The 2012 FOXIES

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.

Wagner's Other World

Parsifal – The ENO at The London Coliseum

Writer: Richard Wagner

Translator: Richard Stokes

Director: Nikolaus Lehnhoff

Conductor: Mark Wigglesworth

Reviewer: Johnny Fox

The Public Reviews Rating: 

As a first-timer at a Wagner opera (is this ‘losing my Waginity?) I wondered what was the thread that binds his audiences in such strong defence of his work, and whether I’d feel any different afterwards.

The first thing to note is how expert this particular Coliseum audience was at going to the theatre. Sociable until the lights went down then there was not a sound, or a cough, or a sweet wrapper, or a watch bleep … and that made it all the more pleasurable to respond to the breadth and brilliance of one of the most complex, yet accessible, pieces I’d ever seen.

First impression is that it’s different from the clowning and fripperies which so often attend Italian opera – no mistaken identities, bewigged countesses posing as their maids, or page boys jumping from windows … this is weightier and yet somehow also weightless stuff as it seems to spin in the air like the metaphoric meteor which is part of the austere and symbolic set by Raimund Bauer and coolly lit by Duane Schuler. We’re in a cleft of time and space which is beyond the earthly world and its moral judgements. If the Tardis were to appear downstage right, it would be entirely appropriate.

The plot has multiple themes of filial loyalty, knightly chivalry, and custody of a holy relic which could appeal to followers of Lord of the Rings or even Spamalot, but is made easy to follow by both a clear English libretto but also the crystal diction of all the singers. You almost don’t need the surtitles. But it’s the presence of Sir John Tomlinson as the high priest Gurnemanz who acts as a sort of anchorman for the production which really blows you away. His is a fine voice at the absolute peak of his virtuosity, and in one of the longest and most arduous roles in opera he takes you with him every step of his emotional journey, and with a performance of this quality you’re proud and privileged to be at his side.

Then there’s the orchestra – the music has brass and woodwind-rich warmth in the Germanic tradition, and conductor Mark Wigglesworth conjures a mystic, ethereal sound: when you can feel the forest and the hunting horns in the music but see the icily grey scene, the contrast is spine tingling.

With a cast of over a hundred, the scenes with the Knights are cleverly choreographed and the stage feels filled with their numerous but strangely introverted presence.

This really is an other-worldly experience, and one which despite the five hours’ running time just flies by.

written for www.thepublicreviews.com and published 18 Ferbruary 2011

She IS big. It's the production that got small ...

There's something about Craig Revel Horwood I just don't like. It may be the introduction of confectionery into a surname that insults my diabetic sensibilities. Perhaps other theatre directors could consider the benefits of an injection of chocolate? Would Nicholas Malteser Hytner, or Trevor Minstrel Nunn be any more successful?

It may be the botoxed expressionless sneer he adopts for most of Strictly Come Dancing, or just an aversion to vertical hair, but I had to try hard not to let this prejudice colour my judgement of his production of Sunset Boulevard which has suddenly made the journey from Newbury to the Comedy Theatre in London's glittering West End with most of its cast intact.

What is has manifestly not done is tarted itself up for the trip to town. In fact, like a purposeful Berkshire housewife up for the Sales in sensible shoes, it looks like it's bought an Awayday ticket and is thinking of heading home on the late train.

This is a soundly competent regional production, from the Watermill - one of the most inventive and successful small producing theatres in Britain. Unlike anything you might see in Ipswich or Woking or Watford, it is not reliant on resting cast members of The Bill to attract audiences, nor is it a slave to Bill Kenwright and the Theatre of the Hasbeen.

The structure of the show is the brainchild not of C Revel H, but of the Watermill's resident artistic director John Doyle who pioneered, about ten years ago, the idea that actors in a musical could also play the instruments and dispense with a pit band thanks to the inventive musical arrangements of his creative partner Sarah Travis.

