Human Rites Movement

DADA MASILO’S THE SACRIFICE

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 28^th March 2023

Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring received an uproarious reception when it opened in Paris in 1913.  The score went on to become one of the most influential pieces of modernist music, and the ballet has been re-choreographed and represented many times.  Now, choreographer-dancer-genius Dada Masilo takes her inspiration from the piece to create this new work, with a specially commissioned score, in which the aim is to retell the story through a fusion of contemporary and South African (specifically Tswana) dance.

A young woman, bare-chested moves across the stage, before an abstract backdrop that suggests landscape and sky.  She is agitated, repeating a sort of hand-washing gesture over and over.  She reaches for the sky, she bends to the ground – we don’t know it yet but this foreshadows what is to become of her.  The young woman is Dada Masilo herself, a striking stage presence with her bald head and regal posture.  Next, we meet her community, dancing with joy before a background of bare branches.  Their movements suggest animals, particularly birds.  There are moments of humour: the dancers stop to castigate the musicians.  They want something slower so they can catch their breath!  The mood changes – a solitary figure, a leader, implores the skies while the others are bowed in prayer.  There is something about the stamping feet and the jerky movements that has echoes of the original choreography by Nijinsky 110 years ago…

The young woman is selected.  She is the Chosen One.  It’s an honour she accepts with mixed feelings.  While the majority of the storytelling is accessible and invigorating, the latter half of the piece loses me a little until the moment of sacrifice comes.  The climactic lament, sung heartbreakingly live by Ann Masina, is absolutely stunning.  Indeed, the entire score is a garden of delights, performed by a downstage trio of musicians, who blow whistles, vocalise, wave things around their heads, to create the perfect soundtrack for this time-honoured tale.  They are: Leroy Mapholo (the sounds he coaxes from his violin are incredible!); percussionist Mpho Mothiba; and Nathi Shongwe on keyboard.  Together with Masina, these three are responsible for the excellently evocative score, which I could happily listen to on repeat.  Some of the irregular rhythms and percussive beats remind me a little of the Stravinsky…

It’s an absorbing, emotional entertainment performed by a stupendous company. The show has an uproarious reception too, but of a wholly positive nature! While some of the more esoteric elements escape me (and that’s on me), the rest is truly universal and totally human.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Dada Masilo (front and centre) and the company of The Sacrifice (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Fair Enough

MY FAIR LADY

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 14^th March 2023

The Lincoln Center Theater’s lavish production of this absolute classic is a great fit for the Hippodrome stage.  A huge company of performers and a whopper of a set all have room to cohabit.  There is certainly no stinting on production values here.

Phonetics professor Henry Higgins encounters Cockerney flower seller Eliza Doolittle and their lives are changed forever.  He diagnoses her with Irritable Vowel Syndrome and embarks on a project to get her speaking like a lady and accepted into high society within six months.  And so we get a series of comic scenes where vowels are strangled until Eliza is finally able to impersonate her oppressors in the ruling class.

Higgins is a tough man to like.  His views are problematic, even misogynistic, but Michael D Xavier imbues him with a kind of charm and enthusiasm that make us warm to him despite his Chauvinistic remarks.  Charlotte Kennedy positively shines as Eliza, although I prefer her gorblimey stage to her more ‘refined’ moments.  What snobs like Higgins fail to realise is that the beauty of the English language lies in its rich diversity of regional accents and dialects.  There is no one way to ‘talk proper’.   Be that as it may, Kennedy’s songs are to be relished.  She looks and sounds the part, whatever the requirements of the scene.

Emmerdale’s John Middleton makes a sprightly Colonel Pickering, while EastEnders’s Adam Woodyatt brings the house down as Eliza’s gorblimey father, Alfred.  Get Me To The Church On Time is a real showstopper, staged here with all-out gusto.  Lesley Garrett provides a nice spot of character acting as housekeeper Mrs Pearce, and you can hear her famous soprano ringing out in the chorus numbers.  Tom Liggins, playing Eliza’s suitor Freddy, gets the best song of the show, the gloriously romantic On The Street Where You Live, and he sings it superbly.

