Nicole schreibt...

Due to circumstances beyond my control I found myself hanging around New York way more often than I had anticipated this year, which, as fine as it was, also meant a very long break from visiting my favourite place in the world. So it was great to be finally back, even though I found myself taken aside by customs for the first time ever for luggage inspection. Once I had shown the really nice guy that I wasn't bringing anything worse into the country than Printen from Aachen and a chocolate Manneken Pis from Brussels, I was allowed to proceed. After a break at the hotel (which had finally given me a room on the side facing King's Cross, which was like watching an oversized model train set!) I set off for the West End for some shopping in my favourite places and to give some poor young lady at the Savoy Theatre some extra work out by making her run up and down the staircases twice for a mug. I also went on a reconnaissance mission to the new hipsterish food market in Seven Dials to check out the cheese conveyor belt which was... erm, cheesy, but really good fun. For a price though, as four cheeses and a bit of sausage came to nearly £24 (and no, none of the cheeses were gold-plated, but of course 'carefully curated'). I had booked for Falsettos at The Other Palace as soon as it had been announced to nab one of the cheap front row seats, then got seriously stumped when more and more interesting announcements came in for the autumn season. For a while I dithered over ditching this for Soho Cinders at Charing Cross, a show I've been wanting to see for years, but ultimately the lack of discounts and the weird traverse staging made me decide it wasn't worth throwing plans around for, especially as I wouldn't have been able to sell my Falsettos ticket anyway. "Falsettos" consists of the two one-act musicals "March of the Falsettos" and "Falsettoland", written in the early-to-late 80s, and is one of these typical "dramedies about neurotic upper class New Yorkers" you either loathe or love. In this case it's the story of Marvin who leaves his wife Trina for a young man named Whizzer and she gets together with their shrink Mendel and in the second act/part things take a serious turn when Whizzer succumbs to AIDS. I tend to fall on the "loathe" side of the fence normally, but was willing to give it a go nonetheless because William Finn wrote some great songs and because not least since the recent big Broadway revival it had felt like one of those shows one should simply have seen once. It includes one of the best comedic female solos ever in Trina's "I'm breaking down", here sung by the wonderful Laura Pitt-Pulford, who was another incentive for booking. She didn't disappoint, nor did anyone else in the cast - if I didn't really feel much for any of them, it was more the material, the relentless pace that hardly allowed for a breather and the presence of one of my pet peeves: The "precocious wise beyond his years" child, another very American thing I just want to set fire to. All the same, it's an important part of musical history and I can see what an impact it will have had in the 80s when the gay community was still struggling for acceptance and the AIDS crisis was at its peak. And it's probably no coincidence that the revival came at a time when the reactionary right in America is trying to pull the country back into the dark ages. I'm glad I was able to catch this and feel like it was (probably) the right choice. Saturday morning I had a bit of time to poke around the shops before it was time to head across the river to meet a friend at the National Theatre. And I think it says something about the ever-pleasant audiences at the National Theatre that after forgetting my jacket in the downstairs cafe when we went upstairs to chat, it was handed in at the cloakroom and kept safe there for me until I came back downstairs in search for it. It would have been a very cold day otherwise indeed, especially as my next destination was way off the beaten path: The tiny new Turbine Theatre, set in the railway arches near Battersea Power Station, 20 minutes walk from Sloane Square tube. While the location isn't exactly ideal (with a train rattling through overhead every few minutes), it's a charming little theatre, made even more charming by the seating arrangements: Two large sofas with space for four each formed Row B while Row A consisted of a bunch of beanbags. Being the cheapskate that I am and always up for something weird, I had booked one such beanbag. On entering I was told I could sit on whichever I liked, so I picked the one furthest to the right, where I could use the wall as an additional backrest. It was all surprisingly comfortable and I'd happily sit in more beanbags rather than ratty old theatre chairs with zero legroom. The show I had ventured out for was "High Fidelity" - first a book set in London by Nick Hornby, then a movie set in Chicago and finally a rather unsuccessful musical on Broadway with music by Tom Kitt, who'd later find fame with "Next to Normal". The London premiere