ajhlovestheatre

IS GOD IS

by Aleshea Harris

Directed by Ola Ince

Royal Court Theatre – until 23 October

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

One of the Urban Dictionary definitions of “nasty” is a word to describe something that is ridiculously good. Between that and the more traditional meaning of the word, I have no hesitation in proclaiming that Aleshea Harris’s literal firecracker of a play is one of the nastiest shows in town. Acclaimed and awarded upon it’s 2018 Off-Broadway premiere, it’s not hard to see why, especially in Ola Ince’s boldly inventive, fabulously cast new production for the Royal Court. It’s astounding.

Imagine, if you dare, a younger, Black riff on a female-led Road Movie such as Thelma & Louise, crossed with a Jacobethan Revenge Drama then overlaid with strips of particularly bitter domestic sitcom, and even Spaghetti Western, but alchemised into something profoundly, essentially theatrical… and you’ll have some idea of what’s going on here. A set of twins, disfigured in an unexplained fire, receive a letter from their presumed-dead mother (a very much alive, almost deified, and magnificently terrifying Cecilia Noble, screaming blue murder from a hospital bed and with a face damaged beyond recognition in the aforementioned conflagration), which lights the touch paper for a vengeful adventure that sees the young women head across America in search of their no-good Dad and to avenge Mom.

The writing is at times poetic and extravagant, and at others brutal and spare, but never hits a false note. It’s full of fascinating detail, quirks and apparent non sequiturs that add up to a wonderfully vivid picture of an only intermittently civilised world spinning off it’s axis.

Probably not for the faint-hearted, but a rollicking good time for everybody else, Harris’s script is particularly impressive because it transitions between these ostensibly mismatched genres almost seamlessly. She, and her resourceful director, have created a modern America that is at once recognisable, relatable even, but also so crazy that it feels like anything could happen. And it pretty much does. Chloe Lamford’s eye-popping, picture-postcard-meets-your-worst-nightmare sets help hugely, as does a uniformly brilliant cast.

Nobody in this company drops the ball: as Racine and Anaia, Tamara Lawrance and Adelayo Adedayo convincingly convey the connection and rapport between identical twins while also making vivid and fascinating some specific differences. As the more outgoing of the pair, and the one less fire damaged, perhaps not coincidentally, Lawrance projects a sunny confidence that masks a breathtaking capacity for brutality. Adedayo is more bruised and watchful, and ultimately very moving as the kinder of the two, or at least the kinder until circumstances put that particular character trait out of her grasp. They are both terrific.

Vivienne Acheampong’s barely suppressed fury as a taken-for-granted, upwardly mobile Mum is both hilarious and unsettling, while Ernest Kingsley Jr and Rudolph Mdlongwa are glorious as her obnoxious twin boys, the former especially funny as a kid so transfixed by his own literary genius as a poet that he can’t find time to help with the chores. Mark Monero is excellent as a father figure who at first seems not quite what was expected…and then….well, come see for yourself.

It’s a bonkers theatrical thrill ride, and one that anybody with an interest in new writing ought to see. Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply troubling, is it a bit early in Harris’s career for her to have created a modern masterpiece? Well….here it is. This is a truly nasty show, and I liked it very very much.

NW TRILOGY

Dance Floor by Moira Buffini

Life of Riley by Roy Williams

Walking/Waking by Suhayla El-Bushra

Directed by Taio Lawson and Susie McKenna

Kiln Theatre – until 9 October

NW TRILOGY

This is community theatre in the truest sense. The Kiln is right in the heart of North West London, and it’s autumn offering is a trio of short plays set in the immediate vicinity, albeit at two different points in modern history. Educational and richly entertaining, NW Trilogy emerges, in Taio Lawson and Susie McKenna’s vibrant production as a sparky, moving valentine to what is traditionally one of the capital’s most diverse neighbourhoods.

Given that not only are there two directors but a trio of writers (Moira Buffini, Roy Williams and Suhayla El-Bushra) involved in the project, it is remarkable how consistent the tone of the entire evening is. Although each short piece is discrete from the others, the overall sense of shared history and cumulative experience, across history, race and gender, is superbly done, the whole company sweeping on to effect scene changes, or act as supernumeraries. Certain themes echo and weave tantalisingly through each text: the commonality of music, the breakdown in communication between men and women, the struggle immigrants have often had to receive acceptance in London, the way an act of unfathomable kindness or cruelty can have a transformative effect on individual lives…. This is powerful, thought-provoking stuff that may occasionally teeter on the brink of sentimentality but is, for the most part, a riveting couple of hours, shot through with some genuine belly laughs and more than a few tears.

The opener, Moira Buffini’s delicate but tough ‘Dance Floor’, set out-of-hours in a 1950s Irish dance hall, is a real beauty. Two women, the older one authoritative but not unkind (Aoife McMahon, perfection) and the younger newly arrived from Donegal, deeply homesick and in trouble (exquisite work by Claire Keenan, who also has the most ethereally lovely singing voice), clean up after the preceding night’s revelry. It’s impossible to describe the plot without spoilers but suffice it to say that it’ll leave you with a real lump in your throat, and includes a terrific turn by Emmet Byrne as one of the guests who imbibed well but not wisely the night before. Vastly more ambitious than it initially appears, ‘Dance Floor’ packs more joy and gentle devastation into it’s brief running time than many plays four times it’s length can manage.

