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｜

Speed-The-Plow Review

Speed-The-Plow

by David Mamet

http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/speed-the-plow/playhouse-theatre/

Speed-The-Lo

With the press feeding frenzy on the first ever stage appearance of LiLo (yes, TLT and her coupé are down there with the yoofspeak!), it sometimes felt like life imitating art, or maybe commerce, at the Playhouse Theatre. 

Yet scaffolding outside turned out to be real,  not perches for the papps. And as hard-hatted builders did not leap to attention when TLT drove up in her limousine, they were probably not undercover reporters. Even so, advance publicity for David Mamet’s 1988 play “Speed-The-Plow” indicates  the baying hacks have never studied  Hillel the Elder’s monoped precept of brotherly love. Or maybe they view LiLo as some parole-breaking ho rather than a brother ... 

So ...

”Will LiLo overcome the Mean Critics, learn some life lessons - surely every feelgood Hollywood film has a pseudo morality? -  and emerge triumphant ...?” 

Well ... 

Firstly, all three actors in this preview performance had acting chops but – TLT is undecided whether it is the play or the direction by Lindsay Posner which make this an uneven theatrical experience. 

Bobby Gould (Richard Schiff of "West Wing" fame) is a newly-promoted or appointed (TLT and sidekick didn't know the play before seeing this) Hollywood executive with the power to “green light” new studio productions. (How thrilling ... has David Mamet read TLT’s blogs ;)?!. 

Erstwhile colleague Charlie Fox (an exuberant Nigel Lindsay) sees his seemingly more cerebral former colleague, suddenly lifted on the shoulders of a corporation, as the gateway to riches with his own populist hack work – a predictable prison violence-fest. 

Add to this testosterone mix a shapely tomato  - yes, TLT  is also down there with the male chauvinist slang! - Karen the temp secretary (Lindsay Lohan) who becomes a tool in Charlie’s blinkered aggression to promote his private interests but turns out to have her own unhealthy (for Charlie) interest in radiation ...

Nigel Lindsay is the most consistent of the performers in this office (and bedroom) satire with an ebullient Charlie invading the stage as he intends to make a cinematic killing, let loose to become a Hollywood made man. Richard Schiff looks and moves the part as Bobby but until the second act his faltering diction upsets the play's balance.

OK, OK, I’m coming to her – in the first act Lindsay Lohan, while slightly constrained, projects her lines clearly, naturally, bringing a poise and dignity to the role of Karen. But oh, and oh, did someone threaten her in the interval? Or did the boys not let her in to the secrets of the rest of the plot? 

Although still clear, she seemed nobbled, delivering her second act lines as a perfunctory duty. She appeared relieved to be viewed a part of the team when taking her bow (ok, from the lofty heights of The Gods, TLT has given in to the common mob, making up her own plot and indulging in a bit of unwarranted amateur psychology like everyone else) !!!  

While  Lohan goes down like a bear market automated trade, Schiff grabs his opportunity and somewhat frenetically but authentically comes into his own. The problem is all three actors throughout feel as if they are acting in different plays, leaving the rhythm of the plot in tatters, not helped by a prolonged gap for a scene change in the second act. Maybe by press night, it’ll be pulled together. In the meantime, TLT and her roadster cannot bring themselves to present their coveted green light but are happy to shove it on the amber light “maybe”  pile.

Invincible Review

Invincible

by Torben Betts

http://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/

Yorkshire Tour De Farce

We like to wear our learning lightly here at TLT Towers, that’s TLT and her petite bagnole.  So this just might be, in this fast-moving media age, the world’s first post-Thomas-Piketty-Capital-in-the-21^st-century play. 

Not that we’ve actually read this current favourite of the chattering classes - a French book analysing  global economics - only the reviews. But as part of Ye Olde Internet Guild of Theatre Bloggers, founded some time between the Frankish Empire and – ahem – July 2014, we’ll always promote our own trade and tradesmen ... ;)

Anyway, a genteely shabby London couple (Darren Strange and Laura Howard), with two children in tow, give up the cost-of-living struggle in the capital (no pun intended) and move to Yorkshire, hoping to integrate with their neighbours by plying them with wine, olives and 16^th century church music. 

The ex government PR man, Oliver, and the left wing misanthropic painter, Emily, are confronted with rotund postman and would-be artist Alan (Daniel Copeland), who wisely brings his own beer, and dental assistant Dawn (Samantha Seager), Yorkshire’s answer to an Essex girl. 

And there’s the rub – there’s a bellyful of laughs, juicy situations whet the appetite and very canny direction by Ellie Jones draw us into the characters’ psychic space.  But finally the stereotypes win out and the characters fail to engage in a coherent meaty dramatization of unfairness and the family divides the play so nicely (and often hilariously) sets up in the first act. 

