The Week in Review(s)

Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily, in which I look back on the last seven days of theatre news and reviews (including my own).

FRIDAY MARCH 3

Tonight I attended the first preview of a new production of Guys and Dolls, my all-time favourite musical, at the Bridge; I’ve written about this here.

My love affair with this most perfectly crafted of any Broadway musical began with the National’s still-unrivalled production in the Olivier in 1982, that Richard Eyre directed and was his calling card to succeed Peter Hall as artistic director there in 1987; it starred an incandescent Julia McKenzie as Miss Adelaide (above left, probably the greatest musical theatre actress Britain has ever produced), with the late Bob Hoskins as Nathan Detroit (above right), the late Ian Charleson as Sky Masterson, and Julie Covington (In one of her last stage roles) as Miss Sarah Brown.

I saw that production at least a dozen times in its original National Theatre run and subsequent transfer to the Prince of Wales; in 1996, Eyre revived it, with Imelda Staunton (who had been an original Hot Box Girl and understudy to McKenzie in 1982) starring as Miss Adelaide.

No other production, till now, has matched that in coming up aces back to back, as Sky Masterson might put it; though the last two West End revivals, by Michael Grandage in 2005 at the Piccadilly and a Chichester revival that transferred to the Savoy, then Phoenix, in 2015, had their pleasures. I’ve also seen a great Broadway revival in 1992 (with Faith Prince and Nathan Lane as Miss Adelaide and Nathan) and a Broadway misfire in 2009 (whose cast included Oliver Platt and Craig Bierko as Nathan and Sky), plus an all-black cast in a production at Manchester’s Royal Exchange in 2017 (pictured above).

And when I was at University, I produced a student production of the show at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge; the director was Julius Green, a producer who now works for Bill Kenwright (and is an authority on Agatha Christie). After the run, we even had a royal gala — Prince Edward was then at Cambridge and his mum and aunt Margaret both came, at which Edward appeared in his student revue and we did a few numbers from Guys and Dolls!

SATURDAY MARCH 4

Tonight the West End’s second longest-ever running play The Woman in Black closed after a run of nearly 34 years — at three different West End theatres, the Strand (now the Novello) and Playhouse, before settling at the Fortune.

Of course it helped that it’s just a two-hander (or, spoiler alert, three), so the cast wage bill is low; also the Fortune is one of the smallest theatres in town, with 432 seats (on three levels), making it easier to fill.

But the long run of The Woman in Black has also taken it out of circulation for smaller shows to transfer to; with the nearby Duchess (492 seats) also now given over to an open-ended run of The Play Goes Wrong, producers seeking intimate theatres have only the Ambassadors left (444 seats) and the grubby Arts (350) left. So The Woman in Black closing creates a big window of opportunity in the West End.

The Woman in Black, meanwhile, heads out on a UK national tour, kicking off in Wolverhampton in September; no doubt it will be back in the West End whenever a filler is required.

SUNDAY MARCH 5

Today we started watching the latest series of The Crown, the five-series (and counting) spin-off from Peter Morgan’s 2013 West End play The Audience (which followed the last monarch’s reign across some of the prime ministers she had a weekly audience with).

The series, created by Morgan and with Stephen Daldry (who directed the original production of The Audience) and its co-producers Robert Fox and Matthew Byam Shaw on board as executive producers, it owes its existence to its stage origins.

The fifth season, covering 1991 to 1997, is led by Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth, with Jonathan Pryce as her husband the Duke of Edinburgh (pictured above).

Pretty much every actor has a theatrical pedigree, from Lesley Manville as Princes Margaret and Dominic West as Prince Charles, to Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, Olivia Williams as Camilla Parker Bowles, Jonny Lee Miller as John Major and Oliver Chris as Diana’s doctor friend James Colthurst, who introduces her to biographer Andrew Morton. 

I’ve seen every single one of them onstage, mostly multiple times, so watching The Crown is fascinating for spotting the actors and seeing how much they transform into their characters.

MONDAY MARCH 6

Tonight saw the West End opening of The Great British Bake-off Musical, a spin-off of the long-running TV show that originated on the BBC before decamping (in every sense) to Channel 4, after a regional try-out at Cheltenham’s Everyman last summer.

It’s an amiable, affectionate tribute that’s pretty obvious and mostly generic sounding, but blessed with a very classy cast who take it to another level entirely.

They don’t come much classier than Haydn Gwynne, who channels Prue Leith but with her own brand of radiance, even when dressed as a scone. John Owen-Jones — the West End’s longest running Phantom and Valjean — finally gets to show us something different, and is suave and knowing in the Paul Hollywood role. Amongst the likeable contestants, Damian Humbley and Charlotte Wakefield are particularly charming and disarming, and are provided with the fullest back story that brings them together delightfully.

It’s not Sondheim, but then it doesn’t aspire to be. Is it opportunistic? Sure. But only as much as every other West End title based on a beloved film or TV show is.

Which makes reviews like Nick Curtis’s curmudgeonly one in the Evening Standard strangely out of sorts with his own likely readership. “This is low-level entertainment for the undemanding, that never rises to the level of a technical hit, let alone a showstopper,” he says. The contempt for his readers is palpable. I, more than most, like to demand more of my musicals — but I accept that low-hanging fruit is sometimes just what audiences want.  Familiarity breeds content (and contents) — hence the success of shows like Only Fools and Horses (now the longest running show in the storied history of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket) and Moulin Rouge.  

