Nicole schreibt...

In a reversal from cancelling entire London trips more recently, I had found myself forced to add another one when the tiny Donmar Warehouse announced the first London production of Dave Malloy’s oddball musical "Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812" – right into a gap between two planned trips. Oh well. For certain reasons I was actually quite glad to add a short trip into the dead week between Christmas and New Year and so I was back on the railways at last.   The same railways on which I had actually booked my ticket while en route to London in summer, having had the sneaky feeling that by the time I’d rock up at the Donmar box office in the afternoon, tickets would be gone. And they would have been! So what’s the fuss? Well, I first noticed this musical when it came to Broadway starring my beloved Josh Groban on a musical stage for the first time, but really wasn’t sure what to make of it. Dave Malloy basically grabbed one chapter of Tolstoy’s epic "War and Peace" and turned it into a nutcase musical filled with mostly very modern pop and electronic music with a dash of added Russian folk. Was it sacrilege to great literature or a stroke of genius? Clearly I wasn’t the only one who really needed to see this live to form an opinion.   After a much delayed train ride due to some trouble in the Eurotunnel I made it to King’s Cross and my hotel first, then onwards to Chinatown. If I couldn’t be in Shanghai this week, at least I could have some delightful Shanghainese dumplings for dinner. Since I had jumped on tickets quickly, I had been able to get a great seat in the middle stalls section of the Donmar right in the middle of the action, which made me happy. While the musical is just an excerpt of War and Peace, the story can well stand up on its own: Young Natasha comes to Moscow with her friend and Cousin Sonya to meet the family of her fiancé Andrej, who’s absent, fighting Napoleon outside Moscow. At the opera she meets the dashing rake Anatole, brother to Pierre’s wife Helene. Pierre himself, also friends with Natasha’s aunt Marya (where the girls stay) is having a morose existential crisis and feels detached from everyone and everything. But when Anatole seduces the naive Natasha and plans to elope with her, all hell breaks lose and it’s Pierre who saves the day. The show thrives on clever and witty lyrics (which, as you all know by now, I absolutely adore) and frequent breaking of the fourth wall when the characters directly address the audience.   And while casting has so often been a misfire in London more recently, this time it was all around perfect, led by the lovely Chumisa Dornford-May as a young teddybear-hugging Natasha and Declan Bennett (so wrong as Billy in Carousel not long ago) an adorably grumpy Pierre with a strong rock voice that I actually found a better fit for the part than Josh Groban’s. My personal source of happiness was seeing Maimuna Memon again, here as Sonya (who gets to sing one of the best songs) and two more stand-outs were Cat Simmons as bitchy Helene and Annette McLaughlin as Chanel-clad dragon Marya. The only mild let-down was Jamie Muscato as Anatole alas, although I generally like him a lot. Maybe I’ve been ruined when it comes to what constitutes swaggering hotness on stage, but I found it hard to believe that Natasha would lose her head completely over this pasty faced boy, who was easily out-swaggered by the much more charismatic Daniel Krikler as his best friend and enabler Dolokhov. Initially I wasn’t entirely sold on director Tim Sheader’s modern staging with clothes that couldn’t be pinned down to any particular decade at first, but within ten minutes it ceased to matter because the show doesn’t for one second pretend it’s set in 1812 anyway. Overall it was as madcap and entertaining as I had hoped it would be and time flew by. Announce a transfer already, please and thank you. Since some random stranger had done me a huge favour in Shanghai just the day before, I felt it was good karma to do a similar favour for a friend and hung around after the show to get a programme signed by Jamie for her – and was doubly rewarded because I not only met him but also Maimuna, who quite conveniently had hot Daniel in tow. A perfect end to a perfect evening!   