Roy Williams’s ‘Life of Riley’ flashes forward to 1976 and depicts an edgy meeting between mixed race Paulette and her successful reggae musician father, who left the family home when she was three. Paulette is repelled by her father’s selfishness and resents his abandonment of her as a mixed race child in an intolerant city, but is drawn despite herself to his talent and the perceived glamour of his connections (“I knew Bob Marley before he was Bob Marley!”) Williams’s writing is fresh and salty, with a lot to say about the race relations and sexual politics of the time, and Harmony Rose Bremner and Chris Tummings mine it for all it’s pain and humour. When they sing together it’s authentically magical. Again, here is a short, but far from small, play that is completely satisfying.

If Suhayla El-Bushra’s final section ‘Waking/Walking’ is less impressive than It’s companions, that is because it’s the only part of the trilogy that really feels as though it ought to be a full length piece. Inspired by the Grunwick dispute, it filters the turbulent tale of female East African Asian workers striking for better working conditions in the late 1970s, through a domestic comedy drama that seems a little hemmed-in but still repeatedly and pleasingly confounds expectations in terms of character and plot development. The lurch from the nicely observed, often very funny, family tragi-comedy of the first scene to an impassioned, increasingly disillusioned monologue for the family matriarch (delivered with excoriating emotional dexterity by Natasha Jayetileke), forced by financial circumstances to defy the strike and return to work (“These were the women who cried for me when I could no longer cry myself”), is dramaturgically clumsy, although it paves the way for a rabble rousing final tableau that fairly yanks the audience out of their seats.

All of the acting is first rate, and directors Lawson and McKenna skilfully balance the ferocity and vitality of the texts with genuinely poignant moments – note the way Tummings’s hard-bitten Riley gently reaches out to touch his daughter’s hair while she is otherwise engaged writing her phone number on his inner arm – and the whole night moves at a cracking pace. Designer Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey ingeniously makes the extended Kiln stage look simultaneously immense yet claustrophobic, and Richard Howell’s lighting is very successful, evoking a past bathed one moment in a nostalgic glow and in the next, in a harsh, uncompromising reality.

NW Trilogy is steeped in the stories and energy of North West London, but it is worth travelling from any postcode for. A magnificent evening.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/

CAMP SIEGFRIED

by Bess Wohl

Directed by Katy Rudd

The Old Vic – until 30 October

https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2021/watch-at-the-theatre/camp-siegfried

The human urge to create something beautiful or at least worthwhile from the ashes of cruelty and catastrophe is an extraordinary thing: witness the phenomenal global success of Come From Away, which would never have happened without 9-11 yet never feels opportunistic or inappropriate. The genocidal horror of Nazi Germany continues to provide a pivot point for art and probably always will as long as humanity tries to process how upwards of 17 million souls were lost while the rest of the world stood by. Currently on the London stage, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt and Paula Vogel’s Indecent, masterpieces both, grapple with this unconscionable evil. They are joined now by the world premiere of Bess Wohl’s slippery, engaging two hander which appears to start off in much less doom-laden territory but ends up being arguably the most disturbing of this trio of remarkable plays.

Proving that real life is often stranger than fiction, Camp Siegfried actually existed: a sort of Butlins with swastikas, it was a family retreat on Long Island, NY, for American-Germans with Nazi sympathies to engage in outdoor activities, live music, dancing… and fascist indoctrination. Wohl’s play is set over the summer of 1938 and sees a pair of unnamed youngsters (the programme refers to them only as “Her” and “Him”, presumably to force home the point that nobody is ever insusceptible to bad influences) who meet at Camp Siegfried, and share an intense, troubling intimacy before going in very different directions.

In Katy Rudd’s spare, witty and ultimately terrifying production, punctuated by newsreel footage of the period, Patsy Ferran and Luke Thallon further consolidate their claims to be among this country’s most exciting younger stage actors. Mesmerising to watch, they subtly, ingeniously uncover layer upon layer of these misguided, fitfully likeable, ultimately repellent individuals. The depth and qualify of the performances and Wohl’s writing, leavened with moments of dazzling humour, mean that while this is not an easy piece to sit through at times, it is undeniably riveting.

The idea that extreme political views appeal to the outsider, to people not fully comfortable in their own skin, may not be a revelatory one but it remains topical, and is handled here with extraordinary conviction. Watching Ferran go from a timid little mouse, comically nervous of almost everything, to a rabble rousing, exalted speech maker is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Thallon matches her with a nuanced portrait of a strapping Aryan-type youth whose enthusiasm seems constantly on the verge of tipping over into mania and violence.

There is a hint that there may be some redemption for Ferran’s character after she receives great kindness at the hands of a Jewish doctor and his family, but Thallon’s is a very different story, and watching the darkness enter him is chilling in the extreme. Rosanna Vize’s stark, expressionistic set and Rob Casey’s lighting – which starts off with a warm, wholesome glow before devolving into a hellish monochrome nightmare – provide suitable foils for this grimly impressive piece of work. Highly recommended, but I wouldn’t bank on getting a good nights sleep afterwards. Evil in plain sight is a real chiller, and that’s exactly what Wohl is serving up here. Disconcerting, essential stuff.

