Marie Curie - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

**

Music by Jongyoon Choi

Book & lyrics by Seeun Choun

English book adaptation by Tom Ramsay

English lyrics, new musical arrangements & ensemble arrangements by Emma Fraser

Directed by Sarah Meadows

Ailsa Davidson

The international credentials of Marie Curie The Musical are remarkable. This is a show about a Pole, Marie Skłodowska (she only became Curie once married) who moved to France, that has been written by two Koreans and is now being staged in England. Not only is the show’s pedigree remarkable, so of course is its subject. Curie was a genius. A woman who battled sexism and anti-Polish racism, who discovered Polonium and Radium and who was to win two Nobel Prizes in her lifetime. While Curie’s studies into the use of radiation for cancer treatment was groundbreaking, her exposure to radium, along with countless others who handled the radioactive substance without protection, was to tragically cause her death together with many other workers who unknowingly succumbed to the lethality of those elements.

And so much like those elusive elements that Curie extracted from hard-wom ores, there are rich seams of romantic and dramatic potential to be mined in writing a musical about her life's journey. But in a show that may well have achieved acclaim across  south east Asia, nearly all of what lyrical cleverness there may have been in the Korean original has been lost in translation. 22 songs are squeezed into this one-act, 100-minute production which would be fine, just, if they were strong numbers. Musicals with a strong human arc demand verse that can combine wit, or at the very least irony given this story’s grim structure, to make them soar and stimulate an audience. Marie Curie lacks both. 

Two songs stand out, Radium Paradise, a song and dance number that parodies the impending grim potential of the newly found element, and You Are The Reason a pathos-steeped duet in the show's endgame beautifully sung by Curie (Ailsa Davidson) and her friend and compatriot Anna (Chrissie Bhima).

The show’s musical director Emma Fraser directs her seven-piece band with finesse, creating fabulous music. However Fraser's contribution to the show extends beyond the orchestral work, to include the translation of the show’s lyrics into English. Quite why the producers decided to engage Fraser for this task when the show's programme suggests that she has no previous theatre-writing credits to her name, is a mystery. The consequence of their decision is a show with lyrics that are for the most part shallow and performative, riddled with melodramatic mediocrity and which for all the hard work of the production’s talented cast, result in a dull evening.

Like a handful of the audience members around me, Marie Curie at least in its English iteration, should be quietly put to sleep with dignity.

Runs until 28th July

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Violet - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London



***


Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book and lyrics by Brian Crawley
Directed by Shuntaro Fujita

Kaisa Hammarlund

After a traumatising accident in her childhood leaves Violet with a facial disfigurement, she becomes obsessed with an Oklahoma televangelist who she believes can heal her scars and make her as beautiful as the movie stars she idolises. Hopping onto a Greyhound bus in South Carolina, she heads off on a cross-country pilgrimage, joining forces with a pair of poker-playing soldiers on the way. 

Originally debuting off-Broadway in 1997, Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s tragic yet heartening musical is remarkable in its quiet, unassuming depiction of what is slowly revealed to be a deeply entrenched self-loathing. The immense disaster of Violet’s accident and the subsequent isolation she experiences, are totally at odds with the plot’s tranquil pace. The accompanying bluesy score only further emphasises the musical’s strange, indistinct tone. Making good use of flashbacks, the plot showing Violet before the accident, together with the subsequent toll it takes upon her and her widower father. But the whole musical feels strangely nostalgic; like a series of diary entries tied together by a purgatorial bus ride. 

In the titular role, and making a short hop across the Thames from Tesori’s Fun Home that recently played at the Young Vic, Kaisa Hammarlund glows with desperate hope in a remarkable portrayal of the warring pain and optimism that drives Violet. Hammarlund makes it agonisingly clear that Violet is scarred not only physically, but emotionally and is never free of her “Otherness”. Her scarred face, although unseen by the audience, hangs phantasmal over every second of the musical. She sits hunched and walks with a clomping, stoic gait. It is as if she has learned to detract others from her scar by cultivating an image of brashness, and self-admitted insignificance; she controls how she is perceived by others in order to protect herself from the would-be tormentors that she encounters day-to-day. 

