Nicole schreibt...

Well, here we go again, less than a month after my joyous first return to the West End. What with Corona forcing so many shows to close and postpone, re-juggling all the new shows had turned into a rather complicated jigsaw and a lucky coincidence led me to assembling them all into this long weekend. And it was a rather different trip, too, having the mother in tow and staying at the freshly refurbished upmarket NYX Hotel in Holborn, where we had stayed before when it was still The Grange. The new design is fabulous and I guess we were lucky to be able to book it at stupidly low prices when tourism was still down.
And while both Cologne Airport and Ryanair had surprised me with very lackadaisical checks the first time round, apparently someone somewhere had chewed them out because this time there was a meticulous control of the right documentation including the Covid tests and PLF. Which, I guess, is a good thing when properly planned, but as it was, boarding took a good hour after the flight was a little delayed to begin with, so getting into London, into the hotel, and then back out again to the Barbican turned into a bit of a rush.
First show for this trip was the hotly anticipated revival of Cole Porter’s timeless classic Anything Goes – when it had been announced to fill the Barbican’s summer gap, I knew it would be just the right thing to lift the spirits after the dire Corona months. A starry cast it was as well with Broadway A-Lister Sutton Foster reprising her Tony-Award winning role of Reno Sweeney and replacing TV star Megan Mullaly who had to drop out at short notice, along with British legends like Felicity Kendal, Robert Lindsay and Gary Wilmot (and bless’em all, but they are getting a bit long in the tooth). Normally Billy Crocker is the charming leading man, but here he felt oddly relegated to second row and Samuel Edwards, while a capable performer, couldn’t hold a candle to my memories of John Barrowman and his incredible stage charisma the last time Anything Goes was in town. The one who really stood out to me with a big personality, stage presence and voice was Carly Mercedes Dyer as Erma, who turned "Buddy Beware" into a bonafide showstopper, as did Haydn Oakley with "The Gypsy in Me". But overall compared to the brilliant version that had been at Drury Lane some years ago, this revival seemed oddly undercooked with low sound levels and a rather small cast that just didn't make the legendary Porter tunes pop as much as they should. My biggest surprise was Sutton Foster though, who really seemed to be phoning it in with an often far too serious expression and somehow just seemed off. Nothing about her screamed leading lady, much less Broadway A-Lister and most certainly not American, known for the biggest smiles of mankind. While it seemed pretty much sold out, I don't think the Barbican is doing itself any favours by charging sky-high prices for such a lacklustre affair.
Friday morning I felt compelled to do a bit of sightseeing with the mother, so I took her to a place I had been interested in myself for a while – the free Sky Garden at the top of the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in Fenchurch Street, which did not disappoint. It's arranged so that you can walk around and enjoy a 360° view into every direction and while the weather was... let's say, typically British, the view was still amazing and all that for free. Above was the view to the East, here's the view to the West. From there we walked on to a few other historical bits and pieces in the City then past the Tower and across Tower Bridge (which gave me serious Assassins Creed I-talked-to-Churchill-here vibes). Finally we made it back to the hotel for a few hours chilling at its lovely pool in the basement, which had been the main reason for returning to this hotel after all.
Show for the evening was Disney’s Frozen, which, to put it mildly, I had been sceptical about. While the movie is a perfectly charming re-interpretation of Andersen’s Scandinavian fairy tale of the Snow Queen, who brings eternal ice to her hapless village deep in the Scandinavian mountains and "Let it go" definitely one of the best tunes Disney had churned out in years, the subsequent endless hype and ubiquity of Elsa and Anna (and the idiotic snowman Olaf) everywhere put me like most everyone over the mental age of 10 off. I also thought it had really been rushed to the stage on Broadway unlike older movies that had taken far too longer to make it to the stage (and even those were usually mediocre at best). So I hadn’t been all that surprised surprised when Frozen didn’t do all that well on Broadway and seeing it in London felt more like an exercise in box ticking than anything else.
