Anyway, here it is again, in an enthralling, bewitching new staging and with a terrific young cast, that is every bit the equal of its predecessor. One way that this version differs from the original is in tone. It’s slightly less fever-pitched, more contemplative and less aggressive….and the glorious songs (Sater and Sheik’s gorgeous rocky, folk-inflected creations collectively remain as haunting and rousing as ever) now spring directly from the script and characters whereas previously they ran almost antagonistically against them, like a contemporary commentary on the story.

There’s even a new number (actually one cut from the original workshop version), ‘There Once Was A Pirate’ which serves as a sort of reverie and a glimpse of children at play, a heartcatching reminder of just how young these characters are supposed to be. It’s staged with a bravura simplicity -the kids creating a ship out of thin air, aided by Finn Ross’s video design, which is breathtaking throughout. The vocal arrangements and orchestrations (Sheik and the always brilliant Simon Hale) have more light and shade than I remembered, only unleashing full rock fury for the now-legendary ‘Totally Fucked’ number, the staging of which is possibly the most thrilling thing in any current London musical, which is quite a statement when one considers the last twenty minutes of Back To The Future, the transformations in Frozen, that Moulin Rouge is in preview, or indeed Cabaret in its entirety: yep, it’s THAT good.

Lynne Page has repeatedly proved herself one of this country’s most versatile and inventive choreographers – American Psycho here at the Almeida then on Broadway, the Menier’s La Cage Aux Folles and Funny Girl, the Pet Shop Boys tour – but her work here is outstanding even by her acclaimed standards. The dances are earthy, organic, angular yet fluid, athletic, character-driven…. and they exhilaratingly negotiate the treacherous looking flight of steps that constitutes Miriam Buether’s striking set.

The overall look of the production (Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes, Jack Knowles’s lighting, both spot-on, plus Ross’s endlessly fascinating projections) is a tantalising mixture of timeless, period specific and jaggedly modern, an ingenious visual shorthand for marrying Wedekind’s angst-ridden expressionist text to the sometimes intolerable pressures that contemporary teenagers face. None of this is oversold though, and the cumulative effect of the tragic narrative overlaid with a creepingly unsettling sense of present day unease proves revelatory.

There isn’t a weak link in the cast, every one of whom, from Nathan Armakwei-Laryea’s swaggering bad boy to Bella Maclean’s luminous victim of abuse, has a specificity, commitment and power that fair knocks the wind out of the onlooker. The scene between the deeply unhappy, painfully sensitive Moritz (Stuart Thompson in a mesmerising star-making performance) and free-spirited outcast Ilse (Carly-Sophia Davies, perfection) where she sort-of comes on to him as he’s lost in a fog of despair has a searing intensity I’ve never seen before. Catherine Cusack and Mark Lockyer do magnificent work as all the adult characters, heightened, removed and slightly grotesque, as grownups often seem to troubled teens.

As the nominal leads, young lovers Wendla and Melchior, Amara Okereke and Laurie Kynaston continue on the upward career trajectories that this sensational pair of young stars so richly deserve. Okereke is the stronger singer -her voice is basically astonishing, combining sweetness and power with a virtuoso versatility- but both invest their characters with an inner life, sharp intelligence and sheer relatability that forces us to pay attention and to care. They are stunningly good.

I’m basically running out of superlatives here. This is the kind of spine-tingling production that forcibly reminds you of the transformative possibilities of theatre, and the uplift and heartbreak that truly great musicals can achieve. It thrills the blood and breaks the heart. Please go and see it…if you can get in.

