Recent Articles
Showing posts with label London Theatre Workshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London Theatre Workshop. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
- 0 Comments
My mental image of Judy Garland is inextricably bound up in The Wizard of Oz. Everything about the film drips with iconic imagery, from the costumes to the songs to the gosh-gee-whillikers goodheartedness of Garland's Dorothy Gale. Sure I've seen Babes in Arms, A Star is Born and Meet Me in St Louis, but mention Garland's name and I'll soon be humming Over the Rainbow.
So it's a shock to be first introduced to Through the Mill's Garland: a cynical, drug-raddled egomaniac who drunkenly bumbles around emitting a forty-a-day throaty rasp. This is Judy Garland on the rocks: pursued by creditors, having worked through a couple of husbands, addicted to painkillers and hiding her somewhat depleted talent behind bluff and sharp-tongued retorts.
This is 'CBS Judy' (Helen Sheals), circa 1963. We're backstage at the recording of The Judy Garland Show, a hodge-podge variety affair in a perpetual state of retooling. The crew warn a fresh-faced dresser about Garland's titanic ego and eggshell-thin skin - a Gorgon-like description that she more than lives up to. Two and a half hours in her presence would be an assault on anyone's patience, so it's with no small relief that quickly flashback to two slightly less miserable Garland incarnations.
'Young Judy' (Lucy Penrose) follows her beginnings at MGM as she's primped, prodded and berated into movie-star shape by a tyrannical mother and pushy studio heads. Don't get me wrong, Young Judy is still basically miserable, but there's a flame of hope inside her that's yet to be snuffed out.
By the time we get to 'Palace Judy' (Belinda Wollaston) a bucket of ice-cold water has firmly extinguished that flame. At just 29, this Garland feels over the hill: riddled with nerves over her talent and, after two failed marriages, desperate for something dependable in her life. She finds this in ex-boxer, B-movie impresario and future husband Sid Luft (Harry Anton), who fucks a bit of self-confidence back into her.
Judging by the rapturous hoots of approval and foot-stomping applause that greets even the duff jokes, the audience for Through the Mill is, to be charitable, perhaps a little uncritical in their response to the show. I'm instinctively wary of musical biopics - generally finding them a hodge-podge of cliches and performances that are more feats of mimicry than dramatically complete.
Through the Mill sidesteps most of that, working from a solid bedrock of Ray Rackham's clever writing. Here, the three eras of Garland are broadly mapped onto the classic feminine trinity of maiden/mother/crone, transforming biopic into a commentary on how women in the entertainment industry are chewed up and spat out by the men around them. The show's best moments come when interrogating this open-sexism - the shaming and heaped upon pressure as relevant in the 1930s as it is now.
That said, there's still a bunch of iffily written luvvie backstage drama - latter period Garland strongly reminiscent a bitchy drag queen, dishing out groan-worthy put downs. It's here that the show drags on - spending entirely too much time on divining the precise flaws of her abortive chat show. This high-profile failure might be of interest to devoted Garland fans, but the lengthy scenes of discussing their Nielsen ratings in relation to Bonanza, or the particulars of Garland's on-camera interview technique had me checking my watch and shifting my increasingly numbed ass in my seat.
At its worst the dialogue inches into clunking heavy obviousness, the absolute nadir being when Garland says goodbye to President Kennedy with a cheery "Have a wonderful time in Dallas Mr President!". Also a bit tiresome is the fact that the latter two Judys are engaged in one long argument with her promoter and crew - the constant bickering draining away enthusiasm.
Fortunately the songs supply some much needed energy. Though they're infrequent (ten over the course of the show), they're staged and performed with vigour and charm. Each era of Judy has a particular personality that shines through in their numbers - yet common to all is an open emotional sincerity. Best of all are the numbers in which multiple Judys duet with each other across the years. There's affecting pathos in watching time-shifted Judys interact - as if we're seeing her memories play out in real-time.
Through the Mill runs on affection for Judy Garland, assuming its audience arrives pre-fascinated. I'm not, and the show didn't convince me that I should be. Still, the songs were good, it's a technically competent piece of theatre and (save for a couple of wandering accents) performatively impressive. But playing to the fans results in a rather safe, uncritical production - I'd have liked something with a bit more bite.
★★★
Through the Mill is at the London Theatre Workshop until 19th December. Tickets here.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
- 0 Comments
Vote For Me has an unfortunate sense of timing. Coming after two months of British election fever, it plays to a country that's sick to death of political argument. Compounding matters is the unfortunate fact that for most Londoners, the election was a profoundly depressing occasion in which scum-sucking evil bastards received a mandate to ramp up their plans.
