Nicole schreibt...

With some spectacularly bad timing my trip to London coincided with storm Ciaran raging through western Europe, bringing extremely strong winds, rain and chaos to international travelling, which made for more excitement that I care for. Belgian railways had cancelled half their trains and those that were running were running very late, so I had to head out earlier than usual and still just made it to Brussels on time. Which meant nothing as the Eurostar departed late, too and trundled through Northern France (and indeed truly abysmal weather with strong wind and rain) very slowly, arriving in London a whole hour late. And this was the trip where I had opted for a Premier Inn far out in Canning Town because prices had become ridiculous anywhere closer to the West End. Oh well. More annoyance when the room came only with a shower while the main argument for Premier Inn had been that they usually come with a bathtub to chill in, but a least I was finally at my destination. After a break I went into the West End to treat myself to a cheeky Nando’s (does one even say that still or has it gone onto the dungheap of brief pop cultural moments?) before moving on to Southwark by tube because the storm didn’t allow for a leisurely walk across the Thames. My first theatre destination was the Young Vic, which was showing Kimber Lee’s "Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play", written as an angry response to the Miss Saigon revival a few years ago and its peddling of racist sexist cliches about Asian women – a topic people know I feel strongly about, so I was glad to see actual Asian women’s voices finally being heard. The first half was a brilliant and very funny satire about the endless stream of shows about supposedly helpless, demure, meek Asian women (all called Kim here, and played brilliantly by Mei Mac) as written and seen through the white male lens, starting with Madama Butterfly and moving through South Pacific, MASH and of course Miss Saigon. In each play-within-the-play Kim meets dashing lantern-jawed American Clark (Tom Weston-Jones) who seduces her, while only ever speaking nonsense compiled of various words from Kim's respective native language (and when he finally ran out of cod-Japanese from origami to hayaomiyazaki, he came up with haribo, which had me in stitches) in a clear dig at how little the western writers even care to research the world they're setting their stories in. And inevitably, in each story, Clark leaves Kim pregnant and turns up four years later with a white wife (Jennifer Kirby) to take the kid away from her. The cast is completed by Asians Lourdes Faberes (Rosie) and Jeff D’Sangalang (Goro/Afi) who push and manipulate Kim while suffering from their own racist depictions and a black Narrator (Rochelle Rose) adding her own good dose of snark. It was all so funny and showing up the shows for the nonsense they are that for the first time I found myself able to just laugh about Miss Saigon (and the others) for being ridiculous overwrought melodrama and dismiss it rather than remain angry. Sadly this was only half the play and the second half – set in 2023 – falls off a cliff somewhat as I really wasn’t sure what point Kimber Lee was trying to make here. The older Rosie gets a great speech explaining that back in the day they were even happy with stuff like “The World of Suzie Wong” because at least they finally saw Asians on screen (an argument I’ve also heard for Miss Saigon and Asian representation), which is clearly not enough for the younger Kim, but what exactly she’s so angry about, I couldn’t fathom. And I do think it would have been fair to acknowledge that things have improved a lot in recent years with Asian pop culture from manga to K-Pop making huge inroads and much better Asian representation on stage and screen. This might have been a better play, if she had just stuck with the biting satire of the first half and delved deeper into the various cliches being peddled there. All the same it was an interesting play, which I’m glad to have seen. Since I was staying in the East End anyway, I spent the next morning poking around Westfield Mall in Stratford, then chilled in the hotel for a while before heading into the downpour of the West End to meet a lovely Russian friend I hadn’t seen for a while at Foyle’s Cafe, now she made it out of Putin's hellhole into temporary English exile. Foyle's of course was conveniently near @sohoplace, the new theatre that sprung up amid the new buildings at Tottenham Court Road Station and which I had been curious about anyway. Their latest offering "The Little Big Things" had also received lots of positive comments and it was heart-warming to realize that a show about inclusivity actually lived what it preached – making a tablet available to me with the entire script not unlike the caption boxes I’ve come to love on Broadway and giving me a little box to sit in on my own, which was far better than the seat I had originally booked in the stalls as it gave me a perfect view on the iPad-like stage floor that kept creating amazing visuals. "The Little Big Things" is based on Henry Fraser’s biography of the same name, in which he describes how an accident on a Portuguese beach left the former active rugby player paralysed from the neck down at 17 years and how he fought his way back into life and acceptance. I had read a lot of very positive comments on how the show had moved people deeply and left them in floods of tears, but alas I can’t say I had the same reaction for myself. While there were quite a few moments where Henry, who is played by an able-bodied younger self (Johnny Amies) and a wheelchair-bound older self (Ed Larkin) is frustrated with life and his parents and brothers also get moments where the strain clearly shows, but on the whole I felt it was all a far too smooth trajectory for Henry without any kind of major setback that on the whole left me a bit bored and unengaged. Whether it was the recovery in hospital, being aided by a chirpy doctor and a no-nonsense extremely positive wheelchair-bound physiotherapist, to the endless support of his wonderful intact family (both parents around and no less than three brothers, plus a some-sort-of-girlfriend who I don’t even remember from the book) to finding new meaning as a terrific mouth-painter with his own gallery exhibition, I couldn't help thinking of how much more others might struggle without such a family or finding such a gift as his painting skills in himself. The best idea writer Joe White had was to have two Henrys talking to each other, voicing his inner thoughts and making the whole story about older Henry learning to let go of younger Henry and his former life. Both performers were great, as was everyone else including