Nicole schreibt...

London January 2015

My usual January-trip to London turned into a bigger expedition since the mother invited herself along, so I wanted to be sure to have two full days for sightseeing and such. Which also came very handy for the shows, since London has been so filled with new musicals this season it's almost impossible to catch everything. I had already added another trip in November and now there were five more new shows to see – quite marvellous really!
< By now the Eurostar has pretty much become my standard mode of transport and so we were off again from Welkenraedt via Bruxelles-Midi to St. Pancras Station in the heart of London. I was surprised to find my beloved town in sunshine for a change, though naturally that didn't last long. Following check-in we went for a first walk, had dinner at the wonderful Dishoom "Bombay Cafe" in Covent Garden and then it was – for me – on to the Playhouse Theatre for the first show, the musical adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's "Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown", the movie that was his big break in the early 90's. I had been curious about this when it first opened in Broadway, but despite a very starry cast, it was one of the biggest flops of the seasons. Having seen the show live now, it's become a lot clearer to me why. The movie is a fast-paced farce catching the bubbly spirit of Madrid in the 80's, when the whole of Spain breathed freely again after the death of dictator Franco in 1975 and the creative arts were blooming (which included the young Almodovar). In the center is voice-actress Pepa, who's nursing a broken heart over her cheating lover Ivan, forever trying to catch up with him on the phone (well, those were the days before Whatsapp), her rather silly model friend Candela (who discovers she's dating a terrorist) and Ivan's ex-wife Lucia and their son Carlos, who in turn has a rather sour-faced girlfriend called Marisa. While Ivan himself is busy trying to seduce the lawyer Paulina. So all the women are indeed on the verge of a nervous breakdown with their chaotic lives, but the fast-paced comedy of the movie is slowed way down by the songs in the musical and overall Pepa just isn't a truly likeable heroine – nor is anyone else, except perhaps ditzy but funny Candela (who also has the one stand-out song of the show to sing, the farcical "Model Behaviour"). And while the leading ladies were all fine, they also simply weren't.... Spanish, without that particular Spanish temper and fire. Lastly, but certainly not least, I also don't think it was a good idea to cast Tamsin Greig as Pepa – she may be a truly good comedy actress on stage and TV, but she is not a singer and it did show, especially compared to the formidable Haydn Gwynne as Lucia, whose "Invisible" was another of the few standout songs. While nothing stood out as truly bad, the whole thing just didn't come together for a good show and my guess is that it was simply the wrong material to turn into a musical and should have been left alone.
On Thursday we visited the excellent exhibition on Germany at the British Museum, then Westfield Shopping Mall at Shepherd's Bush for a nicer shopping experience than crowded Oxford Street. After dinner at the nice Brazilian restaurant across the street from the Shaftesbury Theatre it was time to see a show together – I had chosen "Memphis" for this as I knew the plot fit onto a stamp and it was mainly great song and dance numbers which can also be enjoyed by someone with limited English. When the show first came to Broadway I wasn't interested in it at all, because I was so tired of the permanent rehash of the 50's and 60's clearly aimed at an audience that was young in those days. But I was curious to see it live and the London version came with the added bonus of soul singer Beverly Knight in the lead role Felicia. Thursday was the only free time slot for me, so it also came with the day off for the male lead, Killian Donnelly, but I found Jon Robyns more than adequate as Huey, the true lead of the show whose story is losely based on real white Deejays in 50's segregation Memphis who ignored the rules and promoted black singers to white radio listeners.
The show was entertaining for sure, with some great dance numbers and fantastic dancers full of energy, though rather thin on really good songs, except for Felicia's big "Coloured Woman" song and Huey's rousing final "Memphis lives in me" – although the last fifteen minutes were rather on the odd and very rushed side with Felicia leaving, Huey belting out his big song, Felicia returning for a happy end of sorts. While I wouldn't consider the show racist (not half as racist as a certain show set in South East Asia, that's for sure!), I do think it was all rather glossy and shallow in the way it treated segregation and the problems the black population faced. In that aspect it reminded me quite a bit of Newsies, another show that presented a serious issue in a shallow chirpy way. For entertainment value, Memphis is sure worth a visit, though it wouldn't rank among my favorites either.
Friday saw us day-tripping to Windsor Castle from Paddington Station, but once we got to the ticket office, we heard that the Royal State Apartments were closed. They charged only half-price for entry, but it was still a bummer of course. We did at least see Mary's impressive doll house and some hand-written notes and letters from monarchs across the centuries including the Queen's 100th birthday telegram to Queen Mum and a letter from Abraham Lincoln commiserating Queen Victoria after the death of Albert. Another highlight was St. George's Chapel where various royals are rather randomly buried between commoners and minor nobles. I stood on the grave of Henry VIII., which was rather amazing and saw the much newer tombs of George VI. and Queen Mum. Then, after a stroll around Windsor and lunch at the station it was back to London.