Michael Yeargan’s impressive set never overshadows the action and director Bartlett Shaw has the characters moving through and around it fluidly.  The sheer scale of the production knocks your socks off.  And then there’s the sumptuous score by Frederick Loewe – such melodies! – and the evocative lyrics by Alan J Lerner.  And you’re reminded why this is a prime example from the golden age of Musical Theatre.

Shaw (Bartlett) acknowledges Shaw’s (George Bernard) social commentary by restoring the starker final moment of original play Pygmalion – so don’t expect a cut-and-dried musical theatre happy ending.

A splendid old-school evening at the theatre combining Shavian class critiques with soaring romance.

Luvverly!

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Michael D Xavier and Charlotte Kennedy (Photo: Marc Brenner)

Shooting for the Moon

STARCHITECTS: A Mission to the Moon!

Birmingham Hippodrome, Friday 3^rd February 2023

Motionhouse’s new production is aimed squarely at a family audience, in particular the youngest members of the family.  Five children, portrayed by grown-up performers, are having a sleepover, although sleep is the farthest thing from their fertile little minds.  With tireless energy, these effervescent children bounce around, using cardboard boxes in their play-acting, creating a ceaselessly imaginative sequence in which the boxes are hiding places, an aeroplane, a castle, a train… It’s a dazzling way to start the show before the story proper begins.

The boxes form a huge telescope through which they espy the moon and two girls (Moon fairies, no less).  The kids decide to go to the moon to visit the fairies.  The boxes become a ziggurat on which is projected their rocket – the backdrop is a vast screen onto which stunning visuals are displayed.  The screen is made of strips so the performers can disappear into holes, through windows and so on, and magically reappear.  Visually, the show cannot be faulted.  The digital imagery, by Logela Multimedia, adds colour and excitement as well as denoting setting.

So the kids get to the moon, encounter an alien life form with slinkies for limbs and eyes where its hands should be, but they’re never really in danger.  They meet the fairies and then get back in their rocket and come home.  All of this is underscored by original music by Tim Dickinson and Sophy Smith, which definitely adds atmosphere and drama but at times it’s a bit too loud.  The performers often vocalise to each other and sometimes invite the audience to call out, but we can’t often hear what they’re saying and only glean an impression of their dialogue – which is fine, this is a visual show after all where movement is the main focus, but a bit of contrast in volume levels would have helped.

The performers are uniformly excellent, agile and acrobatic.  Their timing when interacting with the animation is impeccable.  The characters are also uniform in their exuberance and behaviour so it’s hard to pick out anyone in particular.  The direction by Kevin Finnan and the choreography, also by Finnan and the cast, keep the simple story clear and easy to follow.  I would have liked a bit more jeopardy other than a couple of ‘It’s behind you’ moments to help me engage with the characters and their adventure.

Visually stunning and technically perfect, the show has plenty of wow moments but it doesn’t engage on an emotional level, which is the only missing ingredient for me.

☆ ☆ ☆ and a half!

Turn Again

DICK WHITTINGTON

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 20^th December, 2022

After all these years, Hippodrome pantomime favourite Matt Slack finally lands a title role.  At last he is able to make a Dick of himself.  If you’ve seen him before you know exactly what you’re going to get, and Slack delivers exactly what they pay him for.  No one does what Matt Slack does better than Matt Slack, but there is a strong whiff of we’ve seen it all before.  To paraphrase a line from the pantomime, Turn again, turn again, Matt Slack’s doing his turn again. 

You can’t help but admire his energy, his skill set (his impressions are off the scale!) and his wit – he is co-credited as scriptwriter along with veteran panto scribe, Alan McHugh.  The script is aimed well above the heads of the youngest members of the audience; it’s quite the rudest panto I’ve seen this year, which is fun for the grown-ups who have forked out for the tickets. 

As ever at the Hippodrome, it’s a massive spectacle.  An early appearance of the Rat King is breath-taking.   Unfortunately, its dialogue is largely drowned out by the atmospheric music that underscores the scene.  Playing the Rat King’s human emissary, the Rat Man is housewives’ favourite, Marti Pellow, who certainly looks the part.  Elegantly costumed, he struts around, performing tuneful songs of his own composition, but he is largely separate from the action.  It’s like he’s in a different show.  The rest are in a panto while he’s doing his musical theatre thing.

