Showing posts with label Len Cariou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Len Cariou. Show all posts

Thursday, 2 December 2021

Sondheim(s) of the Day - "Killers" special: Sweeney Todd, Assassins

Not so much a musical as an opera, truth be told, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - true to its source material in the Victorian "penny dreadfuls" in the UK - is probably one of the bloodthirstiest productions to open on Broadway; although I suppose back in 1979 the "horror genre" [thanks to Hammer Studios, The Exorcist, Carrie, The Omen and so on] was rather popular, so maybe its timing was quite good after all.

Everyone knows the story: psychopathic barber, bent on revenge, pairs up with deranged pie-shop owner who can't get her hands on any tasty fresh meat - with chilling results! Interspersed with a naive love story involving Sweeney's daughter Johanna and the sailor Anthony who rescued him from drowning, and some black-comedy moments involving rival barbers and the simple-minded assistant at the pie shop Toby, it's certainly a tangled web, brimming with wonderful numbers. And, without further ado...Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd!

[Another Sondheim "standard" that has been covered by loads of artistes, in and out of the production, including MegaBabs, Renee Fleming, Michael Feinstein, (ahem) Jamie Cullum, Lea Salonga, Michael Ball with Alfie Boe, Josh Groban and Cleo Laine]

By the way, no surprises; there is no "Happy Ever After" in this tale!

We've never seen the Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter film, but this is another show in Mr Sondheim's estimable repertoire that we've been to see on stage twice - in completely different productions and five years apart. The first was a major "in concert" revival at The Royal Festival Hall way back in 2007, starring the booming Bryn Terfel as "Sweeney Todd" and Maria Friedman as "Mrs Lovett", and also featured Daniel Boys and Philip Quast [NB the format was later revived again in 2014 with Emma Thompson baking the pies]. It was, as one might imagine, very impressive. Bryn Terfel is quite scary when in full voice!

The second version we went to see was the much bigger, well-promoted, and fully staged and dramatised version at the Adelphi Theatre in 2012 - with a surprising and frighteningly convincing Michael Ball in the title role, and Imelda Staunton as "Mrs Lovett". It was utterly mind-blowing! Quite rightly it won three Olivier Awards: Best Show, and one each for Mr Ball and Miss Staunton. We loved it.

All about Sweeney Todd at Everything Sondheim.

Speaking of "loving it", one of Mr Sondheim's lesser-known [and certainly less-often-revived - although a version is apparently currently showing off-Broadway in 2021] creations is a very weird concept indeed...

I mean, how many "artistic types" would think: "I know what would make a great plot for a musical! Every assassin or would-be-assassin of Presidents of the United States of America implausibly gathered in a Scooby-Doo-style sinister abandoned funfair to sing about their deeds, and to join together in harmony to implore Lee Harvey Oswald to pull the trigger on JFK? That'd go down well."

But. It. Works.

Assassins has had a bit of a chequered history, for sure - its original off-Broadway production in 1990 closed after just 73 performances, and the London run at The Donmar after a mere 76; its proposed revival was delayed for three years after the 11th September terrorist attacks, but once it finally opened (with Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Cerveris), it won a Tony Award. We went to see the 2014 Menier Chocolate Factory version, starring Catherine Tate, the lovely Aaron Tveit, Jamie Parker, Mike McShane and Andy Nyman - where we were in the front row, right in the middle of the action; and we were spooked to bits at having various members of the cast in turn pointing guns in our faces!

It's a twisted idea, but with a helluva score, from which this is merely a soupçon...

Boom!

A comprehensive analysis of the plot, courtesy of the New Line Theatre site; alternatively read more on Wikipedia.

RIP, Stephen Joshua Sondheim (22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021)

[One of a series of tributes I will be posting to Mr Sondheim this week.]
Previous "Sondheim of the Day" entries:

Posted by Jon at 06:55 10 comments
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Tuesday, 30 November 2021

Sondheim of the Day - A Little Night Music

During the solstice in Scandinavia, the sun does not set for days at a time. Dating back to pagan tradition, Midsummer festivities are notoriously raucous social-more-thwarting revelry. Against this ripe backdrop in turn-of-the-century Sweden, A Little Night Music celebrates the romantic foibles of Desiree Armfeldt and friends over one eventful extended sunset.

