ALADDIN
December 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Sunday, January 15, 2012
IT’S a little unfair, I know, but I took a look at my review of last year’s Milton Keynes panto before writing this one. To save myself time, I could easily have trotted it out again with the names changed.
Which, coincidentally, is pretty much what the producers have done with this version of Aladdin, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one they laid on for MK audiences in 2007.
The difference then was that a manic Bradley Walsh was the force of nature that drove the show to the heights of hilarity and mayhem that it enjoyed. This time around, he’s not there.
That’s not to say that TV impressionist Paul Burling doesn’t do a fair job of helming the piece as Wishee Washee, nor that Gareth Gates and Nicola Brazil don’t make a glamorous, fine-voiced couple as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine. Adam Pearce’s overblown Abanazar and Chris Nelson’s reprise of Major Pong also offer entertaining support, with a powerful band in the pit and plenty of expenditure on the set and the well-drilled dancers.
But John Barr’s rather underwhelming Widow Twankey and a frankly dispensable turn from Strictly’s Camilla Dallerup add little to the proceedings, while an odd selection of songs leave you scratching your head over Eric Potts’s script and Andrew C Wadsworth’s direction.
It’s harmless enough – if you’re prepared to excuse the lame attempts at double entendre – and the under-tens in the audience seemed reasonably happy. But there’s no escaping the fact that the stunning Milton Keynes pedigree from the days of Mr Walsh seems to have disappeared in a puff of pixie dust.
SCROOGE
November 25, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, November 26, 2011, then touring
YOU can’t knock Tommy Steele. He’s a few weeks away from turning 75, he’s got about as many world records as gold ones, and he’s still up there giving his all for the fans.
This current tour of Leslie Bricusse’s 1992 musical version of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol is his fourth bash at the role within the past ten years, and his familiarity with the show is abundantly evident.
It’s unquestionably his production, and no matter how strong the huge team behind him, both on stage and off, he’s always the centre of attention, and rightly so. He may be a little underpowered, he may be preserving some energy for tour venues still to come, but the charm and sheer joie de vivre are irreplaceable.
The show itself is perhaps not Bricusse’s best, but it’s pleasant enough, with a handful of hummable tunes and some good old-fashioned song-and-dance numbers in the Cock-er-ney tradition.
The story itself, of course, means there’s a relentless fund of great narrative for director Bob Tomson to fall back on, and he does so with the aid of some nice theatrical trickery by Paul Kieve, an atmospheric design from Paul Farnsworth and an impressive pit band under the masterful baton of Stuart Pedlar.
The result is pretty much exactly as you’d expect: a toe-tapping entertainment that’s not too taxing on the brain but sends the masses away whistling a happy tune. And as that’s been Steele’s stock-in-trade for more than half a century, who am I to complain?
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III
October 24, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 29, 2011, then touring
IT’S a tough act to follow. The star turn given by Nigel Hawthorne in both the original stage production and the subsequent film of The Madness of George III was rightly acclaimed as definitive.
If it’s possible to have two definitive performances of the same part, then David Haig somehow achieves it. His George is whimsical, powerful, outrageous and affecting – in short, outstanding. And he forms the all-important centrepiece for this revival of Alan Bennett’s historical comedy drama about the 18th century monarch and his struggles with his politicians, his divine right and his sanity.
Haig is inspired. His comedy is beautifully judged and timed, his emotional range extensive and deeply touching, and the sheer size and physicality of his performance mark him out as an actor at the top of his game.
He’s surrounded in Christopher Luscombe’s expansive production by a cast of 24, who supply variety, humour and context to the king’s incipient madness, with particularly fine turns from Nicholas Rowe as the authoritative but increasingly undermined Prime Minister Pitt, and Clive Francis as the provincial doctor whose unrewarded efforts bring the king back from the edge of reason.
Luscombe has a decidedly stilted tendency to arrange groups of characters either in straight lines or dull semi-circles, which does little to assist the fluidity of an otherwise versatile and imaginative staging, but some elegant and clever sets by Janet Bird and careful lighting from Oliver Fenwick evoke the formality and majesty of George’s reign well enough to create a credible world.
And ultimately it’s the performances that carry the show, making this a significant and worthwhile addition to the extensive roster of Bennett plays that are seemingly never-ending in their tours of the country.
SOUTH PACIFIC
October 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 22, 2011, then touring
THERE’S been a lot of fuss about this production of South Pacific. Created in New York by the Lincoln Centre Theatre as the first major Broadway revival of the show, it has been playing at the Barbican over the summer before setting out on the road.
And as a steady, safe, straightforward version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s tuneful musical about American sailors at war and at play in World War Two Polynesia, it does pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
But for all the expense, cast numbers and lavish sets, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the hyperbole that has surrounded the show is perhaps a little overblown.
Don’t get me wrong: Bartlett Sher’s re-staging of the original Joshua Logan production is colourful, lively and eminently hummable, thanks in no small part to a large orchestra conducted by Jae Alexander. Whether, in the final analysis, it is truly memorable is another question entirely.
There are solid performances from the likes of Alex Ferns as the wheeler-dealer Billis and Daniel Koek as a strapping and conflicted Lieutenant Cable. Jason Howard, crossing over from the operatic world, is a tad stiff and oddly accented as the French settler Emile De Becque, while at this performance understudy Carly Anderson stepped bravely into the shoes of an indisposed Samantha Womack.
The stand-out player is Loretta Ables Sayre, who brings her Broadway portrayal of the native matchmaker Bloody Mary to the UK and invests her with a much darker, more sinister and therefore deeper and more interesting quality than I have seen in this otherwise unlikeable character.
The chorus work and dancing is all perfectly serviceable, and it’s hard not to find yourself singing along to a score stuffed with great melodies – Some Enchanted Evening, Nothin’ Like a Dame and Happy Talk, to name but three.
And if the warm audience reaction in Milton Keynes is anything to go by, the tour looks set to entertain the troops for months ahead.
THREE DAYS IN MAY
October 3, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 8, 2011, then touring
THE three days in question occurred at the latter end of May 1940 and were some of the most critical in the history of these British isles.
The hyperbole comes direct from the script, which describes the three days – in which new Prime Minister Churchill and his War Cabinet debated, then rejected, a possible peace deal with Hitler – as “intense, frightening and momentous”.
With such a gripping premise and so climactic a conclusion, it seems odd, then, that Ben Brown’s play manages to be so un-dramatic and, frankly, rather dull.
The basic set-up – five men sitting round a table talking – is unhelpful, of course, but Brown does himself no favours with a leaden framing device in which Churchill’s private secretary introduces both characters and action in a kind of “Previously in World War Two…” opening scene.
In fact, there’s a lot of narrative exposition going on, with people explaining to each other things they already know purely for the benefit of the audience, and slowing things down interminably in the process.
But there’s plenty of fine acting talent on stage, with a central star turn from Warren Clarke, returning to the theatre after more than a decade away. His Churchill is gruff, occasionally unintelligible but essentially heroic, a point of calm around which other voices exchange their variety of viewpoints.
Jeremy Clyde as the appeasing Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax is not given enough light and shade to reveal his character, although Robert Demeger’s Chamberlain conveys something of his struggle with personal demons. By contrast, the Labour leaders in the coalition cabinet, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, are no more than one-dimensional ciphers.
It’s a fascinating and historically gigantic occasion that receives a disappointingly static and stodgy production by director Alan Strachan. For students of politics and war, it’s a safe and solid hagiography of Churchill’s leadership. As theatre, it’s far less successful.
