Review Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun
Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Original Book by Dorothy Fields
As Revised by Peter Stone

Of Arms And The Gal We Sing
http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

High time for TLT and her pistol packin' nag to mosey on down to the Union Theatre in Southwark via Ohio for 1946 musical theatre classic Annie Get Your Gun.

We say 1946 but we should be accurate with our reviewing bullet (points). The libretto was given a make over by the late Peter Stone 53 years later to readjust some attitudes towards native Americans in the show which seemed natur'l at the time but decidedly off target half a century later.

Even so, this is a cracking musical, originally conceived by Dorothy Fields as a vehicle for her great pal Ethel Merman with a splendid score by the late Irving Berlin, an eleventh hour replacement when songwriter Jerome Kern died suddenly. Oh, and did we mention that a pair of novice producers were behind the show - by the name of Rogers and Hammerstein?

By the time Berlin came on the scene Dorothy and her brother Herbert Fields had already put together the book and made suggestions for the songs, many of which the incoming songwriter took up with spectacular results - Doin' What Comes Natur'lly, The Girl That I Marry, You Can't Get A Man With A Gun, I Got The Sun In The Morning, An Old Fashioned Wedding and Anything You Can Do are all standards which come out of the show.

We may have forgotten one unforgettable song, but remind us near the end of this review ...

Director Kirk Jameson's production has a spot-on feisty but vulnerable Annie in blonde pigtailed grubby Gemma MacLean with her rifle and a brace of critters shot for the cooking pot. And the kind of competitive vocals scoring a bullseye for target shooting and showbiz.

She's matched by broad-chested Blair Robertson as Frank Butler, star of a celebrated Wild West show, disconcerted by the backwoods ragamuffin and her ragamuffinette sisters and brother (Sarah Day, Chanai Ankrah and Lawrence Guntert) before conceding her feminine sharpshooting prowess and eventually ... Hell, you don't expect us to give away the story, do ya?

While the first act is jam packed with some of the finest songs in the biz known as show, structurally it does feel a little strained which made us wonder whether the 1999 rejigs slightly unbalanced the symmetry of the piece. However it all toughens up considerably in the second act, alongside more wonderful songs.

There also seems to be a very interesting post Second World War subtext as Annie returns from a European tour where she's almost like a returning redneck GI who's been educated in the ways of literacy - and the world.

Even if there's a touch of the American equivalent of Brief Encounter when the rebellious woman seems forced to settle down with An Old Fashioned Wedding (but always with a competitive flavour in the battling lyrics).

There's plenty of strength in the supporting players - Mark Pollard is a relaxed and convincingly jovial Buffalo Bill.  Once Guntert establishes the change and doubling up from brother Little Jake to  Sitting Bull, he makes a canny and dignified native American chief.

Dafyd Lansley is the coyly determined business manager with Lala Barlow as Butler's wisecracking assistant Dolly. Georgia Conlan as Winnie her cute and sassy younger sister has an eye on Dominic Harbison's Tommy in a double act sub-plot with the infectiously jaunty question and answer song Who Do You Love, I Hope?

It's a show that gains in impetus as it rollicks along with wit and plenty of moments to touch the heart. Amy Watts's straightforward design using ladders and curtains with a stage-on-a-stage for the show-within-a-show is both efficient and evocative.

Meanwhile Alex Bellamy's musical direction and Ste Clough's choreography find their stride in the Union's brickwork space with rousing melodies and tip top dance routines.

And the songs, always those songs engendering both poignant and happy feelings because of course unforgettably There's No Business Like Show Business! Aww, you thought we'd forgotten?

We hang a green light star on the dressing room door for this crowd pleasing business merger of target practice, Wild West antics, toe tapping songs and natr'lly the highs and lows of showbiz!

Review Face The Music

Face The Music
Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Book by Moss Hart

http://www.yeolderoseandcrowntheatrepub.co.uk

Police Follies

It's showtime and TLT and her trusty four-wheeled steed took a detour from their usual West End and fringe venues to  venture into the exotic East. That is E17, namely Walthamstow  and Ye Olde Rose and Crown.

This pub theatre has built up a reputation, like the Union Theatre in South London, for resurrecting lesser known musicals. Indeed, this musical was truly “lost”, painstakingly excavated by the US musical archivists’ team from the Rogers and Hammerstein Organization. (There’s a bit of industry inside knowledge for you gleaned from the internet – the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization also represents the Irving Berlin copyrights!).