Show for the evening was "Made in Dagenham" for me, an adaptation of the movie of the same name about the women that went on strike at the Ford plant in Dagenham in the 60s to fight for equal pay (and paved the way for similar regulations not just in England but all over Europe). The musical had drawn quite some negativity and given my disappointment with the new shows that had opened (and closed) the year before, I was certainly wary of this. But halfway through act one I found that I enjoyed myself very much indeed. David Arnold, best-known for writing the score to the recent James Bond-movies, the Sherlock TV series and indeed the movie version of Made in Dagenham, wrote a bunch of very catchy songs like "Everyone Out" and "Stand up" and the show flowed along very nicely. I could have done without the odd clichéd gun-toting yank in "This is America" though it didn't spoil the overall enjoyment. And unlike Tamsin Greig, Gemma Arterton proved herself to be a real find, a good-looking movie star who can truly sing and who carried the entire show as Rita O'Grady formidably, especially her great speech in Eastbourne in the end. Personally I was also glad to see a show about women bonding and fighting for a genuine cause, their treatment and pay as equals, which made a nice change from the ceaseless flow of shows where women only obsess about men and belt big tunes whining about love. So ultimately and quite surprisingly, "Made in Dagenham" turned out to be the highlight of the trip for me and I do hope that word of mouth will continue to spread and the show do well after all.
A busy Saturday started on Camden Lock Market, where I noticed they have now put up a statue of late singer Amy Winehouse who lived in the area, then continued with meeting a friend in Covent Garden before trekking out to the rather shoddy area near Elephant & Castle where the Southwark Playhouse is located. It has gained quite a reputation for staging great musicals in a small space in recent years (among them "Titanic" and the first European production of "In the Heights") and now finally they were doing a musical when I was in London and had time to go. I had never seen "Bat Boy" before, a rather crazy Off-Broadway musical imitating cheap horror flicks and its original run in London (at the huge Shaftesbury Theatre) was a big flop, closing after only a few weeks. This small fringe venue seemed to be better suited for it and I was looking forward to see Lauren Ward again, who I had really liked as Miss Honey in Matilda and who was now playing the Bat Boy's (adoptive) mother Meredith. I was also pleased to see Georgina Hagen, who I had seen as Pearl in Bochum's Starlight Express a while ago, turn up here as daughter Shelley, while the Bat Boy himself was played by newcomer Rob Compton. The leads were completed by Matthew White as Dr Parker, who looked rather spookily like Walter White and I couldn't help wondering if he was cooking meth in his evil lab. It was all rather silly "out there" fun and I did find that I enjoyed myself quite a lot. The theatre certainly deserves its praise and I hope I will see many more interesting productions there – even though I'd probably try and stick with matinees since I wouldn't want to wander about the area in the dark alone late in the evening.
From grotty Southwark it was back into the heart of the West End and to the tiny Donmar Warehouse where once again I had been really lucky to get hold of a ticket, this time for the musical "City of Angels" – which I had seen years ago in Germany but never in English and the cast was simply to die for: Hadley Fraser as crime writer Stine (how about getting Nathan Fillion to lead a Broadway revival?), Tam Mutu as his fictional hard-boiled detective Stone and Rosalie Craig, Rebecca Trehearn, Katherine Kelly and Samantha Barks as the women of the convoluted plot. I was quite impressed at the wonderful stage sets and lavish costumes in this tiny performance space (especially after the rather barebones Coriolanus in January) and the cast was certainly great, but something somehow didn't really click for me. I might simply have been tired at the end of this long and intense trip, but I think the show is just too slick for its own good. It's not really a laugh-out-loud comedy, nor can it be taken seriously with its over-the-top characters. While the (much longer) first act still flowed along nicely, the (shorter) second act just seemed to drag and drag. In the end I was glad that I had once more been able to snag a ticket to a Donmar production and to see this fantastic ensemble on stage together, but the show itself just didn't really grab me.
While I don't think it's in any way possible to rank shows since so many factors come into play, I'd probably say that "Made in Dagenham" was my favorite of this trip, followed by "Memphis", "Bat Boy" and "City of Angels" all on par and "Women on the verge..." as the least favorite. And as if the trip hadn't been intense enough it ended with a weekend of utter travel chaos at the Eurotunnel. A lorry on a Le Shuttle train had had some smouldering load aboard, causing smoke alarm and closure of both tunnels for all of Saturday. By Sunday morning trains from St. Pancras were supposedly running again and we did finally make it through the tunnel and on to Brussels with only an hour delay (though let me tell you, that if the tunnel is scary enough as such, it is doubly so when crossed at a slower speed following calamity) – finding out later that we were doubly lucky since an unrelated power failure had led to closures and cancellations AGAIN later that day. So the trip ended on a rather tense note and I was really glad when I was home again. And I'm truly looking forward to the next one in April, where I'll be on my own and do things at my own pace again.