BUDDY
September 26, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 1, 2011, then touring
IT’S been around for more than 20 years, playing in the West End and on repeated tours around the country. It’s delighted existing fans and created new ones for the bespectacled icon of early rock ’n’ roll, who paradoxically gained immortality by dying in a plane crash on a foul winter’s night at the age of 22.
But dare I suggest that the Buddy machine, currently touring again, might have become a little complacent?
It was one of the first so-called jukebox musicals, dating from 1989, and it tells, in simple by-numbers scenes, the story of Buddy Holly’s rise from Texas country crossover singer to international star in just three short years.
It manages to shoehorn in most of the big hits, including Oh Boy, Peggy Sue and True Love Ways, as well as a handful of other people’s songs from the era, to make an evening of toe-tapping singalong with welcome live performances from musician-actors, rather than the pervasive backing tracks favoured by some penny-pinching producers.
But for all its innocence and straightforward likeability, it does rather suffer from feeling a little dated. In the intervening years, other musicals have come along that use the material of an artist or group in a much more sophisticated way. Buddy, with its three-chord riffs and simplistic staging, begins to look bland by comparison.
There’s no shortage of energy on stage, with Glen Joseph all grinning enthusiasm as the eponymous star and Christopher Redmond, Tom Millen and Roger Rowley (who alternates some performances in the title role) offering cheerful back-up as The Crickets. The sparkiness is infectious, too, with the audience clearly enjoying what amounts to a tribute concert by the end of the night.
But coupled with the all-too-common problem of an appalling sound mix making things hard on the ear and rendering some lush harmony vocals all but impossible to make out, Buddy is not quite the fresh-faced, youthful bundle of raw excitement it could be.
THE SYNDICATE
September 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, September 17, 2011
WHAT an interesting night this is. A huge company perform a straight play that’s a translation of an Italian Mafioso three-acter from 1960 that has never been produced in the UK before – it could be recipe for stodgy datedness and old-fashioned proscenium arch convention.
But when your star turn is Sir Ian McKellen, and your supporting cast include the likes of Michael Pennington, Oliver Cotton and Cherie Lunghi, you know you’re in for something a bit more special than your average rep production.
This tour of Eduardo de Filippo’s obscure Neapolitan drama with jokes has really been built around McKellen and his commitments filming The Hobbit this autumn. Celebrating 50 years in the business, he was keen to squeeze in a play before jetting off to New Zealand for his latest Gandalf jaunt.
Whatever the reason, it’s fabulous to see him still at the peak of his powers, playing Don Antonio, the 75-year-old ‘godfather’ of a Naples district who has held a fragile peace among the city’s warring tribal factions for 40 years.
The entire company have put in a lot of work on the expressiveness of the Neapolitan idiom. No cod accents here – this evocation of the atmosphere and vitality of southern Italy is down to movement, body language and emotion.
And the fact that they succeed in bringing this archaic and alien world to realistic life is a triumph not just for the cast but also for the director Sean Mathias and designer Angela Davies, whose sultry, thundery landscape outside the three giant French windows is simply but effectively created.
The play itself is a curiosity rather than a classic. There’s black humour to be found among all the twisted talk of family and honour, and some powerful speeches and dialogue in Mike Poulton’s fluent translation.
But the performances are far more interesting and entertaining than the piece itself, and McKellen is the figurehead of a fine troupe. Pennington is touching as Don Antonio’s longstanding friend and doctor who wants to leave for a quiet retirement in New York but is bound by his master to remain. Cotton is in superb form as a rebellious baker who refuses to be bullied by the Don, while Lunghi is sadly underused as Antonio’s wife Donna Armida.
Elsewhere, younger colleagues are variously fiery, moving and affecting, with stand-out performances from Gavin Fowler as the hothead baker’s son and Annie Hemingway as his pregnant girlfriend.
For hugely enjoyable performances and a fine-looking production, The Syndicate scores more highly than as a work of great theatre.
TOP HAT
August 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, August 27, then touring
There’s been a recent trend among producers searching for hit theatrical material to plunder the movie back catalogues in the hope of finding a property that has instant recognisable appeal to audiences.
And while there’s a huge debate to be had about the stifling of new creativity and the failure to develop emerging talent, you can kind of see the point: shows such as Legally Blonde, Dirty Dancing and Footloose already have a head start when it comes to making their money back.
So after the stage success of the Irving Berlin film musical White Christmas, it was only natural that another Berlin movie colossus should be on the target list. Step forward Top Hat, a new stage version of the 1935 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicle that was the RKO studio’s biggest earner of the 1930s, and launched with a world premiere in the traditionally glitzy, glamorous, star-studded environs of… Milton Keynes.
It’s a canny move (staging Top Hat, that is, not giving the world premiere in Milton Keynes) and director Matthew White has co-scripted an adaptation with Howard Jacques that actually works as a lush, lavish piece of musical theatre.
Elaborate and beautiful set designs by Hildegard Bechtler and some stunning costumes from Jon Morrell set the tone perfectly, while a vast chorus of hard-working talent puts Bill Deamer’s excellent choreographic skills to superb use.
Headliners Summer Strallen and Tom Chambers are oddly mismatched – she elegant and naturally accomplished, he slightly gawky and having clearly put an enormous amount of work into every footstep, echoing his Strictly routines – but then anyone would struggle in the shadow of Astaire and Rogers, and the pair make a decent enough leading couple in this silly, frothy tale of mistaken identity and resulting slapstick.
There’s humorous support aplenty from Martin Ball and Vivien Parry as socialite couple Horace and Madge Hardwick, and Stephen Boswell as their valet Bates and Ricardo Afonso as a comedy Italian provide laughs with broad brush strokes.
But the real winner is the fabulous Berlin score, including standards such as Isn’t This a Lovely Day, Top Hat and Cheek to Cheek, performed by a top-notch 14-strong orchestra under the commanding baton of Dan Jackson. The sound quality is immaculate, the playing first rate and the music itself simply sublime.
If the show is to have a West End life beyond the national tour that begins here, it will be in no small part down to the ravishing sounds emanating from the pit.
ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
July 11, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, July 16, 2011
MICHAEL Frayn has a gift for farce and a real ear for comic timing in dialogue. And in Alarms and Excursions, he exploits every opportunity to display this enjoyable facility.
It may not have the relentless madness of the second act of Noises Off, but there’s plenty of wit and elegance about the humour of his writing in this collection of sketches, playlets and duologues, brought together under one umbrella to make a full-length evening.
The best bits – perhaps inevitably – are the longer pieces, which are allowed to develop and mature like one-act plays with rounded characters and some depth to the gags. The dinner party at which every beep and buzz and chirp of modern technology seems determined to drive the guests crazy is classic Frayn.
By contrast, some of the interspersed pieces amount to little more than revue sketches and raise their chuckles without much recourse to the craft of a playwright.
Taken at face value, as a hotch-potch of humorous offerings, it’s an entertaining enough evening, and provides a fine opportunity for some well-honed comedy talent among the four performers.
Robert Daws reveals facets beyond his trademark pompous buffoon, mining laughs with a facial expression or physical movement as often as with the words. Aden Gillett does smarmy know-all like almost nobody else, while Belinda Lang and Serena Evans explore accents, looks and characters to considerable comic effect.
