Nicole schreibt...

This unusual trip found me not on my usual Eurostar straight to London, but first on a Thalys to Paris. Why? Many moons ago, before a man in China had an ill-advised bat sandwich for lunch, I had booked a ticket to the muchly hyped revival of Starmania, which then got postponed half a dozen times. Back then I had hoped to repeat the wonderful musical weekend I had had in Paris some years ago, but nothing else worth seeing came along and so I decided to just combine Paris with London and tick another box off my travel geekery list, namely the Eurostar route Paris – London. My first (and so far only live) encounter with Starmania had been a German production as far back as 1992, which must take credit for being the first musical (of the perhaps half dozen I had seen by then) I didn’t really like. Of course now I know that it was mostly because I was a clueless absolute beginner when it came to musicals and I certainly knew nothing of the French spectacles and their different way of storytelling. Starmania is the behemoth that towers over them all and paved the way for all the later favourites. It started as a studio recording by Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon in 1978, hit the stage in Paris a year later and turned the two leads Daniel Balavoine and Diane Dufresne into superstars in the process, while its songs became independent chart hits similar to how ALW’s greatest tunes like “Don’t cry for me Argentina” and “Memory” did in the Anglophone world at the same time. It was revived a few times, most recently in 1994 at the Mogador with my own beloved Bruno Pelletier playing the lead, but back then of course I didn’t know him yet, nor entertained the idea of seeing a musical in Paris. My own proper interest in French spectacles only began with Notre Dame de Paris and a whole string of trips either directly to Paris or at least to Brussels to catch the tours later followed and so I was overjoyed when the new “40th anniversary production“ was announced for 2019. So what’s it all about? Starmania was very losely inspired by the story of Patty Hearst, the super-rich heiress who was kidnapped by a left-wing terror group in 1974 and then joined them in their crime sprees. Berger and Plamondon set their story in a vague future, where the megacity of Monopolis, ruled over by gadzillionaire Zéro Janvier is terrorized by a similar gang, the Black Stars, led by sexy Johnny Rockfort and bossy Sadia. Sadia engineers for popular beautiful TV celebrity Cristal, who hosts the show Starmania, to do an interview with the mysterious Johnny and – you guess it – Cristal and Johnny fall in love and she not only abandons her celebrity life to run off with him, but uses the airwaves to agitate against Zéro Janvier, who himself is having a romance with faded movie siren Stella Spotlight. The whole thing is held together by Marie-Jeanne, waitress at the Underground Cafe, who herself fancies wannabe rock star Ziggy and comments on the plot with her own songs. While it’s all very 70’s, it also feels almost shockingly contemporary with its tale of bland globalized megacities and obsessions with money and fame. This new production takes place at La Seine Musicale, a fairly new venue plonked on the Île Seguin in the middle of the Seine at the far end of Paris in Boulogne-Billancourt, but luckily it was a fairly easy long metro ride away from the Gare du Nord, where I arrived and had also booked my hotel. And colour me impressed, but unlike the tube, the Paris metro has mobile network throughout (which enabled some poor chap to follow France's world cup match on a tiny phone screen). La Seine Musicale is yet another vast arena and director Thomas Jolly (whose next job will be the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics!) has gone for a breathtaking concert design with overwhelming lighting that almost made me regret sitting in the front row as I think it will be more impressive from further back. Like all French spectacles, Starmania has a rather thin book, relying on its fantastic music to propel things along. To my greatest delight, they chose gorgeous Côme, on who I had already crushed on my last Paris trip, to play the male lead Johnny Rockfort, but sadly he turned out to be far too cute and weedy to play this fearsome tough rocker-terrorist and felt more like Sadia’s and later Cristal’s toyboy. Miriam Baghdassarian as Sadia, a role I had never cared much for before, was also the stand-out for me with a fabulous powerhouse performance and really, she should be running the Black Stars anyway. Gabrielle Lapointe (alternating with another singer) was my Cristal, doing a fine job with the gorgeous hit "Monopolis", but the role has always felt like the blandest of the females to me. Much more agency is given to Stella Spotlight (Maag) and of course Marie-Jeanne, who keeps the show together and was played by lovely understudy Louise Charbonnel on this afternoon. Another understudy was Belgian Nicolas Dorian as