The naïve gulf between contemporary London and a Yorkshire town and tragic twists feel a little contrived. While the Piketty elements are there –  a widening gap between rich and poor actually rooted in inherited wealth via a salaried route rather than entrepreneurial nous - some curiously dated elements turn the play’s ending into a rather spiteful face-value equivalent of a drunken middle class lottery fantasy wish fulfilment.  

Yet the entertainment value remains high, and, even if the story ultimately feels underachieved,  it scrapes through into a green light with playwright Torben Betts’ witty dialogue plus excellent directing and acting sustaining the evening. In fact, we think we may be looking forward far more to Mr Betts's next play than Monsieur Piketty's next book unless the latter manages a few more gags. ;)

Review The Silver Tassie

The Silver Tassie

by Seán O’Casey

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

The Wasted Land

The Silver Tassie,  rejected for the Irish stage, appeared first in London in 1929  -  the  year after the Irish Republic issued its own silver coins produced in London’s Royal Mint.  Local Gaelic football star Harry travels from a glorious peak, carrying off a silver cup (the "Silver Tassie") for his team plus the local beauty with her primed Post Office savings account,  to First World War army service and then the contemporary Ireland of the 1920s. 

  

It's all downhill for Harry as he joins the maiming and slaughter on the killing fields of France. Returning home a cripple after being given false hope in a hospital ward, he finds himself a buffeted dependent outcast, alongside a blind comrade,  in a world that has moved on.  Or maybe the world has moved into his Dublin tenement, eventually filled with newly minted Irish citizens. 

This play is apparently in part an example of expressionism. Anyway TLT and her metallic red motorised companion were riveted by the fine, clearly spoken performances from all the cast and the eclectic but focussed nature of Seán O'Casey's writing. TLT’s take on it is that it does have spades of dialectical argument in its four acts (don’t worry, a two hour and twenty minute play!) but  disguised within a characterful domestic and wartime setting with a hefty dose of dark humour.

We also found it powerfully visualised in Howard Davies’s staging, Vicki Mortimer’s design and Paul Groothuis’s equally powerful sound effects (bring the ear plugs for occasional use if you have sensitive ears!). 

Anyone who has managed to read James Joyce’s Ulysses - this is meant to be an insight rather than a boast ;)! -  will have some inkling of the literary, musical and political landscapes through which the characters travel in this often prescient play, emerging into the false dawn of the Roaring Twenties. 

For, by  the end of the year in which the play was produced in London, following  poet and politician WB Yeats’s rejection of an Irish performance, we know with the benefit of hindsight all finished in a huge domino-effect financial crash.

This production of The Silver Tassie certainly receives our own highest green traffic light medal for embodying with humour and dramatic clarity a bitter, resonant turning point in history.   

Review A View From The Bridge

A View From The Bridge

By Arthur Miller

Young Vic SE1 

Family Guy

Yes, we’re back. Do we have to make excuses for our absence? We think not  – after all, you’re reading this blog and hopefully hooked like a fish on bait or a side of meat hung in an abattoir. ;) Nor, unlike some others, will our narration misdirect you. This is a wonderful production of Arthur Miller’s 1950s’ fable, A View From The Bridge, with not a dud coin amongst the performances. 

At the same time, TLT and her well-oiled and speedy-wheeled chariot have to admit, although they would always race to a Miller play, they have always found his writing a little  – well - schematic. Yet in their humble opinion, the rendering of director Ivo van Hove, along with Jan Versweyveld's design and lighting, of A View From The Bridge turns this into a strength.

At the height of an economic crisis, the arrival of a wife's cousins as illegal immigrants from the old country disturbs the tenuous status quo of the Italian-Brooklyn Carbone family: Eddie (Mark Strong), good natured patriarch eventually descending into despairing self-defeating revenge, Beatrice (Nicola Walker), torn between her family and her isolated husband, and Eddie’s young niece Catherine (Phoebe Fox), chafing at the bit to experience life. 

A simple stretched length-wise stage  –  without props, bare-bones black and white with long box benches rising on every side can change within a few words into a dockyard pier, a Brooklyn home, an attorney’s office, a boxing ring or maybe even a court house foyer, a political cell,  an international conference room - or a man trap.

Cousin Marco (Emun Elliott) sets out methodically to earn precious dollars to send back to his own wife and children in Italy but, to the horror of her Uncle Eddie, Catherine is charmed by ambitious Rodolpho (Luke Norris) with his matinee-idol looks. 

Yet there is an explicit indication this play means more than the one man’s tragic (alleged) incestuous, jealous obsession. The two Italians speak perfect American from the start, although TLT and her motorised compatriot willingly took part in the audience's suspension of disbelief, while glimpsing the possibility of parallel stories.