Director Joe Harmston keeps things rattling along at breakneck speed, sometimes losing moments in the process, but it’s polished, well-drilled and amusing.
JEKYLL AND HYDE
June 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, July 2, 2011
THERE’S a wonderful 1989 film comedy called The Tall Guy in which the plot centres around an excruciatingly awful musical adaptation of The Elephant Man, entitled Elephant!. The movie includes snatches of several songs, which are the most brilliant parodies of buttock-clenching musical theatre that you’re ever likely to hear.
My advice to anyone planning to see Jekyll and Hyde, in its current touring version, is simple: watch The Tall Guy before you go. It will add immeasurably to your viewing pleasure.
Everything about this production is thrillingly misconceived. The score by Frank Wildhorn is fabulously banal, facile and largely tuneless, with the exception of the big number This Is The Moment, which as an uplifting song of hope is hopelessly mis-placed just before Jekyll turns into Hyde. The book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse are crammed with inspired clichés, torturous couplets and painting-by-numbers dialogue.
And the spectacular direction by Martin Connor is just plain wrong in so many ways, from hiding Marti Pellow behind a high laboratory counter to forcing the poor man to endure not one but two toe-curling sex scenes with no more menace or danger than he displays when he first pops a child’s balloon as Mr Hyde. Yes, you read that right: to demonstrate the pure evil of Jekyll’s alter ego, one of the first demonic deeds he executes is to pop a child’s balloon.
You almost expect Bricusse and Wildhorn to be standing at the back of the stalls, like Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder in The Producers, watching the audience’s reaction transform from horror-struck astonishment at the appalling Springtime for Hitler to utter delight when they realise the whole thing has to be one big joke.
Unfortunately for all concerned in Jekyll and Hyde, everyone is taking it far too seriously for it to be a joke. This could easily be a five-star review if everyone had their tongue firmly in their cheek and played the show as the hysterical self-parody it almost is. Almost, but not quite.
Poor Pellow is left using his admittedly sumptuous singing voice to belt out crass platitudes in a sub-Russell Watson, cod upper-crust, accent. His hideous transformation is ingeniously achieved by the theatrical coup of sweeping his fringe forwards and putting on a top hat and cape. Extraordinarily, nobody seems to be able to see through this cunning disguise.
Meanwhile, the two girls who are bafflingly attracted to the selfish, priggish git who wreaks hilarious havoc on Victorian London’s gentry sing a duet that would love to be I Know Him So Well but just isn’t.
The Jekyll side of my nature prevents me from naming and shaming anyone else involved in this expensively packaged fiasco, and by the looks of some of the faces at curtain call, many of them will be only too glad when the tour ends and they can put as much distance as possible between themselves and it.
The Hyde part of me, on the other hand, would suggest that if you’re the kind of theatregoer who enjoys a spot of unintentional hilarity at the acutely embarrassed expense of the performers, then this show comes highly recommended.
GREASE
May 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, June 4, 2011
It had an entire television series devoted to discovering two new stars, a four-year (and counting) run in the West End, plus a couple of tours in which to find its feet.
But even without these leg-ups in the promotional stakes, Paul Nicholas and David Ian’s production of the 40-year-old Grease would be an undisputed crowd-pleaser.
Taking heavy inspiration from the 1978 movie with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, director David Gilmore concentrates on the fun and frivolity of the fifties high-school tale. Thus there are stunning dance routines (choreographed by Arlene Phillips), some beautiful costumes (Andreane Neofitou) and a cast of tireless Thunderbirds, Pink Ladies and assorted others ensuring the pace never flags.
The on-stage band of six are faultless under the baton of Gareth Williams and the well-known score never falls into the trap of being stale or routine.
Among the performers, Danny Bayne – who won the original competition – is very relaxed in his role of Danny, as well he might be after several years in the part. Opposite him, Carina Gillespie in a blonde wig has more than a look of Newton-John about her, even if the chemistry between them sometimes feels a little painted-on.
Robin Cousins – yes, the ice-skater – reveals a wonderful singing voice and considerable stage presence as the Teen Angel, and there’s an impressive double act from Ricky Rojas and Kate Somerset How as Kenickie and Rizzo, all attitude and strutting.
There are niggles: as so often with touring musicals, the vocals are far too low in the mix, making it a struggle to make out the words a lot of the time. Mind you, the noisy, talkative audience don’t help, even if they do lend loud encouragement to the performers.
But it’s the material that makes this show a surefire winner, and while the underlying message – you have to become a slut if you want to be popular – remains as suspect as ever, the songs are infectious, memorable and full of fun.
JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL
April 25, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, April 30, 2011
WHILE there’s plenty of amusement to be found at the expense of a witty drunk, there’s something about Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell that leaves a slightly sour taste, like a morning-after hangover.
Keith Waterhouse’s 1989 play ostensibly tells the anecdotal story of the real-life Spectator columnist Bernard, supposing him to have been accidentally locked into his favourite watering hole after hours with nothing to do but reminisce and down more vodka.
It’s actually a broader picture of the declining but still deeply seductive world of Soho from the 1960s and 70s, told through Bernard’s eyes with the self-deprecating, resigned humour of the terminally alcoholic.
Robert Powell takes the role originated famously by Peter O’Toole, and has more than a look of the old soak about him. It’s a huge part requiring optimum capabilities and, fortunately for us, Powell appears at the very top of his game. His drunk is always controlled, like the functioning alcoholic who cleverly disguises the depth of his permanent inebriation, and his bravura performance is a joy to watch.
Whether he’s letting you into a half-secret about a celebrity acquaintance or performing the superb egg-in-a-beer-glass pub trick, he’s never less than a consummate actor with natural instincts and immaculate comic timing.
Often mistaken for a one-man show, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell actually includes four other cast members, who play out a host of characters and mini-scenes from Bernard’s memory. These interjections are frequently ultra-brief and often claim the best lines, but they always serve the central character intelligently and keep the momentum moving forward.
Among these supporting players, the assured Rebecca Lacey stands out, but they all play their part in helping to create a rounded view of the lovable monster that is Bernard.
And if Waterhouse’s play is a little on the self-indulgent, rose-tinted side, there are enough big laughs and fine performances to make it a memorable night at the theatre. Or the pub, come to that.
AVENUE Q
April 18, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, April 23, 2011
The history of Avenue Q is an interesting one from the perspective of this side of the Pond. Starting out as an off-Broadway show in 2003, it quickly transferred to Broadway itself before Cameron Mackintosh picked it up and brought it over here in 2006. Since then, it’s played three West End theatres and is now out on a national tour.
With a parody of worldwide children’s legend Sesame Street as its core (complete with both human and puppet characters), and a heavily laden undercurrent of cynicism and New York vitriol bubbling just beneath the surface, it’s a curious combination. It also makes it hard to define its success.
It takes as its premise the notion that, as children, we were all filled with promises that we could be whatever we wanted to be, while as adults we have come to realise this is just so much claptrap. The whole thing is wrapped up in a cheerful, sing-song score with playfully barbed lyrics – hence numbers such as It Sucks to Be Me and Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.
And while it’s all very witty and there are plenty of laughs to be had at Jim Henson’s expense, the overall impression is of something rather less than the sum of its parts.
None of the problem, however, lies with the cast, an energetic, multi-talented group of performers who breathe extraordinary life into the puppets, often doubling roles and voices simultaneously to hilarious effect. It’s sometimes difficult to tell where the puppet ends and the actor begins.