Certainly quite a few musical theatre afficianados, all of whom are on the venue’s mailing list,  sat alongside TLT at this first preview, eager to see a re-discovered piece directed by Brendan Matthew in its UK première, Face The Music 

.

No, not the other Irving Berlin show with the famous song "Let’s Face The Music And Dance”. Rather, an earlier revue-type musical written four years before  in 1932 with a topical book by Moss Hart  about – er – police graft in the Depression ... 

Yes, you read correctly Irving Berlin wrote a score which underneath all the gags and sunny satire is a pretty angry show about police  and mayoral graft, prostitution, money laundering, fixed court cases  – and, oh yes, putting on a show. 

From the outset, one has to say this was a very unbalanced (especially as regards sound levels) production but there was enough in it to make TLT wonder what it could be. 

At the same time, there was the frustration of a small orchestra often overpowering the voices in the cavernous hall serving as auditorium in this shoestring theatre, plus some strange staging choices affecting sightlines in the first act.

But the costumes (designer Joana Dias) are ingenious and the dance routines (choreographer: Sally Brooks)  satisfyingly witty with plenty of floor space for hoofers to hoof, cutting some particularly cute vaudeville silhouettes. 

The casting and styling too felt ingenious. Alessandro Lubrano as the juvenile lead Pat Mason, hair slicked to one side, actually looks like Irving Berlin in a chirpy performance with a clear singing voice including one of the better known songs “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”. He’s matched by Joanna Hughes as Kit Baker as his love interest, maybe a little hampered by an underwritten role, but with equally sprightly vocals. 

And to continue the likenesses, Ceris Hines as vaudevillian Pickles Crouse, with a passing resemblance to Betty Boop/Julia McKenzie, gives an engagingly kooky and strong rendition of “I Don’t Wanna Be Married”, hoofing pleasingly with partner Lewis Dewar Foley as Mickey Rooney Joey Malarkey. While James Houlbrooke’s besotted police officer even managed to remind us of another James --  Jimmy Stewart. 

Whether or not these resemblances were intentional, it gave a satisfying resonance for this audience member.  

Joanne Clifton, of BBC’s ballroom hit Strictly Come Dancing fame, showed the expected grace in dance routines but also considerable singing chops and sincerity as actress-turned-street-walker in the satiric Torch Song and on the witness stand. 

“The producer came to me/That’s the night I lost my [pause]  modesty ...the business is dropping/The show is not liked by the mob ... And judge, I needed the job!” 

It’s that kinda raw show, it’s that kinda life as the show was first performed during a real investigation into New York City police  and magistrates’ courts corruption with its litany of bribery, perjury, framing of the innocent, fraud and  false imprisonment.  

 

Sure, the impressario Hal Reisman played by Samuel Naughton manages to put on a show, where in a piece of legalistic ventriloquism, the police, lousy with ill-gotten cash, launder their money and then have to raid the show for indecency after expected failure turns to success.   

Then in the second act he puts on a sop of a court case (“on every front page and they don’t even charge for admission”). So naturally there’s a happy ending for the manacled-together criminals, show people, court officials, judge, police chief (David Anthony) and wife (Laurel Dougall) – all rigged by the impressario of course.

Perhaps influenced by 1920s’ Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil without the overt socialist critique, it’s also as tough in its own way as Mel Brooks’s The Producers thirty years later which it obviously influenced. And maybe it stretches forward even to the 1975 John Kander and Fred Ebb Nowadays premise of Chicago . 

 

Anyway it was a raggedy sort of experience in Walthamstow with TLT and jalopy straining to follow the story and lyrics, but foiled much of the time by the sound levels and sometimes a little too much comedy mugging.   

One hopes now some of the flaws are ironed out as it enters mid-run. The audience, in an L-shape around the performing space, all seemed to relish, like TLT, the quality choreography and sporadic high points. So despite misgivings over sound levels, it’s an amber light for an intriguing piece. 

And  come to think about it, perhaps we’ve been misdirected about Irving Berlin by Fred Astaire’s pristine top hat and tails and Ginger Rogers’ high heels and feathers ...  “Before The Fiddlers Have Fled” could be construed as  pretty damned angry ...  

PS Having gone to see the first preview, TLT and her horsepower scarlet sidekick felt it only fair to forgo posting a next-day review but wait until further into the run.