Ziggy, whose name hints that he was modelled on androgynous David Bowie in the 70s, which only half-worked with this extremely good-looking and fairly masculine performer. And finally there was David Latulippe as the villain Zéro Janvier, more Elon Musk than Trump, who delivered his number “Le Blues de Businessman” with aplomp. But really, my ultimate favourite song has always been Johnny’s sad lament “S.O.S. d’un terrien en détresse” and here at least Côme could prove that even if he doesn’t look the part, he can knock this fabulous song out of the park including the impossibly high notes. And what a way to end the number, giving a whole new level to the expression “going out with a bang” that – if you remember 9/11 – could almost do with a trigger warning. While overall Starmania didn’t bowl me over as much as my beloved Notre Dame de Paris, I’m still very glad I’ve finally seen a big French version live on stage and I look forward to seeing it again next spring in Brussels from further back and when everyone has grown more into their parts. I didn’t do much more in Paris beyond a quick trip to FNAC on Champs Elysées as much to buy a boxset as to at least see a bit more of the city than the metro, the station and the venue, but returned to the hotel fairly early on. Next morning I got my moment of travel geekery, boarding the Eurostar at Gare du Nord (whose Eurostar Terminal is much nicer than the one in Brussels!), then spent most of the train ride sleeping (or trying to) since my laptop had given up the ghost on the way to Paris and I was sleepy anyway. In London I immediately moved on to Wembley to ditch my luggage and then into the West End. Luckily more and more shows are doing Sunday performances now (which enabled me to arrange the trip like this in the first place!) and I opted for the matinee of the revised version of Stuart Bryson’s and Tim Rice’s musical “From Here to Eternity” at the small Charing Cross Theatre. It’s based on the book and movie of the same name and the first big West End production was rather a flop – which I didn’t understand really, as it had a great story and some proper good tunes. Its major flaw was that it was far too long and so they took the axe to it now, pruning mostly the two love stories to focus on “life in the army” on a naval base on Hawaii in 1941. Young rebellious Maggio, who gets ground down to the death, is now at the centre of the plot, giving newcomer Jonny Amies a fine chance to shine. Nominal lead Prewitt, played by Jonathon Bentley, still gets half a love story with local hooker Lorene, played by the marvellously named Desmonda Cathabel (whose name I will totally steal the next time I create a gothic Victorian lady character). The young lady is from Indonesia though and shares the fate of other South East Asian performers to so often be reduced to playing hookers, but at least Lorene is a fairly strong and interesting character (and I’ll bet the house on seeing Desmonda as Kim in Sheffield’s Miss Saigon next summer). The leads are completed by secret lovers Adam Rhys-Charles as Warden and Carley Stenson as Karen, both suffering from blandness syndrome. I liked the sharpened focus overall, that helps to showcase the strong songs instead of drowning them in a sea of second rate music and the gorgeous “The Boys of 41” still brings a tear to my eye. Also, well done to director Brett Smock for creatively and perfectly using the small space of the Charing Cross Theatre! I should have gone straight back to Wembley then if not for being tripped up by my desire to see favourite performers in new roles. Young Ivano Turco was for me the breakout star of ALWs “Cinderella”, a show that I enjoyed when I saw it, but which ultimately left me with a blah feeling, not helped by all the backstage and social media drama. Indubitably while waiting for “MJ” to come to town, Ivano joined “Get Up, Stand Up – the Bob Marley Musical” and despite his tender age gets to be alternate Bob Marley twice a week, including Sunday evenings. So between seeing him and sitting in my hotel early, I thought why not. Which proved to be a good idea. Let me start this off by saying, I’m as guilty as the next white person of thinking “ugh, nobody needs this jukebox musical” or associating Marley and reggae mostly with stoners and flower power hippies nowadays. Which is doing the man a great disservice, when you consider just how influential he had been both for music and for the politics of his homeland Jamaica. So while I can’t say I was blown away by the show and the music (knowing only very few big hits of his, all of which are crammed into Act Two), I appreciate that my affection for young Ivano drove me to see this and educate myself on reggae and Jamaican history. And I think THIS is what musical theatre needs when there’s all that big talk of diversity, and not yet another black performer shoehorned into a white part. We need to hear and see stories from other parts of the world to understand those countries, their history