It is therefore a shame that the musical is less generous to its supporting characters. The dynamic between Violet and the two soldiers she befriends is certainly interesting, as it evolves from a bickering rapport to an uneasy love triangle, but despite a couple of excellent performances by Jay Marsh and Matthew Harvey, their insertion into the story feel rushed and underwritten. 

By the time director Shuntaro Fujita’s slick and sun-kissed production draws to a close, it’s impossible not to root for Violet’s happiness, but the plot falters in its hurry to achieve a neat ending, resulting in a finale which, albeit hopeful, remains wholly unsatisfying.

Runs until 6th April

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Growney

Photo credit: Scott Rylander

It Happened In Key West - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London



***

Music, lyrics and book by Jill Santoriello

Additional Lyrics and book by Jason Huza

Book and Original Concept by Jeremiah James

Directed and choreographed by Marc Robin

Wade McCollum and Alyssa Martyn

After washing up from a shipwreck on the beaches of Florida’s Key West, German radiology technician Carl Tanzler (going by the name Count Carl Von Cosel) becomes besotted with a young local woman named Elena, believing her to be the true love he foresaw in a dream many years ago. Unfortunately for Carl, not only is Elena married, but after examining her he discovers that she has tuberculosis, a death sentence in the mid-1900s. Despite his best efforts, Carl was unable to save Elena, but in a bizarre act of devotion he removed her body from its final resting place, continuing to care for her corpse, in his own home, for 7 years!

While that plot may sound too far-fetched to believe, it is in based on a true story that inspired book writer Jill Santoriello and collaborators Jason Huza and Jeremiah James enough to create this gothic-comedy musical adaptation. 

In the hands of other creatives, the show could very well have ended up as rather more disturbing. A crank aspirant doctor experimenting on a trusting young women using untested electrotherapy, falling in love with her to the point of all-consuming infatuation and then stealing her cadaver is chilling stuff. But instead the story very much takes Tanzler’s side, portraying him as a well-meaning eccentric who is defending the woman he believes is destined to be his bride. And so despite the story’s inescapable morbidity Carl and Elena’s love story ends up as rather sweet and touching, at least for the most part.

American actor Wade McCollum leads the musical as the oddball Count. With unrelenting buoyancy, he easily sells Carl’s peculiar manifestation of love-sickness. Fantastic too, is Alyssa Martyn’s Elena. Although severely underwritten (perhaps to emphasise the possibility that Elena is a blank slate onto which Carl is projecting the woman of his dreams), Martyn is an enchanting presence on stage, conveying Elena’s sweetness and naiveté. Meanwhile in role of Mario, Elena’s brother-in-law, Johan Munir provides great support, his strained earnestness helping to ground the otherwise breezy outré romance. 

The success of this musical lives or dies on the ability of the audience to buy into Carl’s belief that he and Elena are divine soulmates. Whilst the first act sees them both embark on a sweeping arc, with the rousing tear-jerking act one closing number Undying Love acting as a tragic yet fitting ending to both characters’ journeys, the grisly novelty of Carl’s obsession with his love’s decaying cadaver, which act two relies so heavily upon, is harder to invest in. After the interval Carl comes across as less of an ardent romantic in mourning, and more the disturbed fanatic. Even though Santoriello’s witty book supports the second act with plenty of saturnine humour and Marc Robin’s direction is full of dark moments of physical comedy, there’s no escaping the fact that the second half lacks the pacing, stakes and congeniality of the first. The story’s uniqueness thus fizzles out long before the show comes to an end. 

Despite these shortcomings, It Happened In Key West takes risks which more often than not, pay off. As beguiling as it is macabre, this morbid musical comedy needs to be seen to be believed.

Runs until 18th August

Reviewed by Charlotte O'Growney

Photo credit: Darren Bell

The Knowledge - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

****

Written by Jack Rosenthal

Adapted for the stage by Simon Block

Directed by Maureen Lipman

Steven Pacey and Fabian Frankel

Jack Rosenthal’s BAFTA-nominated  screenplay of The Knowledge was a gem of a 1970’s television movie. The most routine facets of life, in Rosenthal’s hands, could become perfectly portrayed vignettes, as he transformed the recognisable into the bitter-sweet hilarious.