Particularly strong are Rachel Jerram and Adam Pettigrew as the romantic leads Kate Monster and Princeton, but there are also terrific performances from Chris Thatcher and Katharine Moraz, who work together to create a variety of characters with some deliciously wicked traits – notably the porn-addicted Trekkie Monster.
It’s bright, breezy, colourful and pretty filthy – don’t bring your pre-schoolers – and even if it’s not the next great American musical, as Sir Cameron would like to believe, it’s still an entertaining night out with a surreal, fur-covered twist.
KING LEAR
March 15, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, March 19, 2011, then touring
He’s done Richard III, he’s done Macbeth, he’s done The Tempest. Now, in his ‘grey’ years, it’s the biggie: Derek Jacobi takes on King Lear.
The reassuring news is that Jacobi wins hands down. It’s all the magnificent acting display anyone could hope for, and the consummate skills on offer range from deep pathos to heart-wrenching agony. The tears that spring so believably from this supremely talented performer are wrung equally effortlessly from his awestruck audience.
This is an actor at the height of his powers, and the masterclass is simply a joy to watch. Every moment he’s on stage in this minimalist Donmar Warehouse touring production, he’s nothing less than mesmerising, and it’s a peerless portrayal of a mind in disintegration.
There’s a down side to this thespian extravaganza, of course, and that is that he makes everyone around him seem somehow slightly inadequate.
Actually, that’s a little harsh. Director Michael Grandage draws out some really strong performances among the supporting cast, notably a noble Gloucester from Paul Jesson, an emotionally gripping Earl of Kent from Michael Hadley and a nicely judged, unfussy performance from the always impressive Ron Cook as the Fool.
Christopher Oram’s simple, stripped-wood set pares the drama down to its raw emotions and Grandage reveals the lightest of touches with his handling of the ensemble and the careful rolling out of the well-paced story.
But the night is unquestionably Sir Derek’s, and he seizes the mettle with both hands, his angrily ruddy face offsetting the snow-white hair and the raging monarch pointing up the frailty of the man.
It’s a devastating performance, and one that reflects great credit on both Milton Keynes Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse for their willingness to bring it to the regions.
HAMLET
March 2, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, March 5, 2011, then touring
So many Hamlets, so little time. Since one-time Dr Who David Tennant unleashed his masterful version on the adoring public in 2008, high-profile Hamlets have included Jude Law for the Donmar Warehouse and now Rory Kinnear for the National Theatre, touring in Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress production.
To be perfectly frank, this latest in a long line of gloomy Danes adds little to the pantheon. While Kinnear can deliver the lines and wrings considerable depth from the multi-layered characterisation, the overall concept and ensemble do little more than go through the motions and the result feels long and very drawn-out.
Set in the contemporary world of a crumbling dictatorship, with security forces whispering into their sleeves and pulling handguns on anyone remotely threatening, it could have been both relevant and compulsive. In fact, the ideas run thin all too quickly and it ends up looking like a painted-on notion rather than a thought-through concept.
Kinnear himself is angsty, volatile and sincere, but looks ten years too old for the part and ill at ease in a T-shirt and track pants. And whoever made the decision for him to deliver ‘To be or not to be’ while dragging on a fag should have serious questions asked of them.
Among the strong-on-paper supporting cast, David Calder is entertaining as both Polonius and the Gravedigger, but Patrick Malahide and Clare Higgins fail to ignite as Claudius and Gertrude, and too many of the ensemble are either two-dimensional or just plain inaudible – an inexcusable fault in such a high-quality company.
If you’re going to run pretty much the whole text at almost four hours – as a certain Mr Branagh did twenty years ago – you’ve really got to make it worth the audience’s while to invest the time and effort. On this occasion, the National could (and should) do better.
BLITHE SPIRIT
February 14, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, February 19, 2011, then touring
ALL the signs about this revival of Noel Coward’s biggest hit are promising: an award-winning West End and Broadway director, a stellar cast including one of Britain’s best-loved character actresses and the prodigiously successful producing talents of the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Which makes it all the more bemusing that it doesn’t come off with quite the fireworks one might expect.
There’s much to enjoy, from the stunning and elaborate set (Hildegard Bechtler) to the charmingly wicked Ruthie Henshall, proving as the ghost Elvira that she’s just as much at home in a straight play as she is in a musical.
Coward’s 1941 play – these days firmly a period piece – centres on writer Charles Condomine’s plan to invite the medium Madame Arcati to hold a séance. His intention is to plunder her “tricks of the trade” for his latest novel, but the scheme backfires badly when the ghost of his first wife is summoned up, much to the despair of his second, Ruth.
As Charles and Ruth, Robert Bathurst and Hermione Norris reprise their husband-and-wife act from television’s Cold Feet, their real-life familiarity reflected in their on-stage performances. Alison Steadman makes a decent Madame Arcati, making the most of her bizarre character’s foibles and quirks.
But there’s also a definite sense of the ghost of Noel lurking somewhere in the background: the rapid-fire speed of delivery across the cast is no substitute for Coward’s crisp pacing, and both lines and laughs are lost in the mad rush to be witty. Similarly, the lighting is both dingy and in places crude, with dim footlights casting obscuring shadows, all of which contributes to a feeling of everything amounting to less than the sparkling, bright gem that Coward originally wrote.
It’s a perfectly serviceable, solid production, directed competently if a little unimaginatively by Thea Sharrock, whose previous credits include the Daniel Radcliffe Equus.
It’s certain to do good business on this pre-London tour, and good luck to it. I just can’t help wishing for a few more of those fireworks.
FOOTLOOSE
February 7, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, February 12, 2011
KEVIN Bacon has apparently spent 25 years bribing DJs not to play Footloose at parties. He’s never quite been able to live down the legacy of his iconic role in the 1984 movie.
Implausibly but actually based on a real Midwest American town in the 1979, Footloose tells the story of a Chicago boy, Ren, who moves with his newly single mother to the little Bible-belt community of Bomont only to find the local reverend has had dancing banned.
Ren’s mission, from hereon in, is to overturn the rules and get the schoolkids jumping and jiving again.
It’s not a tale to tax the brain too heavily, but that’s not what Footloose is about. What it’s about is the dancing, and this energetic, highly-charged touring production scores on every possible level as far as the dancing goes.
With a thumping score performed by a driving pit band under musical director Julian Reeve, it races from song to song pausing only to change sets (cleverly designed by Morgan Large). The biggest impact comes from barnstormers such as Holding Out for a Hero and the title track, but the best moments come from the quieter ballads, here performed wonderfully by Karen Ascoe as the preacher’s wife and Carys Gray as Ren’s lonely mum.
Busted star Matt Willis is nominally the headliner, but in truth his part is minor. More important are the roles of the reverend and Ren, and here Steven Pinder (late of Brookside) and Max Milner respectively come into their own. Pinder has a surprisingly mellow voice and really acts his emotion-filled part, while Milner has apparently boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm as he blasts his way through the show, ably contrasted by Lorna Want as Ariel, the preacher’s daughter who finds her soulmate in the new arrival.
Karen Bruce’s direction relies heavily on some stunning choreography brilliantly presented by the large, mainly youthful cast, but she also finds touching and poignant moments of stillness within the tidal wave of movement.
There’s great music, fine singing and superb dancing, and if the whole doesn’t quite hang from the flimsy storyline, there’s plenty of visual excitement to make up for the lack of mental stimulation.