CABARET

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

Book by Joe Masteroff

Based on John Van Druten’s “I Am A Camera” and Christopher Isherwood’s “Tales of Berlin”

Directed by Rebecca Frecknall

Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse – booking to 1 October 2022

https://kitkat.club/cabaret-london/

This was always going to be one of the theatrical events of the year -two of this country’s brightest young stars in a Broadway classic re-imagined by one of the hottest new directors for decades- but I’m not sure anything prepared me for quite how earth-shatteringly sensational Rebecca Frecknall’s take on Cabaret would turn out to be. For a while there it looked as though outrage at the eye-wateringly high ticket prices would eclipse everything else about the show but it’s worth noting that there is a TodayTix lottery, and some of the super high priced seats include dinner and champagne, the reconfigured auditorium now being partly an opulently appointed supper club.

Whether you’re quaffing champers, or you’re quietly enjoying your free welcome drink, I don’t think you’re going to feel that you’ve wasted even a penny at this extraordinary piece of theatre, one that will be talked about for decades to come. The “immersive” aspect is stunningly well done: Tom Scutt’s design and Frecknall’s concept embraces the whole venue (aficionados of the Punchdrunk shows will find this pretty familiar): a beautiful woman regards herself in a dressing table mirror as we file past, another writhes on the floor to piano accompaniment behind a beaded curtain, moustached dancers of indeterminate gender disport on a balcony above the bar. It’s beautiful, a bit strange, quite sinister, and entirely transporting.

All of this would feel like a distraction though if the performance itself were not up to par. It’s rather more than that in fact: a wildly imaginative, exhilarating, brutally disturbing rendition of this most malleable of musicals that draws one into it’s intoxicating, hedonistic world then sends us reeling out into the night, with troubled hearts, dazzled eyes and our heads crammed with unforgettable images. Frecknall is too intelligent to make explicit the parallels between the rise of the Nazis with the sleaze, corruption and divide-and-rule horrors of our present government. It’s not hard to join those dots though, in the brief moments of terror where a moment of joy is punctured by an act of prejudice (there’s a shocking elision of the infamous Kristallnacht with the Jewish glass breaking wedding ritual, that lingers long in the mind afterwards) or in the sense of a party as the world burns.

It’s brought home even more tellingly by the final section, where all the extravagant trappings of 1930s Berlin are abandoned and the whole company appears in anonymous, timeless, beige suits, hollow-eyed everypeople sleepwalking like zombies towards the abyss. This chilling conclusion is foreshadowed by dolls at the end of the first half, clad in the same beige, set down by the cast on the endlessly revolving stage to the seductive, unsettling, anthemic strains of ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’. At that early point in the show it seems like a vaguely uncomfortable fantasy but by close of play it has become a grim reality. Shatteringly powerful, it begs the question how did these people get to this, and it resonates forward upon us: how did we get here?

Every new production of Cabaret tends to be a mishmash of the original musical which ran for over 1000 performances on Broadway in the 60s and transferred to London with a young Judi Dench as the West End’s Sally Bowles, with the major additions made for the iconic Bob Fosse movie starring Liza Minnelli. The last West End revival directed by Rufus Norris had a slightly different running order from the universally acclaimed Sam Mendes version which started at the Donmar before conquering Broadway. This one tells the story with a commendable fluidity and clarity, bleeding the seedy glamour of the Kit Kat Club sequences into the “real life” book scenes more effectively than I’ve ever seen before (the in-the-round staging inevitably helps with this).

Kander and Ebb created the terrific numbers ‘Mein Herr’ and ‘Maybe This Time’ for Minnelli and it’s hard to imagine Cabaret without them. The film was deceptive insofar as Liza was a phenomenal singer and radiated star quality, something Jean Ross (the real life model for the role) did not, according to Christopher Isherwood. In this production, Jessie Buckley is thrilling, only unleashing the full force of her impressive voice at certain moments. Her version of the title song is a spine-tingling apocalyptic howl of rage, and her rendition of ‘Maybe This Time’ is deeply moving in it’s unhistrionic longing. She may be the best sung Sally Bowles in a long time but it’s the acting that really knocks us sideways though….we watch the sunshine drain out of her.