The titular knowledge is famously what is required to become a licensed London black-cab driver, a process so demanding that 70% of hopeful candidates fail to make the grade. This is hardly surprising as those who pass will, over a period of a year or two (that is, for the fast learners) have committed to memory the nigh on 15,000 streets that sit within a 6 mile radius of Charing Cross. Of equal importance, they will also have convinced their examiner that they have the patience and strength of character to deal with the full range of humanity that could, at any point in time, end up in the back of their cab. Rosenthal’s genius lay in not only recognising that “doing” the knowledge was a massive feat of memory, but that it also impacted upon the would-be cabbies’ domestic lives.

Above all, within his cast, Rosenthal created the most brilliantly tyrannical of examiners in Mr Burgess. A finely scripted, complex character, capable of the most sadistic of pedantries yet also, ultimately, caring for the overall good of the taxi trade. Mr Burgess ranks alongside some of that decade's finest dramatic creations.  

Remember too that the original screenplay was written at a time when the internet (let alone Uber) was barely heard of. There is much talk today of the cheaper and far less regulated online service threatening the licensed cab trade. Those fears are probably valid and with this adaptation, The Knowledge does a fine job in reminding us of the asset London has in it’s black-cab drivers.

The play is directed by Maureen Lipman who not only featured in the 1979 film, but was married to Rosenthal until his untimely death in 2004 and rarely has a task been undertaken that is such a labour of love. Lipman makes a decent job of her late-husband’s material, supported by a strong cast of well fleshed out caricatures. James Alexandreou puts in a strong turn as a feckless womanizer, caring as little for wife Brenda (Celine Abrahams, in the role played on TV by Lipman) as he does for his taxi studies. Fabian Frankel is a well acted Chris – an intellectually challenged young lad who struggles with the gargantuan task of mastering London’s geography.

Famously, Rosenthal had an innate understanding of the Jewish community, many of whom work in the taxi trade. Ben Caplan’s Ted , a third generation cabby captures both the man’s passion as well as his nebbish qualities in equal measure – though it is Jenna Augen as his wife Val, who so brilliantly nails the angst-ridden Jewish mother and wife. Lipman played a memorably interfering Jewish matriarch “Beattie”, in a 1980s ad campaign for BT. With Rosenthal’s creation of Val, one can see from where she may have drawn her inspiration.

The finest contribution of the night comes from Steven Pacey’s Burgess. It was Nigel Hawthorne who played the role in 1979 (with ITV’s The Knowledge just preceding the BBC’s Yes, Minister onto the nation’s TV screens). Pacey thus has massive shoes to fill and he makes the role his own. Onstage throughout – on a raised platform representing his office, a device that proves surprisingly effective - he delivers a vocal wit and physical presence that convinces us at all times of his compassionate power over the fledgling drivers.

For the most part the evening is a warm and entertaining night out. The politics may be mild and dated, but the fondness that Rosenthal (a Mancunian by birth) felt towards his capital city is there in every line. The Knowledge is a gorgeous period piece with a lavish programme (highly recommended) that is chock full of recollections and current day comparisons.

If you love Seventies culture, you’ll love this show.

Runs until November 11th

Photo credit: Scott Rylander

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris - Review

Charing Cross Theatre, London

***

Music and original lyrics by Jacques Brel

Concept and English translations by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman
Directed by Andrew Keates

David Burt, Eve Polycarpou, Gina Beck and Daniel Boys

After the success of Andrew Keates' recent chamber adaptation of Dessa Rose at the Trafalgar Studios, he returns to direct this curiously titled show that treats its audience to a feast of haunting theatrical delight, executed with some sophistication. Brel was an acclaimed Belgian composer of theatrical songs. An acclaimed actor too and although destined to die tragically young at 49, his work was to influence a diverse selection of singers including Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and Marc Almond.

Daniel Boys and Gina Beck, both established names on London's West End, fare well in the simplicity and intimacy of this revue. Beck gives a sound performance accommodating the varied stylings of Brel’s work. One number, My Death, markig the stand out moment of her contribution. Boys’ vocal style affords him a secure performance, with his support distinctly noticeable in the larger numbers.

Eve Polycarpou, an increasingly familiar character on London’s stages, brings great depth of character to several of her songs, her Ne Me Quitte Pas, finely accompanied on guitar, being quite the standout of her set. David Burt’s approach to some of the more comic numbers within the piece is welcomed, with his Funeral Tango proving much the crowd pleaser.