As luck would have it, I met my local Russian friend for coffee next morning, who not only loved Comet herself but also had some interesting insights into the show and its context, then had to part ways as I headed for the Royal Opera House. With musical theatre still not offering much of interest to me, I seized the chance to enjoy another classical ballet, in this case Cinderella for the matinee (which made a nice change from the ubiquitous Nutcracker offerings for Christmas time). It was yet another more or less perfect offering by the Royal Ballet with gorgeous sets, costumes and – to my admittedly unschooled eyes – perfect dancing. Nothing to make you feel old, fat and clumsy as dainty young ladies defying gravity en pointe. The ball that made up the second act was such an all-around perfect fusion of music, dance and sets, I’m not ashamed to admit that it moved me to tears.   Afterwards it was time for the annual get together with my favorite English simian for a few bananas and meeting his plushie alter ego, which will find pride of place in my living room (thank you!), then onwards to the last show. I had only booked "The Devil Wears Prada" because it was the only big new musical on offer and I am still very certain that this is also the reason why it’s become such a sell-out smash at the cavernous Dominion Theatre (for me forever the home of my Bats) and this is a hill I’m very much willing to die on (along with the argument that the West End is far too clogged up with long runners to allow for some fresh breath). Based on the book and the hit movie with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway it’s the story of young journalist Andy who ends up working for fashion editor and all-around diva Miranda Priestly (a thinly disguised Anna Wintour of Vogue fame) and almost loses herself in the crazy world of high fashion. Music has been supplied by Elton John, who only just got a big drubbing when his musical Tammy Faye flopped on Broadway and who here had the good sense to work with female collaborators Shaina Taub (lyrics, together with Mark Sonnenblick) and Kate Wetherhead (book) here, resulting (just as in the movie) in realistic, interesting female characters that are neither whiny damsels in distress nor ridiculously camp caricatures. That said... Prada’s first outing in Chicago was shot down by audience and critics alike and it doesn’t look like Elton put all that much effort into improving it for London. The first act seems perfectly happy to just tick off the most famous lines of the movie along with some serviceable pop numbers, but it’s absolutely criminal that we get neither a big “I want” song for Andy (a likable Georgie Buckland in her West End debut), nor a big introduction number for Miranda (Vanessa Williams trying to step into Meryl Streep’s overlarge stilettos and only moderately succeeding). It’s the secondary characters that are served much better with Miranda’s harrassed assistant Emily (understudy Maddy Ambus filling in for Amy di Bartolomeo who seems keen on dodging me whenever I try to see her) dishing out fun advice in "How to survive at Runway" and creative director Nigel (Matt Henry, great to see again after Kinky Boots) finally making the show take off with "Dress your way up" – a theme that continues in the second act, where the shows come more to life and at least Andy gets a bigger number in Paris, but neither do we get some reflection from her on having to choose between the fashion world and her old life, nor does Miranda get a single song where we learn more about her. And this from the man who once wrote the cracking score of Aida chockful of fabulous solos and duets. Sorry Elton, maybe it’s time you retire if you show such lack of interest in your characters. Much has been made of the fashion, which was nice enough, but again only truly impressed during the Met Ball sequence at the end of Act One with it's devilish theme. The rest seemed rather perfunctory, not least because necessity dictated that the dancers needed to move properly, which thus required a lot of mini skirts or floaty robes. I also wasn’t sold on the idea of cutting Andy’s friends completely, now making it more about having to choose between career and boyfriend (yawn) rather than two opposite lifestyles, a choice so many people face especially in Andy's age when their career takes off. Overall I was entertained enough for a pleasant evening, but mercifully I had only spend limited money on a very much discounted ticket in the front stalls. In general though? Seeing the amazing creativity with which Dave Malloy adapted a bit of War and Peace, this now really has to be filed under yet another lacklustre movie adaption that sadly had the potential to be so much more if the two leading ladies had been given more depth and better songs. I certainly don’t regret this short outing to see Comet, as I was rewarded with a wonderful ballet on top and spending time with lovely people, but I still can’t help thinking that London is far from out of this creative rut (with the next shows planned either imports from New York or bringing a history of flopitude with them).