INDECENT

by Paula Vogel

Directed by Rebecca Taichman

Menier Chocolate Factory – until 27 November

https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=FA6A2A98-C9F4-464C-BFEC-25A2A4937DC2

This may be a sweeping statement, but if you’re not profoundly affected by Paula Vogel’s provocatively titled powder keg of a play, as staged here in Rebecca Taichman’s Tony Award-winning production, then can you really call yourself a theatrelover? I’m quite serious: it’s hard to think of any other show in recent memory that is quite so steeped in the seedy magic, the graft, the mechanics, the egos, the passions and eccentricities, and the sheer storytelling of live theatre.

Taichman’s dream-like, occasionally eccentric vision, played out on an almost bare stage under Riccardo Hernandez’s gorgeously tarnished false proscenium arch, revels joyfully in the myriad of possibilities, and the visual and emotional shorthand, that theatrical staging affords. In conjunction with Vogel’s dynamic but weighty script, the show also rams home the importance and relevance of the performing arts in day-to-day life, something so many of us have been uncomfortably aware of during the last eighteen months.

Both Vogel’s writing and Taichman’s production are delightfully and deceptively simple, with a laser sharp precision, but also richly textured, sublimely witty, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly moving. It’s a history lesson – the true story of a controversial 1920s Broadway play that saw the entire company charged under obscenity laws for depicting lesbian love on stage – but one with passion, fire and heart, presented against the broader backdrop of the treatment of Jewish people throughout history. While there are countless plays, films and books depicting the latter, few do so as hauntingly and inventively as Indecent.

The numerous locations, time zones and even languages are beamed up on the bare brick wall at the back of the stage, and the story is contextualised further by the inclusion of projections listing the complete works of Sholem Asch (author of the “offending” play God Of Vengeance). We even get a compendium of 20th century Jewish creatives at the helm of the golden age of the Broadway musical, with the mock-rueful caveat that they don’t tend to write in Yiddish any more.

When the audience enters, the seven actors and three musicians are already seated on stage facing out front. When they start to move, notice how rivers of dust pour from their swirling limbs. It’s an enchanting, but unsettling, effect, and one that will acquire a terrible significance as the story gathers pace and we return to a similar visual near the show’s conclusion. Taichman’s production is filled with instances of similar ingenuity (the moment when the infamous yellow stars appear, is like a shock of icy air blasting through the house) but only ever at the service of the play, never just to be a striking gimmick. The humanity here is all, and it’s beautiful and frequently unsettling.

Almost the entire Broadway creative team has reassembled for the Menier version because, really, why mess with perfection. All of their contributions (David Dorfman’s choreography, Emily Rebholz’s costumes, Christopher Akerlind’s lighting, the aforementioned Hernandez’s set) are seamless and invaluable. Everybody here is working at the top of their game, and the results are spellbinding.

The same is true of the onstage company, who emerge as figures from the mind and imagination of stage manager Lemml (a mesmerising Finbar Lynch). This is truly an ensemble piece, with endless doubling up of roles, and it’s not always clear where the boundaries between actors and musicians exist: they really feel like the troupe of wandering players they represent. Apart from Lemml, all other roles are listed in the programmes simply as “Actor”.

Beverley Klein and Peter Polycarpou as the senior actors are so effortlessly accomplished that you’re only made aware of the brilliance of their technique at the exact moment where they want you to see what they’re doing. Joseph Timms and Molly Osborne – both magnificent- bring multiple layers to the playwright, his wife, and several other roles.

An astonishingly good Alexandra Silber invests the leading actress with a beguiling neuroticism and brittle glamour that gets swept away in moments of high emotionalism: it’s an unforgettable performance, deeply felt and exquisitely detailed. Corey English, known in London perhaps most for his terrific, high energy musical theatre work, proves what a devastatingly fine actor he is, impressively transforming from garrulous Irish-American cop to righteously ranting rabbi in the space of one speech.

Indecent is a Jewish story – the final, rain-soaked scene is actually performed in Yiddish, and it is one of the most moving things you’ll find in any theatre in the land right now – but in it’s clear-eyed compassion, it’s gorgeous theatricality, and it’s quiet but powerful insistence that attention be paid to the past and the departed, this is a play for everyone. This production was closed in preview by the first lockdown but proves a hell of a powerful reopening for this mighty venue. An unmissable, breathtaking piece of theatre, pitched somewhere between a ritual and a seance, I will be experiencing it again as soon as I feel emotionally robust enough. A shaynem dank to everyone involved.

“Tell the guards to open up the gates”, it’s finally here… and Frozen is big, bold, beautiful, bombastic…and better than Broadway! A lot better actually. On almost every level, this West End iteration of Disney’s entertainment juggernaut is a considerable improvement on the rather wan spectacle – not magical enough for kids and insufficiently meaty for the grownups – that opened to muted reviews in New York three years ago. At the Broadway performance I saw, the small children sitting behind me started angling to leave as soon as the intermission lights came up following Caissie Levy’s roof-rattling rendering of the belting ‘Let It Go’, before whining loudly throughout the second act about how bored they were.

