By Edward Seckerson
It says something for the London incarnation of Shaiman & Wittman's Hairspray that it maintained energy levels which normally would tend to dissipate between JFK and Heathrow. After a voracious week in the Big Apple I returned to discover that Michael Ball really had changed sex, married Mel Smith, and spawned a daughter called Tracy. Newcomer Leanne Jones, with hair higher than Everest and a smile as wide as her hips was like the sun coming out at midnight. She and the rest of this terrific London company lit up the Shaftesbury Theatre like a beacon. Perhaps for the first time since Hair opened there in the 60s this unlucky theatre will see some serious traffic. Advance bookings are healthy. Perhaps the great British public have already seen the light.
I'll stick my neck out here and say that this is probably the finest performance that Michael Ball have given us to date. The range of what he does with his voice (and his 'enhanced' body) is extraordinary but most of all it's what he does with his heart that is so totally winning. You'll go a long way to see a more truthful and generous and unselfish performance. He's made a human being of a caricature and left Harvey Fierstein growling all the way to his next torch song. Ball's Edna is so giving, so lovable that you want Tracy to succeed for him - sorry, her - alone. Smashing. And genuinely truthful.
My hysterical week in NY began down at Joes Pub with Judy Kuhn singing Laura Nyro. Talk about taking you back. Nyro would have been 60 this month and Kuhn sang her gritty, unexpected, achingly beautiful songs like they could change the world all over again. Backed by a ferociously feisty band squeezed optimistically on to the tiny stage, this wasn't so much a gig as a shameless album promotion. Did we care? Not a bit. That album - "Serious Playground" - is just out from the enterprising Ghostlight label and reminds us that the Kuhn voice is every bit as individual as the songs. When will Metropolis be forgotten? When will she return to the UK?
Well, not for a while because having created the role of Cosette in the Original Broadway Cast of Les Miz she's back in the show as Fantine, the role I always thought she was much more natural casting for. And she dreams the dream like no time has gone by. Who knows, in a few years the voice may have marinated sufficiently for her to have a crack at her first Jean Valjean. He, at the moment, is our very own John Owen-Jones and he's surely the best yet. He even out-breathes Colm Wilkinson spinning the eternal reaches of his head voice to wonderful effect in the gorgeous "Bring Him Home". The indestructibility of the show is still in part a testament to Trevor Nunn whose stunningly on-the-money production still delivers in spades. Not since the original production of Oliver has a director made more of a revolve. The image of the mortally wounded student revolutionary Enjolras slowly revealed hanging from the barricades draped in the red flag of socialism is one of the most iconic of modern musical theatre. That the show is so well maintained (and packed at a Wednesday matinee) is a tribute, too, to Cameron Mackintosh.
Off then to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre to see what all the fuss surrounding Spring Awakening is all about. A musical of Frank Wedekind's once-banned play of pubescent sexual awakening? You'd better believe it - and a highly original one at that. Imagine a group of impressionable teens in 19th century Germany. The place, a boarding school. Period clothes, period manners. Frigid atmosphere. But the hormones are raging and before you can say 'cold shower' hand-mikes are whipped out of inner pockets and the message is - arousal rocks. Great cast, quirky, original score from Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music). And the first masturbation song since Hair - but this time with visuals.
Curtains - a backstage murder mystery (and why not?) - was one of the shows the late lamented Fred Ebb was working on when he died. His wit is all over it - and so, too, that of Rupert Holmes (he of The Mystery of Edwin Drood - a favourite show of mine) who wrote the book. It's froth, but it's smart froth with one liners strewn about as readily as red herrings. Not a great Kander and Ebb score (and we came to expect great from them) but unmistakably theirs and not nearly as forgettable as some commentators have made out. Fun, too, to have Tony winner David Hyde Pierce deftly throwing material away as surely as the indomitable Debra Monk (the living reincarnation of Ethel Merman) was whacking it out to the back of the gallery.
Elements of Curtains' slapstick finds its way into the new Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens musical The Glorious Ones now playing at the Lincoln Center. Check out my online interview for further insights into this talented duo's work on this and other shows. The Glorious Ones traces the humble origins, the high and mainly low comedy of commedia dell'arte whose legacy of laughter has resounded from the 16th century to the present day. We see the beginnings of familiar characters, real and imagined; we share their dreams, their personal intrigues, their highs and lows and hopes for immortality. Ahrens' book (like all her work) is elegant, Flaherty's music among his most lyrical with an acoustic sounding band beguiling the narrative forward. You know when you leave a new show eager to hear the album? This is one such score. And one song - which Flaherty reckons could be his best yet - "I Was Here" - wholeheartedly delivered by Marc Kurdisch - tugs gloriously at all our aspirations in whatever field we have chosen.
So here I am, back in Blighty, shaken and stirred and wondering why we in London can't maintain such a healthy diet of new musical theatre work. A few years ago Broadway had become merely a repository for British blockbusters like Les Miz and Phantom. Now it's alive with the sound of new music, new talent, new shows. Why? Because I reckon Broadway and Off Broadway realised that if they didn't encourage the burgeoning talent of the here and now that one day there would be no legacy to keep the great Broadway tradition alive. Admittedly the catchment area is larger in New York and its surrounding areas, but people's appetite for theatre is simply greedier than it is in London. It's inconceivable to come into midtown Manhattan and not go to the theatre. How do we get that to happen in London?