But Frozen turned out to be one of those shows that justify my thinking that unless something deeply offends me with horrible (and often sexist) writing or plain awfulness it is worth giving it a chance. It zipped along nicely (unlike the slow-as-molasses Tarzan) and didn’t feel like a very thin story padded out beyond reason (like The Little Mermaid) either – I’d put Frozen on par with Aladdin in terms of good story-telling and some beautiful stage magic but with much stronger female leads. Samantha Barks, so bland when I had seen her in the lacklustre Pretty Woman adaptation on Broadway, sure gave a star turn as Elsa and blew the roof off with "Let it go", certainly the best new Act One closer in ages. And yes, there was an ice castle that looked like a Swarovski factory had barfed all over the stage and yes, I’m still stunned by Elsa's superfast dress change. But she’d be nothing without Stephanie McKeon’s sweet charming Anna and together they were a fabulous dream team, capably supported by Obioma Ugoala's adorable Kristoff and Oliver Ormson’s smarmy Hans, while Olaf (puppeted by Craig Gallivan) is just too daft for my liking and I kinda wished summer WOULD come and melt him. Like all Disney shows Frozen is nothing I’d need to see several times, but it was definitely a pleasant surprise and a very charming show I couldn’t help liking. Much like its spiritual sister Wicked it's a show about friendship rather than the tired old girl-needs-prince cliche (and its ludicrous success should tell Disney a thing or two what matters more to girls), it's full of good tunes and just all-around solid entertainment. It was also lovely to see so many little girls around in one of the Elsa or Anna dresses, showing the movie's lasting appeal despite the fact that these girls were babies at most when the movie came out eight years ago! And let me add that ALW’s refurb of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is absolutely wonderful, giving this historic gem another very long lease of life hopefully.
After some time on Oxford Street amid abysmal weather on Saturday morning, it was time for ALW’s latest offering Cinderella, much postponed and much talked-about with the Lord's grand-standing over England's Covid restrictions. And despite his claims that this was a new modern take on Cinderella, I was still very doubtful about his version of one of the most done-to-death stories of them all. But it really paid off that he finally ditched old male collaborators in favour of Emerald Fennell, best known for playing Camilla on Netflix’s The Crown, who also just happened to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay for her clever strong feminist drama Promising Young Woman. No whiny Cinderella in need of a prince here – she’s the stroppy goth outsider of Belleville, a town obsessed with beauty, whose only friend is Prince Sebastian, himself a wimpy outsider forever in the shadow of his dashing older brother Prince Charming. But when Charming disappears, Sebastian suddenly finds himself heir to the throne and in need of a wife. His mother arranges a ball to find a bride, Cinderella abandons all her ideals to transform into another town beauty... and drama ensues. Ironically, if Fennell and ALW had stuck with just this tale, it would have been grand, but by trying to score woke points, they tore gaping holes of logic into the plot. Prince Charming finally returns like a Deus Ex Machina just before the wedding of Sebastian with Cinderella’s ditzy stepsister Adele, but then declares he’s gay. Good for him, but isn’t it the whole point of a dynasty that the heir marries and fathers heirs in turn? So if Charming marries his boyfriend, wouldn’t Sebastian still be forced to marry Adele instead of leaving Belleville with Cinderella, because where does this leave the dynasty now? And sometimes the whole beautiful "it doesn’t matter which skin colour a performer has" logic also crashes on the rocks of reality, when the plot hinges on Sebastian not recognizing Cinderella at the ball... when she's the only black, short, chubby girl in a village full of leggy white blondes? But let’s stop poking logic holes into the whole thing – it’s still amazingly smart, sharp and fun, with terrific performances all around by an amazing company and ALW has written what I think is his best score in a very long time with classic ballads like "Only you, lonely you" and "I know I have a heart" (yes, let’s ignore the trite titles/lyrics, courtesy of David Zippel, which could have been way smarter) and upbeat numbers like “Beauty has a Price”. I can’t single out anyone really. While I was a bit gutted that leading lady Carrie Hope Fletcher had announced holidays just for this weekend (to run the London Marathon of all things!!), her fresh-out-of-stage-school alternate Georgina Onuorah did a fine job, both in acting and singing. And I was more pleased to see adorable Ivano Turco as Sebastian anyway, who had already charmed me during the Show Must Go On concert in spring and who was indeed absolutely terrific with a surprise highlight towards the very end of the show.
But most of all this show belonged to the female supporting cast – Rebecca Trehearn as the hilariously bitchy Queen, perfectly matched by Victoria Hamilton-Barritt’s equally bitchy stepmother and Gloria Onitri’s star turn as a Fairy Godmother with a surgical scalpel to prettify Cinderella. As an additional bonus, Giovanni Spano, one of my favourites from Bat, made his debut as Prince Charming that afternoon and it was great to see him again. And while it does make sense for the plot to have cut his big Sea Witch number, boy would I have loved to hear Gio rock that song! Another highlight of the show was putting the rotating stage/front rows of the Gillian Lynne theatre to good use for the ball, something not seen since the heady days of Cats, which suddenly put me in Row 2 up close to the cast and action for a while. While a rotating stage should really just have been a little technical thing, it somehow worked as pure theatrical magic. So overall, despite little nitpicky things, I really think that ALW has finally delivered a smart, sassy original show again, which I enjoyed enough to try and see it again with CHF. I hope he will continue to work with a new generation of fresh writers like Fennell (and next time perhaps with a lyricist of similar capabilities) and that Cinderella will enjoy a longer run in a sea of movie adaptations and jukebox musicals.
