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 Lorna Dallas: Home Again

Lorna Dallas: Home Again
Live At Zédel
Director Barry Kleinbort
Musical Director Jason Carr

Passion and Purity
https://www.brasseriezedel.com/live-at-zedel/lorna-dallas

Lorna Dallas is a rare talent  as an amazing operatically trained American singer who has turned her impeccable technical and emotionally true talent to musicals and jazz.

Elsewhere in the West End another classically trained American soprano is showing her versatility and wowing punters, making London a special place this June. For in the heart of Piccadilly there is also a unique chance to see and hear Dallas who paved the way many decades ago in London.

The art-deco Zédel cabaret room proves an elegant backdrop for Lorna Dallas, an equally elegant lady in turquoise silk, a confirmed Anglophile, returning to London after a long absence - too long.

While she does a duet with her English accompanist and arranger, Tony award nominee Jason Carr, with Stephen Sondheim's You're Gonna Love Me Tomorrow from Follies, much of the solo programme has clever song pairings ranging from the classic American songbook to some undeservedly lesser known songs (at least for TLT and her own engine-humming automotive accompanist! :) ).

Carefully structured, it's a set that, like all the best cabaret acts, has a subtle narrative. Lorna Dallas, who made her name here as Magnolia in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat to Dame Cleo Laine's Julie in the 1970s, lets us know her powerful but tender soprano is back in business in London.

Teaming up Sunset Boulevard's beautiful ballad As If We Never Said Goodbye  - from Brits Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Don Black of course - with Sondheim's jaunty Back In Business gives punters a first taste of her vocal and emotional range from the outset.

The Gershwins, Kander and Ebb, Kern and Fields, Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Jerry Herman and Amanda McBroom all figure in Dallas's love letter to London.

However it's also surely a tribute to her British music agent husband, the late Garry Brown, with her brilliantly understated moving rendition of director Barry Kleinbort's poignant One More Spring from his musical 13 Things About Ed Carpolotti.

Other songs include the theme from the film The Picasso Summer by Michel Legrand and Alan Bergman, Summer Me, Winter Me, and the ingenious and lovely Chain of Love from musical The Glass Harp by Claibe Richardson and Kenward Elmslie, paired with I Think I'm In Love  from Ralph Chicorel's Anna Karenina.

But Dallas can also pack the musical equivalent of a software Easter Egg in the midst of a song, demonstrating the versatility of an Ivor Novello/Christopher Hassall golden oldie, so suited to her soaring soprano, when she briefly breaks into scat singing.

A glorious set of 22 songs encompasses too the only PG Wodehouse, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein Showboat collaboration, Bill, about which she tells a wonderful anecdote where in a magic moment unusually from stage left during a performance she managed to spy on Cleo Laine's rendition.

In the first half of the show, her soaring soprano sometimes seems almost to outdo the microphone but this is just a hint of the power which she reins back under perfect control in songs like the 1932 Irving Berlin standard How Deep Is The Ocean.

Dallas brings her warm, precise tone and strength of feeling to  mellifluous romantic melodies like Rogers and Hammerstein's Younger Than Springtime, the exquisite A Timeless Thing - by Tom Snow, Amanda McBroom and Garry Brown with a special personal significance - and Let's Not Waste A Moment from Jerry Herman's Milk And Honey in which she was cast  in summer stock back in 1970.

 With one more performance, Lorna Dallas is a definite treat on American Independence Day next Tuesday, July 4 when, for we Brits,  her talent alone gives us something to celebrate and it's a sparkling green light.