Eddie Redmayne’s Emcee is less immediately revelatory perhaps but It is a magnificent reading of the role, magnetic and reptilian. Try taking your eyes off him whenever he’s on stage. Omari Douglas’s Cliff is sensitively done, clearly gay but trying to make the best of his complicated feelings for Sally, and dynamically urgent when he realises the way things are going under the Nazis and plans to get his unconventional little family out of Berlin. Stewart Clarke and Anna-Jane Casey are both serious luxury casting, giving stellar, riveting performances as a pair of minor, but essential, figures in this creeping nightmare.

In a company without a single weak link, Liza Sadovy is a particular highlight. Her beautifully realised, kind, morally flexible Fräulein Schneider, along with Elliott Levey’s excellent suitor, reads as younger, more vital than usual, making one think that this couple could have had decades together if things has panned out differently, which in turn makes it all the sadder. Her ‘What Would You Do?’ performed high up on the revolving stage seems to indict the whole audience. It is a heartbreaking, heartstopping moment in a show full of them.

Julia Cheng’s choreography is edgy and angular, occasionally breaking into unforgettable stage pictures (look out for the scene near the end where Cliff is beaten up, which is lent a grim grace and beauty), performed by a fabulous ensemble who are as talented as they are intimidating. Isabella Byrd lights Tom Scutt’s stunning designs with breathtaking skill.

All in all, this is a powerful, savagely beautiful, endlessly exciting take on a Broadway classic. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it runs far longer than Redmayne and Buckley are contracted for: see it with them, see it without them, just see it. You’ll probably want to go again. Personally, I can hardly wait.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

by William Shakespeare

Directed by Phillip Breen for the Royal Shakespeare Company

Barbican Theatre – until 31 December 2021

https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-comedy-of-errors

It might seem a bit odd to come out of a Shakespeare production raving about the singing and music. Yet these elements (composer Paddy Cunneen and four stellar vocalists in Dunja Botic, David Jones, Helena Raeburn, Robert Jenkins) are part of what lift Phillip Breen’s captivating new RSC production -first seen earlier this year at the company’s temporary outdoor auditorium in Stratford- from a hugely enjoyable rendition of the text into something truly special. Insistent, atonal and vaguely unsettling, with a slight Middle Eastern flavour, the music provides a haunting, grounding overlay to this most frenetic of Shakespearean texts.

To be fair, a gloriously diverse cast and the inspired work of movement and fight directors Charlotte Broom and Renny Krupinski (respectively), also play a valuable part in this production’s hyper-caffeinated appeal. Undoubtedly the nearest the Bard ever got to full-on farce, this tale of mistaken identities doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense, and what may have had the groundlings rolling about in the 1590s needs a bit of help these days (in one blissful comic moment that may infuriate purists, Jonathan Broadbent’s hilariously wan Dromio of Syracuse rounds on the audience bellowing “help me out here! These jokes are four hundred years old!”).

By setting the comedy in what appears to be the 1980s (to judge from some of the OTT fashion) in an unnamed Middle Eastern country where conspicuous consumerism (characters wander about toting designer shopping bags) sits alongside the constant threat of violence (Nicholas Prasad’s commanding, medallioned uniform wearing Duke is one step away from being a military dictator), Breen lends the piece a slightly harder, more sinister edge than we’re used to. This in turn throws the comedy into even more striking relief than usual, all the funnier because there seems to be a lot at stake. This isn’t simply a joyful romp anyway, there’s real substance here (the almost desperate hug reuniting the Dromio twins at the end has seldom been so moving, and there is a subtle but unmistakable suggestion that Antipholus of Ephesus and Adriana’s relationship is damaged beyond repair by close of play).

