My Fair Lady - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

*****

Music by Frederick Loewe

Lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Molly Lynch

Yet again the good people of Leicester are blessed with the most stunning festive gift from the city’s Curve theatre. This year it is Nikolai Foster’s sumptuous production of My Fair Lady that sparkles.

Molly Lynch, who is no stranger to Foster and Curve following her stunning Betty Schaefer in the venue’s Sunset Boulevard a few years back, now steps up to her rightful place as a leading lady, giving the most powerful yet sensitive interpretation of Eliza Doolitle to have been seen on these shores in years. Lynch has a voice that can capture both power and pathos. We are first treated to her excellence in Wouldn’t It Be Loverly and as her character tumbles into perfect received pronunciation with The Rain In Spain, her development is as seamless and as charming as her voice is sweet. From there it’s into I Could Have Danced All Night and on glancing around the Curve’s audience, the smiles on the audience's faces defined the joy that Lynch was bringing in her take on this, one of musical theatre’s most enigmatic women.

My Fair Lady of course revolves around the relationship between Eliza and Henry Higgins, and with David Seadon-Young’s playing the professor of linguistics the pair are perfectly matched. His is a sensitive take on the emotionally crippled academic and rarely has chauvinism sounded so charming as in Seadon-Young’s interpretation. As he implores the world to fit his view of how things should be, firstly with Why Can’t The English and later with A Hymn To Him, the range of his singing is just delightful. And then with I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, Seadon unlocks the man’s complexities and vulnerabilities with a heartbreaking depth.

Foster has assembled a company of talent to match the two leads. Minal Patel is in fine form as Colonel Pickering, while Steve Furst keeps the flame of old-fashioned sexism burning brightly with his hilarious take on Alfred Doolittle. Get Me To The Church On Time is one of the canon’s comedy highlights that sets the audience up for the traumatic ups and downs of the story's final act. Djavan Van de Fliert is a marvellously voiced Freddy Eynsford-Hill, while Sarah Moyle playing both Freddy’s mother and Higgins’ housekeeper Mrs Pearce is equally en pointe. The venerable Cathy Tyson as Henry’s wise mother brings the perfect weighting of gravitas to her small but critical role in the evening’s proceedings.

Michael Taylor’s lavish set designs fill the Curve’s vast space with height, depth and ingenuity, Mark Henderson’s lighting complements the visuals perfectly, while out of sight (apart from a delightful centre-stage cameo at the Embassy Ball), George Dyer’s nine-piece band make fine work of the classic score. Jo Goodwin's inspired choreography is at its finest in the company numbers, with Get Me To The Church On Time evolving into a spectacle of perfectly rehearsed movement.

Playing until the new year, My Fair Lady at the Curve is quite possibly the finest show to be found this Christmas. Don’t miss it!

Runs until 4th January 2025

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

A Chorus Line - Review

Sadler's Wells, London

*****

Music by Marvin Hamlisch

Lyrics by Edward Kleban

Book by James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante

Directed by Nikolai Foster

The cast of A Chorus Line

Nikolai Foster created a magnificent revival of A Chorus Line at Leicester’s Curve Theatre in 2021. Even then, the brilliance of this production cried out for a wider audience, and so it is that London now has a month to enjoy this show with its residency at Sadler’s Wells before it tours across the country.

It has been 11 years since the A Chorus Line last played in the capital, a long wait to witness such a class act of a show and Foster’s interpretation has only improved with time. At just under two hours, this one-act record-breaker upends the traditions of musical theatre. There are no leading characters whose arcs we follow, rather an ingenious confection of the lives and histories of a fictional Broadway chorus line (with narratives drawn from real-life), all desperate to be chosen from the final-round audition that forms the backbone of the show. 

Adam Cooper and Carly Mercedes Dyer reprise their roles of the fictional show’s director Zach and Cassie an auditionee with more of a back-story than meets the eye. Both are sublimely skilled performers making captivating work not only of James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante’s fiendishly challenging book, but also of Ellen Kane’s choreography, with Dyer’s take on The Music And The Mirror proving breath-taking in her interpretation. Both Curve and Sadler’s Wells offer massive stages and Kane’s work, matched to a band that is intriguingly housed in an on-stage cube of gig boxes, uses that space to the full.

Most of the cast in this Curve revival may be new to the show but Foster has selected his actors wisely and they are all, to a person, performers at the very top of their game. The humanity that underlies each of their characters is sometimes funny but often heartbreaking and to name but a few of these gems, Amy Thornton, Lydia Bannister and Kate Parr as Sheila, Bebe and Maggie respectively make gorgeously poignant work of At The Ballet and Manuel Pacific has us in the palm of his hand as he delivers Paul’s devastating monologue of family dysfunctionality. Jocasta Almgill is entrusted with the role of Diana that includes the show’s hit-song, What I Did For Love. Almgill may have sung the lyric “look my eyes are dry”, but across the stalls on press night, quite a few eyes were moist at her delivery.

Throughout, under Matthew Spalding’s musical direction, Hamlisch’s score is handled beautifully. Grace Smart’s set design is neatly simple as the show demands. Howard Hudson’s lighting however is sensational, comprising ingenious use of rows of spotlights that rise and fall in carefully co-ordinated sequences, evoking scenes that range from intimacy to full on Broadway pizzazz. The tour’s lighting crew will have their work cut out on the road, re-calibrating this spectacular rig for each different venue.

