Nicole schreibt...

Like every summer, I went to London to catch up with the latest offerings in the West End and this time I could at last indulge in seeing a total of five brand-new shows. Well, "brand new" might not fit all of these shows, but more on that later. My first way on Monday led me to the Half Price Booth to pick up a ticket for The Full Monty. I was a bit disappointed that this wonderful show is already available for half-price but the auditorium was full in the evening and the atmosphere was great, too. So I hope that good word-of-mouth will spread and keep this show going for some time. Looking on the entire week now, it was certainly the one I enjoyed most. I had always loved the movie and I also liked the OBC, with its witty lyrics and one-liners. I had been a bit worried about the movie plot being relocated to Buffalo, NY when the show first opened on Broadway, but luckily this time "Americanization" only meant a different town and not being cutified and watered down. The grim, harsh reality of the movie is still present as well as many dry one-liners and ambigous remarks. Some of the American cast had come over to London and I enjoyed seeing Jarrod Emick, whom I had seen in the appalling L.A. Firefighter series on TV. He played the lead Jerry (Gaz in the movie, played by Robert Carlyle). He did well, though his co-stars André de Shields, another Broadway import, who played the "big black guy" Horse and David Ganly as the fat, self-conscious Dave clearly emerged as the audience's favourites. I couldn't fail to notice that the women in the audience laughed more and louder than the men, but even so, I haven't experienced such a great atmosphere in a theatre for a long time. Everyone laughed with the guys, not at them and in the final fifteen minutes, when they were preparing for their big stage debut, everyone was suffering stage fright with them. It was at last another of those rare musicals set in the real world, dealing with the real problems or real people: unemployment, low self-esteem, worries about your marriage, finances or losing your kid after your divorce, and it was easy to really feel for these guys. It was also at last a new musical in the good old tradition of the book musical: character-driven with a strong plot and a great book by Terence McNally, full of great one-liners and jokes. The songs weren't outstanding, but they fitted well into this laid-back, rather small show, where a huge pompous ballad about the miseries of being unemployed had just been wrong. Since it's a rather small-scale production it should be easy to stage everywhere and I hope it will soon find its way to Germany, the Netherlands and many other countries. Tuesday found me heading for the Albery Theatre - not to see a show, mind you, but to buy a ticket for their upcoming Macbeth. The booking had already opened but no one seems to know yet, so I was able to pick the best seat in the house - bring on November and quick :) The show for the day was We will rock you, also the one I was least interested in seeing. But I wasn't too overly keen on the alternatives and after all the controversial talk on the internet (some hate it, some love it), I knew I ought to go and judge for myself. Luckily the Dominion Theatre sells standing room tickets for £10, so I didn't need to waste much money on it and still had a good view onto the stage from behind the stalls. After all WWRY had three things going for it - the immortal music of Queen, a book by one of my favourite authors, Ben Elton, and the immensely talented Tony Vincent in the lead. And I found that I was quite enjoying myself throughout the whole show. If it has one problem then it is simply the fact that you cannot bend existing pop songs so that they will all fit into a show and a particular character's emotions. I guess it's more of a general gripe about this new rage of creating new "musicals" using existing rock music - they may not be bad, but they are hardly original, exciting work. Elton has written an okay book with many jokes that show his sitcom-writing-background (especially in the second act, when comedian Nigel Planer as Pop lets rip) and also a great message - yet it doesn't really come across. I also don't think it had been necessary to set the plot into the future, as reality is bad enough as it is with its bland mainstream pop music by manager-created boy/girlbands, dumb cloned Barbie dolls and recycled old songs. I wonder how good this could have been, if Elton had written this as a play in his own right or at least as a book musical for which a talented songwriter had written new songs. The Queen songs only truly come to shine in the last fifteen minutes that are done in concert-style. Tony Vincent can really strut his stuff here (and boy does he have a fine rock voice!) and from my position behind the stalls, it was incredibly moving to see the entire audience in the stalls sing along to "We will rock you" and "We are the champions" with the appropriate clapping of hands and waving of arms. It does make one realize that those songs are 30 years old and still unforgotten while no one remembers the dross that was in the charts six months ago. Seeing that people now flock to see this Queen musical does give me hope that the McDonaldization of our western culture might still be reversible. At the end of the day I wasn't ecstatic about WWRY and I wouldn't have wanted to spend £40 on a full-price seat, but I think it deserves to be seen. I just know (and it makes me sad) that if WWRY now becomes a similar sell-out success as Mamma mia, it will pave the way for many more recycling shows... and that isn't something I'm looking forward to. Wednesday was a busy day, as I had decided to not idle the whole day away and couldn't afford any more spending sprees, so I went to visit the National Army Museum in Chelsea first, where I spent quite a lot of time on the "Regency" floor dedicated mostly to Wellington's campaigns against Napoleon. It was Sharpe coming alive here - almost literally, for they had a life-size wax-doll of a Rifleman in the typical dark-green uniform aiming at unsuspecting visitors from behind a (fake) tree. Recognizing so many familiar places and names from the Sharpe books and movies, made me realize that no matter how unlikely the actual stories are and how much there'd be to gripe about Cornwell's writing style (and manner of throwing a lot of unlikely female companions into Sharpe's way for no reason whatsoever), those books / movies have certainly brought many people in touch with history for the first time and that can't be a bad thing. Afterwards I went to the British Library which currently has a great exhibition called "Trading Places" dedicated to the history of the East India Company. This was especially funny for me after having been "to the colonies" only a few months ago. I just wished that they had more postcard reproductions of all those wonderful paintings available!