There’s a song about panto and how great it is.  We don’t need to know we’re watching a panto.  They don’t need to tell us they’re in a panto.  Again, the show veers toward musical theatre, which ain’t panto.  There’s no slosh scene, no ‘It’s behind you’ moment, and audience participation is kept to a bare minimum.

Conventionally a dancer is cast as the Cat.  Interestingly, we get local character Doreen Tipton instead.  Doreen has a marvellous deadpan woe-is-me delivery, and it’s great to see her branching away from her usual mockery of people on benefits.  As the Spirit of the Bells, TV’s Dr Ranj prances and sparkles around, very much being himself and proving himself a good sport.  Ironically, he serves as ‘straight man’ to Matt Slack’s extended pun-filled stories.

Andrew Ryan is Felicity Fitzwarren, a garishly glamorous dame, who definitely needs her own moment in the show out from under the shadow of Slack’s spotlight, while former pop star Suzanne Shaw provides love interest as Alice Fitzwarren. Shaw is strangely underused, with no solo number nor even a duet with Slack.

The cast is supported by a hardworking ensemble of ten, and a seven-piece band, led by Robert Willis. It’s a great looking, great-sounding production, beautifully lit by Ben Cracknell, and there are laughs aplenty throughout. What the show gains in scale and splendour, it loses in heart. Slick and spectacular, it’s enjoyable to be sure, but I feel it lacks some of the elements of the very art form it extols in song.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

What a Dick! Matt Slack reigning supreme (Photo: Paul Coltas)

The Peasants are Revolting

LES MISERABLES

Birmingham Hippodrome, Friday 12^th August 2022

Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel of post-revolutionary France (honestly, you could derail a train with that thing) has become more widely known due to this musical adaptation, which receives something of an upgrade after all these years.  The staging is enhanced by video projections, mainly of gloomy watercolours (inspired by the daubs of Hugo himself), but these effects never overshadow the action.   The lighting, by Paule Constable, is absolutely beautiful, giving scenes the richness of the Old Masters.  The visuals match the quality of the music and the singing.  The show feels both familiar and fresh.

Dean Chisnall is powerful as the upright Jean Valjean, a man seeking to rehabilitate himself after a 19-year stretch for stealing a loaf of bread.  Valjean should try his luck in the supermarkets of today, where even the tubs of butter have security tags.   Branded a criminal for the rest of his days, Valjean is the moral heart of the story, and Chisnall’s singing has a purity to it.  His nemesis, the dogged Inspector Javert, is played by an imposing Nic Greenshields, towering over everyone else.  Greenshields brings nuance to the putative villain of the piece, even displaying tenderness over the (Spoiler) corpse of plucky little Gavroche.

At this performance, the role of young lover Marius is played by Caleb Lagayan, who really shines in the heart-breaking Empty Chairs and Empty Tables.  His voice blends marvellously with Paige Blankson’s soprano, and the trio, when the lovers are joined by go-between Eponine (Nathania Ong) is sublime.  Also strong are Rachelle Ann Go as the doomed Fantine, Rick Zwart as the kindly bishop, Samuel Wyn-Morris as the rousing Enjolras, and of course Ian Hughes and Helen Walsh, who rapidly establish themselves as audience favourites, the ghastly Thernadiers.

The chorus scenes are stunning, whether squabbling in a dingy factory, beckoning outside a brothel, or manning the barricades – these latter scenes are almost immersive, thanks to Mick Potter’s sound design; you can almost feel the bullets whizz past your head.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen or listened to the show.  I’d forgotten how repetitive the score can be, with tunes and phrases repeated and repeated.  The big numbers are bangers, of course, but I find the recitatives a little wearing.  (Incidentally, audience member seated directly behind me, it’s not really appropriate to whoop and holler to demonstrate your appreciation for someone’s tender death scene, no matter how well it’s performed.  Glad you’re enjoying it, but not down my earhole, please!)

