What's to discuss, old friends? Here's to us!

There are few words I can use to express how superb Tuesday night's gala Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends - a Celebration truly was. Gobsmacking! Awesome! Stunning! - even these don't do it justice.

I mean - at what other occasion were we ever likely to see Dame Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Dame Siân Phillips, Petula Clark, Michael Ball, Damien Lewis, Imelda Staunton, Maria Friedman, Bernadette Peters, Jenna Russell, Rosalie Craig, Julian Ovenden, Janie Dee, Rob Brydon, Haydn Gwynne, Bonnie Langford, Daniel Evans, Michael Xavier, Charlie Stemp, Gary Wilmot, Clive Rowe, Anna-Jane Casey, Josefina Gabrielle, Jon Robyns, Helena Bonham-Carter and so many more top-class performers gathered on stage in the same show at the same time?!

Sondheim was adored by the theatrical community (understandably), and the love expressed by every performer, as his extensive back-catalogue was comprehensively explored, flowed from the stage. [Yes, I know we were actually only watching it on a screen, but that screen was so huge, the quality so immaculate, and in the glittering surroundings of the Art Deco Prince Edward Theatre, disbelief was well-and-truly suspended!]

Produced (and hosted) by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, with Maria Friedman directing alongside Matthew Bourne and choreographer Stephen Mear, we had a little bit of everything - and more - here. The evening opened with a heartfelt introduction from Sir Cameron, followed swiftly by the remarkable Daniel Evans with Sunday in the Park With George, before a "national treasure" took to the stage, to thunderous applause - arch-Sondheimite Julia McKenzie, making her first stage appearance in 24 years, aged 81, with the opening bars of Side By Side (joined in turn by Ashley Campbell, Rosalie Craig, Josefina Gabrielle, Amy Griffiths, Bradley Jaden and Jenna Russell). Rather than do it myself, I'll leave it to the amazingly comprehensive Theatremonkey to list the rest in his/her own estimable manner:

[carting Sir Cameron off the stage]

...[next was] Comedy Tonight with Clive Rowe, Gary Wilmot, the West End All Stars (the evening's hugely talented ensemble) and one Rob Brydon, who went on to admit that with Haydn Gwynne The Little Things You Do Together make marriage a joy. The real joy being Gwynne’s vocal and Brydon’s running joke about being too short for his stool.

Classic Sondheim ladies’ trio You Could Drive a Person Crazy had Anna-Jane Casey, Janie Dee and Josefina Gabrielle in a hilariously well-choreographed sequence and stunning outfits.

The mood changed a little as Clive Rowe gave a heart-wrenching Live Alone and Like It before Michael Ball segued into Loving You from Passion and produced perfect stillness.

Holly-Anne Hull channelled her inner “Vicar of Dibley” (incidentally, Dawn French was in the audience) to marry reluctant Anna-Jane Casey to Jon Robyns, Casey managing with ease the amazingly fast patter of Getting Married Today.

As the wedding guests pulled out lanterns, the West End All Stars took us Into The Woods, Julian Ovenden and Michael D. Xavier sharing their Agony over life and ladies, as Red Riding Hood lurked.

Throwing back her hood, the show stopped for the first time as the audience acknowledged Bernadette Peters, as she herself acknowledged I Know Things Now. Damian Lewis did too - Hello Little Girl made even more lascivious by his wolf ears and delightful tail.

Peters then pulled a diamond with Children Will Listen...

Out of the woods, time for A Weekend in the Country led off by maid Desmonda Cathabel ... She more than held her own as Janie Dee, Rob Houchen, Holly-Anne Hull, Julian Ovenden, Michael D. Xavier and the West End All Stars plotted a strategy to bring down their hostess with fun in the process.

Then a definitive moment. Dame Judi Dench. Send In The Clowns. Show stopped; standing ovation, which would have gone on longer had there not been so much more to get through. Nothing more to add.

Lightening or darkening the tone, depending on your taste for slick melodrama, good use was made of the Les Misérables slums, re-purposed as Fleet Street for a visit to Sweeney Todd. Michael Ball and a gaggle of West End All Stars townsfolk gave us the background The Ballad of Sweeney Todd before Maria Friedman told of Mrs Lovett’s catering woes in The Worst Pies in London (spit into her apron, dear, wise advice).