It’s hard to imagine that being the case in the West End, where Frozen London proves an infinitely more enchanting proposition: more spectacular, more emotionally engaging, funnier, faster paced, it’s a lovely time in the theatre. Most of the original creative team is still attached (Michael Grandage directing, designs by Christopher Oram, Rob Ashford choreography, sound by Peter Hylenski, truly sensational video and puppet design by Finn Ross and Michael Curry respectively) but a lot of the work feels new and fresh. There’s even a couple of superb new numbers that blend seamlessly into Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez’s eclectic, stirringly memorable score.

You know you’re at a Disney musical when it’s set in a fictional Nordic country but almost everybody speaks with American accents, and Frozen suffers from a similar inconsistency of tone to the one that afflicts The Lion King, whereby cartoony comic shtick (in this case lovable snowman puppet Olaf, forever craving warm hugs and wondering what summer must be like) sits uneasily alongside soaringly beautiful serious stuff (in some of the interior scenes, Oram’s designs, moodily lit by Neil Austin, resemble neo-classical paintings come to life). It’s all massively entertaining but it never fully coalesces in Jennifer Lee’s book, adapted from her own screenplay, which staggers schizophrenically between pratfalls and portentous.

Few will care, when the production values are so extraordinary and the performances are so high octane. Samantha Barks’ ice queen Elsa has presence, elegance and powerful but sweet vocals, carving showstoppers out of the aforementioned ‘Let It Go’ and also ‘Monster’, the cri de cœur second act power ballad. Lee’s script doesn’t require her to do much beyond wander about looking troubled however, and the show’s emotional and comic heavy lifting falls mainly to her younger sister Anna. In this role, Stephanie McKeon is a thoroughly satisfying “tornado with pigtails” and could well turn out to be the production’s break out star. She’s very very funny, completely endearing and with a gorgeous voice. On press night, Sasha Watson-Lobo and Summer Betson respectively played Young Elsa and Young Anna so delightfully it could have been a disappointment when the adult versions of the characters took over, had Barks and McKeon not been so winning.

Although he feels like he belongs in a different musical entirely, Craig Gallivan is tremendous fun as Olaf, and Richard Frame is a comic joy as a conniving potential Royal suitor with a nasty case of short man syndrome. Obioma Ugoala, last seen in the West End as a stunning George Washington in the original London cast of Hamilton, is absolutely wonderful as Kristoff, the feisty, big hearted ice harvester who befriends Anna. Physically imposing but with an off-the-wall wit and warmth, and a beguiling lightness of touch, he commands the stage, with buckets of charm, killer moves, and some serious vocal chops. Sven, his reindeer companion, is an astonishing puppet creation that needs to be seen to be believed: think Joey from War Horse meets Disney cuteness and you’re part of the way there.

The vocal arrangements are exquisite, and magnificently sung by a large cast, and Dave Metzger’s orchestrations sound richer and fuller than we’re generally used to hearing in the West End these days. Personally I could have lived without the excessively kitschy second half opener, ‘Hygge’, a bizarre production number extolling the joys of cosiness in the face of extreme weather conditions, and featuring a chorus line of sauna-loving, nearly naked Ensemble members protecting their modesty with outsize tree branches. In all fairness, the audience went wild for this section, but it reminded me of something that might have scored “nul points” in the Eurovision Song Contest back in the 1980s.

Regardless of my reservations, Frozen is most assuredly a show to see: an epic, dazzling, transporting extravaganza that fits the gorgeously restored “new” Theatre Royal Drury Lane like an exceptionally sumptuous new winter coat. It’ll probably run for years and, what’s more, in this excitingly revamped version, it deserves to. “Do you want to build a snow man?” Yes, yes I do.

Note – this review first appeared on Fairy Powered Productions http://fairypoweredproductions.com/

THE WINDSORS: ENDGAME

Written by George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore

Composer: Felix Hagan

Directed by Michael Fentiman

Prince of Wales Theatre – until 2 October

https://www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk/whats-on/the-windsors-endgame

I approached George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler-Moore’s comedy with some trepidation: stage spin-offs of TV shows can be decidedly naff. I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially after some of the dodgy reviews but I actually loved it. It reminded me a bit of Death Drop in that it is just out to give the audience a rollicking good time, to hell with coherence and indeed sanity. This it most assuredly does: the crowd I saw it with was screaming with laughter.

Maybe some shows just don’t need critical input (he says while reviewing it….go figure). This is about as subtle as being smacked around the head with several old copies of Tatler – the “joke” (not that one can even call it that) that stopped the show was Tracy Ann Oberman’s magnificently nasty Camilla telling Kara Tointon’s joyously vacuous Kate (who comes over all Ninja at the first sign of trouble) to fuck off when she opined that she missed Jamie Oliver’s restaurants – but it is a heck of a lot of knowing fun, which sees Fergie (Sophie-Louise Dann, absolutely hilarious and frequently filthy) working as Meghan and Harry’s cleaner in L.A. and habitually lacing their wheatgrass smoothies with Smirnoff, Andrew (a commendably non-sweaty Tim Wallers) discovered looking furtive in the front Stalls, and Matthew Cottle’s gormless Edward picking up all the spare roles on account of his theatrical experience (“I once worked for Andrew Lloyd Webber you know”).