It says much for the strength of the nation’s regional theatre that three of the finest musicals to be playing this summer, Oliver!, Barnum and A Chorus Line have all originated outside of London. With this interpretation however, Nikolai Foster has possibly created the definitive British production of this enigmatic show. Just go!

Runs until August 25th. Then on tour.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

A Chorus Line - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

*****

Music by Marvin Hamlisch

Lyrics by Edward Kleban

Book by James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante

Directed by Nikolai Foster

The cast of A Chorus Line

It’s a bold statement from Leicester’s Curve that sees them stage A Chorus Line as their seasonal musical. Marvin Hamlisch and Ed Kleban’s meta-musical that scrapes away the schmaltz of 42nd Street, exposing the anxieties and aspirations of an auditioning Broadway chorus line is a gritty glimpse of humanity, with Kleban’s lyrics matching Sondheim's perceptive wisdom. This is a tough show with no gimmicks and which demands a strong and talented company. Here, directed by Nikolai Foster, the musical magic is a singular sensation.

While it is invidious to name cast members as the entire ensemble are all magnificent in the different glimpses of humanity they reveal, be it through the spoken word, song or dance, the key drivers of the narrative are outstanding. In a moment of song-free dialogue Ainsley Hall Ricketts as Paul holds our hearts in his hand as he speaks of the challenges of his parents accepting his sexuality. Lizzy Rose Esin-Kelly as Diana captures one of the show’s most tender lyrics in What I Did For Love, taking those carefully held hearts and breaking them with her honesty, while Carly Mercedes Dyer’s Cassie delivers a dance routine to The Music And The Mirror that is breathtaking in its energy and passion. Helming the on-stage company is Adam Cooper as Zach, the Broadway producer. Fierce yet enigmatic, Cooper plays the role with precise aplomb.

Foster’s team of creatives are as stunning as his cast. Ellen Kane’s choreography skilfully picks out the gelling of the company as the plot’s audition process evolves. Grace Smart’s set design is starkly stunning in its use of the Curve’s cavernous space. But take a bow lighting designer Howard Hudson whose rigs of spotlights rise and fall with a power that both enchants and enthralls. Musical director Tamara Saringer is equally magnificent. Hamlisch’s score is tough, but Saringer and her seven-piece band grasp the music’s challenges perfectly.

The people of Leicester have again been blessed with this festive treat – and if you don’t live nearby, then jump in a car or train and go. This may not be the traditional family show – but for Christmas quality, Nikolai Foster’s A Chorus Line is the One!

Runs until 31st December

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Ria Jones In Conversation

Ria Jones as Norma Desmond, Curve, 2017

 

Sunset Boulevard, directed by Nikolai Foster and starring Ria Jones as Norma Desmond, is currently available to stream until January 9th 2021 and my review of this remarkable re-imagining of Billy Wilder's classic Hollywood tale can be found here.

But while the show, recorded at Leicester's Curve Theatre, may be remarkable, Ria Jones' association with Sunset Boulevard is even more incredible. In 1992, Andrew Lloyd Webber unveiled the show at his Sydmonton Festival, with Jones playing Norma. It was to be some 24 years before Jones was to return to the role, this time at London's Coliseum where she played in standby to Glenn Close.

Fate intervened, and Jones was gifted the chance to lead the Coliseum's show for a series of performances while Close was unwell - and such was the strength of her performance that the Curve, together with producer Michael Harrison, created a touring production of Sunset Boulevard that opened to critical acclaim one year later in 2017.

Now, in the pandemic, it is that touring production that has been revived for streaming.

This week Ria Jones and I discussed Norma and her. Read on.....

JB:     Ria, you have returned to Sunset Boulevard in the midst of a pandemic – tell me how this current, streamed production evolved. 

RJ:     To be honest, when Nikolai Foster, the show’s director first asked me, I literally thought it would be a concert performance with me in a nice dress walking on in front of a microphone and, with the cast, simply singing the songs. But then I thought, how can we do that? Because if you just take the songs, that's not going to last for even an hour!

Then the more I learned about the production, and that there was a revolve that had been donated by Cameron Mackintosh to the theatre, and I thought, okay, that's going to be a bit different to a normal concert. Then I heard we were in costume. And then more and more, and it just sounded more as if it was going to be like the production - although it couldn't be because there were no sets! And then when I heard it was with the 16 piece orchestra, I thought, I'm in! Sadly, a lot of shows can't afford to have that many musicians, but this score begs for that cinematic sound. From that first chord that you hear in the overture, that big, low bellowing sound, it's just fabulous. And I thought, definitely. I think it's a great time to do it because of all the shows I've done, this one is so special for so many reasons. Of all the shows I'd love to sing this year, of all years, would be Sunset, would be Norma.

And then as you know, Leicester went into Tier Three. So, we thought “that would be it, that's it!” and then Nikolai said, "We're thinking of filming it....." 

To be honest, I wished I'd had a few months’ notice and could have gone on a diet because of the lockdown weight I’d put on. HD is cruel at the best of times, let alone after COVID for 10 months! I'm sorry to say this, but HD is not kind unless you're Danny Mac and you wake up perfect like that. 10o'clock in the morning and he would look just as good as at anytime of day! 