It's a formula which has worked brilliantly on productions from The Gondoliers, cunningly set in a Chicago pizza restaurant, to the outstanding Sweeney Todd which played first at the Trafalgar Studios before transferring to Broadway, giving Patti LuPone her second crack at Mrs Lovett, this time with a euphonium, and winning two Tonys.

At its best, the technique makes musicals more intimate, allowing emotional insight and subtleties of character to emerge from under the cellular blanket of lush orchestrations. I'm not sure if the formula's getting old, or there's some reason for it not to work on this particular oeuvre, but it doesn't.

Perhaps taking the immortal line about the pictures getting small, we should consider that the epic scale of Sunset demands grandiose staging and extravagant production values to match the melodramatic plot and the Churrigueresque characters? Certainly it needs more instruments to emulate that string-rich cinematic sound.

In the 60's, Stephen Sondheim had the idea of making a musical of Sunset Boulevard and collaborated briefly with lyricist Burt Shevelove to put it together, but then he met Billy Wilder at a cocktail party and floated the idea past him. "You can't write a musical about Sunset Boulevard," Wilder responded, "it has to be an opera. After all, it's about a dethroned queen." Sondheim ditched the project immediately.

Clearly, Andrew Lloyd-Webber didn't suffer the same agony of self-doubt.

I love the score. Apart from the fact that it's ironing music - a double CD to see you through the most demanding pile of shirts - and it dawned on me recently that there really only are four distinct tunes in the whole thing, I have loyally seen first Betty Buckley, then Patti, Petula and Glenn Close give their Normas. Shunned Paige, obviously. But this time, it's not working for me. Don't worry, Andrew, it happens to every composer your age at least once ...

Not that you can really fault the performances - Kathryn Evans gives her all in pursuit of the fractured heart and tortured soul of Norma Desmond and in some moments - notably her delusional return to Paramount with 'It's As If We Never Said Goodbye' she nails it absolutely.

It's Lloyd-Webber's fault that "With One Look" comes too early in the show to be effective. When she's in her light, and on her notes, this is thrilling stuff. But in this production she's too often clambering up or down a cranked metallic spiral staircase in heels and a succession of rhinestone peignoirs. Clearly she got the rump of the costume budget because everyone else seems to be in grey and white separates which might have been picked from Debenhams, since they owe little to period or place.



As Joe Gillis, relative newcomer Ben Goddard has to follow great performances like John Barrowman and Hugh Jackman, and whilst marginally less attractive, he has the ordinary guy 'aw shucks' likeability and the floppy haircut, but his range of expressions is perhaps equally floppy.

He does very well in some of the numbers, jolting the production out of its misty unreality with genuine fire in the duet "Too Much in Love to Care" played angrily against flame-haired Laura Pitt-Pulford as Betty Schaefer. In fact so convincing was the tempestuous love-hate argument between the angry young man and the redhead, it threatened to lapse in to Will and Grace: the Musical, highlighting the possibility that Kathryn Evans and Karen Walker could be cousins.

At least he affects an American accent. I have no idea why Evans elected to play Norma quite so cut-glass home counties.

Dave Willetts adds to the grand guignol mood of the drama with a dark characterisation for the servant/husband Max, and effortlessly excellent singing you'd expect from a veteran Jean Valjean and Phantom. The ensemble keep up their instrumental playing relentlessly, and play the entire score from memory, but it does cause some detraction from the diction and the impact of some of the punchier numbers like the rousing 'This Time Next Year' is lost.

I was expecting more from the choreography since that's Revel-Horwood's forte, allegedly. Apart from some nifty traffic-direction with the performers and their instruments moving rapidly without collision, there's little actual dancing - except when Joe and Norma perform the tango in a version so obviously more indebted to Strictly Come Dancing than thirties Hollywood, that you could feel the entire audience clenching to avoid shouting "bring back John Sergeant!"




Trivia:

Kathryn Evans is Mrs Peter Purves (of Blue Peter fame). They met in pantomime in 1978 when she was Dandini and he was Baron Hardup.