It IS unquestionably a very funny production though, full of energy and invention. The clowning of both sets of twins (Broadbent and Greg Haiste as the Dromios, Guy Lewis and Rowan Polonski as the Antipholi, all sensational) is incredible but all the more hilarious because it is rooted in the terrible truth that all these people’s lives are potentially going to hell in a handcart. The women are every bit as good, Naomi Sheldon’s ultra-glam, heavily pregnant, totally fabulous Adriana joyously staggering back and forth over the fine line between passive-aggressive and flat-out aggression, abetted by Avita Jay’s fierce Luce. William Grint’s BSL using, Andy Warhol lookalike Second Merchant is another triumph: precious, preening, possibly deadly and utterly, biliously funny. You’d also have to be made of stone not to fall about at Baker Mukasa’s campily aggrieved Angelo hijacking a TV broadcast to shame Polonski’s magnificent Antipholus of Ephesus into paying up at the top of the second half. It’s a riot.

If the production sometimes sacrifices vocal clarity to energy and bombast when the farce really kicks in, and the set still looks built for all outdoor weathers, these are small caveats in what is a real treat of a production. If you don’t fancy panto or a big musical for your festive entertainment, get yourself over to the Barbican. This is a real cracker.

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN

By Young Jean Lee

Directed by Steven Kunis

Southwark Playhouse – until 4 December 2021

https://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/show-whats-on/straight-white-men/

When the 2018 production of Straight White Men opened, it’s Korean-American author Young Jean Lee became the first ever female Asian writer to have a play on Broadway, which is pretty astonishing when you consider what a polyglot, multi-cultural city New York is. A long-standing darling of the avant-garde downtown off-Broadway theatre scene where she has her own company (and Straight White Men had It’s world premiere at the Public in 2014), Lee is known for creating plays that are punchy, free-form and adventurous.

Straight White Men is certainly punchy, abrasive even, but it’s a bit of a headscratcher. The framing device of having two Black trans performers (for this London premiere, the wonderfully engaging Kamari Romero and über glamorous Kim Tatum) open the show with campy banter and a Vogue-heavy walk-down that suggests we are in for a stage version of Pose, then having them return between scenes (the play is set at Christmas and at one point Ms Tatum murders – and I really mean that – a festive carol) doesn’t really add much beyond lending a certain spice to what is otherwise a surprisingly conventional script. Perhaps the idea is to completely wrong-foot the audience from the get-go but Steven Kunis’s production doesn’t seem to have the full measure of the contrast so the result is more baffling than bracing. It doesn’t help that, on the night I saw it at least, Tatum wasn’t on top of her lines and lyrics. If the idea is that we are on a wild, unconventional ride, then it needs to be snappy, sharp and clearly delineated. This show is none of those things unfortunately.

The main meat of the play is a depiction of a family Christmas for a trio of grown-up brothers and their widowered Dad. Younger brother Drew (superb understudy Simon Haines at the show I caught) is a successful author, newly divorced middle brother Jake (dynamic, complex Alex Mugnaioni) is a wealthy banker and the oldest, Matt, who had shown more brilliance and youthful promise than either of his siblings, is now running the family home, looking after their father Ed (Simon Rouse, spot on) and doing small jobs to make ends meet. He also seems to be suffering from acute depression. Charlie Condou is particularly good at projecting Matt’s brittle, bright exterior but with intimations of deep anxiety roiling underneath.

The jock-ish, boisterous camaraderie between the trio -sometimes cruel, sometimes downright crass, but almost always affectionate- is convincingly caught but commendably never descends into cliché. The reaction of go-getter Jake when he realises that his older brother is seriously underachieving not out of a deliberate desire to flick two fingers up at an imperfect world but for reasons much more fallible and humane, is very funny but also rather unsettling.

The between-scenes sequence where they dance together to camp disco tunes is entertaining but does nothing to illuminate the characters’ relationships nor the agenda of Lee’s script, raising yet more questions that aren’t fully resolved. The signage (including one that proclaims the title of the show…or is it a label for the quartet of central protagonists?) dotted above and alongside Suzu Sakai’s commendably realistic set, raises yet more questions: are we to take these guys at face value or are they being presented to us like exhibits in a museum?

