Hair Dos and Home Truths

STEEL MAGNOLIAS

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tuesday 21^st March 2023

Best known for the stellar film version starring Julia Roberts, Sally Field et al, Robert Harling’s story started out as this stage play thirty years ago. Set in a Louisiana hair salon between 1983 and 1985, it’s a golden opportunity for half a dozen actors of the female persuasion to strut their stuff, as the characters prepare for big moments in their lives.  The salon acts as a meeting place, somewhere to confide, to share, to have a right old laugh, with all the important action occurring off-stage. 

As hairstylist Truvy, a big-haired Lucy Speed channels Dolly Parton and gets to deliver most of the script’s best zingers.  She draws us in immediately with her irresistible down-home charm.  New recruit Annelle (Elizabeth Ayodele) sweetly evades questions about her home-life, engendering a little mystery (which is overshadowed by her later conversion to Christian Evangelism). 

Among the customers are Diana Vickers as bride-to-be with health issues, Shelby; Laura Main as mother-of-the-bride M’Lynn; Caroline Harker as rich woman Clairee; and, in this performance, Claire Carpenter as the forthright Ouiser.  It’s a fine ensemble.  Harker seems to warm into her role as the evening goes on and can really deliver a punchline, but it’s Main who delivers the show’s most powerfully emotional moment in an outpouring of the frustration that comes along with grief.  Across the board, the accents are pretty good, pretty authentic.  Occasionally, lines are indistinct, slurred a little too quickly, but the one-liners and acerbic observations mostly come across with expert timing.

Our role as audience is to eavesdrop on the comings and goings, picking up exposition to fill the gaps in between the scenes, as we are drawn into these women’s world.  Laura Hopkin’s set boxes the characters in the salon, framing the scene with light.  This lends an air of intimacy to proceedings but unfortunately also serves as a distancing effect, keeping us out.

It’s an old-fashioned piece, showing its age, and I wonder if the universality of its message (women supporting each other in a man’s world) would translate away from the Deep South setting.  Give them all Dudley accents, for example, and the drama would have the same impact.  Bring it up-to-date to reinforce the need for sisterhood in today’s society, and the piece might turn its girl power into feminism.

It’s a cosy night at the theatre, a solid production that amuses and has moments of emotional truth, but it’s not really my cup of bourbon.

☆ ☆ ☆

Elizabeth Ayodele, Laura Main, Lucy Speed and Diana Vickers (Photo: Pamela Raith Photography)

Siam what I am

THE KING AND I

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Wednesday 1^st March 2023

There is no king on the poster, only the I, selling the show on its female lead, Call The Midwife’s Helen George.  Unfortunately, for this press night performance, Ms George is indisposed (perhaps a midwife crisis) and so there are more than a few disgruntled childbirth fans in the auditorium tonight.  To my mind, the show is the star.  A Rodgers & Hammerstein classic?  It hardly matters who is in it.

Taking the role of Anna Leonowens tonight is Maria Coyne, and she is fabulous.  We are not being short-changed in any way.   She may not portray a midwife but she certainly delivers.

The plot centres around the widowed Anna arriving in Bangkok with her young son.  She has found employment at the palace, as a Julie Andrews figure to the King’s many, many children.  There follows a clash of cultures and a growing respect and indeed friendship between the schoolmistress and the monarch.  As I’ve said, Maria Coyne is splendid in the part, forthright in her opinions and wryly amused by the King’s mangling of the English language.  Her voice suits this old-school kind of musical extremely well.

Old-school?  I mean, classic.  Director Bartlett Sher doesn’t tamper with the material, emphasising what makes the show an all-time great, while playing down stereotypical representations.  There’s enough to give us a taste of Siam in the gorgeous set by Michael Yeargan and the graceful choreography by Christopher Gattelli, combining traditional Siamese and balletic movements.

Darren Lee rules as the King of Siam, bombastic at first and overbearing, but with insecurities and vulnerabilities, and especially, a playfulness in his dealings with the unruly teacher.  He and Coyne are a dream pairing.  The mutual affection and frustration between the characters sparkles.  Lee definitely deserves to be on the poster.

At this performance, the role of Tuptim is played by Amelia Kinu Muus, who is a strong and emotive soprano.  Her duets with Dean John Wilson are definite highlights, as they power through some of Richard Rodgers’s most romantic melodies and Oscar Hammerstein II’s most searing lyrics.  Another belter of a moment comes from Cezarah Bonner’s Lady Thiang, whose solo gives me shivers.  Truly, ‘something wonderful’.