Show for the day was Taboo at the new Venue (yes, it was called that) in Leicester Square, for which my friend Erika had been able to secure bargain tickets for £15 apiece. I fell in love with the venue the moment I entered it as it's the kind of small, flexible fringe theatre that would have been a perfect home for Hedwig instead of the horrible oversized Playhouse and of which London needs many more (right now there's only the Arts Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse to cater for small-scale shows, otherwise you'll have to treck out of the West End to find other lovely small fringe theatres like the Bridewell or the Tricycle). Taboo has been written by once-upon-a-time pop star Boy George, but at least he has bothered to write 15 new songs instead of recycling his old pop tunes. The music was great and I hope that there'll be a CD of this show! The story was a bit cheesy: it's partly Boy George's own biography and a retrospective on the "New Romantics" movement of the early 80's with a love story thrown in for good measure. The cast was great, especially Dianne Pilkington as Kim and Euan Morton as Boy George, who looked so much like the original that I wondered how far cloning has progressed in science ;) The only character I really disliked was the hero Billy's mother (played by Lyn Paul). Her coming to London in search of her wayward offspring, finding him - *gasp* - in the embrace of another man and suddenly turning from mute, badly-dressed provincial housewife to cool rock chick touring the clubs with the young ones, seemed extremely far-fetched. I thought it had become the show better if there had been a true conflict between Billy and his Mom and the clash of the outrageous new romantic dress style and attitudes with the neat, straight suburbia life. I could have done without the audience participation bits, too and if Leigh Bowery was supposed to be funny, I'm sorry, I didn't get it. I've hardly ever seen a more ridiculous figure. Taboo is definitely an enjoyable, interesting show and worth seeing (especially since you can get so many discounts for this one), but I guess you'd have to have been around back then to really appreciate it. Personally I found it hard to feel anything for those painted, crazily-dressed, drug-abusing clowns of the New Romantic era. Thursday wasn't my lucky day. I became a millionaire for ten minutes, when I found a (valid) credit card in a phone booth, someone had forgot to pull out of the slot and it turned out to be from some oil sheik issued by an Arab Bank ;) Unfortunately it came with a photo and I don't look like a 60-year old bearded Arab, so I decided to cancel the shopping trip to Harvey Nicks and instead handed the credit card in at the next-best bank for them to destroy it. I had looked forward to a lazy day lounging in Hyde Park with one of the books I had bought, but the weather was awful again and I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon! Scheduled for the evening was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium for which we had booked wisely in advance. The big blow came upon entering the Palladium and seeing notes everywhere informing us that Michael Ball wasn't on. I'm not a huge fan of Mr Ball, but I did like him in Passion and I had loved to see him live on stage again. Luckily his understudy Peter Bishop was a clone of him and it wasn't hard to imagine Ball on stage when you didn't look or listened too hard. Now unlike the whole British island I have never seen the movie and had to go on what I was seeing on stage. It was bright, big fun with colourful stage sets, cute people in funny costumes and many little jokes. The audience was full of children who were clearly enjoying themselves, although the appearance of the childcatcher seemed to cause quite some ruffled feathers ;)  I only wish that he had taken those annoying brats in front of me with him, because they kept chatting throughout the whole performance. I don't mind excited children exchanging a few words now and then, but those pests should have been shut up by their mothers. Chitty is clearly one of those shows you leave whistling the scenery - the car was the star, especially when it was flying (although the effect wasn't as dazzling as some people had said earlier - it was actually quite easy to figure out), while the songs were of the instantly forgettable sort. Only the title tune was one of those annoying ditties you don't like to begin with but which get stuck in your brain for hours afterwards. The cast was okay, though they didn't have much more to do than the average panto performer and I'd like to see newcomer Emma Williams in something more challenging than the ultra-sugary pastel-coloured Truly Scrumptious one day. However, if you love the movie as one of your annual christmas treats or if you have children, it's definitely a great evening out. Even if us boring grown ups don't fully appreciate a show like this, it's good and important that there are also shows like Chitty around that make for great family entertainment and introduce a new generation to live theatre. I had planned to go to Portsmouth on Friday and stay there overnight, but my bag had already assumed twice its original weight with my shopping sprees and the youth hostel in Portsmouth was miles away from the actual city, so I was glad when I heard that there was another bed available in London and I could just stay there instead of lugging my heavy bag around England. So I just went to Portsmouth for the day in truly awful weather. Everything was so soggy, grey and misty that I felt like riding through a november countryside. But once I had reached the Historical Dockyards, all