the wonderful Linzi Hateley (one of the my reasons for booking) as his mum Fran. Another stand-out was Amy Trigg as the sassy physiotherapist Agnes, who showed Henry that life in a wheelchair can still offer lots of fun. It leaves me baffled why she wasn’t cast as Ado Annie in the new Oklahoma revival like wheelchair-bound Ali Stroker had been in New York, she would have been perfect and it had been such a great chance to give a disabled performer a chance to shine – unlike casting someone from a presently very overexposed ethnic group. And speaking of overexposed, did they really have to go the PC route by casting two of Henry’s brothers with POC performers? It just felt contrived to me and unnecessary, when portraying an actual living English family. The music (Nick Butcher) offered a few decent songs, but it was mostly the currently popular "musical theatre pop" that I find pretty forgettable, although his and Tom Ling’s smart lyrics elevated it above similar soundtracks. Once more I found an open stage setting where you often see performers from the back only as they need to play in the round rather annoying, but unlike "Guys & Dolls" it was less distracting here and made for some great stage craft with the unique modern stage floor adding colour. Overall it was nice enough and the kindness of @sohoplace was wonderful, but I can also see why this show is not setting the box office on fire and I doubt it will have a life beyond this run. Saturday was Ladies’ Day and after a quiet morning in the hotel I first went for a final stroll around the West End before heading to Southwark Playhouse, where, by some ingenious stroke of luck that reminded me of last year's luck with a certain concert in New York, Maimuna Memon was presenting her own fairly autobiographical show "Manic Street Creature" for just three weeks. I had fallen in love with her and her voice at "Standing at Sky’s Edge" this spring, so it was another splendid opportunity to ask "What else you got?". She wrote this show during the Covid days as a mix of concept album and concert (my closest comparison would be "Hedwig and the angry inch") as a way of dealing with living with people affected by bipolar disorder. The show’s setup is that her fictionalized character Ria in a recording studio with two musicians, recording her songs and in-between talking of how they came about – a relationship with a bipolar guy to who she had felt drawn due to Daddy issues (Daddy being bipolar too), wanting to show mental health problems not from the POV of those affected but from those having to live with other people’s issues. In that not being unlike "Next to Normal", but with a much clearer focus on Ria's own development and realizing what she needs from others. It was certainly interesting and her own folk-rock songs didn’t disappoint and I really liked the somewhat rough indie gig atmosphere in the small Southwark Playhouse. Time for a proper album methinks! After a quick dash through the streets of Southwark (Google Maps proving itself truly useful as a guide for once) I met up with my favourite simian friend across the street from the Young Vic for a coffee and a chat and then returned into the (not so) glittering West End one final time for the presently most hotly discussed show in town. I had sworn to never set foot into a Jamie Lloyd directed show again after the godawful "Seagull", but of course he then had to go and direct a radically reimaged (of course, this is Lloyd!) version of ALWs "Sunset Boulevard", starring Nicole Scherzinger (who, full disclosure, I only knew of by name, having never seen or heard a single song of that girl popband she was super famous for, or any of the casting show stuff on telly she does). ATG then dangled an extra carrot at me with a reminder that I still had a pretty fat voucher from Covid days with them, which I had forgotten about and which was expiring at the end of the year. So I figured that if I could see this for free, it would feel less of a waste of a money and booked. And it helped to read so many people writing "I normally can’t stand Lloyd but...", so by the time I finally sat down in the murky depths of the Savoy Theatre, I was pretty curious. Honestly, even several hours later and after a night's sleep I’m still not sure what I made of it. I admit that I had expected a bit more after the gushing online, though that might come from people not used to the gimmicky Lloyd/van Hove Regietheater stuff. All the same it WAS pretty cool and of course a very refreshing take of a show that was at risk at becoming a museum piece and it basically had me at hello - or rather the car chase scene, complete will rolling movie opening credits and I couldn't wait to see what he'd be doing with each new scene. And Good Lord, I had expected nothing of Scherzinger and she delivered in SPADES, not just vocally, but also acting-wise. Of course this wasn’t the be-turbanned Norma Desmond of yesteryear swanning about in swishy dresses in a grand mansion, this was a fading pop star way past her prime in a slinky black underdress, exuding a very different kind of "aging" from the Normas of previous productions, especially when her face (in cruel close-ups) was juxtaposed with that of a "young Norma" (Hannah Yun Chamberlain, who really looked a baffling lot like her). But the way she inhabited that part (rather bravely) and managed to convey both drama and humour, nevermind singing the shit out of her two big numbers, had me in awe. And they found her a perfect foil in Tom Francis’ Joe Gillis, a somewhat pasty-faced country bumpkin, who couldn’t help but get ensnared in this vampy Norma’s attraction. Who cared that there was zero chemistry with Betty (Grace Hodgett Young), the only misfire among the leads with her super-sporty get-up who lacked the innocence and youthful energy that made her such a contrast to fading Norma in older versions. Much has been written about the staging of "Sunset Boulevard" at the start of act two and while it really made no sense within the context of the show, it WAS a fun gimmick to accompany Tom on a stroll backstage and around the block of the Savoy Theatre on London's rainy Strand. While the show was not the be-it and end-it of the season, I am very glad I’ve seen this refreshing oddball version, mostly for changing my mind at least 100% about Nicole Scherzinger, who was nothing short of utterly brilliant in a show clearly tailor-made for her (sorry Caissie, that Olivier will be hers, if there’s any justice). And if ALW is keen on brushing the dust off his old shows, how about letting Lloyd "reimage" the Phantom next? I'm absolutely here for a black & white version of a psychopathic underground killer... In the meantime, here are the four stars of Sunset Boulevard taking their bows...