It's even badly timed for US politics, coming even before candidates have been selected for the 2016 campaign. Compounding this is that the show was first performed in 2010 at the New York Musical Theatre Festival - making it ever-so-slightly politically out-dated. All this added up to a performance where the cast easily outnumbered the audience.
Drew Fornarola and Scott Elmegreen's production reimagines a US Presidential debate as musical. We look on as thecandidates, Democrat Janet Tilghman (Emily Lynn) and Republican Buddy Rounsaville (Hans Rye), slug it out to win the most powerful job in the world. Backing them up are their partners; Buddy's wife Amy (Jennie Jacobs); and Janet's husband Roger (Arvid Larsen). Scurrying around in the background is a scummy spin doctor (Joe Leather), who flips a noteboard over as he switches sides, and the host of the debate -the cool but frustrated Robyn Fiedler (Lucy Grainger).
The show reward an intimate knowledge of US political trivia. I've always enjoyed following US politics and particularly their presidential campaigns - loving the histrionic barminess and usage of every dirty trick in the political handbook is deployed. So, the cast sing about the ACORN scandal, Reverend Wright's support of Barack Obama and the Benghazi controversy. You don't have to be a complete politics nerd to fully appreciate this blizzard of references, but nonetheless, going in blind would be a daunting prospect (though the programme does supply a glossary).
Soon, the show settles into a rhythm of light, bipartisan satire. So, the Hillary Clinton-esque Democrat is presented as a spend-happy, socially conscious politi-nerd with naive foreign policy goals. The Republican is a good-looking Romney-esque dimwit prodded towards candidacy by a power-hungry wife. He's so vacuous that he needs a lengthy binder that keeps track of what his opinions are.
It'd have been real easy to make the Republican a straight up supervillain, but Buddy Rounsaville quickly comes across as broadly and strangely sympathetic. Hans Rye, in a wonderful performance, effortlessly switches gears between a grinning, plasticated game show host and the paranoid man underneath, victim to a pushy wife and a ravenous party machine that will stop at nothing - nothing - to see him elected.
By comparison, the Democratic candidate written is a touch more two dimensional; her struggle is one of confidence - the geek paranoid that she'll never win the approval of the cool kids. Lynn's performance captures the eager swottiness of someone who is absolutely sure they have the right solution and will explain why at great length.
The climax of the show is the audience choosing between each of these candidates - then forking into two possibilities. Frankly I'd be surprised if the Republican candidate ever won this battle - a metropolitan theatre-going audience isn't exactly the right crowd to pick a warmongering, anti-abortion maroon (even a fictional one). But this potentially interesting dramatic device ended up a damp squib when I attended - it's hard to build tension when there's just five people voting.
That aside, at 90 minutes the show feels a touch bloated. I can't fault the impressive number VOTE! (For Me), in which Grainger's disgruntled debate moderator performs an impressive act of memorisation in listing the 139 countries that have higher voter turn-out levels than the US, but narratively it's wheel spinning and the politically it's rather simplistic. Worse, as the minutes tick on, the backroom dealings threaten to descend into soapy melodrama. A nagging sensation grows: the idea of a musical presidential debate is a good one, but perhaps one that'd work better pared back into an hour - or even 45 minute - show.
Vote For Me is a difficult to show to genuinely dislike; it's performed with energy, skill and there's an obvious love of politics at its core. But it's a bit flabby around the edges and lacks bite, especially in comparison to contemporary political satires like The Thick of It/In The Loop and Veep. Admittedly it would have most likely have worked better with an audience above single digits, but them's the breaks.
★★
Vote For Me is at the Eel Brook until the 23rd of May. Tickets here.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
- 0 Comments
A Catered Affair is an odd duck of a musical. For one it's fiercely claustrophobic; the action taking place almost entirely within a run-down Bronx tenement inhabited by a small cast grappling with resolutely unglamorous domestic situations. Even the music is largely utilitarian, devoid of catchy choruses and upbeat numbers - functioning more as a vehicle for emotion than as anything to hum along to. Whereas musical theatre is generally a vehicle for fancy-free escapism, A Catered Affair shoots for social realism.
Adapted from Richard Brooks' 1956 film of the same name (written by Gore Vidal), starring the inestimable Ernest Borgnine and Bette Davis, this is a story of the postwar American working class and their struggle for middle-class respectability. The space above The Eel Brook becomes a crummy New York room which we share with four members of the Hurley family: middle-aged parents Aggie and Tom (Maggie Robson and Howard Samuels), their daughter Janey (Aimee Gray) and Uncle Winston, Aggie's brother.