December 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Sunday, January 15, 2012
IT’S a little unfair, I know, but I took a look at my review of last year’s Milton Keynes panto before writing this one. To save myself time, I could easily have trotted it out again with the names changed.
Which, coincidentally, is pretty much what the producers have done with this version of Aladdin, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the one they laid on for MK audiences in 2007.
The difference then was that a manic Bradley Walsh was the force of nature that drove the show to the heights of hilarity and mayhem that it enjoyed. This time around, he’s not there.
That’s not to say that TV impressionist Paul Burling doesn’t do a fair job of helming the piece as Wishee Washee, nor that Gareth Gates and Nicola Brazil don’t make a glamorous, fine-voiced couple as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine. Adam Pearce’s overblown Abanazar and Chris Nelson’s reprise of Major Pong also offer entertaining support, with a powerful band in the pit and plenty of expenditure on the set and the well-drilled dancers.
But John Barr’s rather underwhelming Widow Twankey and a frankly dispensable turn from Strictly’s Camilla Dallerup add little to the proceedings, while an odd selection of songs leave you scratching your head over Eric Potts’s script and Andrew C Wadsworth’s direction.
It’s harmless enough – if you’re prepared to excuse the lame attempts at double entendre – and the under-tens in the audience seemed reasonably happy. But there’s no escaping the fact that the stunning Milton Keynes pedigree from the days of Mr Walsh seems to have disappeared in a puff of pixie dust.
SCROOGE
November 25, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, November 26, 2011, then touring
YOU can’t knock Tommy Steele. He’s a few weeks away from turning 75, he’s got about as many world records as gold ones, and he’s still up there giving his all for the fans.
This current tour of Leslie Bricusse’s 1992 musical version of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol is his fourth bash at the role within the past ten years, and his familiarity with the show is abundantly evident.
It’s unquestionably his production, and no matter how strong the huge team behind him, both on stage and off, he’s always the centre of attention, and rightly so. He may be a little underpowered, he may be preserving some energy for tour venues still to come, but the charm and sheer joie de vivre are irreplaceable.
The show itself is perhaps not Bricusse’s best, but it’s pleasant enough, with a handful of hummable tunes and some good old-fashioned song-and-dance numbers in the Cock-er-ney tradition.
The story itself, of course, means there’s a relentless fund of great narrative for director Bob Tomson to fall back on, and he does so with the aid of some nice theatrical trickery by Paul Kieve, an atmospheric design from Paul Farnsworth and an impressive pit band under the masterful baton of Stuart Pedlar.
The result is pretty much exactly as you’d expect: a toe-tapping entertainment that’s not too taxing on the brain but sends the masses away whistling a happy tune. And as that’s been Steele’s stock-in-trade for more than half a century, who am I to complain?
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III
October 24, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 29, 2011, then touring
IT’S a tough act to follow. The star turn given by Nigel Hawthorne in both the original stage production and the subsequent film of The Madness of George III was rightly acclaimed as definitive.
If it’s possible to have two definitive performances of the same part, then David Haig somehow achieves it. His George is whimsical, powerful, outrageous and affecting – in short, outstanding. And he forms the all-important centrepiece for this revival of Alan Bennett’s historical comedy drama about the 18th century monarch and his struggles with his politicians, his divine right and his sanity.
Haig is inspired. His comedy is beautifully judged and timed, his emotional range extensive and deeply touching, and the sheer size and physicality of his performance mark him out as an actor at the top of his game.
He’s surrounded in Christopher Luscombe’s expansive production by a cast of 24, who supply variety, humour and context to the king’s incipient madness, with particularly fine turns from Nicholas Rowe as the authoritative but increasingly undermined Prime Minister Pitt, and Clive Francis as the provincial doctor whose unrewarded efforts bring the king back from the edge of reason.
Luscombe has a decidedly stilted tendency to arrange groups of characters either in straight lines or dull semi-circles, which does little to assist the fluidity of an otherwise versatile and imaginative staging, but some elegant and clever sets by Janet Bird and careful lighting from Oliver Fenwick evoke the formality and majesty of George’s reign well enough to create a credible world.
And ultimately it’s the performances that carry the show, making this a significant and worthwhile addition to the extensive roster of Bennett plays that are seemingly never-ending in their tours of the country.
SOUTH PACIFIC
October 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 22, 2011, then touring
THERE’S been a lot of fuss about this production of South Pacific. Created in New York by the Lincoln Centre Theatre as the first major Broadway revival of the show, it has been playing at the Barbican over the summer before setting out on the road.
And as a steady, safe, straightforward version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s tuneful musical about American sailors at war and at play in World War Two Polynesia, it does pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
But for all the expense, cast numbers and lavish sets, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the hyperbole that has surrounded the show is perhaps a little overblown.
Don’t get me wrong: Bartlett Sher’s re-staging of the original Joshua Logan production is colourful, lively and eminently hummable, thanks in no small part to a large orchestra conducted by Jae Alexander. Whether, in the final analysis, it is truly memorable is another question entirely.
There are solid performances from the likes of Alex Ferns as the wheeler-dealer Billis and Daniel Koek as a strapping and conflicted Lieutenant Cable. Jason Howard, crossing over from the operatic world, is a tad stiff and oddly accented as the French settler Emile De Becque, while at this performance understudy Carly Anderson stepped bravely into the shoes of an indisposed Samantha Womack.
The stand-out player is Loretta Ables Sayre, who brings her Broadway portrayal of the native matchmaker Bloody Mary to the UK and invests her with a much darker, more sinister and therefore deeper and more interesting quality than I have seen in this otherwise unlikeable character.
The chorus work and dancing is all perfectly serviceable, and it’s hard not to find yourself singing along to a score stuffed with great melodies – Some Enchanted Evening, Nothin’ Like a Dame and Happy Talk, to name but three.
And if the warm audience reaction in Milton Keynes is anything to go by, the tour looks set to entertain the troops for months ahead.
THREE DAYS IN MAY
October 3, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 8, 2011, then touring
THE three days in question occurred at the latter end of May 1940 and were some of the most critical in the history of these British isles.
The hyperbole comes direct from the script, which describes the three days – in which new Prime Minister Churchill and his War Cabinet debated, then rejected, a possible peace deal with Hitler – as “intense, frightening and momentous”.
With such a gripping premise and so climactic a conclusion, it seems odd, then, that Ben Brown’s play manages to be so un-dramatic and, frankly, rather dull.
The basic set-up – five men sitting round a table talking – is unhelpful, of course, but Brown does himself no favours with a leaden framing device in which Churchill’s private secretary introduces both characters and action in a kind of “Previously in World War Two…” opening scene.
In fact, there’s a lot of narrative exposition going on, with people explaining to each other things they already know purely for the benefit of the audience, and slowing things down interminably in the process.
But there’s plenty of fine acting talent on stage, with a central star turn from Warren Clarke, returning to the theatre after more than a decade away. His Churchill is gruff, occasionally unintelligible but essentially heroic, a point of calm around which other voices exchange their variety of viewpoints.
Jeremy Clyde as the appeasing Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax is not given enough light and shade to reveal his character, although Robert Demeger’s Chamberlain conveys something of his struggle with personal demons. By contrast, the Labour leaders in the coalition cabinet, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, are no more than one-dimensional ciphers.
It’s a fascinating and historically gigantic occasion that receives a disappointingly static and stodgy production by director Alan Strachan. For students of politics and war, it’s a safe and solid hagiography of Churchill’s leadership. As theatre, it’s far less successful.