White Christmas The Musical Review

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas The Musical

Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin

Book by David Ives and Paul Blake

http://www.dominiontheatre.com/theatre/white-christmas/

  *˛°.˛*.˛°˛.˛★˛˚˛*˛°.˛*.˛°˛.*★* Merry (Better Early *★* 。*˛.
˛°_██_*.。*. / ♥ \ .˛* .˛。.˛.*.★* Than Never) Christmas *★ 。*
˛. (´• ̮•)*.。*/♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____.♥ ♥ ˛* ˛* ★ 。*  *˛°.˛*.˛°˛.˛
.°( . • . ) ˛°./• '♫ ' •\.˛*./______/~＼*. ˛*.。˛* ˛. * ˛°˛.*★*
*(...'•'.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜╬╬╬╬╬*˚ .˛ *.

The Sound of Berlin

It was three quarters of the way through the perfectly enjoyable, toe-tapping “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas the Musical” (based on the 1954 movie) when your blog mine host found herself wracking her brains for the other story which ended up in an inn in Vermont. Suddenly it came to her –  the Von Trapp family of the later musical The Sound of Music (1959)  walked over the Alps – but after the credits rolled set up a successful family music franchise - in an inn in Vermont ! Was this in the mind of movie makers when they changed  location from Connecticut in Holiday Inn (1942) to Vermont twelve years later in the White Christmas movie directed by Hungarian-born Michael Curtiz? Here of course nearly all similarities between White Christmas and the Sound of Music – almost – end. In both there are strict military types who eventually melt into good guys with their hearts in the right place.  But all this is by-the-bye – how does the current musical extravaganza  – a US 2004 creation with several Irving Berlin songs not in the movie – shape up? It’s no masterpiece (and there were a few initial microphone sound issues, although this improved as the performance progressed), but it’s a great seasonal show directed in this West End première by Morgan Young, pressing all the right buttons without feeling too contrived. Classic songs from the Berlin catalogue. Infectious platoons of tap dancing chorus boys and girls. Two couples whose affairs are bolstered by beautiful melodies and smooth dance routines. Three roles for veterans including a comically monosyllabic Phil Cole as handyman Ezekiel and a suitably gruff Graham Cole (are they related?!) as retired General Waverly, and a pigtailed granddaughterly swot of a little lass who by the the show's end holds her musical theatre own with the best of them (not sure which of four Susie Waverlys we saw, but taking turns are Tatum Confrey, Sophia Pettit, Emily Robins and Amy Snudden). No cute dog, but you can’t have everything ;). A few design choices meant some scenery seemed dwarfed by the large stage near the beginning but even a couple of mentions of larceny can’t dim the bright later design, inventive costumes, lighting and happy ending story. Aled Jones as Bob Wallace and Tom Chambers as Phil Davis respectively take on the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye roles, ex-army pals and celebrity song-and-dance men working to save a mountain inn, the investment into which their beloved former commanding officer has (inexplicably!) poured his savings and pension. Aled Jones has a truly excellent clear melodious voice while Tom Chambers dances, sings and cracks gags with an impish Jack Lemmon-like glee, although their parody “Sisters” number is perhaps not as sharp and hilarious as it could be. Wendi Peters leaves Coronation Street's Cilla Battersby-Brown far behind as entirely believable American Martha Watson - busybody switchboard operator, receptionist and closet-Ethel-Merman in an engrossingly spot-on performance, using her powerful showstopping voice with Broadway ease. Meanwhile blonde Judy (Louise Bowden) and redhead Betty (Rachel Stanley) warble and tap-dance pleasingly and more-than-proficiently through some terrific numbers as the love interests. And who can resist a stand-out song and dance routine on the pleasures of the piano accompanied by lyrics such as "I know a fine way to treat a Steinway"?! ;) With lush sounding orchestra, glorious choreography and costumes, it’s really a show that can’t fail to be a crowd pleaser for those who like their musicals bold, brassy and predictable, so, despite some flaws, a shimmering green light from this happy punter and her jalopy, now garaged, but with an engine still humming those irrepressible songs from the Irving Berlin stable :).

_██_*.。*. / ♥ \ .˛* .˛。.˛.*.★*

˛*.。. (´• ̮•)*.。*/♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____.♥ ♥

★*.( . • . ) ˛°./• '♫ ' •\.˛*./______/~＼

* 。* (...'•'.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