The family spend their lives perched on the edge of a financial cliff, with Tom describing himself as "a man who finds dollars hard to come by". He drives a cab and scrabbles together enough money to save a few crumbs every month while keeping the family just above the breadline. Further adding to their woes is the recent death of their son in the Korean War, the family collectively suppressing their grief for each other's sake.
Kicking off the events of the play is Janey's impulsive decision to marry Ralph, an upper-middle class academic. All Janey wants is a visit to the registry office with her immediate family in attendance, followed by an idyllic cross-country honeymoon. Unfortunately everyone stickd their oar in on what they think a wedding should be and all too quickly the wedding plans balloon grotesquely. As halls are hired, limousines are booked, gourmet food is ordered and hungry relatives begin crawl from the woodwork the costs mount ("why blow twenty years of savings on one party!?") and pressures both emotional and financial begin to mount on the family.
 |
| Maggie Robson and Aimee Gray |
It's the kind of plot you'd be unsurprised to find cropping up on Coronation Street, and it's be commendable if only because of its clear-minded class consciousness. The financial problems these characters face are all too easy for a modern audience to sympathise with. Aggie and Tom suffer the problems of the 'Golden Generation', having weathered both the Great Depression and World War II. Now, in the early 1950s things are starting to look up for America and these characters are desperate for their bite of a very affluent apple.
My favourite scene was a small one that most deftly and sensitively lays bare the consequences of urban poverty. Janey asks her best friend to be her Maid of Honour, and she has to decline because she can't afford a dress. Even if she could she'd have to also buy matching shoes and obviously her husband would have to attend, which would mean the rental of a tuxedo - more money. Like a stone thrown into a pond the economic ramifications of decisions ripple outwards, straining the social fabric. In frustration Janey comments "It's only money!". It's testament to how well played this scene is that I actually cringed at the naivety and crassness of saying something like this to a woman for whom it's never only money.
All this political stuff chugs along in the background quite satisfyingly, and it's only when the material begins to deviate from this that problems begin to arise. It's not so much that there's any obvious problems with the performances (though the 'Noo Yoik' accents are often a bit wobbly), rather that Fierstein's adaptation is slightly creakily constructed. The emotional core of the play is the mirroring of the two central relationships, Tom and Aggie worried that their passionless marriage of convenience is a harbinger of what's to come for the deeply dippy teenage Janey and Ralph.
 |
| David Anthony as Uncle Winston |
Jammed into the middle of this is a neurotic gay uncle whose story feels largely extraneous. Part of the problem is that in a story with a tight and admirable focus on characters monetary woes he's ambiguously wealthy one minute and relegated to sleeping on a sofa the next. His main function appears to be to clown around on the periphery of scenes saying semi-outrageous things and throwing theatrical tantrums - a stark contrast to the buttoned-down realism of every other character. This comes at the cost of attention to Janey's fiance Ralph, who deserves more than the cursory character development he gets. He likes Janey and he wears glasses. That's about it.
Still, there are some fantastic scenes here, most of them courtesy of Howard Samuel's quietly sensitive father/husband Tom, a man with a face like an well worn shoe who spends the entirety of the play looking like he's nursing a mean hangover An obvious high point is the barnstorming I Stayed, a song which constantly threatens to tip over into melodrama but doesn't. There's an argument that A Catered Affair would function better as a play rather than a musical, but the agonising sung/yelled/wept catharsis of I Stayed single-handedly puts paid to that.
 |
| Howard Samuels as Tom Hurley |
In the confines of the space above The Eel Brook, this drama gains power purely from our proximity to it. Sitting in the front row I felt less as if I was watching their lives through a lens and more that I was a fly on the wall, involved yet invisible. A Catered Affair makes the most of the space, relying on us being able to spot the tics and grimaces across the character's faces - particularly in a fine bit of acting as Maggie Robson ecstatically dreams her perfect wedding. It's not exactly a toe-tapping showstopper of a musical (ask me to whistle a tune from it and I'd come up short) - but its heart and sympathies lie in the right place. A solid, compassioniate piece of theatre, but one which never quite reaches the exceptional.
A Catered Affair is produced by the London Theatre Workshop and performed at The Eel Brook, 65 New Kings Road, SW6 4SG
3 June – 20 June, 2014
20:00 – Tuesday to Saturday
16:00 – Saturday Matinees
20:00 – Tuesday to Saturday
16:00 – Saturday Matinees
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)