I also loved Tom Durant-Pritchard’s weirdly hot himbo Harry and the genius comic pairing of Eliza Butterworth and Jenny Rainsford as a wonderfully clueless Beatrice and Eugenie so vowel-manglingly posh that it’s quite a challenge to work out what they’re actually saying half the time. Crystal Condie as Meghan is so accurate she borders on the uncanny, and Ciaràn Owens makes a lovable Prince William. Oberman’s Camilla is so good she deserves some sort of award, or possibly a restraining order. Harry Enfield as Prince Charles engineers one of the most bizarre standing ovations I’ve ever been part of, reasoning that since the cast are Royal, we in the audience should stand and bow TO THEM while they wave half heartedly.

Michael Fentiman’s surprisingly opulent production (Madeleine Girling’s set is gorgeous) resembles a panto with Tourettes. This is a ton of disrespectful fun, both for us and the cast, although I’d be fascinated to know what an ardent Royalist makes of it all. The Prince of Wales (the theatre that is, not the eccentric Royal) is being kept very warm while The Book Of Mormon is on hiatus. My face ached from smiling.

13 – The Musical

Music and Lyrics by Jason Robert Brown

Book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn

Directed by Dean Johnson for The British Theatre Academy

Cadogan Hall, London

one day only – Tuesday 31 August 2021

The British Theatre Academy has a constantly growing reputation as being an exceptionally fine, commendably diverse, training and play ground for budding young performers, as evidenced by the acclaim for their recent residences at Southwark Playhouse (Once On This Island, Bring It On!), and the fact that alumni include Dear Evan Hansen’s Sam Tutty. This is their second production of this punchily enjoyable Broadway musical – the first was part of their 2017 season at the West End’s Ambassadors Theatre, but with a different creative team – and it proves a frequently uplifting ninety minutes.

13 is an unusual proposition for a number of reasons: for starters, this tale of a Manhattan Jewish kid supplanted to rural Indiana and struggling to make friends when his parents’ marriage fails, features not a single character over the age of 13, and furthermore the creatives specified at the outset (the show was first seen in New York in 2008 with an original cast that included a pre-superstardom Ariane Grande) that it can only be performed by an age appropriate company. So, no adults pretending to be kids à la Blood Brothers or the various American musical distillations of the Peanuts cartoons. Also, to be fair, very little of the angst of Spring Awakening either. Personally I love that angst, but that’s not what 13 is about.

The other anomalous thing about 13, at least to musical theatre geeks, is that the catchy score, covering everything from bops to soft rock to a mild but unexpected flirtation with reggae at one point, is the work of Jason Robert Brown. Yes he of the majestic grandeur of Parade, the sharply observed urbanity of The Last 5 Years, the edgy but witty heartbreak of Songs For A New World and the full blown romanticism of The Bridges Of Madison County. True, his ear for pastiche has always rivalled Sondheim’s, as does his sharp, ingenious way with a lyric, but here he crafted a real pop score, and it’s as much fun as it is unexpected.

The young performers (there’s a core of thirteen principals augmented by a gigantic but superbly drilled ensemble) in Dean Johnson’s high energy but focussed staging were clearly having an absolute ball, but impressively never sacrificed clarity to exuberance. Corin Miller’s choreography – pitched somewhere between raw and slick, but never less than exciting – fares similarly. The only technical aspect of the production that didn’t quite work was the sound design which unfortunately rendered the lyrics almost completely incomprehensible for the first half of the show whenever there was more than one person singing.

Edward Flynn-Haddon was charming and likeable as bewildered New Yorker Evan while Ivy Pratt was genuinely touching, as well as vocally terrific, as Patrice, the funny, quirky school friend who adores him. Zoe Forward and Rebecca Nardin were great fun as a pair of Teen Queens falling out over the same boy, and Ethan Quinn (who was also in the 2017 version) was utterly brilliant as Evan’s friend Archie, a hyper-smart, manipulative youngster suffering from a degenerative disorder and entirely prepared to use his physical shortcomings to get whatever the hell he wants. Quinn’s comic timing is already that of a master.

Where 13 doesn’t quite work is in the disconnect between the vivacious score (Chris Ma’s band were excellent) and much of the dialogue in Dan Elish and Robert Horn’s amusing but – apart from the lack of any adult figures – hardly groundbreaking script. These young people (meaning the characters themselves, not this cast, all of whom are doing sterling work) sound authentically youthful when negotiating the peppy, poppy songs, but are saddled with a world weary borscht belt humour, that is frequently funny but seldom convinces as the utterances of school-going pre-teens. For instance, Evan, referring to his upcoming Bar Mitzvah: “For us it’s the one day everything in your life is supposed to be happy and perfect” elicits Patrice’s response “See, Catholics don’t have that day. It would go against everything we believe in” ….I laughed a lot but it sounds more like something one would hear on Seinfeld rather than in a school yard.