moved the plot back to London, but kept the Americanized lyrics. I was really impressed by how well the small space of the Turbine Theatre was used for the show and by the pretty much perfect casting. It's the story of womanizing manchild Rob, owner of the "last record shop on Earth", whose frustrated girlfriend Laura leaves him, sending him on a journey of self-discovery and adulting. My first thought when Oliver Ormson, who looked like someone cloned the young John Barrowman from the 90s, entered was that he was way too handsome for a nerdy music geek, but ultimately it worked perfectly - who wouldn't want to see one of those pretty boys, so in love with themselves, brought down a peg or several? He was fabulously supported by Shanay Holmes as Laura, Robbie Durham and Carl Au as his useless shop assistants and no one less than Robert Tripolino as Laura's new flirt, the esoteric hippie Ian. Having last seen him as Jesus in JCS at the Barbican, a show as dramatic as it gets, it was great to see him do funny so well, too. The music had a decent rock music flair and the plot zipped along fine, with a particularly hilarious scene involving Bruce Springsteen to materialize for Rob. I really think this show would deserve a longer run on a bigger stage somewhere. I made my way back to the West End and had a quick dinner before it was time for what should have been the biggie of this trip: The London production of the muchly hyped Broadway show "Dear Evan Hansen". When this show had first been announced, I had wanted to like it so badly: A shy outsider at school, racked with social anxiety and stumbling into mess - that sounded oh so familiar to me. But when the album came out, I was sorely disappointed, both by the plot (too convoluted to explain here in two lines, which is in itself a bad sign) and by the noisy music by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, a pair that hasn't yet written a wonderfully catchy melodic song they didn't then proceed to ruin with an obnoxious beat. Still, I wanted to see it live, see how it would all feel when the plot unfolded on the stage and I was lucky to nab a £15 seat in the slips on the Grand Circle, which offered a perfect view. I wish I could say, the show won me over, but unfortunately it didn't. There's just so much wrong with Steven Levenson's book that never really calls Evan to account for the lies he's told people, a too saccharine American feel-good ending and basically a structure that doesn't work at all for me. Connor, whose suicide triggers the whole plot, is never really introduced as a character, we never really know what drove him to do what he did and we learn even less about the other teens involved, such as bland mopey Zoe or over-achieving Alana. Nor do we really hear much from Evan's mother until the very end when it's far too late. Not to mention that Evan comes across as a bit of a dick towards her, a single mum, working hard to support them both. Lastly I feel that we can't really follow Evan on his journey of lies either. There's a moment just before his big speech (the sappy "You will be found" number that closes Act One) that's screaming for a big solo in which Evan tells us how he's racked with guilt over his lies and doesn't know how to stop things now... ANYTHING to let us into his head and not just let Sam Tutty stand around on stage looking constipated. Not his fault really, I think he did a fine job as Evan, as did everyone else, doing with their flimsy characters what they could (question: Will Rebecca McKinnis win some 'Mother of the Year' award moving from playing one troubled teen's mum to another?) The infuriating thing is that there is a really good show lurking in this mess. The music sounded much better live with less noisy "pop" amplification and it IS one of the very rare beasts, an original show, neither movie adaptation nor jukebox musical, that deals with contemporary issues such as social anxiety and the influence of social media. The theatre was full of young folks and I got the sense that most of them were familiar with the album and happily anticipated each song. And if it works for them, fair enough. I couldn't help comparing it to how I felt when "Rent" came out in the 90s and with its contemporary subjects and rock soundtrack felt like such a massive breath of fresh air among all the lacklustre adaptations of literary classics that had followed in the wake of "Les Mis" and "Phantom". I guess each generation has a few things they will jump on and embrace, leaving others mystified and I guess that now I'm on that older side of the fence, looking baffled by what the young folks are into. I just wish it was a better show they could love - Jamie, playing less than 500 metres down the road, is so similar in many aspects and yet a million times better written. Ah well, I don't regret having seen it but I was happy to move on - quite literally as it was time to go home next morning. Luckily it's only six weeks until the next trip and more teenage hype (which I already know I will love, so there's that).