Showing posts with label Simon Russell Beale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simon Russell Beale. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 May 2022

So please, don't fart

It may be my first day back in the office after the long weekend, but - pah!

Madam Arcati and I are off to a very special evening tonight...

...a live screening of the otherwise sold-out gala Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends: A Celebration, starring a panoply of glittering stars including Michael Ball, Helena Bonham Carter, Rob Brydon, Petula Clark, Rosalie Craig, Janie Dee, Judi Dench, Daniel Evans, Maria Friedman, Haydn Gwynne, Bonnie Langford, Damian Lewis, Julia McKenzie, Julian Ovenden, Bernadette Peters, Siân Phillips, Jon Robyns, Clive Rowe, Jenna Russell, Imelda Staunton, Charlie Stemp, Hannah Waddingham, Gary Wilmot and Michael Xavier!

Knowing the ill-behaved rabble that constitutes West End audiences these days (I blame Simon Cowell, Strictly and the whooping, hollering, baying audiences they encourage on TV), I sincerely hope this particular set of commands will be stricty adhered to:

Gods of the theatre, smile on us.
You who sit up there stern in judgment,
Smile on us.
You who look down on actors… (And who doesn't?)
Bless this yearly festival and smile on us.

We offer you song and dance.
We offer you rites and revels.
We offer you grace and beauty.
Smile on us for this while.
You who sit up there stern in judgment, smile on us.

We offer you song and dance.
We offer you rites and revels.
We offer you gods and heroes.
We offer you jokes and insults,
We offer you (we offer you) paeans and pageants,
Bacchanals and social comment.
Bless our play and smile.

Yes, but first…
Some dos and don'ts,
Mostly don'ts:

Please don't cough,
It tends to throw the actors off.
Have some respect for Aristophanes
And please, don't cough.

Please don't squeak,
We haven't oiled the seats all week.
You wouldn't want to miss a single work of Greek,
It's hard enough for us to hear each other speak
So please, don't squeak.

If you see flaws, please,
No loud guffaws, please,
Only because, please,
There are politer ways.
As for applause, please,
When there's a pause, please,
Although we welcome praise,
The echo sometimes lasts for days…
(Days…days…days…days…)

But first…
(Days…days…days…days…)

Don't take notes
To show us all you know the famous quotes.
And when you disapprove don't clear your throats
Or throw your crumpled programs, coins and coats
Or tell your neighbour scintillating anecdotes,
And please, refrain,
From candy wrapped in cellophane.

If we should get rhetorical,
Please don't curse.
Wait till it's allegorical,
And in verse!
If we should get satirical,
Don't take it wrong.
And if, by a sudden miracle,
A tune should appear that's lyrical,
Don't hum along.

When we are waxing humorous,
Please don't wane.
The jokes are obscure but numerous…
We'll explain.

When we are waxing serious,
Don't squirm or laugh.
It starts when we act mysterious.
And if you're in doubt, don't query us,
I'll signal you when we're serious
(It's in the second half).
(Half…half…half…half…)

But first…
Please, don't leave.
It only makes the actors grieve.
We may have something better up our sleeve,
So please,
Don't leave.

Don't say, "What?"
To every line you think you haven't got.
And if you're in a snit because you've missed the plot
(Of which I must admit there's not an awful lot),
Still don't
Say, "What?" (What?)

Do not intrude, please,
When someone's nude, please.
She's there for mood, please.
And mustn't be embraced.
If we are crude, please,
Don't sit and brood, please.
Let's not be too strait-laced -
The author's reputation isn't based
On taste.

So please, don't fart -
There's very little air and this is art.
And should we get offensive, don't lose heart,
Pretend it's just the playwright being smart.
Eventually we'll get to the catharsis, then depart.

And now…

But first…
We start.

I can't wait!

PS It was David Beckham's birthday yesterday.


[click to embiggen]

You're welcome.

Posted by Jon at 07:54 8 comments
Labels: , , , , ,

Saturday, 4 December 2021

Sondheim of the Day finale - Side by Side by Sondheim and other random oddities

As introductions to the magnificent repertoire of Stephen Sondheim go, I must admit that Side By Side By Sondheim is possibly the finest. As I mentioned way back in chapter #1 of this rambling (more than a) week-long series of tributes to The Maestro, it was through listening to Madam Acarti's double CD of said classic revue - the brainchild of That Was The Week That Was producer Ned Sherrin, in response to a commission from none other than Dame Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth back in 1976 - that I gathered an understanding, and a nuanced appreciation, of the work of a true genius in the world of musical theatre. Basically, before that point I knew the song Send in the Clowns and the "hits" from West Side Story, and that was just about it.

Gathering the brilliantly talented combo of Sondheimites Julia McKenzie, Millicent Martin and David Kernan together, with connecting narration from Mr Sherrin himself, the revue covers everything from the popular and the well-known, to more obscure and rare numbers by The Maestro.