As the streamed production came together, the lovely thing about Nikolai was that he allowed us all to put our own ideas in the mix. And he genuinely meant it. This take on the musical was so new and so groundbreaking that we were all able to contribute to its creation. Dan came up with the idea of Betty and Joe underneath the stage with all the scaffolding for that scene in act two, a moment that I thought was just gorgeous. It was a learning curve for us all.

As the tech went on, we got more and more excited because we could feel and see how good it felt and as soon as we heard the orchestra play, it was like sitzprobe all over again. Actually, it was like a sitzprobe each time they played as they were in the room with us throughout, rather than hidden away in a rehearsal room upstairs. That worked especially well, helping us to connect with the musicians and we needed that even more so with there being no audience to relate the story to. 

I think for me playing Norma to an empty auditorium was just amazing because, for her, she was still in a silent world, looking out to the empty seats, the empty auditorium. Tragic in a way, but also quite beautiful because it summed up her whole world, the silent world.

Since the first streams have been broadcast I have had people say that they found my singing "With One Look" or, "As If We Never Said Goodbye," to an auditorium with empty seats was quite moving, especially today. 

JB:     Indeed – the poignancy of the empty Curve is striking. Within the show, the most moving moment for me remains when Hogeye, a Paramount lighting operator who remembers Norma from her glory days, shines a spotlight on her – sending her mind back through the decades. 

RJ:     Yeah, me too. And the music, the way the music is written for that moment is stunning, because the climax of the light hitting her on that with one look moment, that it's just absolutely glorious to play.

"I can say anything I want, with my eyes!"

JB:     It is a heartbreaking piece of humanity, tied to brilliant visuals and brilliant music.

RJ:     Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. Because in an ideal world, on a film set, it would be those huge empty studios, and with just that one beam of light smacking her in the face. And whether I did it at the Coliseum, even when I first did it at Sydmonton, I remember that, the build-up. It's all the build-up to that moment, isn't it, for her? And it's just so beautifully written and timed.

And of course in her head, and she's just completely in her own world. Nobody else exists. Even though she sings “I don't know why I'm frightened”, it’s as if she's telling them, she's not. She's in her own little world remembering the fairy tale. It's the fairy tales, and the laughter and the joy and the nervousness of it all. She's a teenager, she's 17, again. She's 17. And that beam of light is that smacking her in the face. She's 17 and she’s just met Mr. DeMille who made her a star.

I bawl my eyes out every time, because that's the age I was when I started in the business. I was 16 doing the tour for Bill Kenwright of Joseph. During the tour, I became 17. And then I really got going when I was 17. So when he says that, "If you could have seen her at 17, beautiful and strong, before it all went wrong. She doesn't know that she never knew the meaning of surrender." And you just think, "Oh, there but the grace of God, go I!"

Ria Jones as Norma Desmond, Curve Streamed Performance, 2020

JB:     How did social distancing impact upon your performance?

Social distancing has imposed some strange and unfamiliar working practices upon the company. We couldn't have wigs. We couldn't have dressers. We had to dress ourselves and I had to do my own hair. I always do my own makeup anyway, but of course again under the scrutiny of HD cameras, you've got to think and I've got to be a makeup artist all of a sudden; I've got to be a hairdresser. Previously I’d have had three dressers. Literally, I would come off stage, and have three dressers around me to get me dressed quickly for the next scene. So that was strange. 

Luckily for me though, I could wear turbans for most of the stream. Also, luckily, I'd grown my hair through lockdown, for no other reason than just change really. And so that's why I was able to use my hair for the last scene. On tour, Colin Richmond had designed two wigs for me. The glamorous one, when she's the ingenue, trying to flirt with Joe and the hair has to be perfect. And then one for her breakdown in Act Two, that was much thinner and going grey and everything.

So I thought, how can I do that this time? And I decided to use my own hair and make that look a bit mad, so that the streaming audience see that Norma is real underneath the turban. 

All of those things were tricky, because as well as thinking about what I was singing, I was also thinking about my quick changes, doing my own hair and makeup, all while we were in the real-time of a show. It was not like we were doing a film with the luxury of stopping for an hour while I did a complete makeup change and hair change. I had five, 10 minutes to do all that in, before I was back on camera. So that was scary.

JB:      Your association with Sunset Boulevard has been remarkable, given that you workshopped the show with Andrew Lloyd Webber before performing as Norma Desmond in its first outing at Lloyd Webber’s  Sydmonton Festival in 1990. Please tell me about that journey. 

RJ:     From the outset I adored the songs, they really suited my voice. And it was lovely to work closely with Andrew on them. I mean, I remember sitting next to him at the piano, in his home in Belgrave, literally while he was writing the end of "As If We Never Said Goodbye," And he was like, do you think it is up or down? I said, no, I think it should go up at the end of “goodbye”, which it does – and then of course he added "we taught the world, new ways to dream" And I thought, yes, that's a lovely touch to the song. 

Ria Jones as Norma Desmond, Sydmonton, 1992

At first I thought I really understood why it was there. So then when I played Norma again – fast forward to the Coliseum 26 years later or whatever - oh my gosh, had I learned a lot more, because I had lived a lot more, and by then (in 2016) I was the right age. And having been in the business then for 30 odd years, and having experienced tragedy, loneliness and fear of being on my own at times all helped me get into the bones of Norma Desmond, because the one thing I didn't want was to become a caricature of her. 

