Cabaret

Cabaret

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

The Lowry, 25 September 2012

Just whenever there is a danger of this show being a Will Young vehicle only, it goes and turns edgy and violent.

And since it is a musical about the rise of Nazism, along with all the complaisance, complicity and cowardice accompanying that chthonic upsurge, you cannot really complain.  What you may recall, as you see the grocer and the landlady break off their engagement, is Henri Bergson’s decision to register as a Jew, thereby spitting on the Vichy government who gave him an opt-out.  You don’t see anyone taking a stand like that here.

The show is excellent, of course, and so too Will Young.  He’s looking and behaving an awful lot like Norman Wisdom here, mind.  But, anyway, for genuine cabaret look to Henri Salvador singing Maladie d’Amour.  A legend, not so long ago deceased.

Cabaret is showing until 29 September, details here.

Starlight Express

Starlight Express

Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe

Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber

The Lowry, 20 June 2012

Puzzling and perplexing, that’s the provisional judgement regarding this curious musical beast.

Lets try to work it out, the gender landscape at least.  Men are train engines and can be powered by steam, diesel and even electricity (though it has to be said that the masculinity and sexuality of the electric train is called into question since he’s ‘OK with AC/DC’); women are carriages or, when they’re especially appetizing, buffet cars.  They attach themselves to, or are ‘coupled with’ engines: that’s the only way they can move forward.  Now, doesn’t it already sound despicable?

Anyway, the engines race each other for the right to take certain carriages, that’s the story: who will win the race?  It’s a kind of courtship ritual and has most likely been going on since Stephenson’s day.

There’s also a Starlight Express entity that the engines appeal to when things don’t go their way.  They don’t pray to it exactly, because there’s no element of propitiation.  There’s instead an infantile wish or appeal, such as savages make when scrabbling about in the dirt.  At first ‘Starlight Express’ sounds like a metaphor for God, an heavenly engine of some sort, but then we learn that it’s ‘within’ – well, of course it is.  Narcissism, hippie style, fits in with the reactionary politics.

Where the show is not confused and idiotic, it is suspect.  However, one good feature was the dexterity and skill exhibited by the skaters.  Here the standard was very high.

Starlight Express is at The Lowry until 30 June, details here.

Toxic Bankers!

Toxic Bankers!

By Andrew Taylor and Desmond O’Connor

The Lowry, 24 May 2012

This intelligent, well-acted drama takes a long, hard look at some of those chemically challenged city folk.

It’s probably best described as a satirical musical and if you think of Sondheim doing Whoops! you’ll get the gist, right enough.  The songs have a smart and sassy quality, and I was only mildly surprised to learn that they were written by Desmond O’Connor, a name that benighted burlesque-goers and absinthe-quaffers (I’ve developed an abiding affection for Gold Wasser, myself) will likely know.  He’s a familiar face on the cabaret circuit, what with his panda-spec eyes and all that.

They have keyhole surgery incisiveness, do these songs, at their best.  If they also draw as many spurts of blood as a ragged rusty blade might, should we be surprised?

I enjoyed this show immensely, was vastly entertained all the way through.

Toxic Bankers! is at The Lowry again tonight, details here.  Future tour dates will most likely be posted here.

Opera North’s Carousel

Carousel

Music by Richard Rodgers

Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Opera North

The Lowry, 23 May 2012

Context is absolutely key to understanding the impact of Carousel when it opened on Broadway in 1945.

The Second World War had come to an end, but many of the men that America had sent overseas had failed to return.  There then came Carousel, a musical that’s in part about how a man returns from the grave to aid his ailing daughter.  His return being accompanied by the stirring song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, recognised immediately as a classic.  Be in no doubt, it was powerful stuff – and it still is, as this admirable production makes plain.

Eric Greene’s central performance as Billy Bigelow is brilliant; the set and lighting design is inventive and effective, especially in the transition from heaven to earth in scene 3; and the use of Agnes de Mille’s choreography was a masterstroke.  To pick out other things to admire would be easy an’ all.

Indeed, I have only two qualms.  The first is the really rather romantic attitude to domestic abuse: ‘When a man hits you, can it feel like a kiss?’ a daughter asks her mother.  She doesn’t answer: ‘No, not really.’  The second is with that classic, hymn-like song (the two were fond of these kind of songs, recall ‘Climb Every Mountain’) and in particular with the line ‘walk on / with hope in your heart’ – for once you depend on hope, you’re already lost to God.  A true Christian has a faith that fear cannot ever touch.  Hope is for heathens, if they want it.

Anyway, it is some sweet ride, this Carousel.  It’s at The Lowry until 26 May then tours the UK thereafter.  Further details are here and here.

Close the Coalhouse Door

Close the Coalhouse Door

By Alan Plater

Northern Stage & Live Theatre

The Lowry, 15 May 2012

 

This is a joyous, vital production of Plater’s play, first performed in 1968.

What is clear now – and one senses that Alan Plater knew it even then – is that the play is an elegy, a lament for an industry that gave much to the working class movement and the nation itself, but was in decline then and is now virtually no more.

Even though union battles might be recounted still in songs and stories, their mines are shut up and mining communities desolated.  Those fellows who would have been pitmen at present earn their daily bread in call-centres and megastores.  If they’re lucky enough to have jobs at all, of course.  That Thatcher woman, her legacy lives on.

As for the play, it invites you to traipse through a couple of centuries of mining history, what with neo-folk music and impish humour lighting the way.  It is entertaining, moving and you do learn a fair bit as well.

Close the Coalhouse Door is at The Lowry until 19 May then continues its UK tour.  Further details can be found here and here.

Rent

Rent

By Jonathan Larson

All Saints Musical Productions

The Lowry, 1 May 2012

This is a lively, fiery production of Jonathan Larson’s astonishingly successful musical.