Stephen Sondheim and the original director Harold Prince “always wanted to do a musical that dealt with love and lovers and mismatched partners...love and foolishness.” While looking for material to adapt into a romantic operetta, they found their own perfect match in the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. “Bergman achieves one of the few classics of carnal comedy,” wrote renowned film critic Pauline Kael, “a tragicomic chase and roundelay that raises boudoir farce to elegance and lyric poetry.” While Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler retraced the romantic runarounds of the film’s story, they sweetened Bergman’s cynicism, allowing “the darkness to peep through a whipped-cream surface. Whipped cream with knives.”

- from The Huntingdon Theatre website

From its debut in 1973, A Little Night Music was warmly received by the critics and reviewers, and has been revived myriad times since - the show is often cited as one of Sondheim's finest works. Conceived as a sort of operetta, virtually all of the music is, unusually, written in waltz (three-quarter) time - and from its magnificent score, a legendary showbiz standard (and pop hit) was born. But first, on with the show...

[Other notable versions of this remarkable number include Elaine Stritch, Dame Cleo Laine, Dame Sian Phillips, and even Margaret Hamilton(!) - but my fave is the original by Hermione Gingold (no video for that, unfortunately)]

And finally... The number that gained a life all of its own - probably Sondheim's most recognised and famous song. It has been covered by just about everyone in the business, including Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins (whose version was a huge hit in 1975), MegaBabs, Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Lou Rawls, Shirley Bassey, Blossom Dearie, Jack Jones, Johnny Mathis, Cleo Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Maria Friedman, Ruthie Henshall, Michael Ball, Glenn Close, the Tiger Lilies and even Dame Edna Everage (and many, many more besides). However, this is the lady for whom it was written:

Other notable "Desirees" include Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons, Sally Ann Howes, Dorothy Tutin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Juliet Stevenson, Bernadette Peters and Judi Dench]

We went to see it back in (gulp!) 2009 - at the "home" of many a successful Sondheim production the Menier Chocolate Factory - starring Maureen Lipman as Madame Armfeldt, Hannah Waddingham as Desiree and Alexander Hanson as Frederik, and loved it.

A Little Night Music is quite simply magnificent, and deservedly revered as a classic.

All you need to know about the show is on the Everything Sondheim site.

RIP, Stephen Joshua Sondheim (22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021)

[One of a series of tributes I will be posting to Mr Sondheim this week.]
Previous "Sondheim of the Day" entries:

Posted by Jon at 06:52 10 comments
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Friday, 6 March 2009

It's but a pleasurable means to a measurable end



We went to see the Menier Chocolate Factory's new production of A Little Night Music last night - and what a show!

One of Stephen Sondheim's best works, the concept is relatively simple - a soap-opera plot revolving around generational differences, relationships and sex, all set to 4/4 waltz time. But in the hands of the master of all musicals (and a tremendous cast!) it becomes far more complicated as the lives of the characters unfold, and their various paths criss-cross. Based upon an Ingmar Bergman film, and set in the craziness of the Scandinavian eternal summer, it could hardly be straightforward...

Alexander Hanson is superb as the tormented Frederick, married for almost a year to Ann, a much younger wife who is "unfortunately still a virgin" despite his evident frustration at that fact. Events turn on their head when an old flame, the actress Desiree, comes to town. Brilliantly played by Hannah Waddingham (who was the "Lady of the Lake" in Spamalot), Desiree's reappearance after fourteen years, complete with teenage daughter, throws doubt into Frederick's life. Their duet You Must Meet My Wife is a skilful dissection of the foolishness of the marriage, at the hands of a much older, wiser woman.

Frederick and Desiree's rekindling relationship causes problems for everyone when one of her lovers, the Count (accurately played as a complete madman by Alistair Robins) becomes psychopathically jealous. He uses his long-suffering wife Charlotte (the wonderful Kelly Price) to stir things up by telling the naive Ann about their affair, and she pours her heart out about her own unhappiness in the fabulous number Every Day A Little Death.