Even now, in the two and a half years from doing it on tour to filming it last week, I've experienced more layers to her. 

And also, I am grateful to Norma. For many reasons, she's been a big part of my life. When I was standby to Glenn Close, Norma got me back out there into the world after my illness and that was great.

 

JB – Tell me more about the Coliseum production

RJ:     Because I wasn't actually in the show as an understudy, I was standing by in the wings literally every night. It's not every day you get to watch a Hollywood A-Listers rehearse and create and everything and that was fascinating for me. Also it was a way of me dipping my toe back into the business, but not with all the pressure of eight shows a week or everything. It was a nice way for me to just slowly get back into it and by gosh, it worked out.

Of course I was booked as Glenn's standby – so when the time came to step up to the role one had to remember that the reason you're going on is because somebody else is poorly. So as much as you can celebrate it, you have to also be respectful of that.

Ria Jones as Norma Desmond, London Coliseum, 2016

JB:     Kevin Wilson (Theatre PR)  had a ticket in the audience for your first night on at the Coliseum as Norma and he penned a 5* rave review of your performance. 

RJ:     He did. And it went viral, I think! It was amazing and as someone wrote, "It took 36 years to be an overnight success." But it's a case of being at the right place, the right time, the right musical and the right age and the right style for me.

Everything, all the stars aligned and I swear it was Victoria Wood’s heavenly influence too! She had sadly passed away the day before I got the call to play Norma at the Coliseum  and she was a good friend of mine. At the time I said to Steven Mear: "You know what? She's gone up there and thought, right. It's about time for Ria!." I swear it was Victoria.

We all know that unless you make it on TV, you could be a jobbing performer for 40 odd years. I'd rather be a jobbing actress respected by my peers any day than just being a star for the sake of it.

The sad reality of course is that stars do put bums on seats and you do lose out sometimes on jobs you should maybe get, simply because you're not famous. But I'm happy with my lot more than, more than, and so lucky to have been able to have done Sunset Boulevard at the end of what has been an awfully dark year for theatre.

But you know, we're such survivors. We really will come back better than ever after all this. And I'm just thrilled that we had the chance to do this and it's been done and received really well. Yeah!

Sunset Boulevard In Concert - At Home is available to be streamed until 9th January 2021. For tickets, click here

Sunset Boulevard in Concert - at Home - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

****

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Book & lyrics by Don Black & Christopher Hampton

Based on the Billy Wilder film

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Ria Jones

Art can have a curious and fascinating evolution. In 1950, Billy Wilder’s noir movie, Sunset Boulevard scooped three Oscars, including the award for Best Story. Some forty years later Andrew Lloyd Webber together with Don Black and Christopher Hampton gave Wilder’s picture a Tony-winning musical theatre makeover. Now, driven by the pandemic and with the vision of director Nikolai Foster, that musical production has itself been helmed back to the screen.

The story is a cinema classic - of Norma Desmond, a reclusive Hollywood star of the long since faded Silent Movies era, who fate throws together with Joe Gillis, a hack screenwriter down on his luck.

At his Curve Theatre in Leicester, Foster directed a critically acclaimed touring version of the show in 2017 - and it was that production that in these restricted times was scheduled to be reprised in a concert format, live at the Curve over the 2020 festive season. Heightened rules intervened to forbid live performances in front of an audience, leading to the production being re-imagined for cameras and for streaming.

What makes this particular stream so delicious, is that the videographers are not just capturing the image of a show staged for the benefit of a live audience with the cameras as an “add-on”. Here, Foster has taken his company and his venue and then carefully and thoughtfully, blended classy camera work into the mix. The result is a fresh interpretation of this musical that makes for a glorious two-act entertainment.

This website reviewed Foster’s original take on the musical when it first opened - It was stunning then with an imaginative use of projections that conveyed not only Hollywood, but also served well as settings for a show designed to be taken on the road. These projections have been neatly woven into the streamed musical, giving a further aspect of authenticity to a tale that is so deeply rooted in Tinseltown’s Golden Age. But even more than the show’s vision, projections and use of the Curve’s adaptable cavernous space, what makes this musical such a gorgeous experience remains Foster’s carefully assembled cast, originally brought together in 2017 and who return, almost in the company’s entirety, to create this revival.

Much praise has deservedly been showered upon Ria Jones’ take on Norma Desmond, a woman driven by a fatal combination of narcissism and depression, unable to grasp that the arrival of the “talkies” had extinguished the flame of her stardom and such praise remains as true today. Jones, here finally in close-up, is compelling in her take on Desmond’s slide into insanity. Vocally magnificent - live, her versions of With One Look and As If We Never Said Goodbye were spine-tingling - she condenses the energy previously projected into auditoria, and focusses it squarely at the cameras, with a compelling intensity.

Danny Mac’s Joe Gillis is equally at ease, performing for the cameras as in the theatre. Mac’s grasp of Joe Gillis’ wry cynicism - a man who understands his circumstances with a compelling immediacy - remains as sharp as ever, with a combination of both strength and tenderness in his vocals.

The sub-plot between Gillis and studio script editor Betty Schaefer is beautifully nuanced between Mac and Molly Lynch’s Schaefer. Lynch captures both fire and fragility in her turn and in the show’s final act - as she realises the tragedy that’s unfolding before her eyes - in close up, offers a glimpse of her character’s scorching pain that only adds further shading to Schaefer's complexity. Alongside Lynch as a featured role, Adam Pearce’s Max, Desmond’s long-time butler, remains a treat, with Pearce’s resonant baritones delivering some of the narrative’s most pathos fuelled moments.