From Company there's the eponymous number Company, The Little Things You Do Together, Another Hundred People, (Not) Getting Married Today, Barcelona, You Could Drive a Person Crazy and Side By Side By Side. From Follies, there's Bring on the Girls, Ah, Paree!, Buddy's Blues, Broadway Baby, Losing My Mind, [David Kernan's "gay" version of] Could I Leave You? and I'm Still Here. From Gypsy, If Momma Was Married and You Gotta Get a Gimmick; and from West Side Story, A Boy Like That/ I Have a Love.

Then there's the less well-known ones - some of which have become firm favourites here at Dolores Delargo Towers, such as this one from the film The Seven Percent Solution [originally sung by our Patron Saint Régine; here done rather differently]:

Even more obscure, this one came from a weird-sounding US television show called Evening Primrose, about drop-outs who live in a department store [very 1967!]:

This fantabulosa number is from Do I Hear a Waltz?, with music by Richard Rodgers:

The next two were dropped from (respectively) Company, and from Follies:

From Anyone Can Whistle, the title song and this:

And, from a show that hasn't played in London since 2003, Pacific Overtures, this:

Leaving the best to last, however - also included in the melange was another particular favorite of ours, a song that was written for yet another revue [bizarrely based on Mad Magazine; a collaboration with Richard Rodgers' daughter Mary] - here as part two of a faboo skit by Kit and the Widow [Part one being just too good not to feature!]:

We went to se a revival of the show at "the Venue" (now The Leicester Square Theatre) - gosh! - fourteen years ago, which we thought was faboo, if not a patch on the original (what could be?)

Read more about Side by Side by Sondheim at Sondheim.com

In 1992, combined pressures from Cameron Mackintosh and Julia McKenzie persuaded Mr Sondheim to do a "updated version" of the 1976 classic.

Titled Putting It Together, it actually only featured four songs from Side by Side (Marry Me a Little, You Could Drive a Person Crazy - this time in first person "I" - (Not) Getting Married Today and Could I Leave You?). From A Little Night Music it featured Every Day a Little Death (with another song dropped from most performances of that show My Husband the Pig), Now, Night Waltzes, Country House, Bang and The Miller's Son; from Company, Have I Got a Girl for You, Sorry-Grateful and Being Alive; Pretty Women and Sweet Polly Plunkett from Sweeney Todd; Hello Little Girl from Into The Woods; and The Gun Song from Assassins.

Also woven into the mix were songs from a Sondheim show we've never been to see A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, including my fave:

From another Sondheim show we've never seen Sunday in the Park with George, the number that inspired the revue's title...

...and two from Dick Tracy:

More about Putting It Together

The revue also featured numbers from a couple of productions that we did actually go and see...

Merrily We Roll Along is a very clever conceit - based as it is on a satirical play from the Depression era by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, the show's narrative runs entirely in reverse; from the opening scenes of embittered individuals, forcibly and callously cast aside by the lead character (and former friend) Franklin Shepard in his quest for fortune and success, to the closing ensemble numbers where the group are all young and idealistic and very much a "gang" of like-minded characters just setting out on their uncertain destinies.

We and our own "gang" went to see it in its Olivier-award-winning revival by Sondheimite Maria Friedman at the Harold Pinter Theatre in 2013.

It is a phenomenal show, with a clutch of excellent songs, such as these...

And then, there's this - a genuinely heart-wrenching number if ever there was one!

[Another one of Sondheim's that's become a bit of a "standard" in its own right, and has been recorded by Bernadette Peters, Judy Collins, La Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, Cleo Laine and even Jane McDonald]

Read a rather good article about the show by arts professor Laurence Maslon, or else Wikipedia

And the other show?

It's probably more famous for this number than anything...

...it's a musical "freely adapted from" the writings of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, involving the God of Wine Dionysus, Hades and the resurrected spirits of George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare - The Frogs. Again, only Stephen Sondheim could have possibly come up with this idea!

We caught it at its first UK production since the 1990s (and its West End première; bearing in mind this was a show that begain its life - in a swimming pool in Yale University with Meryl Streep among its cast - in 1974) at the bijou Jermyn Street Theatre in 2017. Ever since then, "Brek-kek-kek-kek" has become a bit of mantra for us - it made such an impression! Here's some grainy footage of the faboo Nathan Lane in (I believe) his own revised production in 2004:

All about The Frogs at Music Theatre International

And finally...

...the best tribute a Maestro could expect:

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

[The final one of a series of tributes I have posted to Mr Sondheim this week.]
Previous "Sondheim of the Day" entries:

Posted by Jon at 10:38 8 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Into the woods, and who can tell...what's waiting on the journey?