Which segues nicely into the evening. After the shortest meeting ever with a friend and a lovely Indian Dinner it was off to the Adelphi for the show I had (admittedly) been most excited about – the musical adaptation of Back To The Future. When I had first heard about it, my thought had been "hell no, leave that alone, nothing good can come out of it", but eventually curiosity got the better of me and for various reasons I’ve recently been on a massive 80s binge, revisiting several of my old favourite movies of the time. And BTTF had always held a special place there for me as one I loved dearly and Michael J. Fox being my first teenage crush.
For this stage adaptation, the movie team had reassembled and created a strange beast of a show. The only one I can really compare it to is Dirty Dancing (itself another of my 80s favourites) – people just wanting to see their favourite movie scenes recreated and greeting those with massive applause. It was the only show during this trip where both leads (first Marty, later Doc) go entrance applause and where every big moment – George punching Biff, George kissing Lorraine and the fabulous race back to 1985 all getting massive applause and cheers by a hyper middle-aged audience, no less excited (and far more unruly) than all the little girls at Frozen.
What was left behind though was any reason why this should have been a musical. Unlike many others, where they managed to find a new approach and thus make it fresh (like Beetlejuice most recently), this was really just the movie slapped on stage (with some tiny alterations that wouldn't fly anymore today, like the Libyan terrorists coming after Doc) and admittedly anything else for such a beloved iconic movie would have felt wrong. The new music was mostly forgettable and I actually found myself inwardly groaning when they started launching into another song instead of getting on with the plot. Tellingly, the best songs by a mile were "Johnny B. Goode" which Marty rocks at the dance and the movie’s big hit "The Power of Love", tacked on here as the finale. So is this worth seeing? If you’re an 80s kid like me and a fan of the movie – absolutely. The designs are stunning, the grand finale of Marty going back to 1985 absolutely breathtaking and of course it’s massive fun to be in a big theatre with 1,500 like-minded nerds. The cast is also great, with Olly Dobson playing Michael J. Fox playing Marty McFly, while Roger Bart gives Doc a bit more of a personality instead of just copying Christopher Lloyd. Everyone else including Hugh Coles and Rosanna Hyland as Marty’s parents George and Lorraine were capable clones of the originals as well, having little chance to do something fresh with their parts. But on the whole it had that Double Whopper with Cheese feeling to me - you enjoy it immensely, but it leaves no lasting impression and makes you wonder what the whole point was. Admittedly, I personally had a great evening because I loved the movie back then and just went along with the amazing atmosphere in the theatre, but if I judged it by my regular fairly high standards, I’d have to rank it (way) below the smart Cinderella and the polished Frozen and it might be the best proof as of yet, why some things are better left alone.
Normally I would have gone home on Sunday morning, but thanks to Ryanair offering a cheap late flight on Sunday evening, I was able to have another wish come true: Catching the twice-postponed 30th anniversary concert of Children of Eden at Cadogan Hall. I had loved the Original London Cast CD when it came out in 1991, but the show flopped badly and so I didn't get to see it. And while it never became a big hit anywhere, the biblical subject made it a favourite show for amdram and school groups where it continued to thrive. I missed the revival at the (tiny) Union Theatre, but now at least I could hear the songs performed live on stage and as an additional bonus got to see composer Stephen Schwartz in the flesh. I had also been curious about Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, which has emerged as one of the most popular concert venues in recent years. It used to be a church for nearly hundred years, before falling into disrepair and getting converted into a fairly nice concert hall. The concert had been produced and put together by Rob Houchen, who also sang Cain and Japheth (capably and adorably as ever), with Shan Ako on Yonah duty, singing a beautiful and way less squeaky version of my favourite song "Stranger to the Rain" than Frances Ruffelle on the recording. Original cast member Ruthie Henshall was there as the Snake and Adam Pearce did a good job as Father with his deep sonorous voice (though if we're all going woke, why not have a Mother?). With no other information around, the following dialogue by text occured during the interval. Me: "Wow, Alice Fearn really has some pipes!!" Friend: "You mean her understudy has some pipes, she had to cancel her appearance!" He forwarded a tweet that indeed confirmed that Fearn had to drop out last minute to be replaced by (similar looking pretty blonde) Emma Kingston. Seriously, how rude is it, especially to her, to not put a slip of paper with information into the programme?! If I hadn't made just that remark to my friend, I would have continued in blithe ignorance that it was Emma Kingston who really blew me away with her Eve and Mama Noah in both acts - making it even more impressive if she stepped in at such short notice! Oh well, Children of Eden still remains one of my favourite scores and I'm really glad I was able to catch this concert version at least. And feeling caught up on London and its crop of new big musicals now, I shall await my next trip in January and reunion with my beloved Bats impatiently...