For me, the star of the show is the translation of the book and lyrics into English by Herbert Kretzmer, giving dignity to the undignified, wit to the wretched, and compassion to the tortured.  It’s thrilling to see the show performed live with all the bells and whistles (no thank you, concert performance) and thank goodness you don’t need a degree in French history to derive an immense amount of pleasure from all this suffering.

The French have always been better at taking to the streets than we Brits.  The show emphasises romance over social injustice, hitting us emotionally rather than politically, so don’t expect to leave the theatre in revolutionary mood.

Stirring stuff, in one respect, but the message seems to be, The poor are always with us, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One reprise more!

Cher and Cher Alike

THE CHER SHOW

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 2^nd August 2022

Charting the life story of one Cherilyn Sarkisian, this show gives us not one, not two, but three Cher-alikes, depicting the diva at three stages of her career.  There is Millie O’Connell as Babe, taking us from bullied schoolgirl to budding hippie popstar.  There is Danielle Steers as Lady, showing us Cher in the Sonny Bono years.  And there is Debbie Kurup as Star, giving us Cher post-Sonny and beyond.  Each performer is phenomenal but I find when they’re all on stage together, I can’t help but compare them: this one looks most like the real thing… that one sounds most like the real thing… The other one can do the hair toss…  When they’re all chatting in that characteristic and highly mannered way of speaking, it’s a bit weird.  What starts as a narrative device becomes an alienation effect, and I can’t warm to any incarnation.

Rick Elice’s book contains some zingers but on the whole I get the impression that Cher has had a miserable life.  The script focusses on the low points, the relationship break-ups, the unemployment, while successes (winning an Oscar) are glossed over.  Some songs fit their moments better than others, but we get all the hits – and more.

With Arlene Phillips directing and Oti Mabuse choreographing, as you might expect, the staging of the musical numbers is top drawer, energetically executed by an excellent ensemble.  Production values are high, although the set, which mainly consists of row upon row of costumes in bags suspended on rails, gives the impression that the main events of Cher’s life took place in a dry cleaner’s.

As well as the three Chers, we get Lucas Rush bringing moments of tension as Sonny Bono, Jake Mitchell camping it up as Bob Mackie, and the versatile Sam Ferriday playing a range of parts including 70s rock yeti Greg Allman.  There is strong support from Tori Scott as Cher’s mum, although she does repeat the key line, “The song makes you strong” a little too often.  One moment is splendidly touching: the recently deceased Sonny duetting with Cher one last time, before she realises she’s no longer got you, babe.

Danny Belton conducts a splendid band.  The story might come across as a bit of a downer but the music is relentlessly uplifting, culminating in the inevitable megamix that gets everyone on their feet and enjoying the party atmosphere.  And there is much to enjoy, in the performances, in the music, but I feel unengaged and distanced from the material, and I love Cher as much as any gay man.

☆ ☆ ☆

Three Chers! Hip hip hooray! Danielle Steers, flanked by Millie O’Connell and Debbie Kurup (Photo: Pamela Raith)

Right as Rain

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 7^th June 2022

I maintain that the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds film is a pinnacle of cinematic endeavour, so any stage production seeking to emulate this piece of perfection has an impossible task ahead.  This large-scale touring production  originating from Chichester Festival Theatre comes pretty close!

A spoof of the advent of ‘talking pictures’, this story of Hollywood glamour is funny, romantic and spectacular.  This show doesn’t stint on the large production numbers.  Andrew Wright’s exuberant choreography delivers period, verve and character.

Sam Lips makes quite a splash as leading man Don Lockwood, cocksure and on the right side of cheesy.  A lovely crooner, Lips can also hoof it – the iconic title song which closes the somewhat lengthy first act is everything you want it to be.  As Don’s love interest, the sunny, funny Kathy Selden, Charlotte Gooch is practically perfect, while Jenny Gayner is hugely entertaining as villainous diva Lina Lamont – you can’t bring yourself to hate her.