That’s a pretty small quibble though in a piece of upbeat musical theatre that could well prove a calling card into the industry for enthusiastic young people on both sides of the footlights. It’s a shame that BTA’s delightful new staging only got two shows at Cadogan, though it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see it back but on a more permanent basis soon.

CINDERELLA

Music by Andrew LLoyd Webber

Lyrics by David Zippel

Book by Emerald Fennell

Gillian Lynne Theatre – open ended run

https://andrewlloydwebberscinderella.com/

Andrew Lloyd Webber may have composed better scores than his new Cinderella, but he has certainly never created anything camper, and no, I haven’t forgotten Sunset Boulevard. This collaboration with Oscar winning book writer Emerald Fennell and lyricist David Zippel (City of Angels, ALW’s own The Woman In White) actually feels like something of a return to form, not because it’s much like anything else in the Lord’s canon thus far, but more because, after well over two decades, a new musical by this country’s most successful theatrical composer actually feels, once again, like a major West End event. School Of Rock doesn’t count as it was already a solid Broadway hit by the time it opened at the same Gillian Lynne Theatre that Cinderella is now gaudily occupying.

Of course, the pandemic has something to do with the feeling of triumph – any large scale production that gets off the ground at the moment feels like a win – as does Lloyd Webber’s heroic attempts over the last 18 months to get theatres open while other impresarios (not counting Nica Burns) either couldn’t or wouldn’t. More than that though, Cinderella is a thumping good time in the theatre, a rousing, brash, eye-popping bit of escapism filled with terrific performances and an irrepressible confidence in it’s own ability to show us a good time. Which it does. In spades.

In a way, it’s a shame they didn’t opt to call the show ‘Bad Cinderella’, after the memorable number Carrie Hope Fletcher’s heroine introduces herself with, partly so as to distinguish it from the more traditional Rodgers & Hammerstein musical fairy tale or countless pantomimes, and also because they’ve basically Elphaba-ed her up. Gone is the meek scullery maid with the cosy fairy godmother and penchant for befriending small rodents, and in comes a roaring Goth iconoclast, armed with a spray paint can, an acerbic wit and a ton of attitude. Fletcher displays cracking comic timing, as well as her trademark silver-toned belt, and succeeds in creating a character who is as tough as the DMs she stomps around in, but also with a real warmth and undertow of vulnerability. The beating heart of the show is in very safe hands.

Elsewhere, it’s a riot of camp opulence, as Laurence Connor’s romp of a production comes on like a turbo-charged fusion of outlandish fashion show, gay fantasia (the young men of the Royal court are given to disporting in little more than leather pants and harnesses, giving me uncomfortable flashbacks to Magic Mike Live, and a couple of ill-advised clubbing nights in Vauxhall in my youth) and The Real Housewives Of …Versailles. The extravagance of Gabriela Tylesova’s costume design – think Christian Lacroix and Jean-Paul Gaultier in bed with Cecil Beaton – is matched by her own ravishingly over-the-top sets and Campbell Young’s equally crazy wig creations, and the whole thing is lit to twinkly, technicolour perfection by Bruno Poet. It looks a million dollars, several million dollars actually.

Out-camping everybody and everything on stage is Victoria Hamilton-Barritt as Cinderella’s socially ambitious Stepmother, in a joyous, rampaging comic tour de force. With a voice that suggests she has a mouth full of marbles (designer of course) and a laugh like a braying donkey, she conjures up memories of, variously, Fenella Fielding, Cruella DeVil, Joanna Lumley’s Patsy Stone from AbFab …and Dame Edna. She’s simply astonishing, spinning comedy gold out of some fairly hackneyed gags, and it says much for the vital, funny work of Laura Baldwin and Georgina Castle’s stunning but horrid Stepsisters that they don’t disappear into her shadow.

If Rebecca Trehearn’s not-as-wholesome-as-she-looks Queen seems a little muted in comparison, she’s still vivid and amusing, with a fabulous, if underused, singing voice. In this updated, upended version of the story, there is no fairy godmother but there is The Godmother, a slightly demented, darkly glamorous plastic surgeon, reminiscent of Tommy’s Acid Queen, to whom Cinders goes for a makeover before attending the climactic ball. Gloria Onitiri has precious little stage time in the role but is truly thrilling, and deliciously weird. Personally I would like to have seen a whole lot more of her. Caleb Roberts’s Prince Charming is similarly unconventional (go see the show to find out why) but great fun, bowling in unexpectedly late in the second half.

The real male lead of the piece is Charming’s younger brother Prince Sebastian, who gets one of the best songs, a rueful ballad ‘Only You, Lonely You’ where he expresses yearnings for this decidedly unromantic Cinderella. It requires a true tenor range and, at the press performance I saw, it was delivered stunningly by understudy Michael Hamway. There’s been a lot of Twitter chat lately amongst theatre enthusiasts about how covers and understudies are keeping the industry going at the present time. It’s all true. Here, Hamway gives a performance of such insouciant charm and technical skill, he ought henceforward to be at the top of every casting director’s list when they’re lookIng for modern romantic male leads: that’s how good he is.