There’s really not much point blaming a show for doing exactly what it says on the tin. Maybe things could be a bit more adventurous in the West End — but familiarity sells tickets. As Alice Savile comments in Time Out, “Where most art forms strive for novelty, West End theatre’s appetite for artistic cannibalism is pretty much limitless, as it hungrily raids pop culture in search of sweet, sweet box office gold. You’ve got verbatim Wag drama in Rooney v Vardy, Netflix-inspired excitement in forthcoming play Stranger Things: The First Shadow. And now, a chance to relive the thrills and spills of a much-loved reality telly show, in the form of The Great British Bake Off Musical. As the poster for ABBA jukebox musical Mamma Mia! says, ‘You already know you’re gonna love it!’.”

TUESDAY MARCH 7

The farmer and the ploughman should be friends, goes the song in Oklahoma! (pictured below in its current West End revival at Wyndham’s). But can critics and some bloggers?

I don’t intend to fuel the divisions there, but one of the latter tweeted the other day how sad they were that “certain critics actively try to dislike as many shows as possible.”

Of course, you could say that certain bloggers actively try to like as many shows as possible — their self-image depends on it, and it’s the way to get validation and quoted on the posters and outside the theatre. (Time was when such quotes actually meant something; they’re now so random you might as well quote members of the public, which some producers have even done with campaigns based on twitter quotes).

I like to think that I’m a champion for the theatre, too. But it doesn’t mean a thing if you declare every single opening (potentially) the show of the year — until the very next night produces yet another five-star rave.

Of course the industry laps up the praise — and even puts it up on their posters nowadays — but, as Michael Billington said of the late, great Irving Wardle, “He believed criticism was only valid when you justified your opinion. He didn’t just bang out an opinion in the first paragraph, but allowed it to emerge through detailed evidence.”

There’s nothing detailed about the ‘evidence’ that this brand of ‘reviewing’ presents — just a stream of meaningless praise. It’s great for quotes, no doubt, but the endless gush is just mush.

WEDNESDAY MARCH 8

Bonnie and Clyde the Musical managed a Broadway run of less than a month when it opened in New York at the beginning of December 2011, before closing on December 30 after just 36 performances (that followed 33 previews).

As such, it slightly outran Wonderland (33 performances after 30 previews) that had preceded it earlier that same spring.

But these double failures were followed by an even more disastrous revival of Wildhorn’s most substantial hit, Jekyll and Hyde, which had run for over 1500 performances across over 4 years in its original 1997 premiere but only managed 30 performances and 15 previews when it was revived in 2013.

No wonder that no one has produced a Wildhorn show on Broadway in the decade since.

In an interview with Broadwayworld, he blames bad producing: ”Even on Broadway, the problem was never the audience. It was a combination of producer stuff on Broadway that just didn’t come up enough to support the venture that it was. You have to have the deep pockets, especially in the winter months when it’s tough times. The audiences were always great!”

Meanwhile, over here, he finally has his first-ever West End production with Bonnie and Clyde, where it had a limited summer run at the Arts Theatre and now returns to the larger Garrick.

As with The Great Bake-off Musical earlier this week, the terrific cast and production rise above the plodding material. But even so it’s a lacklustre musical.

It comes with its own spoiler alert at the top of the show showing you how it will end; we then spend 2.5 hours getting there, via a succession of mostly indifferent songs, with a 2nd act that is 50% reprises. But Frances Mayli McCann and Jordan Luke Gage (pictured above) sing it with bursting charisma in the title roles, and there’s also strong support in underwritten roles by George Maguire and Jodie Steele as Clyde’s brother and sister-in-law.

Nick Winston’s production — which began as a one-night concert version at the London Palladium before being shrunk-wrapped to fit the Arts Theatre stage — now finds a warmer, less crowded home at the Garrick; it is very handsomely done, with effective projections by Nina Dunn that do a lot of the heavy scenic lifting.

THURSDAY MARCH 9

I could just pretend that the revival of We Will Rock You this summer is just not happening: the show’s appointed press representative Neil Reading PR and his account manager for the show Emma Harlen have inadvertently promoted this fiction by simply not sending me a press release. (But then this failure isn’t specific to WWRY: they don’t send me ANY of their releases. Which is a unique approach to their job — and kind of makes it entirely redundant).

But the announcement of Lee Mead and Brenda Edwards to head the cast — which again, of course, I never received — has changed the story.  

I’m a fan of both, so I messaged them private congratulations. And Lee has kindly agreed to sort me out tickets to see it. It really is something when the star of a show has to do that because the press agent refuses to engage with you.

The same press agent is also handling the London transfer of A Strange Loop.  When I found out about yesterday —ahead of the press release being sent, but of course not sent to me anyway — I tweeted this and the author himself retweeted it. 

Who, indeed, needs press releases?

I, meanwhile, contacted the artistic director of the Barbican to congratulate him on the programming of this truly ground-breaking show — I saw it three times in New York — and he told me he’d accommodate me when I wanted to see it.

So, who needs press agents? 

SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY

My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on Broadway is here: https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-march-6/

Today I’m headed to Manchester for an overnight stay: I’m seeing David Eldridge’s BEGINNING at the Royal Exchange tonight, then Simon Stephens’s SONGS FROM FAR AWAY at HOME tomorrow afternoon; and on Sunday i’ll be in London for the concert performance of ONCE at the London Palladium.

See you here on Monday

I will be back on Monday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)