This streamed take would be virtually perfect were it not for a couple of minor snags in Foster’s direction. When, in his second act reprise of New Ways To Dream, Max delivers a shocking revelation about Desmond’s past, it would have added value to have seen Joe Gillis’ face as he learns this fact rather than having the cameras trained on Pearce. This of course will always be a flaw of a screened show - that one can only see in any scene what the director chooses to show us, rather than allowing one's vision an unfettered view of the tableau as played live on stage. Likewise, and also in act two, there are moments of dialog spoken by Carl Sanderson’s (excellent) Cecil B. DeMille that should add a profound pathos and understanding to Desmond’s plight. Foster has allowed these lines to be spoken far too freely with the result that a degree of depth and nuance that deserved to have been tapped, is missed.

Above all, this re-translation of Sunset Boulevard, back to its filmic origins, is to be celebrated. The vision of Foster and his team at Curve, together with his top-notch creative and musical collaborators - now including the wizardry of Crosscut Media - have taken the cruel contemporary (and hopefully, short-lived)  imposition of social distancing and have worked around these legislative and safety-driven necessities to deliver a show that is as fresh and as moving as ever.

Traditionally, in the story’s final scene, Norma Desmond speaks her final words to the gathered press cameras assembled at her Sunset Boulevard mansion, mistaking them in her madness for a DeMille film crew. Here, amongst the deserted balcony of the Curve, and with only a (deliberately visible) Crosscut camera operator up close, the tragedy both of Norma's time and of our own is palpable and heart-breaking.

Go watch this show!

Streaming until 9th January 2021. For tickets, click here

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

White Christmas

Curve Theatre, Leicester



****

Music and lyrics by Irving Berlin

Book by David Ives and Paul Blake

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Emma Williams, Danny Mac, Dan Burton and Monique Young

There are few shows as comforting and traditional at this time of year as Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It’s a corny old yarn for sure that sees Dan Burton and Danny Mac playing Phil Davis and Bob Wallace and two ex-trouper/troopers who team up with the Haynes Sisters (Emma Williams and Monique Young) to put on  a show in Vermont, and rescue the business of their former and much loved commanding officer General Waverly who since the end of World War 2, has been running an upstate Inn and making horrendous losses.

Strip away the seasonal feel, and the story crumbles under close scrutiny. But with Berlin’s classic numbers and in the gifted creative hands of director Foster and his choreographer Stephen Mear, the evening becomes a fabulous feel-good delight.

Foster has established form in coaxing excellence from Mac and Williams, but it is Mear who offers the lucky citizens of Leicester their biggest Xmas treat by taking Burton and Young away from his usual seasonal offering at Paris’ Theatre du Châtelet, to their native side of the English Channel and pairing them at the Curve. These two actors have seen recent years allow them to develop an intuitive connection in their dancework – they surely have to be the finest movers in the nation’s musical theatre corps, proving this again with their  phenomenal footwork in the show’s second half opener I Love A Piano.

Mear of course delivers excellence from across his ensemble, with strong performances from Garry Robson as Waverly and from Wendy Mae Brown as Martha Watson, the General’s much put upon, (but ultimate) sweetheart and, on press night, the cutest turn from Georgia Stewart as his young granddaughter Susan.

A seasonally busy Jason Carr has done beautiful work arranging the Songbook classics, while the seven piece band, under Neil Macdonald’s direction, take the packed Curve houses all the way back to the 1950s – heck, the snowblowers even deliver a venue-filling blizzard as the audience delight in a singalong of the title number.

White Christmas maybe as cheesy as a fine old stilton, but it’s still first-class festive fayre!

Runs until 13th January 2019

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore

Sunset Boulevard - Review

New Wimbledon Theatre, London


*****


Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Book & lyrics by Don Black & Christopher Hampton
Based on the Billy Wilder film
Directed by Nikolai Foster

Ria Jones

It is a delight to return to this award-winning production of Sunset Boulevard as its week-long residency in Wimbledon brings it the closest to central London that its touring licence (which has already included venues in Italy and Holland) will allow.

Directed by the Curve’s Nikolai Foster, at its Leicester launch last September (for my review of that opening night see the foot of this page) the show was nigh-on perfect. Seeing the production some seven months on reveals that not only have this outstanding company gelled, but also how some of the cast have matured into their roles.

A packed house at the New Wimbledon Theatre rose as one to salute Ria Jones’ bow and with good reason. Jones remains magnificent, her definitive, decaying diva capturing Norma Desmond’s long-faded Hollywood majesty. Notwithstanding her remarkable association with the role (remember that she created it for Lloyd-Webber as he trialled the show, nearly ten-thousand midnights ago, at his Sydmonton Festival) Jones’ performance now reveals a greater depth to Desmond’s tragedy. Free of the distractions of movie mega-stardom that surrounded the show’s most recent Norma in both London and on Broadway, Jones’ portrayal of Desmond’s shattered mind stands only on its sheer artistic beauty. Her voice thrills, while her acting breaks our hearts. Ria Jones’ Norma Desmond has to be one of the finest musical theatre creations of the decade.