My Friends suggested how Mr Ball might take revenge, Pretty Women was Jeremy Secomb’s last duet before Maria Friedman suggested a cunning plan to recycle him and Mr Ball finally got it, and A Little Priest found the sweetest spot of humour as well as satire as only Sondheim can do.

Sticking firmly to the liquid, Haydn Gwynne came up from the stalls to celebrate The Ladies Who Lunch in style before Daniel Evans, Bernadette Peters and the West End All Stars brought a harmonious curtain down on the first half with a heartfelt Sunday.

Such was the atmosphere, it was only by taking the auditorium lights down to half that the audience were persuaded to re-take their seats instead of enthusing in the aisle and let the second half begin with the Entr’acte Overture from Merrily We Roll Along.

And roll in they did, the New York street gangs, to give us a quintet from West Side Story. Shan Ako, Christine Allado, Lous Gaunt, Rob Houchen and students from the Royal Academy Musical Theatre Company and Mountview – both schools should probably consult police immediately to deal with the issue before the rabble get out of hand.

Speaking of rabble, the hotly contested Broadway Baby went from the Hey, Mr Producer! routine of Gary Wilmot as frustrated audition pianist dealing with Julia McKenzie to a battle for supremacy between Rosalie Craig, Maria Friedman, Josefina Gabrielle, Amy Griffiths, Haydn Gwynne, Bonnie Langford, Bernadette Peters, Jenna Russell and Helena Bonham Carter - the last swooping in at the last minute to take it. Standing ovation as the final tableau, what else could we do?

With all those ladies around, Roman sexism arrived as Rob Brydon, Damien Lewis and Julian Ovenden agreed that Everybody Ought to Have a Maid - and Sian Phillips set them right.

Burlesque reminded us that You Gotta Get A Gimmick and Anna-Jane Casey, Bernadette Peters and Bonnie Langford had theirs – Langford’s eye-watering end to the song [the splits] drawing more gasps than even Casey’s electric dress or Peters' trumpet.

...from Follies, Waiting For The Girls Upstairs was given proper nostalgia by Ashley Campbell, Rob Houchen and Bradley Jaden, Charlie Stemp summing it up: "Weren’t we chuckle-heads then?"

The Girl arrived - Petula Clark with I’m Still Here. One of the very best versions of the song ... a true theatre survivor giving us autobiography and growing through adversity to end on a note of total victory, and another standing ovation until she left the stage.

Michael Ball then asked Could I Leave You? and had the audience stunned into silence with his final answer to us, guess... he certainly had us doing so.

One-man Vaudevillian Gary Wilmot gave us Buddy’s Blues complete with counterpoint from a dim but devoted lover, well, until the next man produced furs. Another show-stopper in an evening full of them.

Against a beach back-projection, The Boy From.... by Janie Dee demonstrated Sondheim’s flair for pastiche, even of popular music.

The tone turned black as Bernadette Peters revealed she was Losing My Mind. Another perfection, another standing ovation continued until the lady had entered the wings.

Just when the evening couldn’t yield any more wonders, Imelda Staunton appeared, with her career high Everything’s Coming Up Roses, and the audience came to its collective feet once more.

A reminder of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber / Stephen Sondheim duet from Hey, Mr Producer provided a video breathing space and a little fond chuckling.

Not A Day Goes By when we who love musical theatre don’t miss Stephen Sondheim. To a backdrop of changing projected photographs of his life and career, Julia McKenzie, Michael Ball, Rosalie Craig, Maria Friedman, Bernadette Peters, Jenna Russell and the West End All Stars gathered beneath the screen to celebrate, remember and mark.

Michael Ball, Rob Brydon, Rosalie Craig, Haydn Gwynne, Bradley Jaden, Bonnie Langford, Julian Ovenden, Jon Robyns, Jenna Russell, Jeremy Secomb, Michael D. Xavier and the West End All Stars then reminded us of the importance of Being Alive to bring the full company and Sir Cameron Mackintosh onto the stage for Old Friends and Side By Side.

The final closure came from the young, as a truly stunning troupe of new West End performers of the future filled the side aisles in front of the proscenium, spilling up and onto the stage either side of the rest of the cast to deliver a pure gold Our Time.

Phew!