Caleb Lagayan impresses as the young Crown Prince, with a powerful singing voice that belies the character’s self-doubts. His first entrance is a stark, dramatic contrast to the cutesy kowtowing of the King’s other children. Also strong is Charlie McGuire as Anna’s son Louis in an assured and mature performance.

There is drama, there is humour, there is something about gender roles and challenging the entrenched attitudes of the patriarch. There is something about European interference. There is the marvellous play-within-a-play: a staging of Uncle Tom’s Cabin through the prism of Siamese dance and theatrical conventions – an absolutely delightful piece of storytelling. Catherine Zuber’s beautiful costume designs allow for plenty of melodramatic swishing of fabric and add to the sense of another place in another time.

This no-nonsense production reminds us why the show is one of the greatest musicals and why Rodgers & Hammerstein are geniuses.  Captivating, involving and powerful, this show will entertain and move you, and get you humming all those great tunes all the way home.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

We are Siamese if you please: The Small House of Uncle Thomas (Photo: Johan Persson)

Bleak House

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tuesday 7^thFebruary 2023

Imagine Bob Dylan wrote Les Misérables but set it in 1930s dustbowl America à la Steinbeck.  If you can do that, you’re some way to understanding what this show is like.  Technically, a jukebox musical, raiding Dylan’s back catalogue and stringing songs together to tell a story, except it’s not, not really.  The story, with script by the excellent Conor McPherson (of The Weir fame) could work as a straight  play (Well, I’ll come to that later).  The songs could stand alone without the story.  And so instead of a conventional piece of musical theatre where the songs reveal character or develop the plot, what we have here is a straight play interrupted by concert-like performances of the musical numbers.

The setting is a guesthouse under threat of foreclosure by the bank.  The proprietor Nick (Colin Connor) struggles with his estranged wife, Elizabeth, who has developed some kind of dementia, while cajoling his wannabe-writer and alcoholic son to get a job.  Nick is waiting for his mistress’s ship to come in; she’s a widow waiting for probate and they have plans to set up a new guesthouse elsewhere… That American dream, you see.  Meanwhile, Nick’s adopted black daughter is mysteriously pregnant, so he’s trying to marry her off to an elderly shoe repairer, for her own good.  To top it off, there’s a storm brewing and two strangers arrive in the middle of the night, a former boxer and a bible salesman…

There’s more humour than you might expect in this tale of economic hardship, unemployment,  racial prejudice, alcoholism, failed marriage, senility, learning difficulties, and just about every other miserable thing you can think of.  In the first half, at least.  But there are so many characters, there’s not really enough time for things to develop.  It takes a narrator, Dr Walker (Chris McHallem) to provide exposition and to wrap things up at the end.  There are some fine dramatic moments, well played, but apart from the general misery of it all, I’m not particularly moved.  McPherson writes great scenes but, judging by this show, is not so hot when it comes to dramatic structure beyond these vignettes of misery.

And then there are the songs.  Not Dylan’s greatest hits shoehorned in, but a careful curation of some of the more obscure tracks, rearranged to fit the period.  The actors play instruments to augment the onstage band creating a rich sound, but it’s the singing that stands out.  For example, songs like ‘Has Anyone Seen My Love?’, ‘Slow Train’ (wonderfully sung by Joshua C Jackson) and ‘I Want You’ (Gregor Milne) all knock your socks off.  But it’s the ladies who really deliver the goods.  Maria Omakinwa as the elegant widow Mrs Neilson is just about perfect, and so is Justina Kehinde’s pregnant Marianne.  Surprisingly, perhaps, demented Elizabeth (Frances McNamee) almost steals the show with her vigorous dancing and superb vocals. I invariably prefer Dylan’s songs when performed by anyone other than the songwriter, so this score serves to remind me of Old Bob’s songsmithery.

It’s a show of two halves, then, beautifully presented, albeit on a dingy stage, and while I enjoy the drama and love the songs, the two halves don’t quite fit together.  An excellent production, to be sure, but it’s a bit of a downer.  You won’t be dancing in the aisles, but you might be uplifted a little by the gospel-style finale before the crushing bleakness of existence closes in.

Oh well.  I’m off to write a show about the Cod War, using the music of The Smiths.  Why not?

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Marianne (Justina Kehinde) – Photo: Johan Persson

Many Wrongs Make a Right

PETER PAN GOES WRONG

The Alexandra, Birmingham, Tuesday 18^th February, 2020

 

Mischief Theatre followed up their mega-hit The Play That Goes Wrong with this adaptation of J M Barrie’s classic.  This one continues the traditions established by the earlier show by framing the performance within the context of an inept am-dram group with their internal dramas and shortcomings foreshadowed and impinging on proceedings.  What makes this one better than the first, to my mind, is that because we are familiar with the source material, our expectations are higher.  We know what should be happening and our expectations are both met and confounded in the same instant.  For example, we know Peter Pan is supposed to come flying in through the bedroom window and we expect something will go awry but when it happens/fails to happen, it’s funnier than we could have hoped.