Another big-screen big-budget Sondheim adaptation opens at Xmas this year (after 2008's Sweeney Todd) - and its cast is quite a roll-call of beloved thesps including Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, Frances de la Tour, Simon Russell Beale, Annette Crosbie and Tracey Ullman(!)

Into The Woods, one of Mr Sondheim's finest, most complex (and funniest) musicals, is (remarkably) a Disney production, and was primarily made in Shepperton Studios, London.

From the trailer alone, one just knew Miss Streep was born to play The Witch...


Heaven only knows how this will compare to our experience of the stage version at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2010, complete with Dame Judi as The Giant and a full-scale breeze blowing the trees that complimented the atmosphere perfectly, I don't know...

...nevertheless I can't deny it - I am dying to see this one...

Into The Woods on IMDB.
Posted by Jon at 07:59 6 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Show us your Privates!



Madam Arcati and I trolled through the rain to go and see the much-anticipated opener for Michael Grandage's season of short-running plays at the Noel Coward Theatre - the "play with songs", Privates on Parade. We have both seen the film (with Dennis Quilley and John Cleese), and were curious how such a tongue-in-cheek satire would translate to the stage.

Of course, another main attraction was the prospect of seeing the multi-award-winning Simon Russell-Beale CBE (whose repertoire has over the years tended towards Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and Shaw rather than drag) donning the fishnets and Cuban heels to play the leading role of Acting Captain Terri Dennis, all dubious double-entedres and motherly queeniness. But "play it" he certainly does!



Brilliantly capturing the bittersweet and bizarre spectacle of a mincing theatrical queen somehow ending up in charge of a motley troupe of keen but naive (and largely gay) army entertainers, in the middle of guerilla warfare in the crumbling colonial outposts of Malaya, Mr Russell-Beale shines out as brightly as the sequins on his frocks. His set-pieces, uproariously "impersonating" Marlene Dietrich, Carmen Miranda and even Vera Lynn, were pantomime perfection. Yet behind each and every one, the subtleties and sadness of the situation (the futility of the struggle to prop-up the British Empire, the corruption, the waste of young lives) filter through - not least in our favourite number, the show-stopper Could You Please Inform Us (Who It Was That Won The War?), in the style of Noel Coward.



The aforementioned army troupe - the "players" of the Song And Dance Unit South East Asia (SADUSEA) - provided some excellent supporting campness, too (even if their vocal arrangements could probably do with a bit of polish). It is in the boys' individual back-stories that the pathos begins to unfold, to take the glitter out of the lurex a little. Joseph Timms is the play's pretty-boy hero Private Flowers, whose progress from "virgin soldier" to "career soldier" is both charming and chilling. At first it is the charms of the company's solitary female member, the half-Welsh half-Indian Sylvia (Sophiya Haque), for which he falls, but by the end, his first love is the British Army and a conventional life...

The unlikely (and ultimately doomed) relationship between the scent-wearing Charley (Harry Hepple) and the constantly-swearing - and still married - Len (John Marquez) provides waspish banter, sentimental moments and desperate tragedy in turn. The pathetic self-assurance of the geeky "Erica" (Brodie Ross), with his refusal to cope with the truth of his fiancee's betrayal, and the false bravado of the "straight man" of the group Kevin (Sam Swainsbury) are also beautifully played out.

In one of the best-written roles, the song-and-dance ensemble have to contend with a loony, bible bashing Major (played by Angus Wright with a much less madcap air than John Cleese but nonetheless subtly deranged) whose rabid desire to defend the Empire from the Commies creates far more danger than any of the jungle inhabitants. Of course, it is his intervention that directly destroys the carefully built-up cosiness of their little theatrical "bubble", and leads us to the story's emotion-tugging denouement. In fact, throughout the action, there is a dark side looming. The military camp's silent Asian attendants are obviously plotting subterfuge throughout. The soon-to-be-late unlamented bullying Sergeant Major (Mark Lewis Jones) is a wife-beater, a thief and a gun-runner, selling beautifully-made British armaments to the very guerillas whose insurgence his men are disastrously attempting to put down. There is definite sense that everyone is trying to run away from something (whether it is Sylvia's dreams of living in Britain, or Captain Dennis's warnings about the UK's growing persecution of the gays back home) - and showbiz is the only escape!

Despite its shocking moments, and its sometimes uncomfortably blunt exposure of the stupidity, racism, homophobia and arrogance of post-war British attitudes, this is definitely not a gloomy play. There's a musical duet between two ostensibly straight hunks about masturbation fantasies, a nude shower scene (the privates were definitely on parade, much to our delight!), lots of silly jokes, great songs, and as much camp humour as the Paul O'Grady Christmas Show, for gawd's sake!

This show provides more class in one or two of its carefully-delivered quips than in the whole of most of its theatrical competitors.

We loved it!


Privates on Parade - book today!
Posted by Jon at 12:50 4 comments
Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)