Stealing the show, though, is the indefatigable Ross McLaren as Don’s sidekick Cosmo Brown.  McLaren lights up the stage, combining terpsichorean talent with comedic flair.  His Make Em Laugh brings the house down, and his double act with Lips delivers some of the funniest moments of the show.  You can’t take your eyes off him.

Director Jonathan Church doesn’t miss a detail.  The filmed excerpts are a delight, and there’s a light touch to the comedy across the board.  The musical numbers are wonderful.  Some standouts include All I Do Is Dream Of You, Good Morning, and the extended, luxuriant Broadway Melody sequence, where the production values go through the roof. Simon Higlett’s costumes bring a rainbow after the downpour.

The infectious score is played by a tight-knit orchestra with Grant Walsh at the helm, the music so evocative of that bygone age.

An absolute joy, a celebration of showbiz, and  pure, unadulterated fun, the show’s message is to enjoy yourself whatever life chucks at you.  Sing in that rain!

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Storming it: Sam Lips, Charlotte Gooch, and Ross McLaren (Photo: Johan Persson)

Bad at Spelling

MAGIC GOES WRONG

Birmingham Hippodrome, Tuesday 25^th May 2022

The team behind The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and all the rest of them, join forces with master-magicians Penn & Teller to bring us this cavalcade of calamity.  The title says it all.  A hapless bunch of performers strive to raise funds for charity with a series of acts that each go awry in their own special way.

Our host is the increasingly desperate Sophisticato (Sam Hill) trying to preserve his late father’s memory.  Sam Hill’s eyes get wider as the situation around him unravels.  His act with doves is hilarious, and I’m assured no birds were harmed during making of this spectacle, although perhaps several humans were.

Rory Fairbairn as the Mind Mangler is hopeless, making wild stabs in the dark to guess our names and occupations.  The joy of it comes from seeing through his cod mysticism, of being smarter than he is.

Kiefer Moriarty is delightful as The Blade, a daredevil act, ripping off shirt after shirt, and attempting dangerous feats involving spikes, a water tank, mousetraps… and never giving up no matter how much pain he inflicts on himself.  It takes a lot of skill to do things ‘wrong’ – Think Les Dawson at the piano – and the timing across the board is flawless.  It has to be.

Jocelyn Prah and Chloe Tannenbaum are a hoot as Teutonic glamour girls Bar and Spitzmaus, serving as assistants to the others and also as an act in their own right, involving gymnastics, contortionism, and a ‘live’ bear…

Valerie Cutko brings elegance and charm as the ill-fated donor Eugenia.  Much use is made of a live video feed, and there’s the running joke of the woeful total of funds raised.  The ‘In Memoriam’ section brings tears to my eyes for all the wrong reasons.

Organised chaos is the order of the day, with surprises and slapstick galore.  Every now and then, the magic goes right, and this is just as surprising as the mishaps.

Relentlessly funny entertainment from a hugely talented team.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Disillusioned: Sam Hill as Sophisticato (Photo: Pamela Raith)

Jacob’s Cracker

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

Birmingham Hippodrome, Wednesday 6^th April 2022

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s first (and best) musical is on the road again in this refurbished production by director Laurence Connor.  There are a few interesting changes, most of which work brilliantly.  Firstly, the use of children.  Liberated from the usual choir corral, the kids come and go, singing and dancing along with the other performers.  Connor also uses kids in character roles: the younger brothers, for example, complete with comedy beards.  This serves as a reminder that the piece was originally conceived as a school play.

Another big change is the expansion of the role of the Narrator.  The mighty Alexandra Burke leads us through the story, with charm, good humour, and above all, that marvellous voice.   Connor also has her don a comedy beard to portray the patriarch Jacob.  Burke does a good job but I miss the old man.  At the show’s climactic point, the father-and-son reunion is therefore diluted, robbing the show of its emotional kicker.  Oh, well.  Burke also takes on the role of seductress Mrs Potiphar – surely there are guidelines about making a pregnant actor work so hard! – She is clearly having a lot of fun in this show, and she handles the crowd like a boss.

As Joseph, rising star Jac Yarrow is instantly appealing, with his boy-next-door good looks, powerful vocals, and broad shoulders.  His Close Every Door  stirs the blood.

