We’re not a big fan of awards. Especially not the sort voted for anonymously rather than juried – so often it boils down to which tyro producer has the most Facebook mates who’ll vote for his play without having seen it, or which West End shows starring TV names most fourteen-year-old girls-who-phone-in have heard of. So in the tradition of endorsing the inaccurate prejudices of internet trolls, here are the 2012 FOXIES.
BEST ONSTAGE PLUMBING
A surprisingly tough category which ought
to have been dominated by SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN where seven tons of water are
sloshed and recycled nightly, although we sat close enough to scent the
chlorinated detergence whose constant rinsing might account for the
over-brightness of the smile La Strallen never took off her face even in the
sad or serious bits. The next
contender would be MYDIDAE where Phoebe Waller-Bridge douched naked upstairs at
the Soho Theatre in what every review called “a fully-plumbed bathroom”. There were also some well-plumbed depths
in the scripting and overall it felt gimmicky so this year’s winner is TWELFTH
NIGHT (which we saw) and by extension the other ‘Shipwreck Plays’ in the RSC’s
summer lodging at the Roundhouse. The actors are obliged to crawl under the
stage and enter via a huge glazed water tank, like freshly landed fish. Freshly landed fish is a sweeter smell
than many West End offerings, so a worthy win.
BEST PLAY ABOUT SOLDIERS IN WHEELCHAIRS
Hotly contested even though there are only
two nominees: OUR BOYS certainly scored on the ‘hotness’ front with a moistly
pantied queue at the stage door most nights for a glimpse of Lawrence Fox or
Arthur Darvill or a strangely beefed Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter, an
actor who is probably destined never to be known by any other sobriquet. But
the acting was as semi-stiff as some of the ‘gentlemen who moisturise’ in the
audience and we preferred Sandi Toksvig’s tighter two-hander at the shiny new
St James’s theatre – a Journey’s End for the Helmand generation - and so the
winner is BULLY BOY.
BEST ONSTAGE COKE SNORTING
There was a time when such activity was
confined to fringe venues in Brixton or Dalston, sometimes even on stage, but
not only are we talking about a nose-to-nose contest between our second premier
opera house and a top off-West-End railway arch, we’re also escalating this
award to Best Onstage Coke Snorting By An Eponymous Heroine In A Musical With
Two Christian Names In The Title.
It’s tempting to give the award instantly
to Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi if only for the pleasure of
hearing Stephen Fry stumble over the pronunciation at the ceremony in the
Dorchester (oh, weren’t you invited – so sorry, maybe next year) since her
vocal and physical performance as Bess in Cape Town Opera’s PORGY AND BESS were
equally incandescent, but ‘happy dust’ has been mentioned in previous
productions and so for originality in both snorting and characterization we’re
going for Laura Pitt-Pulford’s gloriously-sung creative take on Mabel Normand
in MACK AND MABEL at Southwark Playhouse.
Being from Warwickshire, she’ll be cheaper to fly in than Maswanganyi.
BEST PRESS NIGHT INCENTIVE
We are not to be bought. Certainly not by what’s usually on
offer at West End press nights – a glass of tepid chardonnay and nary a twiglet
in sight. Unless you count Premier
PR’s wholesale flooding of the Stalls with plastic flutes of champagne and free
programmes for the opening of CHARIOTS OF FIRE, a strong runner-up for
generosity if not for intimacy although we did manage to rub up against a
number of Olympicans including Sally Gunnell, firm body and what felt like a
rayon frock (surely not), and pre-Tom-Daley everyone’s favourite speedo wetter
Mark Foster with whom we wandered out into the night for a photo-op in a Soho
alley. But for actually creating
an enjoyable atmosphere in a whole theatre from cellar to rafters, and for its
ingenious Hendricks Gin and Tonic Fountain in the foyer with attendants dressed
as juniper-flavoured water nymphs, it’s Wilton’s Music Hall’s production of THE
GREAT GATSBY that takes the crown.
BIGGEST DIVA DISAPPOINTMENT
This might have been a second ‘Singing in
the Rain’ award since despire the wonderful setting and display of gameness,
even the charms of LIZA MINELLI were harder to appreciate in the relentless
downpour that attended her open-air concert at Hampton Court. Every time we see Liza we think “this
could be the last gig” and at one point it looked like pneumonia might carry
her off actually during ‘Maybe This Time’ but she, and we, survived. So looking
around for a successor to Megan Mullally for the most self-indulgent and
under-rehearsed performance of the year, it was an easy win for the display of
gameyness in IDINA MENZEL’s over-ambitious and under-directed whole week of
concerts at the Apollo.
Lazily-scripted, slackly performed, shoeless and in a dress she had to
keep tugging up over her tits this was a production of such ill-conceived
inanity it could only appeal to the most hardline of her fans, some of whom
actually provided 20 minutes’ of the show in a sort of karaoke session which
must have been a thousand times more fun to take part in than for the rest of
the audience to watch.
BEST SURVIVOR OF CORRIE
We’re not in favour of telly casting, but
conversely seem drawn to see ex-veterans of Coronation Street strutting the
legitimate boards. Sometimes it’s
because we think they were ‘wasted’ in soap and could do better work, at other
times it’s because they seem so closely cast to type in the television
programme they’d never be capable of anything else. So, unfortunately, seemed the case with VICKY ENTWISTLE
(Janice Battersby) partnered with CRAIG GAZEY (daft Graham) in the ATG tour of
FUNNY PECULIAR which would pick up our worst play of the year award if we gave
one, so relentlessly sexist, homophobic and racist it shouldn’t really be
performed any more. We adored SARAH LANCASHIRE in BETTY BLUE EYES and seriously
admired TRACY BRABIN’s work in MEAT at Theatre 503: we think she could like
Lesley Sharp make the transition from soap to Ibsen, but they are both
long-gone from Corrie and so the runner up is undoubtedly the surprise and
delight that is the rediscovery of WENDI PETERS (Cilla Battersby Brown) as a
musical theatre talent in THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD at the Landor. Truly a potential Mrs Lovett if anyone
can ever prise the cleaver from Imelda’s cold dead hands.
But our winner, hailed by all the print
critics too, is KATHERINE KELLY (Becky Macdonald) for SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER at
the National, vaulting the railway viaduct in a single bound to become a
legitimate leading lady. Let’s
hope she doesn’t piss it all up the wall in MR SELFRIDGE on TV.
BIGGEST TAX DEDUCTIBLE TURKEY
The obvious choice is VIVA FOREVER, whose
tuneless, thoughtless, clumsy production had a £3 million advance a month
before opening and proved itself critic-proof. It may yet break even, but it establishes ‘stadium shows’ as
a different category from musical theatre and we may yet have to breed a new
strain of critics to hate them enough. So in our efforts to leave no avenue unexplored we made
a pilgrimage to Leicester (wisely this time not staying overnight) for FINDING
NEVERLAND. Regardless of its total
disregard for historical truth or honesty to the biography of J M Barrie, it
was a lush staging with some excellent singing from Julian Ovenden, Rosalie
Craig and Clare Moore. With a pirate ship AND a fully-operational vintage car,
it was more Chitty and more Bang-Bang than you could shake a stick at, as, for
Harvey Weinstein’s ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS it bloody should have been.
Like the car, it’s stalled and going
nowhere, and may never-never find a London theatre to land. But for the moment, it can console
itself with its 2012 Foxy award.
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