There were just so many highlights for us, including: Michael Ball's version of Could I Leave You? with a gay nod and a wink in its gender-bending that echoed the much earlier [and at the time - 1976 - even more shocking] rendition by David Kernan [in the original Side By Side by Sondheim, which also starred the aforementioned Miss McKenzie]; Dame Sian's mischievous wink; Our Pet singing a song that might have been made for her now she is 89; the brilliantly "Stritch-esque" Ladies Who Lunch in which Miss Gwynne showed [the overrated, in our opinion] Patti Lupone how this song should be done, Dame Judi's gut-wrenching-yet-perfect vocals; and (of course) the simply faboo Ms Peters. Truth be told, it's hard to pick, really.

Have I mentioned - we enjoyed it?

Old Friends - Stephen Sondheim: a celebration gala concert finale

It was one of the very best things I have ever seen on stage in my life!

Starless and bible-black

It was such a thrill for Hils, Crog, Madam Arcati and I, as we gathered on the South Bank for our first major theatrical production post-pandemic - Under Milk Wood at the National Theatre (NT) - last night! We certainly didn't quite know what to expect...

Firstly, I must state that in my opinion there is probably no version of Dylan Thomas's magnum opus that will ever better the original BBC radio recording by Richard Burton in 1954.

Secondly, let's get the "elephant in the room" dealt with - Lyndsey Turner’s new production certainly was not a conventional treatment of this literary masterpiece; the conceit was to sandwich it into another context by way of a new (rather over-long, admittedly) introductory segment, in the setting of a nursing home, inevitably (and a bit clunkily) using Thomas's wistful nostagic satire as the means whereby an estranged (and resentful) son tries to jog the memories of his father who, he discovers too late in their relationship, has dementia. Whether this worked, or was even necessary, is a moot point. Venerable journal The Spectator certainly didn't like it; as Lloyd Evans rather excoriatingly put it in his review:

Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff this dazzling, rapturous comic tone-poem with misery and pain? The policy at the NT is that ticket holders must endure a play rather than enjoy it. They had four options. Racism, homophobia, misogyny and mental illness are the sources of woe most favoured by modern theatre-makers. The NT duly ticked box four, mental breakdown, and hired a writer, Siân Owen, to supply the necessary dollops of torment by penning a one-act melodrama as a preamble to the script itself.

Having adjusted to the unsettling introduction, however, the moment this "play for voices" actually began we were immersed in Thomas's mellifluous poetic use of language - and in the lives of all the fantastic characters who inhabit the Welsh seaside town of Llareggub [which is "Bugger all" backwards, for the uninitiated]: their dreams, their lusts, their interactions, their foibles, their triumphs, tragedies, hatreds and loves, writ large. The "elderly residents" of the opening segment transformed into them all, as the storytelling unfolded.

Ah, the cast! Could one seriously express anything other than praise for, and and awe at, the sheer mastery of Michael Sheen - playing as he did "the estranged son" and the "First Voice" (narrator) of this epic - or Dame Sian Phillips (at the venerable age of 88) playing the "village tart" Polly Garter with all her lusty behaviour and illegitimate children and poignant regret over her (now long dead) one true love? In fact, most of the (significantly older generation) actors were sublime - notably Karl Johnson as the bewildered "dad" with his occasional reminiscencess of his severe, oft-bullied, childhood; Alan David as the embittered Mr Pugh with constant fantasies of murdering the overbearing Mrs Pugh; the remarkable Anthony O'Donnell as Blind Captain Cat; and Susan Brown as the redoubtable Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, proprietoress of the boarding-house into which she wants no guests ("breathing on the chairs"), still dominating her husbands despite the fact they are both dead and merely ghosts...

All of Dylan Thomas's characters are, of course, larger-than-life: The Reverend Eli Jenkins, Dai Bread and his two wives, Ocky Milkman, Nogood Boyo, Mog Edwards, Gossamer Beynon, Willy Nilly Postman, Organ Morgan, Lord Cut-Glass and his clocks that all tell different times, Evans the Death, Mr Waldo, and the tragic Mr and Mrs Cherry-Owens. Some were brought to life more effectively than others in this ensemble, as is inevitable with any quick-change production - and indeed, at times, the amount of "quick-changes" themselves were to the detriment of the prose - but conversely, some of the visual "tricks" (such as the changing of the breakfast tablecloths on a single table to indicate the change of households in which the scenes were located, the reuse of a wheely laundry trolley from the prologue as Nogood Boyo's fishing boat in Llareggub, and the mobile kitchen hob/tea trolley/milk float, armchairs and other furniture that turned up in many scenes throughout) worked very well indeed.