As Joe Gillis, Danny Mac now brings a fully formed wry, sardonic swagger to the part that completes his character. Billy Wilder’s original story (and if you haven’t yet watched the 1950 movie, it’s a must see) was a noir-satire, driven by Gillis’ narration. William Holden nailed the caustic hack on screen and Mac, now, displays a craft that truly inhabits Wilder’s writer. Gillis’ is a complex journey, with Mac convincing us of his ultimately irresistible charm to the young script editor Betty Schaefer and indeed, his love for her in return. 

On an interesting side issue, since September the #MeToo issue has exploded into our collective conscience. In a perceptive interview published late last year in her native Ireland, Molly Lynch (Schaefer in the show) referenced her understanding of the role to comment on an entertainment industry that had remained “toxic, negative and very difficult for women”. Considering the sexual politics that drive the show’s undercurrent - that of a 50 year old star desperately seeking the desirable glamour that she possessed some 30 years previously – one has to acknowledge that the industry’s ugliness and moral vacuity, only now in the headlines, has actually existed since the cameras first turned.

Thankfully Lynch’s vocal and stage presence is as en-pointe as her analysis. Wilder may have created Schaefer with an essential, if simple, 2-dimensionality. Lynch however, as reviewed back in September, delivers the role in a perfect support to the story.

Adam Pearce’s Max, the keeper not only of the flame, but also, perhaps, of one of the tale’s darkest secrets likewise retains his beautifully sonorous boom. As the audience still gasps at his devastating revelation late into the second half, there is a heartbreaking sensitivity to the devotion Pearce’s manservant shows to Norma.

The creatives here have always been top-notch. Lee Proud’s choreography lends an ingenious slickness to the onstage movement. Not just in the exciting ensemble numbers, but also in a gorgeous tango performed by Jones and Mac to The Perfect Year.

My September review omitted referencing Douglas O’Connell’s imaginative projection work that well supports Colin Richmond’s ingenious design. Likewise Ben Cracknell’s lighting work. Above all, a nod to Adrian Kirk in the pit, whose 14 piece orchestra brings a symphonic texture to Lloyd-Webber’s sumptuous score.

The tour is entering its final weeks and there’s only a few days left to catch it here in south west London. As Norma says to Joe: Now Go!


Runs at New Wimbledon Theatre until 14th April, then touring to the end of the month

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan





Sunset Boulevard at Leicester - First published in September 2017

There is a magic that pervades Nikolai Foster’s production of Sunset Boulevard and it flows from leading lady Ria Jones. 26 years after creating the role of Norma Desmond for Andrew Lloyd Webber at the composer’s Sydmonton Festival, Jones now leads the show and never has a casting been more perfect.

Some might argue that a quarter of a century ago she was too young to play Billy Wilder’s middle aged silent movie starlet. A 1920s screen goddess who with the arrival of the “talkies” was to lose first, her 30-million strong fan base and then, her mind. What is beyond question however is that Jones now owns the role, bringing a vocal excellence and power to Norma Desmond that has not been seen for decades. 

Rarely is a character created that is as magnificent, terrifying and ultimately tragic as Desmond and in playing her Jones, who has spent years preparing for the role, delivers what has to be one of the most sensational performances to be seen this year. Her take on With One Look, early on in the show as the narrative starts to unfold, drips with a thrilling energy, alongside pathos that reduces the audience to tears. Jones’ second half stunner, As If We Never Said Goodbye, proves another spine-tingler, wowing the packed Curve auditorium as she defines Desmond’s devastating decline. And in the finale, when it has all gone so horribly wrong and Jones, grotesquely made up, advances on a newsreel camera “ready for her close up”, the audience is floored. 

Several relationships flow through the show. Danny Mac plays writer Joe Gillis, over whom Desmond becomes dangerously obsessed. Mac delivers a powerful presence and style in the role. Elsewhere, Wilder sketched out love from Desmond’s devoted butler Max Von Meyerling and, on the Paramount lot, from the youthful script editor Betty Schaefer who finds herself falling for Gillis.

Adam Pearce’s Von Meyerling is a bald-headed booming monolith, bearing the most complex, tortuous and yet sensitive of loves. Pearce brings a vocal resonance that is as imposing as it is delicate – his take on The Greatest Star Of All is just gorgeous.

As Schaefer, Molly Lynch makes fine work of a delicious Billy Wilder creation. Her love for Gillis is pure film- noir, with Lynch bringing a gorgeously all American cliché to her performance, aspects of her work suggesting the vitality of a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon. Lovely stuff and so beautifully sung too, Lynch’s career is already on an impressive trajectory.

If there’s a minor niggle it’s that the two old hands at Paramount (Jonesey and Hog Eye) who recognise Desmond on her return to the studios, should ideally be played by men in their fifties rather than Foster’s two youthful (albeit very able) lads from his ensemble. Carl Sanderson however as Cecil B. De Mille is spot on in his cameo of the old and wise director who must sensitively grapple with Desmond’s mental decline.

Planned to tour from the outset, all credit to the Curve’s co-producers Michael Harrison and David Ian for boldly creating such a lavish experience, and to the show’s creatives for their ingeniously transportable work. Lee Proud’s choreography is enchanting, while Colin Richmond’s design work, (enhanced by Ben Cracknell’s lighting) makes fine use of projections, screens and the hangar doors of a Paramount sound stage to convincingly create a 1950s Hollywood.

