Review A Spoonful Of Sherman

A Spoonful Of Sherman
Music & Lyrics by Richard M Sherman & Robert B Sherman
Al Sherman and Robert J Sherman
Book by Robert J Sherman
Conceived by Robert J Sherman & Colin Billing

Worth A Lot More Than Tuppence
https://www.brasseriezedel.com/live-at-zedel

Awww, back in the day when TLT was an motorless tricycle learner driver, she treasured her mini-cache of  LPs (remember those?) amongst which was The Story And Songs From Mary Poppins with an illustrated booklet.
 
So even though she'd never seen the movie and the album (ah, those old fashioned words!) wasn't even the Disney film soundtrack, TLT and her very own like-minded chitty of an automobile can sing along to all the songs such as supercalifragi - califragi ...  califragi- er -lipstick  ... well, you know the one she means.

Now comes along an 85 minute celebration of the Sherman family tune- and wordsmithery, A Spoonful of Sherman. 

The title puns of course on another of the most famous Mary Poppins's songs, A Spoonful Of Sugar, apparently inspired by the polio vaccine sugar lump but ask TLT's seven year old self who wrote it - she probably would say, "Mary Poppins of course!".

No, dear, it was in reality written by the  New-York Sherman Brothers whose fame unusually lies in songs for movie musicals with the stage shows coming only relatively recently after the celluloid fact.

Yet the brothers were only  the fourth musical generation of an emigrant family from Stepantsy near Kiev in the Ukraine which arrived, via by-royal-appointment freelance musician posts in the Austro-Hungarian Emperor's court, in the musical melting pot of 1906 New York.
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Musical director Christopher Hamilton at the piano with vocalists (with more than a smidgeon of subtle yet spot-on choreography as well directed by Stewart Nicholls) Helena Blackman and Daniel Boys join a fifth generation musical Sherman, Robert J, at the Brasserie Zedel's Crazy Coqs cabaret room.

Musically the show begins with granddad Al, born  in the old country, who became a successful Tinpan Alley composer, in an age dominated by music publishers and  song sheet music.

Al was a master of in-demand upbeat ditties such as Save Your Sorrow (For Tomorrow) with Buddy De Sylva and anthem to sports and dating (surely an American high school surefire hit!), "You Gotta Be A Football Hero", written with lyricists Al "Blueberry Hill" Lewis and Buddy Fields.

At the same time, with fellow songwriters Nat Burton and Arthur Altman, he could also turn his hand to a wistful wartime song There's A Harbour Of Dreamboats.

This song put TLT in mind of another celebrated 1940s' contemporary song - Walter Kent's and, ahhh, that's why!, Nat Burton's White Cliffs Of Dover.

However it's the brothers who certainly as the show puts it, wrote "The Songbook of  Your [TLT's] Childhood" and since, as far as TLT can remember, the booklet had the words and possibly the music on the long playing record, it's no exaggeration!

Not being musical specialists, TLT and her little jalopy had no idea 60s' bubblegum pop classic You're Sixteen was written by the fraternal duo in 1960  - beating Neil Sedaka's Sweet Sixteen by a year, even if The Sound Of Music's Sixteen Going On Seventeen  was a year before.

Indeed putting in context the songs (including lyricists' rhyming dictionaries!) was all part of the fun of this solidly enjoyable show for your own automotive duo. 

For this reason, it was the inclusion of the brothers' grandpoppy's roots in Austro-Hungary (where the waltz king Johann Strauss and all those operettas come from) and the brothers' pop Al Sherman (who also had a hobby later incorporated in another famous song) with Robert J's more recent works such as Music Of The Spheres which made A Spoonful Of Sherman a full-bodied experience for us. 

Helena Blackman soaring soprano easily encompassed a range of 20th century song styles from perky 1920s to near operetta to the limpid notes and musical hall idiom of Sherman Brothers' songs.

Meanwhile Daniel Boys put his own Eastenders stamp on chimney sweep Bert's songs from Mary Poppins and the doowop jazzy Jungle Book numbers (which TLT originally learned through  Kenny Ball and His Jazzman on the Morecambe and Wise Show).

Nevertheless it's the beautiful, tender harmonies of Blackman and Boys, especially with Feed The Birds (tuppence a bag!) which will stay with us.