I won’t give away the shocks and surprises but the show adheres to Sod’s Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong; and so we get collapsing set pieces, props going astray, lighting and sound cues botched, lines mangled, and so on, all while the inner conflicts and agendas of the cast play out in and around Barrie’s much-loved story.

It’s a breath-taking cavalcade of disaster.  Every nightmare every actor ever had is crammed into this catalogue of failures.  And that’s where the success lies.  For everything to go so ‘wrong’, everything must go absolutely right.  The timing is impeccable – I dread to think what the risk assessments are like for this production!

Katy Daghorn’s Wendy brings over-acting to a new low, with dance moves illustrating every phrase.  James Marlowe’s Pan manages to pursue his off-stage womanising despite his experiences on the wires.  Oliver Senton is a scream as long-suffering canine retainer, Nana – and later, he is hilariously unintelligible as pirate Starkey.  Romayne Andrews is suitably one-note as John, being fed his lines by radio feed, and Phoebe Ellabani has an exhausting series of quick changes, switching from Mrs Darling to the maid, often between lines.  Her Tinker Bell comes a cropper in line with Barrie’s narrative, adding another layer of brilliance to the script (by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields).  Patrick Warner carries on doggedly as the Narrator with a wayward chair, and George Haynes’s pain is palpable as he struggles on as Mr Darling and as a Captain Hook who decries audience participation.  Georgia Bradley’s Tootles, afflicted by crippling stagefright (among other things) is good fun, and watch out for Ethan Moorhouse as hapless stage hand ‘Trevor’.  But it is Tom Babbage who wins our hearts, playing ‘Max’ who is only in the show because of a financial contribution.  Yes, this is a version of Peter Pan that gets us rooting for the crocodile!

It’s quite simply one of the funniest nights you will ever have at the theatre and it leaves you marvelling at the skill of the cast who manage to fake all this catastrophe without apparent injury.  The show celebrates the human spirit, to keep going when all around you is collapsing.  The show must go on and so must life!

You’ve been framed! James Marlowe wings it as Peter Pan

 

 

Phantom Menace

GHOST STORIES

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Thursday 9^th January 2020

 

Scary shows are rarely done live, and even more rarely, done successfully.  You think of The Woman in Black which continues to put the willies up audiences in the West End decades after it opened – and that’s about it.  Until the advent of this production at the Lyric Hammersmith, which went on to have a decent run and is now embarking on its first national tour.  Written by Andy Nyman and The League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson, this is an anthology of tales, curated by Professor Goodman (an excellent Joshua Higgott), who in a kind of lecture or TED talk, seeks to debunk the supernatural.  Because there’s a rational explanation for everything.  Isn’t there?

I am under strict instruction not to reveal any of the show’s secrets so I will skate over the subject matter by saying only this.  Each story is completely different and is narrated by a different character, ranging from Paul Hawkyard’s down-to-earth Tony Matthews, to Gus Gordon’s more agitated Simon Rifkind, and to Richard Sutton’s boorish, braggart, Mike Priddle.

What I will tell you is you are in for ninety minutes of suspense, shocks and scares.  I saw the original production at the Lyric; there are more laughs than I remember, some of them the nervous kind, but the script is richly laced with humour, calculated to relieve the tension.  It’s beautifully written; the stories unfold in such a way that they play on your imagination, and the staging of each one is exquisite.  Everyday activities take on an aspect of suspense.  The ordinary is a gateway to the extraordinary…

Technically the show is a marvel of darkness (James Farncombe’s lighting design excels in what it doesn’t reveal as much as what it illuminates) with an unsettling sound design by Nick Manning.  There are jump-scares, sudden loud noises, eerie silences… every trope you might expect, and an almost relentless sense of dread.  You spend a lot of the time dreading what might happen and when things happen, wondering how they do it.  Everything is achieved with impeccable timing and it works brilliantly.

Even on second viewing, the show loses none of its power to grip, to thrill and to entertain.  It’s a funfair ride, a visceral and intellectual experience, addressing dark aspects of the human psyche.  It’s a pleasure to be manipulated in this way. The show is a testament to the power and unique properties of live theatre.  You won’t get frissons like this by watching the movie version on your phone.