Adrian Kirk's lavish 17 piece orchestra give Lloyd Webber's score a sumptuous treatment, but understand this. In 2017, it is Ria Jones who is making Sunset Boulevard unmissable.  Back as Norma Desmond, it’s as if she never said goodbye.

Scrooge The Musical - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

****

Music, lyrics and book by Leslie Bricusse

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Jasper Britton

Made At Curve is a brand name that is growing in traction. Producers Michael Harrison and David Ian have a canny eye for what will make a successful show and Scrooge The Musical is their latest partnership with Leicester’s Curve that sees the theatre’s Artistic Director Nikolai Foster helm a thoughtfully crafted take on the Leslie Bricusse show.

It all makes for classic festive fayre with Bricusse’s original work, last seen some 15 years ago, being subtly re-engineered for this revival. Jasper Britton (and Curve Board Member) heads the cast in the title role, convincing us throughout of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. As he is visited by the spirit of his dead business partner Jacob Marley and then the three ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, we believe in Britton’s Scrooge learning to sip the milk of human kindness and to redeem himself.

Around Britton there are no co-leading roles, rather an ensemble of wonderful quality. Notable in the company are an enchanting Lauren Stroud who doubles up as both the fiancée of the young Ebenezer in times past and as the current wife of his nephew Harry. Anton Stephans turns in a crackingly fizzing take as the Ghost Of Christmas Present, while Danny-Boy Hatchard as local lad Tom Jenkins is also particularly striking.

The show has been put together with a view to taking the spirit of future Christmases on the road (Harrison and Ian are no fools) – and Michael Taylor’s ingenious designs, brilliantly  lit by Ben Cracknell, capture the gritty flamboyance of London’s Cheapside, the towering misery of Scrooge’s office and the impoverished warmth of the Cratchit household. No expense has been spared on the creative talent throughout the production – Sarah Travis has (as ever) done a wondrous job arranging Bricusse’s score, which on the evening is delivered by Neil MacDonald’s eight piece band. Local legend Stephen Mear returns to his home town to choreograph, bringing a magic to those numbers that allow a spectacle in movement – the Toy Ballet and The Milk of Human Kindness being two particularly ingenious routines (pantomime aficionados should look out for the two dames in the latter).

The musical makes no bones about the darkness of Dickens’ tale and Scrooge’s journey of redemption. The ghosts are scary (Karen Mann’s Marley is particularly ghoulish), with Britton fleshing out Scrooge’s journey of redemption in a way that highlights the character’s own childhood of emotional abuse and neglect.

There is perceptive stuff here, from both the leading man and Nikolai Foster, and by rights the show should be garnering 5 stars. But it is Britton’s singing that is perhaps the show’s only flaw. The actor’s eminent background has been hard won on stage and deservedly so, but his expertise stems primarily from the spoken word. While this Scrooge is undoubtedly believable, commanding our empathy, one cannot help but speculate how a different actor, who perhaps has a Valjean or the Phantom under his belt, might take Bricusse’s songs to their fullest potential. But… these are early days for the production and Foster is a shrewd director – it may well be that come mid-December Britton will inhabit the musical numbers with a more majestic vocal confidence and presence.

The story here is classic and heart-warming and it says much for the city of Leicester that a multi-racial cast, evidently drawn from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, can so lovingly tell a story that celebrates an English heritage. Scrooge The Musical is another Christmas cracker at the Curve.

Runs until 7th January

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Sunset Boulevard - Review

Curve Theatre, Leicester

*****

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Book & lyrics by Don Black & Christopher Hampton

Based on the Billy Wilder film

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Ria Jones and Carl Sanderson

There is a magic that pervades Nikolai Foster’s production of Sunset Boulevard and it flows from leading lady Ria Jones. 26 years after creating the role of Norma Desmond for Andrew Lloyd Webber at the composer’s Sydmonton Festival, Jones now leads the show and never has a casting been more perfect.

Some might argue that a quarter of a century ago she was too young to play Billy Wilder’s middle aged silent movie starlet. A 1920s screen goddess who with the arrival of the “talkies” was to lose first, her 30-million strong fan base and then, her mind. What is beyond question however is that Jones now owns the role, bringing a vocal excellence and power to Norma Desmond that has not been seen for decades. 

Rarely is a character created that is as magnificent, terrifying and ultimately tragic as Desmond and in playing her Jones, who has spent years preparing for the role, delivers what has to be one of the most sensational performances to be seen this year. Her take on With One Look, early on in the show as the narrative starts to unfold, drips with a thrilling energy, alongside pathos that reduces the audience to tears. Jones’ second half stunner, As If We Never Said Goodbye, proves another spine-tingler, wowing the packed Curve auditorium as she defines Desmond’s devastating decline. And in the finale, when it has all gone so horribly wrong and Jones, grotesquely made up, advances on a newsreel camera “ready for her close up”, the audience is floored. 

Several relationships flow through the show. Danny Mac plays writer Joe Gillis, over whom Desmond becomes dangerously obsessed. Mac delivers a powerful presence and style in the role. Elsewhere, Wilder sketched out love from Desmond’s devoted butler Max Von Meyerling and, on the Paramount lot, from the youthful script editor Betty Schaefer who finds herself falling for Gillis.