(c) Edward Seckerson 2007
It says something for the London incarnation of Shaiman & Wittman's Hairspray that it maintained energy levels which normally would tend to dissipate between JFK and Heathrow. After a voracious week in the Big Apple I returned to discover that Michael Ball really had changed sex, married Mel Smith, and spawned a daughter called Tracy. Newcomer Leanne Jones, with hair higher than Everest and a smile as wide as her hips was like the sun coming out at midnight. She and the rest of this terrific London company lit up the Shaftesbury Theatre like a beacon. Perhaps for the first time since Hair opened there in the 60s this unlucky theatre will see some serious traffic. Advance bookings are healthy. Perhaps the great British public have already seen the light.
I'll stick my neck out here and say that this is probably the finest performance that Michael Ball have given us to date. The range of what he does with his voice (and his 'enhanced' body) is extraordinary but most of all it's what he does with his heart that is so totally winning. You'll go a long way to see a more truthful and generous and unselfish performance. He's made a human being of a caricature and left Harvey Fierstein growling all the way to his next torch song. Ball's Edna is so giving, so lovable that you want Tracy to succeed for him - sorry, her - alone. Smashing. And genuinely truthful.
My hysterical week in NY began down at Joes Pub with Judy Kuhn singing Laura Nyro. Talk about taking you back. Nyro would have been 60 this month and Kuhn sang her gritty, unexpected, achingly beautiful songs like they could change the world all over again. Backed by a ferociously feisty band squeezed optimistically on to the tiny stage, this wasn't so much a gig as a shameless album promotion. Did we care? Not a bit. That album - "Serious Playground" - is just out from the enterprising Ghostlight label and reminds us that the Kuhn voice is every bit as individual as the songs. When will Metropolis be forgotten? When will she return to the UK?
Well, not for a while because having created the role of Cosette in the Original Broadway Cast of Les Miz she's back in the show as Fantine, the role I always thought she was much more natural casting for. And she dreams the dream like no time has gone by. Who knows, in a few years the voice may have marinated sufficiently for her to have a crack at her first Jean Valjean. He, at the moment, is our very own John Owen-Jones and he's surely the best yet. He even out-breathes Colm Wilkinson spinning the eternal reaches of his head voice to wonderful effect in the gorgeous "Bring Him Home". The indestructibility of the show is still in part a testament to Trevor Nunn whose stunningly on-the-money production still delivers in spades. Not since the original production of Oliver has a director made more of a revolve. The image of the mortally wounded student revolutionary Enjolras slowly revealed hanging from the barricades draped in the red flag of socialism is one of the most iconic of modern musical theatre. That the show is so well maintained (and packed at a Wednesday matinee) is a tribute, too, to Cameron Mackintosh.
Off then to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre to see what all the fuss surrounding Spring Awakening is all about. A musical of Frank Wedekind's once-banned play of pubescent sexual awakening? You'd better believe it - and a highly original one at that. Imagine a group of impressionable teens in 19th century Germany. The place, a boarding school. Period clothes, period manners. Frigid atmosphere. But the hormones are raging and before you can say 'cold shower' hand-mikes are whipped out of inner pockets and the message is - arousal rocks. Great cast, quirky, original score from Steven Sater (book and lyrics) and Duncan Sheik (music). And the first masturbation song since Hair - but this time with visuals.
Curtains - a backstage murder mystery (and why not?) - was one of the shows the late lamented Fred Ebb was working on when he died. His wit is all over it - and so, too, that of Rupert Holmes (he of The Mystery of Edwin Drood - a favourite show of mine) who wrote the book. It's froth, but it's smart froth with one liners strewn about as readily as red herrings. Not a great Kander and Ebb score (and we came to expect great from them) but unmistakably theirs and not nearly as forgettable as some commentators have made out. Fun, too, to have Tony winner David Hyde Pierce deftly throwing material away as surely as the indomitable Debra Monk (the living reincarnation of Ethel Merman) was whacking it out to the back of the gallery.
Elements of Curtains' slapstick finds its way into the new Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens musical The Glorious Ones now playing at the Lincoln Center. Check out my online interview for further insights into this talented duo's work on this and other shows. The Glorious Ones traces the humble origins, the high and mainly low comedy of commedia dell'arte whose legacy of laughter has resounded from the 16th century to the present day. We see the beginnings of familiar characters, real and imagined; we share their dreams, their personal intrigues, their highs and lows and hopes for immortality. Ahrens' book (like all her work) is elegant, Flaherty's music among his most lyrical with an acoustic sounding band beguiling the narrative forward. You know when you leave a new show eager to hear the album? This is one such score. And one song - which Flaherty reckons could be his best yet - "I Was Here" - wholeheartedly delivered by Marc Kurdisch - tugs gloriously at all our aspirations in whatever field we have chosen.
So here I am, back in Blighty, shaken and stirred and wondering why we in London can't maintain such a healthy diet of new musical theatre work. A few years ago Broadway had become merely a repository for British blockbusters like Les Miz and Phantom. Now it's alive with the sound of new music, new talent, new shows. Why? Because I reckon Broadway and Off Broadway realised that if they didn't encourage the burgeoning talent of the here and now that one day there would be no legacy to keep the great Broadway tradition alive. Admittedly the catchment area is larger in New York and its surrounding areas, but people's appetite for theatre is simply greedier than it is in London. It's inconceivable to come into midtown Manhattan and not go to the theatre. How do we get that to happen in London?
(c) Edward Seckerson 2007