Beardless, singleton Joseph is coded as different from his hirsute and married brothers, who soon tire of their father’s favouritism, Jacob’s encouragement of Joseph’s flamboyance —  he may as well wrap the kid in a Pride flag – so they plot to get rid.  This gives us the marvellous country-and-western number, One More Angel In Heaven, complete with a culture-clashing Hebrew hoedown.  The joy of this musical, for me, is Lloyd Webber’s shameless use of pastiche, cobbling different styles of popular music together in his richest, most fun score.

It’s a short show still, having been extended over the years from its school hall origins.  To give it a decent runtime, we get reprises and prolonged dance sequences.  I prefer a leaner version, where we don’t hear the same song twice.

Featuring as the Pharaoh is national treasure, former pop-and-soap star Jason Donovan.  Incredibly, it’s been thirty years since he donned a mullet and a loincloth to give us his pop-oriented Joseph (while Yarrow’s is more musical theatre) and it’s a treat to see him as the King, incorporating Elvisisms into his performance.  Donovan is golden, and there is much love for him in the room, a considerable amount of it coming from me.

The highlight of the second act is the brothers’ French song, Those Canaan Days, a wonderfully camp staging complete with a can-can.  All the dance routines bring a smile.  Joann M Hunter’s exuberant choreography and the cast’s tireless efforts give us much to enjoy, even if it’s chiefly to extend the running time.  The show has more padding than a drag queen’s bra, sacrificing dramatic impact in favour of fun.  But, hey, it IS fun, and fun seems to be this production’s watchword, and there’s nothing wrong with fun.

Yarrow is great, Donovan is marvellous, but if I’m being honest as coconuts, the show belongs to the indefatigable Alexandra Burke in a winning performance that demonstrates her comedic skills as much as her rich, tingle-inducing voice.

A bright and colourful, tuneful treat.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆☆

Musical Theatre gold: Jason Donovan and Jac Yarrow (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Something to Crow About

Motionhouse: NOBODY

Birmingham Hippodrome, Friday 4^th February 2022

This latest piece from dance company Motionhouse seeks to externalise the internal.  Our inner voices, represented here by crows, are what keep us apart from others.  Our inner doubts, fears and concerns prevent us from achieving our potential as individuals and as a society.  The show begins with the performers moving like crows, settling on the rooftops of tall buildings in a cityscape projected on the backdrop and on the set.  Then we meet human characters, each of them caught up with their own crow, holding them back, keeping them distracted, and so on.

Above all, the show is a visual feast, as the performers move around an ever-shifting set.  A huge cube frame, when covered in fabric, becomes a building emerging from the background.  The cast physically move this structure around – putting the motion house in Motionhouse, you might say.  Stripped of its fabric, the cube becomes a room, a cage.  The way the performers move and manipulate the frame while they move in, on, and through it, is spellbinding.

The second act begins with swimmers in a stylised ocean, heads, arms, and torsos rising from the cloth, thrashing and flailing around, until one figure rises up, impossibly tall.  This is a turning point.  From now on, the crows are no longer around.  The humans move together, supporting and helping each other to get over obstacles  in the landscape (the cube frame) and creating a sense of shared purpose, harmony and cooperation.  If we don’t listen to our inner voice, the piece appears to say, then we will really get somewhere as a species.  It’s a back-to-basics approach.  The performers are like a tribe of prehistoric humans, and also a giant, multi-headed organism.  The individuals have become parts of the whole, a mass of limbs and heads and trousers.

Of course, one’s inner voice isn’t necessarily negative.  Quite the contrary.  Perhaps the crows could turn into doves or something.

Brimming with ideas, the show doesn’t give you time to absorb and reflect; it’s constantly shifting and changing, presenting each next idea, expressing the next concept, so you get an overall impression of the experience with some moments and images that stick in your mind’s eye – a man drowning in a water tank, for example.  What impresses, perhaps more than the content of the piece, is the proficiency of the performers.  Their circus skills blend in seamlessly with contemporary dance, extending the range of the performers and what is achievable in their storytelling.

Captivating and breath-taking, Nobody has something for everybody.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A murder of crows!