Alongside a masterly use of sound (Tom Gibbons), lighting and choreography, the staging reminded TLT of a previous Young Vic production – the circular heartbeat simplicity of  The Brothers Size. And like Richard Eyre’s recent absorbing Ghosts, this production gathers momentum by eschewing an interval (back to its one-act verse roots) and the two hours fly past. 

The twists and turns of this piece’s tragic trajectory and insistent lawyer-narrator demand attention and open up the possibility of an audience analysing the action and words for itself rather than accepting the say-so about any character from others.

Naturally the pacing is superb with seemingly sympathetic but seedy lawyer Alfieri (Michael Gould) and the increasingly tortured and trapped longshoreman Eddie Carbone juggling the action until all hell breaks out and events spiral out of their control.

A minor quibble alone -  for us, using coloured lighting in the denouement might have made a more visceral impact than a final prolonged clinch in an actual liquid tide, although (we think) we can understand the reasoning for this. 

Anyway this may seem rather churlish as, for us too, the tragic human consequences acted on an anosmic (look it up! :) ) set of otherwise almost digital cleanliness gives the play recognizable currency in our globalized electronic age of video games and drones. A great ensemble effort to which TLT and her rootin’, tootin’ buggy give an unadulterated green light!

Review The Winslow Boy

The Winslow Boy
 By Terence Rattigan
The Old Vic, SE1

Is Right Ever Really Done? -  Rattigan's Tangled Web

It was generally thought to be very strange that a notoriously insincere farceur could so readily turn his hand to matters of fairly serious theatrical moment ..."  The playwright quoted in Terence Rattigan by Michael Darlow and Gillian Hodson.

TLT and her shiny metal aide de camp went to an early Old Vic preview of Rattigan's evergreen 1946 The Winslow Boy, the five-shilling-stolen-postal-order drama. However, at the time we desisted from writing a review of a rather plodding production with the best performances coming from Henry Goodman as pa (Arthur) Winslow, Deborah Findlay as ma (Grace) Winslow and Nick Hendrix as the alleged culprit's brother, Dickie.

What is seemed to miss was the febrile pace of the early years of the twentieth century with Britain on the cusp of introducing universal social insurance, changing subjects to citizens. Also the atmosphere of 1946, with Churchill and the Conservatives defeated, ushering in a new government and a welfare state dependent on American loans.

So this is a rather different review and, hopefully, a thoughtful piece, giving some context to a fine play. Bear with us as we start the engine, build up speed and rev into action! :)

Just to nudge you along the highway, the original old age pension, introduced in the significant year of 1908, paid tellingly mostly to elderly single women, via local post offices was, guess what - five shillings.

The Winslow Boy was inspired by a true-life 1908 post office scandal, which went global, of 14-year-old Royal Naval cadet George Archer-Shee, renamed in the play Ronnie Winslow (acted by Charlie Rowe this time at the Old Vic). Rattigan moved to 1912, after the resolution of the real case in 1911, which was also the year of the first National Insurance Act and Rattigan's birth.

It seems the authorities at the Royal Naval College, Osborne pretended that cadets' parents did not exist but allowed postal orders to be sent direct to cadets rather than to the College and then paid out.

Despite one cadet alleging theft against George Archer-Shee (or whatever else was going on amongst the male cadets), the case did not involve the police and police courts. It was left as an internal affair with the verdict of the internal enquiry protected by Crown immunity.

Perhaps it's worth noting that the character of barrister Sir Robert Morton was based on Sir Edward Carson who represented the Marquess of Queensbury, cross-examining Oscar Wilde at the notorious "somdomite" libel trial. 

In The Winslow Boy, with the help of journalists competing for a human interest story and women readers, the silk Sir Robert Morton (Peter Sullivan, played at the 1946 première by Emlyn Williams, writer of Accolade) proves adept at disguising that Ronnie and family de facto citizens under social insurance, not subjects under the Crown.

Instead he promotes the role of the Crown, petition of right, the play-acting of civil courts with their legal advertisements and presents and Her Majesty's Parliament, already rendered obsolete before the Crown Proceedings 1947 legislation, catching citizens in its Kafkaesque Crown and court web from a bygone age of subjects.

In this context, "Let Right Be Done!", far from a sincere plea for civil liberty, becomes a much more slyly ambiguous expression of deceptive right-wing politics, glib soundbite, "costs" for legal theatricals and the manipulation of a vulnerable family and a gullible newspaper-reading public.

Anyway, in our view, the character of barrister Sir Robert is a Janus-faced chancer of a politician, putting the family unnecessarily through the emotional and, more importantly, financial wringer (pocketing fees and helping legal chums pocket the court costs), manipulating public opinion with contract law rendered a sham by the introduction of social insurance.