Then it all gets really complicated as Desiree talks her mother Madame Armfeldt (played to bitter, imperious perfection by Maureen Lipman, who obviously relishes the part and delivers all the best lines in the show) into hosting a Weekend in the Country, where all the characters are uncomfortably thrown together. Delicious bitchiness ensues as everyone examines their own feelings about each other, and their relationships.



The most famous number of the whole show is of course Send in the Clowns, often treated as a torch song, but here magnificently delivered by Miss Waddingham as the desperate breakdown of a strong woman's defences in the face of a rapidly diminishing chance of happiness with her lost love. Utterly awe-inspiring - I could hardly breathe through her stunning performance.

Miss Lipman's Madame Armfeldt gets her own show-stopper too, of course, as she reminisces about the flimsiness of the sexual morés of the younger generation, compared to the profitable nature of her own affairs, with Liaisons - and she really does deliver it magnificently!

At the villa of the Baron De Signac,
Where I spent a somewhat infamous year,
At the villa of the Baron De Signac
I had ladies in attendance,
Fire-opal pendants...

Liaisons! What's happened to them?
Liaisons today.
Disgraceful! What's become of them?
Some of them
Hardly pay their shoddy way.

What once was a rare champagne
Is now just an amiable hock,
What once was a villa, at least,
Is "digs."
What once was a gown with train
Is now just a simple little frock,
What once was a sumptuous feast
Is figs.
No--not even figs--raisins!
Ah, liaisons!
Now, where was I? Where was I? Oh, yes...

At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara,
Who was prematurely deaf but a dear,
At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara
I acquired some position
Plus a tiny Titian...

Liaisons! What's happened to them?
Liaisons today.
To see them--indiscriminate
Women, it
Pains me more than I can say,
The lack of taste that they display!

Where is style?
Where is skill?
Where is forethought?
Where's discretion of the heart?
Where's passion in the art?
Where's craft?
With a smile
And a will
But with more thought,
I acquired a château
Extravagantly overstaffed.

Too many people muddle sex
With mere desire,
And when emotion intervenes
The nets descend.
It should on no account perplex,
Or worse, inspire;
It's but a pleasurable means
To a measurable end.
Why does no one comprehend?
Let us hope this lunacy's just a trend.
Now where was I? Where was I? Oh, yes...

In the castle of the King of the Belgians,
(We would visit through a false chiffonier)
In the castle of the King of the Belgians
Who, when things got rather touchy,
Deeded me a duchy...

Liaisons! What's happened to them?
Liaisons today.
Untidy! Take my daughter, I
Taught her, I
Tried my best to point the way.
I even named her Desiree.

In a world where the kings are employers,
Where the amateur prevails
And delicacy fails
To pay,
In a world where the princes are lawyers,
What can anyone expect
Except to recollect...

And while the bitterness of the lives of the guests is played out in full, the servants take the opportunity to enjoy themselves. The maid Petra (Kaisa Hammerlund) treats us to her own thoughts on life in the wonderfully bawdy The Miller’s Son, cocking a snook at the inflexibility of the upper classes, and her outlook on sex as a young woman cleverly mirrors yet contrasts the sentiments of the much older Mme Armfeldt:

It's a very short way
From the fling that's for fun
To the thigh pressing un-
Der the table.
It's a very short day
Till you're stuck with just one
Or it has to be done
On the sly.
In the meanwhile,
There are mouths to be kissed
Before mouths to be fed,
And there's many a tryst
And there's many a bed,
There's a lot I'll have missed
But I'll not have been dead
When I die!
And a person should celebrate everything
Passing by.

Many of the complex strands of these bizarre people's lives are drawn together in a denouement that leaves some wounds exposed, but resolves many more. Not a happy ending, nor entirely sad - just A Little Night Music.

We had a great time, and even got the chance to have a little drinkie in the Green Room bar with the whole cast, including Maureen Lipman, afterwards.

I highly recommend everyone to see this show! Although the entire run at the Menier Chocolate Factory sold out within weeks, the show transfers to the Garrick Theatre on 28th March.

No preview videos are available of the Menier cast yet, but here are a few songs from the show:





A Little Night Music at Menier Chocolate Factory
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