BUDDY
September 26, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, October 1, 2011, then touring
IT’S been around for more than 20 years, playing in the West End and on repeated tours around the country. It’s delighted existing fans and created new ones for the bespectacled icon of early rock ’n’ roll, who paradoxically gained immortality by dying in a plane crash on a foul winter’s night at the age of 22.
But dare I suggest that the Buddy machine, currently touring again, might have become a little complacent?
It was one of the first so-called jukebox musicals, dating from 1989, and it tells, in simple by-numbers scenes, the story of Buddy Holly’s rise from Texas country crossover singer to international star in just three short years.
It manages to shoehorn in most of the big hits, including Oh Boy, Peggy Sue and True Love Ways, as well as a handful of other people’s songs from the era, to make an evening of toe-tapping singalong with welcome live performances from musician-actors, rather than the pervasive backing tracks favoured by some penny-pinching producers.
But for all its innocence and straightforward likeability, it does rather suffer from feeling a little dated. In the intervening years, other musicals have come along that use the material of an artist or group in a much more sophisticated way. Buddy, with its three-chord riffs and simplistic staging, begins to look bland by comparison.
There’s no shortage of energy on stage, with Glen Joseph all grinning enthusiasm as the eponymous star and Christopher Redmond, Tom Millen and Roger Rowley (who alternates some performances in the title role) offering cheerful back-up as The Crickets. The sparkiness is infectious, too, with the audience clearly enjoying what amounts to a tribute concert by the end of the night.
But coupled with the all-too-common problem of an appalling sound mix making things hard on the ear and rendering some lush harmony vocals all but impossible to make out, Buddy is not quite the fresh-faced, youthful bundle of raw excitement it could be.
THE SYNDICATE
September 12, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, September 17, 2011
WHAT an interesting night this is. A huge company perform a straight play that’s a translation of an Italian Mafioso three-acter from 1960 that has never been produced in the UK before – it could be recipe for stodgy datedness and old-fashioned proscenium arch convention.
But when your star turn is Sir Ian McKellen, and your supporting cast include the likes of Michael Pennington, Oliver Cotton and Cherie Lunghi, you know you’re in for something a bit more special than your average rep production.
This tour of Eduardo de Filippo’s obscure Neapolitan drama with jokes has really been built around McKellen and his commitments filming The Hobbit this autumn. Celebrating 50 years in the business, he was keen to squeeze in a play before jetting off to New Zealand for his latest Gandalf jaunt.
Whatever the reason, it’s fabulous to see him still at the peak of his powers, playing Don Antonio, the 75-year-old ‘godfather’ of a Naples district who has held a fragile peace among the city’s warring tribal factions for 40 years.
The entire company have put in a lot of work on the expressiveness of the Neapolitan idiom. No cod accents here – this evocation of the atmosphere and vitality of southern Italy is down to movement, body language and emotion.
And the fact that they succeed in bringing this archaic and alien world to realistic life is a triumph not just for the cast but also for the director Sean Mathias and designer Angela Davies, whose sultry, thundery landscape outside the three giant French windows is simply but effectively created.
The play itself is a curiosity rather than a classic. There’s black humour to be found among all the twisted talk of family and honour, and some powerful speeches and dialogue in Mike Poulton’s fluent translation.
But the performances are far more interesting and entertaining than the piece itself, and McKellen is the figurehead of a fine troupe. Pennington is touching as Don Antonio’s longstanding friend and doctor who wants to leave for a quiet retirement in New York but is bound by his master to remain. Cotton is in superb form as a rebellious baker who refuses to be bullied by the Don, while Lunghi is sadly underused as Antonio’s wife Donna Armida.
Elsewhere, younger colleagues are variously fiery, moving and affecting, with stand-out performances from Gavin Fowler as the hothead baker’s son and Annie Hemingway as his pregnant girlfriend.
For hugely enjoyable performances and a fine-looking production, The Syndicate scores more highly than as a work of great theatre.
TOP HAT
August 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, August 27, then touring
There’s been a recent trend among producers searching for hit theatrical material to plunder the movie back catalogues in the hope of finding a property that has instant recognisable appeal to audiences.
And while there’s a huge debate to be had about the stifling of new creativity and the failure to develop emerging talent, you can kind of see the point: shows such as Legally Blonde, Dirty Dancing and Footloose already have a head start when it comes to making their money back.
So after the stage success of the Irving Berlin film musical White Christmas, it was only natural that another Berlin movie colossus should be on the target list. Step forward Top Hat, a new stage version of the 1935 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicle that was the RKO studio’s biggest earner of the 1930s, and launched with a world premiere in the traditionally glitzy, glamorous, star-studded environs of… Milton Keynes.
It’s a canny move (staging Top Hat, that is, not giving the world premiere in Milton Keynes) and director Matthew White has co-scripted an adaptation with Howard Jacques that actually works as a lush, lavish piece of musical theatre.
Elaborate and beautiful set designs by Hildegard Bechtler and some stunning costumes from Jon Morrell set the tone perfectly, while a vast chorus of hard-working talent puts Bill Deamer’s excellent choreographic skills to superb use.
Headliners Summer Strallen and Tom Chambers are oddly mismatched – she elegant and naturally accomplished, he slightly gawky and having clearly put an enormous amount of work into every footstep, echoing his Strictly routines – but then anyone would struggle in the shadow of Astaire and Rogers, and the pair make a decent enough leading couple in this silly, frothy tale of mistaken identity and resulting slapstick.
There’s humorous support aplenty from Martin Ball and Vivien Parry as socialite couple Horace and Madge Hardwick, and Stephen Boswell as their valet Bates and Ricardo Afonso as a comedy Italian provide laughs with broad brush strokes.
But the real winner is the fabulous Berlin score, including standards such as Isn’t This a Lovely Day, Top Hat and Cheek to Cheek, performed by a top-notch 14-strong orchestra under the commanding baton of Dan Jackson. The sound quality is immaculate, the playing first rate and the music itself simply sublime.
If the show is to have a West End life beyond the national tour that begins here, it will be in no small part down to the ravishing sounds emanating from the pit.
ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
July 11, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, July 16, 2011
MICHAEL Frayn has a gift for farce and a real ear for comic timing in dialogue. And in Alarms and Excursions, he exploits every opportunity to display this enjoyable facility.
It may not have the relentless madness of the second act of Noises Off, but there’s plenty of wit and elegance about the humour of his writing in this collection of sketches, playlets and duologues, brought together under one umbrella to make a full-length evening.
The best bits – perhaps inevitably – are the longer pieces, which are allowed to develop and mature like one-act plays with rounded characters and some depth to the gags. The dinner party at which every beep and buzz and chirp of modern technology seems determined to drive the guests crazy is classic Frayn.
By contrast, some of the interspersed pieces amount to little more than revue sketches and raise their chuckles without much recourse to the craft of a playwright.
Taken at face value, as a hotch-potch of humorous offerings, it’s an entertaining enough evening, and provides a fine opportunity for some well-honed comedy talent among the four performers.
Robert Daws reveals facets beyond his trademark pompous buffoon, mining laughs with a facial expression or physical movement as often as with the words. Aden Gillett does smarmy know-all like almost nobody else, while Belinda Lang and Serena Evans explore accents, looks and characters to considerable comic effect.
Director Joe Harmston keeps things rattling along at breakneck speed, sometimes losing moments in the process, but it’s polished, well-drilled and amusing.