However, a further surprise when Robert J took to the piano and sang the River Song from the 1973 musical adaptation of Tom Sawyer - TLT is certain there was reference to the very first word of James Joyce's epic and very musical novel Finnegans Wake (Robert B - Robert J's Dad, keep up at the back! 😉 - was a literature major!).

It's a practically perfect introduction drawing on a family fistful of songwriting characters, sadly missed and still living.

A family spanning  the change from songsheet publishing to movie technology - in a different way from, say, another Imperial Russian emigrant songwriter, Irving Berlin - with an inextricable golden link to movie mogul Walt Disney and the influence on the soundtracks of numerous films which have followed. So we're saving our sorrow for tomorrow 😀 and it's a green light.   

Review Miss Atomic Bomb

Miss Atomic Bomb

by Adam Long, Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long

Having A Blast

https://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/ 

It's a great strange story for a musical - or a play or a movie. During the 1950s' Cold War, Las Vegas and the state of Nevada turned atomic bomb testing into a commercial golden goose. 

Before the public knew the dangers of radiation fallout, tourists flocked not only to gamble but also to grandstand the nuclear mushroom clouds. And the burghers of Las Vegas invented a beauty pageant< Miss Atomic, roping in radiant (geddit?!) Las Vegas showgirls photographed in a fetching range of A-bomb inspired swimwear. 

A strong story - and TLT and her atomically charged little motor thought they could detect a  visceral and more complex history lurking beneath the muddled but slickly-performed piece that is Miss Atomic Bomb.

The story of this new musical from Adam Long (also co-director), composer Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long is roughly (very rough) this (deep breath):

Farm girl Candy (a hillbilly country and western  Florence Andrews, Dolly Parton with a touch of Doris Day) from Utah but a Californian wannabe, threatened with losing her trailer home to bank administrator Mr Potts (Daniel Boys in suited and booted evil form) after her grandmomma's death, is persuaded by small-town sophisticate chain-smoking best friend fashion designer Myrna (Catherine Tate) to compete for Miss Atomic Bomb prize money to clear the mortgage.

Meanwhile  Joey Lubowitz (soon-to-be Aladdin Dean John-Wilson), conscripted during the Korean War draft, goes AWOL and deserts the army in the desert (no, that's not a line from a song but a TLT excruciating pun!), running away to Las Vegas. Where his brother Lou (Simon Lipkin making the most of his role) runs a hotel but is threatened by Brooklyn mobsters. 

And a  mad professor (Stephane Anelli in fine animation adversary fettle) with his own secrets  is also paperclipped on to the plot. 

Between the foreclosure on the trailer and the crowning of the new Miss Atomic Bomb, there's a series of skits and turns involving the army, the showgirls - and a Hasidic rabbi disguise. Because Lou meant to order in a rabbit costume for Easter but instead ... Yeah, one joke which maybe should have been passed over ... 

Adam Long is, according to Wikipedia, a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and it does feel like a homage gallop through various musicals, plays, styles and issues instead of trusting to the strength of the real story and growing the themes from that tale. 

So, to take a more obscure example, we thought we got a hint of the first musical version of a Bernard Shaw play, The Chocolate Soldier, adapted from Arms And The Man, but the fleeing soldier is given a different label of ... well, we won't spoil the gag but a vegetable without rhyme or reason is involved.

There are also references to or pastiches of the opus of Jerry Herman, Babe the sheep-pig, Priscilla Desert Queen (mind you, Australia has its own nuclear test scandal), The Producers, Gypsy and maybe Calamity Jane, the play Angels In America, Dr Strangelove, The Desert Song  and Beautiful. 

In a small fringe venue or at the Edinburgh Festival,, this cartoonish revue could have been a hit but marketed as a bankable fully fledged musical, it doesn't feel at ease. Still it's never boring. There's serviceable hoofing (choreography by co-director Bill Deamer) and a few of the songs have wit in both form and content.

And, above all, there's a classy cast of performers who give their all with nuclear gusto. 

The projections from Jack Henry James transform the production with desert vistas. A harder edged and more intriguing story does occasionally peep through as when the showgirls come pageant contestants plaster on the smiles and belt out "vote for me".   

So with a green for the performances and red/amber for the story, it just about scrapes through into a glowing radioactive amber light.

Oh, and if anyone knows the whereabouts of the real 1952 Miss Atomic Bomb, Lee Merlin, as photographed by Las Vegas snapper Don English, there are people who really wanna know with a possible movie in the offing ....