that was forgotten. Ever since I fell in love with the Hornblower mini series I had been itching to see Portsmouth and more particularly the HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's flagship in the battle of Trafalgar. After reading all those books and seeing all those movies on TV, it was great to visit a genuine navy ship and see it all come to life. Though I understand their motives, I pitied the fact that they only run guided tours on the ship, because I had loved to stay longer and see more. This way however, I enjoyed seeing the horrified looks of those little old ladies when the guide described the daily life on the ships, including the awful food and the frequent use of the cat o'nine tails :) The historical dockyards also contain a naval museum, which offers a special "real life experience" of the battle of Trafalgar and a special exhibition about Nelson, who was the most popular man of his time. I was more intrigued by his waxwork - I had known that he had been rather small, skinny and sickly, but he just reached up to my nose (well, guys, that should relieve you - size doesn't matter *g* Nelson's success with the ladies was well-known!) I also saw the "Mary Rose" (or rather what's left of her after rotting in the Solent for 400 years) and the HMS Warrior, the first modern, iron-hulled warship of 1860, but found it dull and modern compared to the Victory. The biggest joke was the restaurant though. Romantically named "Tradewinds" it advertised offering food from all around the world... and what you got inside was either fish & chips or shepherd's pie. Well, ha! Still the fish & chips were better than the solid-rock ship's biscuits the souvenir shop sold :) When I finally left the dockyards, I went to the shore for a bit to look across the water, but I didn't regret my decision to reduce this outing to a one-day-trip and return to London in the evening. Apart from a bag full of souvenirs I had also brought a nasty cold with me from Portsmouth which began making itself felt on Saturday already. Left with nothing to do and feeling unwell anyway, I was glad to see that the latest big Bollywood-movie "Devdas" had just opened on Leicester Square, starring India's answer to Tom Cruise, Shahrukh Khan, so I went to see it despite the ludicrous ticket price of £10. It was as lavish as Bollywood gets with an epic love story set in impossibly beautiful palaces, giving us the kind of romantic escapism fantasy Hollywood has all but forgotten now. So what if the acting is cheesy, so what if the plot is far-fetched, I enjoyed every of its long 182 minutes and truly cared for the star-crossed lovers Devdas and Paro (though what India's girls see in Shahrukh Khan is beyond me - there are much better looking Indians out there).

The idea of seeing Devdas in the afternoon only backfired when I went to see Bombay Dreams in the evening. I had been looking forward to this show more than any other show - and then found myself a bit disappointed. Mostly I blame the (English) set designer, who created dull, boring, uninspirited stage sets, that neither brought the lavish extravaganza of the Bollywood movies to life nor India itself. I was also disappointed by the leading lady, Preeya Kalidas, though I don't know how much it's her fault or simply the role's fault - but I found Priya a rather cold fish, a snooty upper class girl in modern western clothes, one in the endless row of second-rate celebrities, IT-girls and socialites in every big city of the world. But these were the only setbacks. The music was wonderful and at last something fresh and exciting. The choreography in big dance numbers blew me away and left me wishing to have just a fraction of the spirit and liveliness those dancers convey in their Indian-style dancing. Raza Jaffrey was a convincing leading man as Akaash, the boy torn between fame and his hometown slums, but I found thesecond leading lady Ayesha Dharker and Raj Ghatak best of the cast. The music has been playing non-stop since I returned from London and once more I cheer Andrew Lloyd Webber for his courage to bring something truly new and refreshing to the London stage. Bombay Dreams could still be improved by tightening the story and giving it better sets but considering what else is new - adaptions of old movies and recycling old rock music - this is certainly a step into a different (and right) direction. I was also glad to see that the huge Apollo Victoria (where not the faintest traces of Starlight Express are left) was sold out and that many in the audience were of Indian background, introducing these people to a new genre, just like us westerners are slowly being introduced to Bollywood-movies like Monsoon Wedding, Lagaan and now Devdas. This seems to me a far healthier approach to foreign cultures than the cliched, one-sided approach to the Far East with the soppy Miss Saigon. Overall, it was an exciting trip with many new shows, though nothing that had really knocked me off my seat. If I were to make a top five of what I've seen, I'd give The Full Monty top spot, closely followed by Bombay Dreams. Chitty would come third, Taboo fourth and WWRY five. But this only means, that I have no desire to see the latter three again, while I hope to revisit Full Monty in different countries and see Bombay Dreams again at a later date. With my ticket for Macbeth already in my pocket, I know I'll return to London in November, but right now it looks like this could be the first play only trip, with many exciting new drama productions being prepared, while the musical scene has nothing more exciting to offer than yet another pop music recycling (Our House, using songs by 80's pop band Madness).