Let's face it, "trendy new interpretation" or no, there's absolutely nothing that can diminish literature of this magnitude:

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding though the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing, dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams...

An absolute joy. [And after the show, we congratulated Dame Sian for her part in it; sat as she was, waiting her ride home, just outside the stage door.]

Under Milk Wood is on at the Olivier, National Theatre, until 24th July 2021.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

It's Saint David's Day, cariads - the day when all things Welsh are supposed to be celebrated, apparently. As it happens, all anyone across the UK has been thinking about today is the dreadful weather [it was -5C during the day today here in London, but thankfully the thermometer is slowly starting to rise; there are still blizzards and ice everywhere North of here, however], so there has been little chance of waving one's leek around!

Dim ots, on with the music, methinks - here are a few of our fave Welsh artists, doing what they do best! First up, help yourself to a bit of Sir Tom...

Tom Jones- Help Yourself

...one of Dame Shirl's shining moments:

Shirley Bassey - Something

...Miss Jenkins, her amazing tonsils, and a plethora of safety gays:

Katherine Jenkins - Bring Me to Life

...some Cerys Matthews:

Catatonia - Mulder and Scully

...and to finish (a bit of a surprising one, this), how about one of Wales' grandest, Dame Siân Phillips - singing?!

Siân Phillips - Liaisons (from A Little Night Music)

And, in case you feel the need to use any Welsh phrases on this special day - try this handy guide!

We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Speaking of Dylan Thomas...

The BBC, in all its magnificence, really pulled all the stops out for its "official tribute" to The Great Man's greatest work Under Milk Wood (that we watched on catch-up tonight). It was breath-taking.

Auntie Beeb managed to gather an impressive cornucopia of Welsh stars (filmed in New York, Los Angeles, London, Cardiff and Laugharne) each taking a part in this marvellous "play for voices":

Voice	Michael Sheen
Captain Cat	Tom Jones
New York Voice	Matthew Rhys
Laugharne Voice	Aimee-Ffion Edwards
Drowned and Willy Nilly	Tom Rhys Harries
Drowned and Voice	Karl Johnson
Drowned and Evans the Death	Iwan Rheon
Drowned and Voice	Aneurin Barnard
Rosie Probert	Nia Roberts
Mog Edwards	Ioan Gruffudd
Myfanwy Price	Kimberley Nixon
Mr Waldo	Steffan Rhodri
Neighbour	Mark Lewis Jones
Neighbour	Richard Harrington
Neighbour	Sophie Evans
Neighbour	Melanie Walters
Voice	Griff Rhys Jones
Voice	John Rhys-Davies
Voice	Andrew Howard
Voice	Rakie Ayola
Mr Pugh	Jonathan Pryce
Mrs Pugh	Sian Phillips
Rev Eli Jenkins	Bryn Terfel
Polly Garter	Katherine Jenkins
Mrs Ogmore Pritchard	Charlotte Church
Mr Ogmore	Tom Ellis
Mr Pritchard	Aneirin Hughes
Butcher Beynon	Robert Pugh
Mrs Beynon	Suzanne Packer
Lily Smalls	Eve Myles
Mae Rose Cottage	Alexandra Roach
Nogood Boyo	Craig Roberts
Mary Ann Sailors	Sharon Morgan
Dai Bread	Owen Teale
Mrs Dai Bread One	Di Botcher
Mrs Dai Bread Two	Sian Thomas
Sinbad Sailors	Jon Tregenna

Whew! a tour-de-force of acting, indeed - we were exhausted by the time it was over.

As someone wisely said on the occasion of their recent star-studded God Only Knows video: "Only the BBC could make this happen".

And here, for your delectation - catch it while you can before the "powers-that-be" take action to remove it from the interwebs - it is, in its entirety (well, I say entirety; this is Auntie's slightly abridged version of Mr Thomas' work, condensed):

Part 1:


Part 2

Read more about this brilliant programme

Dylan Thomas Centenary