 

 

 

Phat Lot of Seuss

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS – The Musical

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Tuesday 3^rd December, 2019

 

Dr Seuss’s Christmas classic is given the Broadway treatment in this vibrant musical version by Timothy Mason (book and lyrics) with music by Mel Marvin.  As the years pass, I feel a growing affinity with the Grinch, a hermit-like, curmudgeonly Scrooge of a creature who begrudges the simple townsfolk their seasonal cheer.  He is the Anti-Santa, entering people’s homes and taking stuff away – although even I stop short of burglary.

John Lee Beatty’s set design draws heavily on the Seuss illustrations, with their off-kilter, pen-and-ink style.  Robert Morgan’s costumes follow suit, padded to alter the shape of the actors, especially those playing the Whos, the peculiar race of Christmas worshippers.  Add to the mix Ben Cracknell’s luscious lighting design, and you have a weird and wonderful world straight out of a storybook.  Production values certainly are high – just look at the size of the chorus!

Steve Fortune is Old Max, formerly the Grinch’s dog.  He is our narrator, our link to the past.  Fortune has a strong and pleasant baritone, which he gets to demonstrate in his rendition of You’re A Mean One, Mr Grinch – a song from an animated TV version of years ago.  The song is more well-known in the States than over here, so later, an audience singalong doesn’t really come off.

Playing Young Max is Matt Terry, last seen as a lion in Madagascar.  Terry seems to be carving out a career playing animals in musicals, and why not?  He is excellent at it, and this show gives him chance to show off his movement skills, even with his padded costume, and his vocal talents.

Holly Dale Spencer shines as Mama Who, with a fine singing voice, and a quirky way of moving.  There is a touch of mania in her eyes that is just delicious.  Together with Alan Pearson as Papa Who, and Karen Ascoe’s Grandma (in a towering pink wig like a dollop of ice cream) and David Bardsley (a sprightly Grandpa), there is a lovely quartet as the adults prepare the house on Christmas Eve.  The score is rich, and very Broadway, with catchy tunes and Sondheimesque phrasing.

Tiny Isla Gie almost steals the show as cute-as-a-button Cindy Lou Who, who interrupts the Grinch’s housebreaking.  She holds her own in a hugely impressive performance, like Shirley Temple with an edge.  Matt August’s direction allows a satirical touch so that things never get too saccharine or cloying.  The show delivers its message that Christmas is not about consumerism and brand names but those with whom you share it.

Now to the Grinch himself.  Edward Baker-Duly is just magnificent.  He makes the role his own with some cartoony reactions and some masterful showmanship.  One of a Kind is an old-fashioned showstopper.  This is a villain to be cherished and enjoyed – and I enjoy his throwaway topical references.

This crazy, stylish, funny and tuneful show has heart and is a welcome alternative to all the versions of A Christmas Carol that are out there.  It will get you in the feels; it even melted this cold-hearted Grinch of a reviewer.

 

Dark Deeds Come To Light

GASLIGHT

Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Monday 30^th September, 2019

 

This new production of Patrick Hamilton’s classic thriller impresses from the start with an imposing set designed by William Dudley.  The perspective is so forced the ceiling looms large over proceedings and the sense of claustrophobia is almost palpable.  The box set is augmented by judicious use of gauzes so we can see who is eavesdropping outside the room or going up and down the staircases, and there are video projections, also by Dudley, that give us a view into the uppermost room and, more importantly, the mindset of our heroine, Bella.

Written in 1939, the play has given its name to a form of systematic psychological abuse, and Hamilton gives us a textbook example here as Jack Manningham uses every trick in the book to send his wife around the twist.  From the off, Bella (Charlotte Emmerson) is tightly wound and Jack plays her like a fiddle.  James Wiley is perfectly villainous as the domineering, manipulative husband, while Emmerson, increasingly unhinged, quickly gains our sympathy and keeps it.

There is strong supporting character work from Mary Chater as Elizabeth, and Georgia Clarke-Day as Nancy, two maids of the household, contrasting nicely with each other; but the piece centres around a star turn from the mighty Martin Shaw as Rough, a detective with an Oirish accent.  Shaw’s Rough is humorous and yet authoritative, a charmer who takes control – a Professional, if you will!

Mic Pool’s sound design adds eeriness and the all-important lighting, by Chris Davey, creates a suitably murky atmosphere for the dastardly goings-on.  Director Lucy Bailey wrings suspense out of moments of silence, and the action builds to a rather lurid climax in which we see the villain’s ultimate fate.

Even if you’ve seen the play the before, this high-quality production shows there is still plenty of mileage in the material.  Gripping, amusing and thrilling, Gaslight deserves a glowing review!

Nice bit of Rough: Martin Shaw