The other breakout songs are the exquisite ballad ‘Far Too Late’ which would not sound out of place in Phantom and the stirring, folk-inflected ‘I Believe I Have A Heart’ performed with a theatre-shaking passion by Fletcher that brings the house down. Elsewhere, Lloyd Webber’s score feels like comic opera meets Eurovision Song Contest, and, if not particularly memorable and seldom subtle, it matches the baroque excesses of Joann M. Hunter’s stylish choreography and Zippel’s nicely turned lyrics. Fennell’s book is fast-moving and often very funny, if not perhaps quite as fresh and original as one might have expected given her track record.

This is the first show since Cats to utilise the Gillian Lynne’s unique feature of being able to revolve the entire stage taking the first half dozen rows of the Stalls with it, and, while it doesn’t really add anything significant, it’s an extra touch of magic to what is already a richly enjoyable night out. An authentic crowd pleaser where you can really see where the cost of your ticket went, it genuinely feels as though we are looking at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first solid smash hit for quite some time. Is it perfect? No. Will the majority of paying customers care? Also no. If the Gillian Lynne is looking for a new occupant within the next three to four years I’ll be extremely surprised. To recycle a cliché, I had a ball.

OLEANNA

by David Mamet

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Arts Theatre – until 23 October

https://artstheatrewestend.co.uk/events/oleanna/book

If you want to see what a bunch of people who have been collectively shaken and stirred looks like, hang about outside the Arts Theatre on the fringes of Covent Garden just before 9.30pm. That is when the evening performance of David Mamet’s still-incendiary Oleanna gets out, and the expressions of bewilderment mingled with excitement and fury on the faces of departing audience members is quite something to see. Better still, get a ticket and experience this remarkable controlled explosion of a production for yourself.

First seen in New York in 1992, when the shocking ending regularly provoked outbreaks of fighting in the front Stalls, this superbly constructed two hander about a college professor being professionally and morally demolished by an apparently desperately insecure female student, feels more relevant than ever in the wake of the Me Too movement and in a modern landscape where the patriarchy is under pretty much constant interrogation. The London production was directed by Harold Pinter no less, who was famously angered by his original stars, David Suchet and Lia Williams, making explicit in an interview where their sympathies lay: Suchet felt student Carol was lying and out for blood while Williams countered that her accusations were 100% valid.

Pinter’s staging humanised the protagonists while a 2004 West End revival, with film stars Aaron Eckhart and Julia Stiles, played up the subtly heightened poetry of Mamet’s text, which is uncharacteristically unprofane right up until the very end when the obscenities rain down like missiles through the hitherto civilised canopy of academia. Lucy Bailey’s magnificent, technically flawless new production, first seen in Bath, sits somewhere between the two and may just be the best account of this punchy, provocative play I’ve yet seen.

Rosie Sheehy imbues Carol with a rich but troubled inner life and a tentative watchfulness, almost like a wounded animal…. or at least at first. I’ve never felt so invested in the character’s back story (which is never explicitly told) than here. More sympathetic but also spikier than some of her predecessors, this Carol makes the transformation from endlessly note-taking, walking inferiority complex to driven, sharply dressed, vengeful fury, constantly referring to a “group” that seem to be driving her motivation, with total credibility. It’s a terrific performance, delivered so authentically that it barely feels like acting.

Jonathan Slinger is equally good as John, the benignly patronising professor, thinking he’s helping Carol while simultaneously and unwittingly shooting himself in the foot, and negating her power. Watching him putting words into Carol’s mouth time after time, blurring the line between kindness and insensitive privilege, is as compelling as it is toe-curling, although his American accent wavers a little. His disbelief when his carefully constructed life comes tumbling down is brilliantly done, while his ultimate descent into violence is utterly chilling. The final couple of moments have never felt as brutal and unsettling.

Jon Nicholls’ sound design is subtly ingenious, the insistent but uncomfortable almost-music between scenes coming across as an aural equivalent of the gulf between what these two characters are saying to each other and what they’re understanding. Similarly, Oliver Fenwick’s lighting is naturalistic throughout but then chills down to a stark, white wash in the seismic final seconds as though we are watching specimens in a museum rather than real people. None of this is overly showy, but it all adds up.

Depending on your viewpoint, Carol’s table-turning on John could be seen as a satisfying riposte to him never letting her finish her sentences, as she and her “group” remint so much of what we, as an audience, have heard him say, and effectively put new words, or at least new meanings, into his mouth. Or is she just spiteful and mendacious? You have to see it to decide. There’s a rape allegation made and, for the first time in any Oleanna production I’ve seen, there is an ambiguity in the central relationship, and also in the work of fight director Philip D’Orleans at specific moments, that adds a whole new layer of fascination.

Every bit as relevant, if not more so, now than when it premiered nearly thirty years, Oleanna remains a peak in Mamet’s career (his more recent plays The Anarchist, China Doll and Bitter Wheat were pretty disastrous star vehicles) and has a complexity and breadth of viewpoint that exhilarates as much as it shock. I’d be surprised to ever again see it acted and directed as well as here. Unmissable.