In fact, he fulfils the bitter words about him early in the play, voiced by Ronnie's rather Left-wing suffragette sister Catherine (Naomi Frederick), herself a single woman who, by the end of the play, may well be destined for a spinster old-age-five-shilling pension, directly as a result of her family pursuing the case. Unless she, as one of an elite few and token female presence, joins with a "charming hat" the archaic Parliamentary club, as hinted in the play, and either is left in ignorance of or does not let on about the pretence.

This may seem pedantic and over-complicated beside a simpler, more appealing melodramatic court room triumph and almost-love story Rattigan dedicated, "in the hope that he may live to see a world in which this tale will point no moral", to future Tory MP Paul Channon, son of his friend, American-born Henry "Chips" Channon.

However, that loses the sheer Morton-like cunning artfulness, drive and political nous implicit in the writing's sly subtext in the year of armed forces returning hoping for a brave new world and Churchill's speech on an iron curtain descending in Europe.

In 1908 (or 1912) Britain losing its Empire had more ready cash in the all-too-tempting state pension pot at local post offices and the accumulated small savings of citizens, than in failing commercial banks. Citizens' small savings came from wages paid daily or weekly in money, cash - unlike the debts of tottering credit-driven banks, solely with commercial clients, at the mercy of Britain's fading imperial power, US loans and market crashes. Surely, not so distant from current day news images of Cypriots demonstrating with the placards "Hands off our Provident Funds"?

Interesting also to discover that true-life Archer-Shee father did not work for "Westminster Bank" as in the play (nonetheless, a real bank now part of Royal Bank of Scotland) but as an agent in Bristol of The Bank of England.

Meanwhile, The Winslow Boy's real (half) brother, Major Martin Archer-Shee, was a Conservative MP in the Palace of Westminster.

With the Bank of England acting at the time as the Receiver for insolvencies and the real Royal Naval College, Osborne, closing down eventually in the 1920s, it gives added pith to father Arthur Winslow's telephone call to the College after his son's "sacking". He questions the General Post Office (GPO) telephone operator: "Replace the receiver?". It may again be worth noting 1912 was the year when most of the private telephone companies in the UK were nationalised.

If you're still unconvinced, remember the refusal of the headmaster in Rattigan's next play, The Browning Version, of 1948 to pay out of the public school pension pot for the "Himmler of the Lower Fifth", Crocker-Harris the Classics Master.*

In TLT's opinion, much of The Winslow Boy's genius comes from the knitting together and bridging of many 20th-century themes alongside the stolen postal order story, even possibly up to atomic bomb corporation DuPont Chemicals, transformed with acid wit into "Madame Dupont", French dressmaker to the Winslow femmes.

And the play also reflects accurately the sorry clash of modern corporate state with archaic insolvent institutions, in real life still conning citizens with national insurance numbers that they were the middle-class version of Oliver-Twist-orphan/cadet workhouse subjects with no rights.

Surely no coincidence that maid Violet (Wendy Nottingham in the current production), brought up in an orphanage, evolves through the play into a modern woman? She becomes more and more assured in dealing with both media and tradesmen. Like the small savings of Post Office account holders and the state pension funds of elderly women, she assumes an increasingly important role.

For TLT, this remains a beautifully-crafted, mid-20th century play shaped by its characters, a true story and the increasingly desperate strategies of post-war Tory politicians to veer public opinion their way. There are some good performances but energy and vitality are sapped in this unfocussed production.

See the Financial Times, WhatsonStage and The Observer critics to back up this view. The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and the London Evening Standard critics reserve the right to differ, while blogger Head of Legal seems to play off both sides: Just about an amber light from this reviewer.

By the way, the real-life naval cadet pawn in all this, George Archer-Shee, was killed aged 19, after enlisting as a first lieutenant in the army on his return from a Wall Street job,  in the First World War. So, legal farce turned to tragedy and he never lived to collect his five-shilling-old-age-pension (seven shillings and six old pence for couples if he had married) - unlike his lawyer ...

* Furthermore, the story of George Archer-Shee and the postal order was first mooted as a propaganda movie advertising English democracy. Even so, it was inspired by an American piece on the case by critic Alexander Woolcott, brought to Rattigan, the grandson of a high-ranking colonial judge and MP, by actor couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Filmmakers rejected it as too "dull" for a movie, Rattigan stuck by it and the rest is history.

30th March 2013 UPDATE:  "Crown Post Office Workers Strike Over Franchise Plans' BBC  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-21974862

25th April 2013 JUST ANOTHER NOTE The beauty of the internet is that when events (as in the apocryphal quote of Macmillan) come along, TLT can add them for posterity or, at least, one hopes, the British Library archive. So, without wanting to diminish the tragic impact of conflict on families, the irony of this story about two First World War soldiers finally laid to rest turning out to be insurance company employees proved irresistible ...