Keates’ direction provides a cohesive narrative and flow to this varied revue of song and style, but there are times when Sam Spencer Lane’s choreography, although often imaginative, can fail to enhance both plot and staging. Chris de Wilde's design provides a sparse yet characterful set, boasting flavours of forgotten drama, whilst Dean Austin’s delightful 5 piece onstage band supports well, providing a dutifully decadent Parisian atmosphere.

This eclectic show, from a writer not broadly known in the mainstream, proves to be a bijou gem that is, in parts, quite charming. Performed and executed by a talented cast and creative team, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris offers a genuinely intriguing look into Brel's work. It is well worth a visit.

Runs until 22nd November

Lost Boy

Charing Cross Theatre, London

***

Book, music and lyrics by Phil Willmott.
Arrangements and additional music by Mark Collins
Directed by Phil Willmott

Steven Butler

J M Barrie’s Peter Pan is currently proving the inspiration for many a new piece of theatre the most recent of which, Phil Willmott’s musical Lost Boy, has just transferred to the Charing Cross Theatre. Focusing on George Llewelyn-Davies (a stirring performance from Steven Butler), one of the real-life inspirations behind Pan and set during the First World War, Llewelyn-Davis dreams of being the boy that never grew up, poignantly considering the nightmare that his generation has to face, sent out to fight whilst on the cusp of adulthood. The audience is made aware of being taken on an “awfully big adventure” and as we begin this year that commemorates the centenary of the war’s outbreak, there is an enormous sense of foreboding as we are introduced to the story’s young boys. 

It's a brilliant concept and to begin with the 'grown up' versions of Barrie's beautifully crafted characters are entertaining, cleverly suggesting their Neverland charm. It quickly becomes apparent though that you can have too much of a good thing. Wilmott’s plotlines become too complex, finding little room for the development of the multitude of stories. 

That being said, the many subplots do provide the cast of 12 with an opportunity to showcase their talents. Joseph Taylor gives an enchanting Michael Darling, Joanna Woodward an impressively gutsy Tinkerbell and Richard James King sings, arguably the best song in the piece, 'Jungian Dream Analysis' displaying brilliant comic timing to re-inspire us at the opening of the second act. 

The music – executed brilliantly by Isaac McCullough’s on stage trio of keyboard, clarinet and cello – tries to marry together contemporary styles and sounds with Edwardian Music Hall. The two don’t integrate well but, again provide a platform for the talents in the cast and in the final moments of the show the sound of the youthful ensemble is powerfully moving.

Having just moved across London from the Finborough Theatre it’s apparent that the show has had an opportunity to grow. It’s a charming idea, with incredible potential and is a moving tribute to the lost boys of the Great War.

Runs until 15th February 2014

WAG! The Musical

Charing Cross Theatre, London

**

Written by Belvedere Pashun

Music and lyrics by Grant Martin, Thomas Giron-Towers and Tony Bayliss

Directed by Alison Pollard

Lizzie Cundy and Alyssa Kyria

WAG is the acronym for a footballer's wife or girlfriend. It describes the caricature of a money grabbing woman, who when young is a siren luring a rich athlete whose brain is well hung between his legs and who when older, will have made sure she has married her trophy sportsman, turning a blind eye to his infidelities as she enjoys the trappings of wealth and glamour that his earnings provide.

If the concept of the WAG is a shallow cliche, then WAG! The Musical is an even more vacuous pastiche. The story is flat, the characters are two dimensional (at best) and Belvedere Pashun its writer, whose biography curiously suggests likes nothing more than camping in the mountains of his native Tibet, needs to return to his homeland damn quick because based on this show his writing skills are close to non-existent.

Even more damningly, Pashun has played solely to the cliché, showing no regard at all to the emotional back lives of the WAGS or their real loves, anxieties and issues.This is a story as flimsy as the atrociously poor scenery that would barely grace a local am-dram production. (Producers, hang your heads in shame).