and their culture. And given how many black people I saw around me in the stalls, I think that they may agree that they rather see subjects and hear music dear to their hearts than the contrived stuff so often slapped on stage now in the name of woke. As for Ivano - he’s definitely too young I think and the fake beard they slapped onto his baby face was laughably bad, but he did give a good performance, showing that there’s a lot more promise in him than the drippy Prince Sebastian allowed him to show. Star of the evening for me was Cleopatra Rey as Rita Marley though, who brought the house down with her gorgeous version of “No woman no cry”. I can’t help thinking that Bob Marley deserved better than this typical done-by-numbers jukebox musical rushing through the important bits of his life (book by Lee “Billy Elliot” Hall) and should have focused on those most momentous years in Jamaica, but all the same, it was a good lesson for me to not just dismiss things that don’t instantly speak to me personally as “nobody needs this”. The next two days had been planning chaos with a healthy dose of luck. I had first booked The Band’s Visit at the Donmar Warehouse for Monday on the grounds that even though I had considered the Broadway production a tedious snoozer, I felt I should give it a chance live. Then the Almeida Theatre announced the world premiere of the new Elton John/Jake Shears musical Tammy Faye which sent the hype machine into overdrive, so I ended up consciously double-booking myself. Thinking that I would decide spontaneously based on reviews and feedback for both shows (or a transfer being announced at least for Tammy Faye). Then, funny enough, The Band’s Visit added an unexpected matinee for Tuesday and not just that, it would be one of the few performances in which Emma Kingston (with who I had fallen in love at the Children of Eden concert) would be playing the lead Dina. So naturally I was all over that, sold my ticket for Monday and was off to the Almeida with an easy heart on Monday. When something is all the hype, I get suspicious quickly, especially since I ended up disliking so many hypes of recent years. Since I didn’t know anything about Tammy Faye, I watched the recent movie about her life starring Jessica Chastain (who won the Oscar for it) but it didn’t do much for me. Tammy seemed the cliché ditzy American housewife and the whole American religious right creeps me out – now more than ever as they keep chopping away at fundamental women’s rights. Luckily the musical with music by Elton John, lyrics by Jake Shears and book by James Graham got it right and my initial doubts were blown away by the second number. They don’t lean so much into the camp crazy of the televangelist circus but steamroller into it and show it up for the idiot nonsense it is. And this is a much stronger Tammy, dealing with her cheating husband’s shit like so many wives before and after her, and much is made of the real Tammy Faye’s iconic interview with Steve Pieters, an HIV-positive man, in 1985, when it was such a wonderful and brave exception to the American right’s homophobia. Naturally she also gets the best songs to sing, two proper belt-out-big ballads (“Empty Hands” and “If you came to see me cry”) the likes of which I haven’t heard from Elton since Aida. The first act zips along nicely with many great and very funny show numbers like “Heritage USA” taking the piss with that godawful Christian theme park, but sags in the second act when we head for darker territory amid Jim and Tammy’s downfall. Nonetheless, the whole thing was just a perfect package and mix of funny and moving and Katie Brayben as Tammy sure deserves all the awards going next spring. She’s capably supported by Andrew Rannells as her slimy husband Jim Bakker and Zubin Varla as hardcore preacher Jerry Falwell. I remember him even now from when he was a fantastic Judas in the JCS revival of the 90s and now he gets his own Gethsemane moment with yet another big banger called “He’s inside me”. Sure, it can all use some more tweaks and tightening of the second act, but in this case I do agree that all the hype is justified and I really hope it will actually come to the West End and doesn’t do an American Psycho/Groundhog Day/Hadestown, all great shows that leapt from their Off-West-End debuts straight to Broadway to never return. After a quiet morning in the hotel with my finally working laptop I went into the West End for nothing more but a quick lunch followed by The Band’s Visit at the Donmar Warehouse. And this one proved that sometimes it IS really rewarding to give things a second chance or try a fresh mental approach. The musical is based on the Israeli movie of the same name which I had actually watched some years ago after my trips to Jordan and Israel sparked more interest in this troubled and yet fascinating region. It’s the slight story of a group of Egyptian musicians who accidentally strand in a tiny Israeli desert town and as they can’t take a bus out until the