JEKYLL AND HYDE
June 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, July 2, 2011
THERE’S a wonderful 1989 film comedy called The Tall Guy in which the plot centres around an excruciatingly awful musical adaptation of The Elephant Man, entitled Elephant!. The movie includes snatches of several songs, which are the most brilliant parodies of buttock-clenching musical theatre that you’re ever likely to hear.
My advice to anyone planning to see Jekyll and Hyde, in its current touring version, is simple: watch The Tall Guy before you go. It will add immeasurably to your viewing pleasure.
Everything about this production is thrillingly misconceived. The score by Frank Wildhorn is fabulously banal, facile and largely tuneless, with the exception of the big number This Is The Moment, which as an uplifting song of hope is hopelessly mis-placed just before Jekyll turns into Hyde. The book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse are crammed with inspired clichés, torturous couplets and painting-by-numbers dialogue.
And the spectacular direction by Martin Connor is just plain wrong in so many ways, from hiding Marti Pellow behind a high laboratory counter to forcing the poor man to endure not one but two toe-curling sex scenes with no more menace or danger than he displays when he first pops a child’s balloon as Mr Hyde. Yes, you read that right: to demonstrate the pure evil of Jekyll’s alter ego, one of the first demonic deeds he executes is to pop a child’s balloon.
You almost expect Bricusse and Wildhorn to be standing at the back of the stalls, like Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder in The Producers, watching the audience’s reaction transform from horror-struck astonishment at the appalling Springtime for Hitler to utter delight when they realise the whole thing has to be one big joke.
Unfortunately for all concerned in Jekyll and Hyde, everyone is taking it far too seriously for it to be a joke. This could easily be a five-star review if everyone had their tongue firmly in their cheek and played the show as the hysterical self-parody it almost is. Almost, but not quite.
Poor Pellow is left using his admittedly sumptuous singing voice to belt out crass platitudes in a sub-Russell Watson, cod upper-crust, accent. His hideous transformation is ingeniously achieved by the theatrical coup of sweeping his fringe forwards and putting on a top hat and cape. Extraordinarily, nobody seems to be able to see through this cunning disguise.
Meanwhile, the two girls who are bafflingly attracted to the selfish, priggish git who wreaks hilarious havoc on Victorian London’s gentry sing a duet that would love to be I Know Him So Well but just isn’t.
The Jekyll side of my nature prevents me from naming and shaming anyone else involved in this expensively packaged fiasco, and by the looks of some of the faces at curtain call, many of them will be only too glad when the tour ends and they can put as much distance as possible between themselves and it.
The Hyde part of me, on the other hand, would suggest that if you’re the kind of theatregoer who enjoys a spot of unintentional hilarity at the acutely embarrassed expense of the performers, then this show comes highly recommended.
GREASE
May 27, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, June 4, 2011
It had an entire television series devoted to discovering two new stars, a four-year (and counting) run in the West End, plus a couple of tours in which to find its feet.
But even without these leg-ups in the promotional stakes, Paul Nicholas and David Ian’s production of the 40-year-old Grease would be an undisputed crowd-pleaser.
Taking heavy inspiration from the 1978 movie with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, director David Gilmore concentrates on the fun and frivolity of the fifties high-school tale. Thus there are stunning dance routines (choreographed by Arlene Phillips), some beautiful costumes (Andreane Neofitou) and a cast of tireless Thunderbirds, Pink Ladies and assorted others ensuring the pace never flags.
The on-stage band of six are faultless under the baton of Gareth Williams and the well-known score never falls into the trap of being stale or routine.
Among the performers, Danny Bayne – who won the original competition – is very relaxed in his role of Danny, as well he might be after several years in the part. Opposite him, Carina Gillespie in a blonde wig has more than a look of Newton-John about her, even if the chemistry between them sometimes feels a little painted-on.
Robin Cousins – yes, the ice-skater – reveals a wonderful singing voice and considerable stage presence as the Teen Angel, and there’s an impressive double act from Ricky Rojas and Kate Somerset How as Kenickie and Rizzo, all attitude and strutting.
There are niggles: as so often with touring musicals, the vocals are far too low in the mix, making it a struggle to make out the words a lot of the time. Mind you, the noisy, talkative audience don’t help, even if they do lend loud encouragement to the performers.
But it’s the material that makes this show a surefire winner, and while the underlying message – you have to become a slut if you want to be popular – remains as suspect as ever, the songs are infectious, memorable and full of fun.
JEFFREY BERNARD IS UNWELL
April 25, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, April 30, 2011
WHILE there’s plenty of amusement to be found at the expense of a witty drunk, there’s something about Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell that leaves a slightly sour taste, like a morning-after hangover.
Keith Waterhouse’s 1989 play ostensibly tells the anecdotal story of the real-life Spectator columnist Bernard, supposing him to have been accidentally locked into his favourite watering hole after hours with nothing to do but reminisce and down more vodka.
It’s actually a broader picture of the declining but still deeply seductive world of Soho from the 1960s and 70s, told through Bernard’s eyes with the self-deprecating, resigned humour of the terminally alcoholic.
Robert Powell takes the role originated famously by Peter O’Toole, and has more than a look of the old soak about him. It’s a huge part requiring optimum capabilities and, fortunately for us, Powell appears at the very top of his game. His drunk is always controlled, like the functioning alcoholic who cleverly disguises the depth of his permanent inebriation, and his bravura performance is a joy to watch.
Whether he’s letting you into a half-secret about a celebrity acquaintance or performing the superb egg-in-a-beer-glass pub trick, he’s never less than a consummate actor with natural instincts and immaculate comic timing.
Often mistaken for a one-man show, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell actually includes four other cast members, who play out a host of characters and mini-scenes from Bernard’s memory. These interjections are frequently ultra-brief and often claim the best lines, but they always serve the central character intelligently and keep the momentum moving forward.
Among these supporting players, the assured Rebecca Lacey stands out, but they all play their part in helping to create a rounded view of the lovable monster that is Bernard.
And if Waterhouse’s play is a little on the self-indulgent, rose-tinted side, there are enough big laughs and fine performances to make it a memorable night at the theatre. Or the pub, come to that.
AVENUE Q
April 18, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, April 23, 2011
The history of Avenue Q is an interesting one from the perspective of this side of the Pond. Starting out as an off-Broadway show in 2003, it quickly transferred to Broadway itself before Cameron Mackintosh picked it up and brought it over here in 2006. Since then, it’s played three West End theatres and is now out on a national tour.
With a parody of worldwide children’s legend Sesame Street as its core (complete with both human and puppet characters), and a heavily laden undercurrent of cynicism and New York vitriol bubbling just beneath the surface, it’s a curious combination. It also makes it hard to define its success.
It takes as its premise the notion that, as children, we were all filled with promises that we could be whatever we wanted to be, while as adults we have come to realise this is just so much claptrap. The whole thing is wrapped up in a cheerful, sing-song score with playfully barbed lyrics – hence numbers such as It Sucks to Be Me and Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.
And while it’s all very witty and there are plenty of laughs to be had at Jim Henson’s expense, the overall impression is of something rather less than the sum of its parts.
None of the problem, however, lies with the cast, an energetic, multi-talented group of performers who breathe extraordinary life into the puppets, often doubling roles and voices simultaneously to hilarious effect. It’s sometimes difficult to tell where the puppet ends and the actor begins.