Similarly, a scene change during which Tatum and Romero sort-of ransack the set we’ve all been looking at, stealing the spoils of white male privilege, such as sports trophies, a board game (Monopoly repurposed as ‘Privilege’ by the boys’ deceased Mom) and pulling out a rainbow flag (fine, but why?) is more confusing than significant, plus comes close to perpetrating some very unhelpful tropes. When the tables turn on Matt at the end they appear alongside him as he is forced to make changes in his life. It’s an interesting stage picture but it doesn’t connect with anything we’ve seen previously.

At least in this staging, Straight White Men falls between two stools: not outrageous enough and too esoteric to really spark conversation, but not funny enough to register as satisfying satirical comedy. It doesn’t have the courage to be as unconventional as it could be, nor the humanity to really bind us to the main actors. There’s some lovely work here (specifically that of the four principal actors, and some coruscatingly witty and perceptive dialogue by Young Jean Lee) but ultimately it’s a frustrating and only intermittently engaging night in the theatre.

THE CHOIR OF MAN

created by Andrew Kay and Nic Doodson

Directed by Nic Doodson

Arts Theatre – until 13 February 2022

https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/

Big burly men who sing like angels while dispensing free beer….what’s not to love, right?! It isn’t hard to fathom the appeal of The Choir Of Man, which has, pandemic notwithstanding, triumphed at festivals, and in the States and Australia, since it’s 2017 debut on the Edinburgh Fringe, but is only now making it’s West End debut: the term “crowd pleaser” was coined for shows such as this.

Since the economics of running a production with a cast of nine and a band of four presumably couldn’t be made to work in an actual pub, which is where this raucous melange of jollity, sentimentality, classic pop/rock numbers and audience participation truly belongs, the producers have alighted on the down-at-heel Arts Theatre. This does feel like the next most appropriate venue, with it’s sticky floors and rickety seating, and designer Oli Townsend has gone to town blurring the line between the fictional Jungle Pub of the show and the auditorium: photos, hung up coats and hats plus other pubby paraphernalia line the walls of the Stalls. If the rough-round-the-edges exuberance of Nic Doodson’s production sometimes feels a bit hemmed in on a traditional stage, the sheer talent and bonhomie of the cast of make up for it.

The show itself is like a mash-up of Tap Dogs (the stage floor and many of the tables take a hell of a pounding, thanks to Freddie Huddleston’s rambunctious choreography) and Once (complete with onstage working bar but without the plot), with all of the nine male “choir” members having specific identities, although they are too sketchily introduced to make much impact. Lengthy poetic monologues, celebrating the camaraderie of pub life or mourning the loss of welcoming spaces for the whole populace to elitist urban re-development, are beautifully performed and penned by Ben Norris, but threaten to extend the novel evening beyond it’s natural length.

The singing and instrumental playing (Jack Blume is the musical supervisor, orchestrator and vocal arranger) are magnificent however, although the muddy sound design means that the lyrics are barely comprehensible most of the time. That said, most people will already know the words to ‘The Impossible Dream’, The Proclaimer’s ‘500 Miles’, Queen’s ‘Somebody To Love’ or Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ (the song stack is nothing if not eclectic). Personally, I enjoyed the few lyrical moments the most: there’s a stunningly performed (by Miles Anthony Daley) and staged version of Adele’s ‘Hello’ which sees the pub loner contemplate a lost love while his oblivious mates react in slow-mo to a football match on TV (all while exquisitely delivering multiple part harmonies, because that’s how talented these blokes are).

The whole cast are a likeable, prodigiously talented, testosterone-fuelled bunch and, if all the male posturing gets a bit much at times, the virtuosity of the singing and energy of the performances are pretty hard to resist. The syrupy sentimentality and extensive audience participation weren’t for me, but most of the crowd were loving every minute of it. This is also that rare West End show that feels as though it is aimed squarely at the cis straight male market. It’s going to be a massive hit, and although billed as a limited season, I could easily imagine the Arts being occupied with this for a couple of years.