CAROUSEL

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Based upon Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom, as adapted by Benjamin F Glazer

Directed by Timothy Sheader

Regents Park Open Air Theatre – until 25 September

https://openairtheatre.com/production/carousel

With the theme of domestic violence tethered inextricably to it’s central love story, Carousel has for many a decade, but more so now than ever, resisted prettifying, despite having one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most rapturously ravishing scores. Timothy Sheader’s bold, brave Open Air production goes even further, excising abused heroine Julie’s problematically eggy assertion that being hit hard by somebody you love barely hurts (say WHAT?!), yes, but also proceeding to strip the show of it’s American setting: we get a Midlands Billy Bigelow, a Northern Nettie Fowler, a Londoner Jigger Craigin, a Welsh Carrie Pipperidge; also gone are it’s orchestral strings, most of it’s romanticism, and even it’s carousel (although we do get the bare bones of one when dead fairground barker Billy returns to see his troubled daughter, but it more resembles a revolving cage in Tom Scutt’s striking, stark circular design.). The result is a defiantly spare, unglamorous Carousel, one that cannot quite absorb the Americanisms of the original (clambakes, specifically New England references) but is almost as remarkable, in it’s way, as Nicholas Hytner’s astonishing 1992 production for the National, which is still the one that others tend to be measured against.

That version featured the last work of the late Sir Kenneth Macmillan who created dances that were seemingly light as air yet full of passion and weighty feeling. Here Drew McOnie’s choreography is more muscular and earthy, almost as though Jerome Robbins had discovered clog dancing. More angular than elegant, there is a raw dynamism that fully convinces in this gritty reinvention.

It’s Tom Deering’s brass band orchestrations that may be the single most surprising aspect of this production. Out are the soaring violins and melancholic cellos one might expect during the famous ‘Carousel Waltz’ and in are cornets, trombone, tuba and trumpet. It’s as if the Coronation Street theme tune had a musical baby with some old Broadway classics and the result is rousing, unexpected and instrumental (pun intended) in rooting Sheader’s bleak but compelling vision in it’s mid century coastal English milieu.

The ensemble are all terrific – it’s a lovely choice to transform the Heavenly Gatekeeper, traditionally played by a senior actor, into a chorus of women who, there but for the grace of God, could have ended up like Julie or may have had lives like her. The leading casting is a bit of a mixed bag however, with the women faring much better than the men. It’s a coup for Regents Park to have the National Theatre’s original Julie Jordan (Joanna Riding, incapable of giving a less-than-stellar performance) as Cousin Nettie, bringing a vitality and brisk warmth to a role that can sometimes feel a bit like the resident old banger, wheeled out periodically to impart homilies and gamely shake a leg during the company numbers,but not so here where Riding’s glorious but very real creation lights up the stage. Jo Eaton-Kent invests fairground owner Mrs Mullin with an unusual brittle dignity, grace and quiet desperation that makes her more impactful than usual.

Christina Modestou is fabulous, life-enhancing and pretty much show-stealing as a gorgeously funny but still deeply felt Carrie, in a performance that nearly equals the impact a not-yet-famous Janie Dee had in the role nearly thirty years ago. Carly Bawden’s haunting, watchful Julie is excellent but it takes a moment to get used to the fact that all her music is transposed down. Instead of the shimmering soprano notes we get a lyrical, lilting mezzo. The lack of chemistry with Declan Bennett’s somewhat wan fairground barker is ultimately disappointing however, and robs the piece of some of it’s emotional punch.

Bennett is a singer-actor of special quality, capable of remarkable intensity, as evidenced by his titular turn in Sheader’s enthralling reimagining of Jesus Christ Superstar here in the Park, or his starring role in the West End Once, but feels miscast here. The performance seems vocally thin (the notoriously difficult but potentially thrilling ‘Soliloquy’ feels like a real struggle) and dramatically a bit one-note. However, he stabs himself with such gusto that I was getting flashbacks to his Jesus having to nail himself to the cross last summer, presumably because the cast weren’t allowed to touch each other due to Covid risk, in the Superstar concert at this very address. His post-death reaction to the life struggles of the sixteen year old daughter he never knew (a very moving Amie Hibbert at the performance I saw) is genuinely affecting though.

Sam Mackay is a terrific talent but doesn’t find sufficient darkness in the villainous Jigger, not helped by some uncharacteristically inappropriate choreography that substitutes camp for threat in a key number, while John Pfujomena’s amusingly uptight, palpably ambitious Mr Snow could afford to show more authentic affection for Modestou’s sparkling Carrie.

Timothy Sheader’s thoughtful, visually monochromatic rendering won’t be for everyone, it’s too tough and unsentimental for those after a bit of summery escapism – indeed, some of the preview reports were so damning I wondered if we might be in for another divisive production along the same lines as Sheader’s 2012 Ragtime – but it has a lot to commend it, and lingers in the memory. Rodgers’s tunes are indestructible, and Deering’s novel musical approach is a welcome opportunity to re-examine them, and hearing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ performed as if by a (particularly accomplished) Northern community choir, brings a real thrill to the blood. I would absolutely buy/download a cast album of this uncommon Carousel. It’s not traditional but neither is it as radical an overhaul as Daniel Fish did with his bluegrass Oklahoma! in NYC a few years back. Go and judge it for yourself.