Yet, amidst this smorgasbord of medioce creativity and forgettable tunes there is actually some damn good acting, with a predominantly young cast giving their classy all to the show. Daisy Wood-Davis and Amy Scott lead the line as two young department store perfume saleswomen with complicated love lives. Whilst their characters could not be more stereotypical, they enliven their performances with commitment and passion and when towards the end of the show, Wood-Davis laments her character's broken heart in How Could I Not Leave A Scar, her belt is rather spectacular. As expected, the talented Katie Kerr turns in another class act with her obesely chav character, Blow-Jo (subtle, huh?)

The predators at the top of this food chain of feminity are the WAGS, casually spearing these young pretenders with their Louboutins. Lizzie Cundy, a former WAG in real life is Zoe, all legs, knickers and a walking testament to the cosmetic surgeons who have laboured over her for years. Mercifully spared too much singing, Cundy delivers a spicy feisty turn as a TV red-carpet commentator. Whilst it is Cundy’s famous name that may draw punters to the show, it is Alyssa Kyria's Ariadne, a Greek WAG who unashamedly steals it. Kyria’s character is no stranger to the UK's stand-up circuit, and with echoes of Nancy Dell’Olio hers is the comic performance of the night.

Judging by the timely cheers and baddie-directed boos coming from the audience, there is a market for this show, probably amongst slightly tipsy women on a girls night out, whose husbands, boyfriends and feminist pals have been kept well away. Whilst WAG! The Musical’s residency in the West End may be thankfully short, the producers should be seriously looking to tie their cast into a tour.


Runs to August 24 2013

Dear World

Charing Cross Theatre, London

***

Book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman

Directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne

Betty Buckley and Paul Nicholas

Dear World is a whimsical piece of musical theatre from Jerry Herman. Inspired by the novel The Madwoman Of Chaillot and set in post WW2 Paris, it speaks of a wish to heal a world that is literally held “dear”. Much has been made of the show's chequered Broadway life and even in her programme notes director/choreographer Gillian Lynne apologises for its troubled history. In part, Lynne suggests, this is due to the show having come up against Hair when it premiered in the 1960's. Lynne's protestations are a little misplaced, as the work is far from being the composer’s finest.

Revolving around a wonderfully frivolous old lady, the Countess Aurelia, the story tells how she, in league with an as whimsically wise Sewerman,  hoodwink a trio of evil financiers, keen to lay waste to Paris in pursuit of oilfields that they have been duped into believing lie beneath the city's boulevards. Of course, good triumphs over bad in a tale that bears more than a passing nod to P L Travers’ Mary Poppins. For a magical nanny, read the Countess, the cheerful grimy sweep replaced by the filthy Sewerman and the bankers of course playing themselves. While the parallels between the two stories may be clear that is where any similarity ends, for in a songwriting contest between Herman and Shermans, Disney’s lyrical brothers win hands down.

This slight production however is redeemed by its performances. Betty Buckley is a wonderfully contrived Countess, a lady who refuses to look into the mirror in her hall, because she doesn’t like to see the old lady who lives behind the glass.  Buckley is a talented treat to watch throughout and her act two number And I Was Beautiful still marks her as a true diva. Paul Nicholas imbues the Sewerman with an ironic wisdom akin to Hamlet’s gravediggers. No airs and graces, just wry observations from a man who having seen all of the city’s garbage, knows the true realities behind the grand and the not-so-grand Parisian lives.

Notable in support are Rebecca Lock and Annabel Leveton, playing respectively a young virginal girl and an elderly but still libidinous lady, both delightfully dotty consorts of the Countess, who when the plot becomes almost too thin to discern, allow their caricatures to provide gently humoured relief. Stuart Matthew Price and Katy Treharne bring youthful vocal excellence to the show in a love interest between their two minor characters, of little relevance to the plot other than suggesting the world's promising future.

Whilst the show’s structure is dated, its heart still speaks loudly. One only has to read today of corporate fraud tainting our food chain with horsemeat, to know that some aspects of big business remain exploitative and ugly. The scenario that this fable presents of a humble Sewerman, one who deals with daily detritus, being wiser than the bankers’ besuited buffoons whom the Countess ultimately invites to descend to their grisly doom, speaks to us much as a fairy tale of wishes. Dear World is a cri de coeur to mend this fractured planet and whilst its arguments may be simplistic and a little far fetched, if one can suspend cynicism as well as disbelief then the performances on stage will capture the simple light-hearted and frothy elegance of a show not often seen.

Runs until March 30th 2013