Danny Mac

Adam Pearce’s Von Meyerling is a bald-headed booming monolith, bearing the most complex, tortuous and yet sensitive of loves. Pearce brings a vocal resonance that is as imposing as it is delicate – his take on The Greatest Star Of All is just gorgeous.

As Schaefer, Molly Lynch makes fine work of a delicious Billy Wilder creation. Her love for Gillis is pure film- noir, with Lynch bringing a gorgeously all American cliché to her performance, aspects of her work suggesting the vitality of a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon. Lovely stuff and so beautifully sung too, Lynch’s career is already on an impressive trajectory.

Molly Lynch

If there’s a minor niggle it’s that the two old hands at Paramount (Jonesey and Hog Eye) who recognise Desmond on her return to the studios, should ideally be played by men in their fifties rather than Foster’s two youthful (albeit very able) lads from his ensemble. Carl Sanderson however as Cecil B. De Mille is spot on in his cameo of the old and wise director who must sensitively grapple with Desmond’s mental decline.

Planned to tour from the outset, all credit to the Curve’s co-producers Michael Harrison and David Ian for boldly creating such a lavish experience, and to the show’s creatives for their ingeniously transportable work. Lee Proud’s choreography is enchanting, while Colin Richmond’s design work, (enhanced by Ben Cracknell’s lighting) makes fine use of projections, screens and the hangar doors of a Paramount sound stage to convincingly create a 1950s Hollywood.

Adrian Kirk's lavish 17 piece orchestra give Lloyd Webber's score a sumptuous treatment, but understand this. In 2017, it is Ria Jones who is making Sunset Boulevard unmissable.  Back as Norma Desmond, it’s as if she never said goodbye.

Runs until 30th September and then tours. Full touring details here.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

The Hired Man - Review

St James Theatre, London

****

Music and lyrics by Howard Goodall
Book by Melvyn Bragg
Directed by Nikolai Foster

Dominic Harrison and Amara Okereke

The programme notes for this production written by Howard Goodall himself, speak of the poignant significance of The Hired Man being staged in 2014, the centenary of the Great War. Goodall references the youthful age of the soldiers slaughtered in that infernal conflict, bringing a haunting resonance to bear upon this powerful interpretation of the show, produced by NYMT with a predominantly teenage cast.

The tale spans a thirty year stretch of English history, betwixt the 19th and 20th centuries and follows John Tallentire, the titular hired man and his journey through the economic evolution of his beloved Cumbrian fells. We see John shift from being a skilled ploughman, to an oppressed life below ground in a coal mine.  The demands of industry are replacing the more traditional rural lifestyles whilst against this backdrop, wife Emily falls into an adulterous affair with Jackson Pennington the dashing son of the local landowner and the First World War looms, ultimately to devastate the Tallentire family and the wider community.

Goodall and Bragg created an ingenious piece of theatre with The Hired Man. The first act is intimate, focussed upon John, his family and Emily’s extra-marital desires, before the second act widens the musical’s scope exponentially, addressing the march of industry, the rise of the trade union movement and the brutality of the War.

Under Nikolai Foster’s generally perceptive eye Dominic Harrison does well as John, carrying the burden of the narrative through his performance. It’s not easy for any teenage boy to play a cuckold, though Harrison rises to the challenge with a creditable performance as a good, if wronged man. Opposite him Amara Okereke, Maria in NYMT’s 2013 West Side Story is Emily, reprising her exquisite vocal work, combined with immaculate nuance, to create her complex character. A Yorkshire lass, Okereke’s natural northern brogue suits the play’s geography perfectly. The cast of thirty are at their best in Nick Winston’s splendidly choreographed numbers, none better than the multi-part harmonies that close each act, thrilling with the fusion of melody, lyrics and a stage full of young people in perfect synchronicity. 

An actor-muso production, many of the company are all the more remarkable for mastering their instrument on stage as well as acting. Joe Eaton-Kent’s exquisite work on violin/viola more than matches his work as Jackson Pennington, whilst amongst the (many) unsung gems of this cast Gloria Obianyo’s guitar playing adds a folksy contemporary touch to the sound not commonly heard. The credit for this innovative musical impact with musical director Sarah Travis. Re-arranging numbers to accommodate the actor-muso transition it turns out that much like adding mineral water to a fine scotch malt, so has Travis taken Goodall’s score and opened it up, releasing hitherto hidden yet beautiful complexities. These revelations are particularly highlighted in act one’s Fill It To The Top and in the second half’s haunting post-war elegy, Day Follows Day. 

Farewell Song, sung by the entire company immediately before the young men leave to  face the terrors of France, remains one of the most moving songs in the musical theatre canon, its words depicting  the anguish of such painful partings. As Goodall’s exquisite key changes pluck at our heart strings, if ever a song were to merit inclusion in November’s annual Festival of Remembrance it is this one.

Ben Cracknell’s stark lighting work cleverly depicts the shifts in the story’s time and location, whilst Matthew Wright’s flag-stoned stage perfectly anchors the show’s era. Notably absent from the production team is a hair and make-up professional. This is an unfortunate omission as the show’s final scenes, of Emily and John in more senior years, demand a more visible change in appearances to mark the passing of time and would have assisted the young actors in portraying their parents’ generation more convincingly.

But bravo to NYMT and the inspirational vision of producer Jeremy Walker. Yet again, in an incredibly short space of time and coached by some of the industry’s finest creatives, talented young amateurs have gone on to realise theatrical excellence on a commercial stage.