Particularly strong are Rachel Jerram and Adam Pettigrew as the romantic leads Kate Monster and Princeton, but there are also terrific performances from Chris Thatcher and Katharine Moraz, who work together to create a variety of characters with some deliciously wicked traits – notably the porn-addicted Trekkie Monster.
It’s bright, breezy, colourful and pretty filthy – don’t bring your pre-schoolers – and even if it’s not the next great American musical, as Sir Cameron would like to believe, it’s still an entertaining night out with a surreal, fur-covered twist.
KING LEAR
March 15, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, March 19, 2011, then touring
He’s done Richard III, he’s done Macbeth, he’s done The Tempest. Now, in his ‘grey’ years, it’s the biggie: Derek Jacobi takes on King Lear.
The reassuring news is that Jacobi wins hands down. It’s all the magnificent acting display anyone could hope for, and the consummate skills on offer range from deep pathos to heart-wrenching agony. The tears that spring so believably from this supremely talented performer are wrung equally effortlessly from his awestruck audience.
This is an actor at the height of his powers, and the masterclass is simply a joy to watch. Every moment he’s on stage in this minimalist Donmar Warehouse touring production, he’s nothing less than mesmerising, and it’s a peerless portrayal of a mind in disintegration.
There’s a down side to this thespian extravaganza, of course, and that is that he makes everyone around him seem somehow slightly inadequate.
Actually, that’s a little harsh. Director Michael Grandage draws out some really strong performances among the supporting cast, notably a noble Gloucester from Paul Jesson, an emotionally gripping Earl of Kent from Michael Hadley and a nicely judged, unfussy performance from the always impressive Ron Cook as the Fool.
Christopher Oram’s simple, stripped-wood set pares the drama down to its raw emotions and Grandage reveals the lightest of touches with his handling of the ensemble and the careful rolling out of the well-paced story.
But the night is unquestionably Sir Derek’s, and he seizes the mettle with both hands, his angrily ruddy face offsetting the snow-white hair and the raging monarch pointing up the frailty of the man.
It’s a devastating performance, and one that reflects great credit on both Milton Keynes Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse for their willingness to bring it to the regions.
HAMLET
March 2, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, March 5, 2011, then touring
So many Hamlets, so little time. Since one-time Dr Who David Tennant unleashed his masterful version on the adoring public in 2008, high-profile Hamlets have included Jude Law for the Donmar Warehouse and now Rory Kinnear for the National Theatre, touring in Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress production.
To be perfectly frank, this latest in a long line of gloomy Danes adds little to the pantheon. While Kinnear can deliver the lines and wrings considerable depth from the multi-layered characterisation, the overall concept and ensemble do little more than go through the motions and the result feels long and very drawn-out.
Set in the contemporary world of a crumbling dictatorship, with security forces whispering into their sleeves and pulling handguns on anyone remotely threatening, it could have been both relevant and compulsive. In fact, the ideas run thin all too quickly and it ends up looking like a painted-on notion rather than a thought-through concept.
Kinnear himself is angsty, volatile and sincere, but looks ten years too old for the part and ill at ease in a T-shirt and track pants. And whoever made the decision for him to deliver ‘To be or not to be’ while dragging on a fag should have serious questions asked of them.
Among the strong-on-paper supporting cast, David Calder is entertaining as both Polonius and the Gravedigger, but Patrick Malahide and Clare Higgins fail to ignite as Claudius and Gertrude, and too many of the ensemble are either two-dimensional or just plain inaudible – an inexcusable fault in such a high-quality company.
If you’re going to run pretty much the whole text at almost four hours – as a certain Mr Branagh did twenty years ago – you’ve really got to make it worth the audience’s while to invest the time and effort. On this occasion, the National could (and should) do better.
BLITHE SPIRIT
February 14, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, February 19, 2011, then touring
ALL the signs about this revival of Noel Coward’s biggest hit are promising: an award-winning West End and Broadway director, a stellar cast including one of Britain’s best-loved character actresses and the prodigiously successful producing talents of the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Which makes it all the more bemusing that it doesn’t come off with quite the fireworks one might expect.
There’s much to enjoy, from the stunning and elaborate set (Hildegard Bechtler) to the charmingly wicked Ruthie Henshall, proving as the ghost Elvira that she’s just as much at home in a straight play as she is in a musical.
Coward’s 1941 play – these days firmly a period piece – centres on writer Charles Condomine’s plan to invite the medium Madame Arcati to hold a séance. His intention is to plunder her “tricks of the trade” for his latest novel, but the scheme backfires badly when the ghost of his first wife is summoned up, much to the despair of his second, Ruth.
As Charles and Ruth, Robert Bathurst and Hermione Norris reprise their husband-and-wife act from television’s Cold Feet, their real-life familiarity reflected in their on-stage performances. Alison Steadman makes a decent Madame Arcati, making the most of her bizarre character’s foibles and quirks.
But there’s also a definite sense of the ghost of Noel lurking somewhere in the background: the rapid-fire speed of delivery across the cast is no substitute for Coward’s crisp pacing, and both lines and laughs are lost in the mad rush to be witty. Similarly, the lighting is both dingy and in places crude, with dim footlights casting obscuring shadows, all of which contributes to a feeling of everything amounting to less than the sparkling, bright gem that Coward originally wrote.
It’s a perfectly serviceable, solid production, directed competently if a little unimaginatively by Thea Sharrock, whose previous credits include the Daniel Radcliffe Equus.
It’s certain to do good business on this pre-London tour, and good luck to it. I just can’t help wishing for a few more of those fireworks.
FOOTLOOSE
February 7, 2011
Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday, February 12, 2011
KEVIN Bacon has apparently spent 25 years bribing DJs not to play Footloose at parties. He’s never quite been able to live down the legacy of his iconic role in the 1984 movie.
Implausibly but actually based on a real Midwest American town in the 1979, Footloose tells the story of a Chicago boy, Ren, who moves with his newly single mother to the little Bible-belt community of Bomont only to find the local reverend has had dancing banned.
Ren’s mission, from hereon in, is to overturn the rules and get the schoolkids jumping and jiving again.
It’s not a tale to tax the brain too heavily, but that’s not what Footloose is about. What it’s about is the dancing, and this energetic, highly-charged touring production scores on every possible level as far as the dancing goes.
With a thumping score performed by a driving pit band under musical director Julian Reeve, it races from song to song pausing only to change sets (cleverly designed by Morgan Large). The biggest impact comes from barnstormers such as Holding Out for a Hero and the title track, but the best moments come from the quieter ballads, here performed wonderfully by Karen Ascoe as the preacher’s wife and Carys Gray as Ren’s lonely mum.
Busted star Matt Willis is nominally the headliner, but in truth his part is minor. More important are the roles of the reverend and Ren, and here Steven Pinder (late of Brookside) and Max Milner respectively come into their own. Pinder has a surprisingly mellow voice and really acts his emotion-filled part, while Milner has apparently boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm as he blasts his way through the show, ably contrasted by Lorna Want as Ariel, the preacher’s daughter who finds her soulmate in the new arrival.
Karen Bruce’s direction relies heavily on some stunning choreography brilliantly presented by the large, mainly youthful cast, but she also finds touching and poignant moments of stillness within the tidal wave of movement.
There’s great music, fine singing and superb dancing, and if the whole doesn’t quite hang from the flimsy storyline, there’s plenty of visual excitement to make up for the lack of mental stimulation.
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