The original show ran for over twelve years on Broadway, from 1996 to 2008, clocking up some 5,123 performances altogether, but to echo the song ‘Seasons of Love’: how do you measure success?  Another song in the show – ‘La Vie Boheme’ – alludes to Larson’s original inspiration: Rent is a loose take on Puccini’s opera, which has been relocated to ‘90s New York and given a happy ending.

Out of many fine performances, Simon Murray’s vivacious Angel stood out.  It’s a wonderful role because (s)he is in many respects the oaken heart of the show.  Laura Bryant made for a sexy, sensual Mimi while Adam Whittle as Roger, a punk rocker, gave a marvellous performance of ‘One Song Glory’, which to my mind is the best song in the show.  It served also as a poignant reminder that Jonathan Larson (1960-1996) never actually lived to see Rent open, nor tasted its glorious success.

As a celebration of living in the moment and to the max (the take-home message is something like: you don’t own life, it is rented out to you, so make the most of it) and an embrace of otherness (Larson’s bohemians, all citizens of cosmopolis, are marginalised in various ways, not least by being HIV-positive) Rent really cannot be beat.  It’s a terrific achievement.

This amateur production, easily of professional calibre, is at The Lowry until 5 May, further details are here.

Wonderful Town

Wonderful Town

Music by Leonard Bernstein

The Lowry, 5 April 2012

It is impossible to recommend this show highly enough: it rates 10 out of 10 with ease.

The story concerns two sisters, newly arrived from Ohio and aiming to make it big in the Big Apple.  One is an actress, the other’s a writer.  They find digs in Greenwich Village and encounter a bunch of city eccentrics, including an artistically inclined landlord and a wolfish reporter, before finding true love and professional advancement.

What’s sensational about the show is how the stage is piled high always with colour and incident: fast-moving and high-kicking dance, gorgeous costumes and sets, generous helpings of humour, songs wildly different in character, switching the mood suddenly from slow and moving (A Quiet Girl) to frenetic and exciting (Conga!) to raucous and crazy (My Darlin’ Eileen).

Bernstein’s jaunty and cheery score sets you up perfectly for a Runyonesque yarn of big-city life.  All the leads deliver terrific performances, and among the ensemble cast Frankie Jenna caught the eye (or my eye at least) – and that on more than one occasion.  And a live orchestra, particularly one as consummately accomplished as the Halle, makes all the difference in the world to a show like this.  Bernstein’s music, just like Gershwin’s, needs to be played live.

Yeah, the great big city is a wondrous toy.  And this is a wondrous production of a feel-good, musical comedy that came just four years before the tragedy of West Side Story.  It’s at The Lowry until 21 April then tours the UK until July, details here and here.  Do not miss it.

No Sleep for the Haunted

No Sleep for the Haunted

By Geoff Page

Perfect Pitch Musicals

The Lowry, 8 March 2012

On the night presented as a work in progress, this musical yet delivers a satisfying jolt of terror.

Actually, a more precise description of the form might be opera comique, rather than musical, but that’s probably a discussion for another day.

There were three ghost stories all told, with two (‘The Judge’s House’ by Bram Stoker and ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens) being nested within the last (‘A Warning to the Curious’ by M.R. James).  Expertly melded together, they were alternately acted, sung (in recitative secco for the most part) and narrated by the three versatile cast members.

It was eerily atmospheric and there were some marvellously macabre set pieces, the pick involving a judge, a noose and an unfortunate interloper.  The performances were terrific and I’d draw attention in particular to Fred Broom’s wonderful singing.  His voice soared.

No Sleep for the Haunted is one of The Lowry’s NeverBeenSeen strand of works and is showing again tonight and tomorrow, details here.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Lyrics by Tim Rice

Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber

The Lowry, 10 January 2012

It would be pushing it a bit, I think, to call this musical a classic; but it does have a certain magic.

The whole shebang is clearly, absolutely absurd: Elvis as pharaoh, cowboy songs, calypso tunes, gospel anthems, that French ditty with the Eiffel Tower in the background… and so on, all in Ancient Egypt.  But because the musical flaunts and even peacock-struts its very absurdity, somehow it all holds together.  Meta-cognition, irony, call it what you like, is a kind of glue.  Just as Bryan Robson was, in Ray Wilkins’ immortal summation, ‘an egg’ (‘So versatile,’ Ray helpfully elaborated) so Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a meringue (lightweight yet durable).

Keith Jack as Joseph, and the whole of the cast actually, do a sterling job in bringing the musical to life.  Here Charlotte Watts as Mrs Potiphar, a temptress and a half, naturally caught the eye, but I must admit also to a fondness for Richard J. Hunt, who’s been in this production each time I’ve seen it.  (And was he also in the recent production of Spring Awakening?  I’ll have to check.)  He’s a stellar stalwart of the show, who’s always lively and giving it 100%+, really getting into the spirit of the thing.  His vivacity is as infectious as Joseph’s coat is impractical.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is at The Lowry until 15 January, details here.

Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

USA, 1944

Cornerhouse, 17 December 2011

Set in old St. Louis, which is to say in the 1900s, this is a charming musical.

Judy Garland singing, ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas…’  is rather fine, so too the entertaining shenanigans of her little sister.  This is a girl who, as a for instance, buries her dead (sic) dolls in the local cemetery.

Although nothing really spectacular or dramatic happens (and there are none of the elaborate set pieces that are to be found in Vincente Minnelli’s later An American in Paris), it is somehow very moving and sweet.

When a girl asks you to help her turn the lights out in her house that means she likes you.  That’s one thing I learnt and took away from the film, anyway.

 Meet Me in St. Louis is a fine musical and is playing as part of Cornerhouse’s Festive Favourites season all this week, details here.