next day, the locals put them up. The movie wisely avoids all the political pitfalls that could go with this and lets people encounter people and connect on a basic human level. It made for a heartwarming little gem of a movie, but the musical version left me rather disappointed with mostly forgettable music by David Yazbek that added nothing really. Another problem, quite common in New York sadly, is that essentially small musicals that belong in small venues are blown up for Broadway with ludicrous prices which they simply aren’t worth and where a lot of the intimacy gets lost. So I appreciated that the London production took place in the tiny Donmar Warehouse and the show indeed very much benefitted from this new space. It also really helps me to consider shows like this as “plays with music” rather than musicals, so I could really appreciate the gorgeous middle eastern infused instrumental music played by the band between scenes and even some of the actual songs grew on me. Emma Kingston gets to sing the best tune, Dina’s big song about Omar Sharif and Umm Khultum, the greatest Egyptian stars that “came to her on the jasmine wind”, showing another connection between Arab and Jewish world and encapsulating her dream of the wider world beyond her little desert town. But everyone was in fine form and I was happy to see performers like Marc Antolin and Sharif Afifi (recently so woefully miscast as Freddy in My Fair Lady) really shine in a show that works for them, joined by Israeli leading man Alon Moni Aboutboul as Tewfiq, the band leader. And once again I'll say with an eye on the fuss about diversity, that THIS is what the West End needs more of - shows that bring other parts of the world and their culture and people to London, bringing either foreign stars along or giving Londoners a chance to bring that part of their own background to the stage including spoken dialogues in Hebrew or Arab. More of this please! Which brings me nicely to the last show and the reason for this oddly timed trip from Sunday to Tuesday and the hotel in Wembley: Disney’s Newsies finally getting a London outing at the Troubadour Theatre in Wembley Park, a former TV Studio. I returned to Wembley after the matinee to first meet a friend for a trip back to the 80s by having dinner together at Wimpy, once an ubiquitous English fast food chain (which I visited on my very first trips to England during a school exchange back then) and now almost gone, with the outlet in Wembley being the last one in London. Afterwards he gave me a guided tour around the new urban quarter before dropping me off at the theatre, that wasn't so much a theatre as a big metal box, that has been rather impressively converted to an U-shaped theatre around a big stage. I had enjoyed Newsies on Broadway when I saw it but it was one of those that faded quickly from memory without making a lasting impression. Much like Hunchback of Notre Dame, the story of the desperately poor newspaper boys of late 19th century New York striking for a few pennies more from rich media tycoon Joseph Pulitzer, is just too earnest and dark for a blandified Disney treatment, in which a whole bunch of very good looking and very cute male dancers strut their stuff on a big stage and there is little at stake or genuine drama. Yes, the striking boys get beaten up, but a minute later they’re back on their feet for a big chirpy tap dance number, so what gives. The incredible dancing is really the only reason to see this, as the plot is wafer thin and the characters one-dimensional. And yes, I’ll say it here, casting black (and fairly bland) Michael Ahomka-Lindsay as Jack Kelly (the name alone as Irish as leprechauns and Guinness) was nothing but misguided virtue-signalling, standing out among a sea of otherwise 16 (sixteen) very white (and one black) supporting newsies, with not a single Asian face in sight (as so often) nor any female newsies (until a whole bunch appeared “from Brooklyn” late in second act and were cheered like the Six Queens had finally arrived). This while a vast cast of supporting dancers could have been a great chance to really show the “melting pot” of turn of the century New York and why not incorporate the female dancers from the start? As it was the very first preview, the fans were out in full force, treating the show like it was the second coming, but for me it remains a mostly forgettable show that just leaves me cold. And so a fairy long trip across two great European capitals and with some unexpected extra drama around a dead laptop finally came to an end – flying from tiny London City Airport to Düsseldorf rather than taking the Eurostar back to Belgium as I had no car waiting in Welkenraedt. Which turned out to be a major lucky coincidence as the Belgian railways were on strike anyway! And now another longer break awaits until the second double bill in March when I do this trip into the opposite direction. Until then, here's a clip from the finale of Starmania in Paris from the front row: