Nicole schreibt...

My trip started on Wednesday, 3rd January and the initial plan had been to see Napoleon in the afternoon and The Beautiful Game in the evening. But somehow I felt more tempted by the sales in Oxford Street than by the prospect of seeing yet another melodrama set in a France of the past, so when they told me at the Shaftesbury Theater Box Office that Paul Baker was on that afternoon (instead of Uwe Kröger, whose West End-debut I had so much wanted to see), I decided to give the show a miss and hit the shops instead. But we had pre-booked for &The Beautiful Game as I hadn't expected ALW to release tickets to the Half Price Booth that early in the run (He did - but what can you do expect grit your teeth when people holding blue half price tickets take seats right in front of you?!). Luckily the show proved worth every penny I spent on it. It's not an easy musical to comment on because it's certainly different from the rest, comparable only to Blood Brothers. This is much more Ben Elton's show than ALW's and should be seen rather as a gritty play with music than a musical, especially when compared to ALW's usual output. I must confess that it took me two days and a trip to Stratford-on-Avon to really recover from the impact it left on me and I've never seen a queue at the ladies' so quiet as during the interval of BG. It's not one of the weepy melodramas set in a distant past you can easily brush off when you leave the auditorium and I suppose that especially for the English audience it's too close to home to digest easily. For those who don't know the story, it's about a group of young footballers in the Belfast of the late 60's, just before the troubles started. The only protestant member of the team, Del, gets thrown out as the radical catholic Thomas starts to turn the others against him. The major storyline concerns the talented young John and his girlfriend Mary, both catholic and determined to stay out of the trouble. A subplot deals with catholic Christine who loves protestant Del and marries him despite the abuse she gets from the catholic community. They are later forced to emigrate to the USA to find peace there. Events take a nasty turn when tubby Ginger is killed by a protestant mob and his funeral ends the first act - leaving the audience rather in stunned silence than in tears. The second act opens on a higher note when John and Mary finally get married, but Thomas, who has by now become a fierce IRA supporter, drags John down with him into the underground scene. John ends up in a prison camp where he turns into a fanatical republican himself and (after shooting Thomas, who betrayed him) decides to join the IRA terrorists in London, leaving Mary and their baby Sean behind. The wonderful, very touching final sees Sean as a little boy going to play football with his friends again while Mary reflects in song that no child was ever born to hate. Josie Walker (Mary) acted throughout the show with breathtaking intensity and I haven't been moved like this for ages. She was well supported by David Shannon as John and Hannah Waddingham as Christine, who gets to sing the best tune "Our kind of love" in which she defends her love for protestant Del (and if this sounds familiar - yes, it looked like a first cousin of that scene in West Side Story when Maria defends Tony with "I have a love"). Outstanding for me was Michael Shaeffer as the radical Thomas and I hope he gets the "best supporting performance" awards he deserves. The show is not all gloom and doom luckily. Ben Elton is best-known for his sitcoms Blackadder and Thin Blue Line and his sharp, witty books full of black humor. The dialogues are full of dry one-liners and there are also funny songs like "Don't like you" and "The first time". Wonderful ballads "Our kind of love" and "God's own country" are more ALW's home turf and very moving. The book may not be perfect and if you WANT to find fault with the show (as many not-so-flexible musical lovers do) you can find them of course, but I say for myself, that at least these two guys dared to write about a contemporary, political topic which others won't touch with a ten-feet pole. It's fresh and it's different and I dare say that it's never been meant for the mainstream audience that is still darkening the doors of Phantom or Les Miz after 15 years. With its simple stage sets, usually only using a bit of furniture and props, I could rather imagine it being picked up by small theatres, amateur companies and especially school or college drama groups. If I have one minor complaint about the cast it is that most of them were too old to look like teenagers. I certainly wouldn't call this show a flop or failure if it doesn't last longer than a year or two in the West End, but I hope that maybe, like Blood Brothers it will become a modern classic away from the mainstream.
On Thursday I caught a train to Stratford-upon-Avon, best known for being Shakespeare's hometown. I suppose that it's crowded with tourists in the summer but in early January there were hardly any people about. The town is hardly more than a village and a sightseeing tour takes only 1-2 hours. I saw Shakespeare's birthplace, Holy Trinity Church where he is buried, and a lot of wonderfully kept medieval houses. Stratford is certainly worth a day-trip in itself, but of course, the major reason why I was going there in drizzly, grey January, was the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Secret Garden. I have always loved the original novel by Frances Hogdson Burnett and I had also loved the CD of the Broadway production, so I was very glad that this lovely show had finally arrived in Europe. But the book has been re-written, songs were scrapped or moved to another place in the show, and the changes were not always for the better. I missed the slightly eerie atmosphere of the ghosts that seemed to be omnipresent in the original Broadway production and songs like "The house upon the hill". However, most of all I blame Anthony Ward, the stage designer, for not liking the show as much as I had expected it to. The "garden" was represented by some dull, semi-transparent panels covering the stage from floor to roof with black trees painted on them as in a Japanese-style drawing. It was okay while it was winter on the estate, but when spring came it killed all the atmosphere of the original novel where the garden comes to life in a burst of colour. Only in the very last scene did the garden turn green and some branches with cheesy big roses appeared from above. But at least the cast had been worth the journey to Stratford. After years of belting mezzos and young tenors, it was great to have classic singers in the leading roles. Phillip Quast (Archibald) had a wonderful warm baritone voice and Meredith Braun (Lily) a brilliant, clear soprano. Both sang and acted well, though if someone deserves praise for the show, it's Linzi Hateley. The part of Magda the maid seems to have been written for her and it was great to see her on stage again after a long absence. For me The Secret Garden is also the only musical with a child in the leading role, which I can watch without wanting to puke over so much soppy cheesy big-eyed orphan nonsense as in Annie or Oliver. Mary Lennox is an obnoxious, irritating brat at first and her selfish cousin Colin is no better until they both cheer up through their work in the budding secret garden. In short they are real children and not those irritating musical orphans and both kids I saw were doing a great job. I was glad that of the three girls playing Mary, I was seeing Eliza Caird, who, if I'm not mistaken is the eldest daughter of Frances Ruffelle and John Caird (correct me, if I'm wrong!) and she's certainly a chip off the old block! I'm not sure how long this show will last in the West End - not very long I dare predict, but after all the time waiting for it to cross the pond I was glad I got a chance to see it on stage at all. On Friday morning I went back to London and indulged in some more shopping (And no, I didn't buy anything at French Connection, their fcuk shirts are pretty cool but I found prices a bit over the top!) A story too long to write down here brough me to the Royal Shakespeare Company once more, this time to their London home at the Barbican to see The Rivals the brilliant comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. I had been in the Pit last year to see the RSC's Taming of the Shrew and it was nice to visit the big Barbican Theatre at last. Though if you go there for the first time, make sure you end up where you want to - I had almost ended up in the Barbican Hall if the usher I tried to buy a programme from hadn't told me that I was on the wrong track. The play was very enjoyable with great performances by David Tennant as Jack Absolute, Benjamin Whitrow as his father, Sir Anthony, Ian Hughes as the love-struck Faulkland and Wendy Craig as the Queen of the Dictionary Mrs Malaprop. How anyone can utter her lines with a straight face is beyond me! The staging was simple with row of houses representing Bath and some pieces of furniture, relying fully on Sheridan's masterful play. If something really impressed me that evening, it was the fact that a play that's more than 200 years old can still make people laugh so much today.

Come Saturday and I was on the (rail)road again, this time to Cambridge to catch the UK-Tour of Grease Two hours of walking around was enough for sightseeing as there are the impressive old university buildings to look at, but not much more besides. Just like Stratford it's definitely worth a day-trip, especially in combination with a visit to the Corn Exchange Theatre. As the name tells, it's not a real theatre, but a converted corn exchange and a really beautiful building that made up for the somewhat cramped seating of the flat stalls. It was the first time I was seeing a tour production of a former West End-show and found that if tickets cost significantly less, it was also only half as spectacular. The cast had been cut down in size, the stage sets had been cut down and worst of all, the dialogues had been cut down to a mere minimum required to keep the the action going. However, I have seen Grease more times than I care to count and the only reason I had gone to Cambridge to catch the tour was Steven Houghton, once my favorite firefighter, now back in stage musicals. I had seen him in musicals before his big break in London's Burning and Bugs, and afterwards when he played Keith in the wonderful musical Spend, spend, spend and I had always liked him (I wouldn't travel to see him otherwise, uh?), but I wasn't too impressed with his Danny Zuko. Somehow it showed that once you earned TV fame, you can pretty much demand any role in musical theatres and get cast not because of your abilities, but because of your name. Steven has a good voice and he's very good at pulling funny faces, but he lacked the certain something that makes Danny a lovable jerk. However, his Sandy Irene Warren, was really wonderful and made up for what he lacked. With her cute face and bright smile she just WAS Sandy. The others were okay, especially understudy Miranda Wilford as Rizzo and thetubby couple Peter Jamieson (Roger) and Louise Dearman (Jan), but with so much dialogue and one song cut, it was a bit hard to comment on them.

Fate can play a mean trick sometimes, as I had been planning to see the London production of ;Hedwig and the angry inch that evening. As it would only begin at 9pm I had plenty of time to return to London, but then Hedwig died a premature death and I risked the gamble to get back to London for the evening performance of Notre Dame de Paris at 7.45pm. Luckily I could get a lift from my friend and had send another friend to get us half-price tickets for Notre Dame in London that day (thanks Wendy, George and Rob - without your help I had certainly not made it back in time for the show and enjoy it for half price). My luck was in again for I would see both the new (and hotly disputed) Esmeralda Patti Russo and finally former Rent star John Partridge as Gringoire. Sadly neither one really impressed me. Patti sang her songs without much feeling and I couldn't help thinking back to the wonderful Tina Arena whom I had seen last summer and who was so much better. John did a fine job and he certainly has the voice for Gringoire, but I suppose that Bruno Pelletier's footsteps had been too big for anyone to tread in. Well (sorry), the Brits just don't have that certain je ne sais quoithe French have and that made Bruno and also Sylvain Cossette, whom I saw on my first visit, so outstanding. Besides, that pale face and horrible wig made John rather look like a vampire out of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles than a human narrator and troubadour. However, there were great performances from Samuel Gough (alternate Quasimodo), Scott Ciscon (alternate Phoebus) and Hugh Maynard (understudy Clopin) to make up for that. The cast was completed by Fred Johanson as Frollo and Kate Pinell as Fleur-de-Lys. I enjoyed seeing the show again and I know that it's one of those shows I could see over and over again as I can't tire to watch those amazing dancers and listen to the wonderful rock music. All in all it was a very interesting trip that introduced me to two charming towns and I didn't regret a single show I went to see. But with My Fair Lady being the only new musical on the horizon at present (apart from lots of rumours and in the pipeline-stuff), I suppose that it has been my last trip to London for a while...