Imagine This

Maryam Philpott, a historian, regular blogger  and theatre reviewer. She now joins the TLT team and finds a musical charting one of the Second World War's darkest hours is hampered by a clumsy handling of its themes.

Imagine This
Book by Glenn Berenbeim
Music by Shuki Levy
Lyrics by David Goldsmith

Love Among The Ruins
http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

One of the most terrible and doomed of wartime circumstances, The Warsaw Ghetto, provides the backdrop for the musical Imagine This.

War and theatre have of course a long history together through Julius Caesar to Journey's End and beyond.  Yet theatre has always also provided an outlet for raising the morale of those experiencing the conflict at first hand.

During the First World War, for instance, servicemen started concert parties, putting on a range of entertainments  including all-male revues and the Royal Navy even had dedicated theatre ships pulling alongside warships, allowing men to board and watch a show.

Book writer Glenn Berenbeim with composer Shuki Levy and lyricist David Goldsmith have taken the idea of theatre instilling hope for the civilians caught up in Nazi atrocities.

Daniel Warshowsky, the head of a family and a theatre company, is imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto alongside hundreds and thousands of other Jews driven inside its barbed wire by the Nazis.

In 1942 Daniel is spurred on by justified fears the Nazis have plans to crush them further. He encourages family and friends to put on a clearly allegorical play about the Jews persecuted by the mighty Roman Empire in the desert settlement of Masada.

Initially roused by the idea, the players start to hope for a better future. However their company is disrupted by the sudden arrival of resistance fighter on-the-run Adam.

They give him a starring role to shelter him, but he also forces them to confront stark realities and decide whether to continue with the play and its message of hope or to take another course of action.

Imagine This is a strange compression of two semi-independent stories as the audience watches the cast preparing for the show in the bleak surrounds of the ghetto and then putting on the Roman story as a musical within a musical.

Director Harry Blumenau manages the transitions fairly seamlessly, clearly emphasising the areas where art and life begin to overlap which adds moments of poignancy and purpose to the odd construction.

Yet the ancient story of the Jewish rebels somehow feels more believable and encourages greater audience investment.

Some of the songs here are well-staged including Masada in which the local community vows to defend themselves against the advancing professional army.

Kevan Allen’s choreography uses the rhythmic beating of sticks to suggest a powerful stomping force approaching, while the arrangement of the cast in the Union Theatre's small space gives the impression of greater crowds on both sides.

The rebel story also has a credible love story at its heart. Lauren James Ray is the young Jewish woman who, despite herself, falls in love with Shaun McCourt’s Roman General Silva, the two then togther attempting to prevent further bloodshed.

Their duets Far From Here, Far From Now and I Surrender have a sweet charm, lending genuine feeling to their romance. However, they are also the only characters the audience gets to know well, although Rob Hadden’s Rufus as the Roman Emperor's tribune does make an intriguing villain.

By contrast, the ghetto scenes have much less impact than the Masada musical-within-a-musical and feel much stagier.

As actor-manager Daniel, Nicky Wyschna has considerable presence and sings well. Nevertheless the non-musical acting between the songs is awkward, the scenes lack tension and any real sense of the danger they all face.

Jonny Muir’s Captain Blick skilfully manages to avoid Nazi stereotypes, suggesting a man who enjoys culture and has some feeling for Rebecca, but a collection of supporting characters barely make their mark.

While this is primarily a problem with the show itself (this is a revival following a shortlived première in 2008), it seems a shame the elements of a true story, filled with potential darkness and hopelessness, aren't used more meaningfully.

There are also times when the voices do get lost beneath the volume of the band under the direction of Alex Williams. Nevertheless there are some genuinely engaging moments, particularly when the company performs in unison with striking effect. 

The same harmony, though, eludes the structure and themes of the musical. Imagine This fails to exploit the constant battle between optimism and realism, embodied in the contrasting figures of the actor and the resistance fighter.

War and theatre may be closely linked, but Imagine This never manages to  reconcile its two plots satisfactorily, undermining the signficance of the musical's conclusion, and it's an amber light.

Review Salad Days

Salad Days
Book & Lyrics By Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds
Music By Julian Slade

Dancing In The Park
http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

In 1955, so Wikipedia tells your theatregoing duo,  The Pajama Game won the award for Best Musical. However, tellingly, British musical Salad Days received the award for Most Enjoyable Show.

With an original story by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds, Salad Days evokes nostalgically a fantastical 1920s' world around a well-connected toff and his equally upper class female pal. Although the latter, while a university graduate like her male counterpart, is destined for debutante balls and marriage rather than an influential public role.

Sunny-natured Lowri Hamer and gawky Laurie Denman make a fetching pair of chaste yet fun-loving graduates, Jane and Timothy.

They master the musical's restrained yet joyous style with Hamer's strength being a lucid soprano while Joanne McShane's choreography makes the most of Denman's windmill athleticism.

Jane and Timothy however defect from the destiny mapped out for them and search for a job on their own, well before the age of uni careers advice, online recruitment, zero hours contacts and Uber.

The two emerge from the idyllic years at, presumably, Cambridge University, throwing their lot together on a railway platform after graduation - cue the lovely duet "We Said We Wouldn't Look Back." The two like-minded chums subsequently also secretly contract a romantic, yet still rather convenient, marriage.

Lo and behold, in London they find themselves temporary caretakers on £7 a week for Minnie, an unlicensed magic piano, the plinking plonking notes of which incite a viral outbreak of rebellious dancing in everybody who hears them, "Oh Look At Me, I'm Dancing".

This all signals the start of some amazing earth- and air-bound adventures within a revue sketch structure.

The beauty parlour scene with Jane's mother Lady Raeburn (Sophie Millett) on the (non mobile) phone could have come straight out of a Joyce Grenfell sketch.

Yet the second act segues into Cleopatra nightclub (after all, the musical is named after a line from Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra and Timothy's uncles seem to have "Egyptian" connections).

Meanwhile a scene reminiscent of sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still transforms Maeve Byrne's vocally statuesque nightclub singer into a space alien.

A mention of 1950s movie bad girl Diana Dors brings in another futuristic note to a musical otherwise populated with good 1920s upper class gals like Jane and Fiona (Francesca Pim). 

Designer Catherine Morgan transforms the Union Theatre space into a cross between an English park and a Coronation street party with colourful bunting, a wooden bench and graceful twirly white seats reminiscent of the original (English!) Mary Shephard illustrations for Mary Poppins on an expanse of manicured green lawn. 

Add to this, Mike Lees' delightful costumes crisscrossing the decades to arrive at the 1950s with a detour again with Emma Lloyd's Rowena first into Mary Poppins' gingham territory and then capitalizing on the script's Wizard of Oz reference to produce a yellow road Dorothy in the second act mash up.    

On first blush, directed by Bryan Hodgson, Salad Days is a quaint, frothy fairytale asserting Englishness in an uncertain era when the United States had come to police the world and dominate the entertainment business.

Maybe the subversive notes also emerge more clearly in the Gilbert and Sullivan-like Hush Hush with Karl Moffatt playing one of a variety of Timothy's string-pulling, influential uncles.

"Don't ever ask where the Empire's gone ... Double cross your double locks ... Never reveal your age or sex .. Don't ever ask what the war was for/It's hush hush."

Equally so with the singing and dancing of the police inspector (Stephen Patrick) and his subordinate PC Boot (Tom Norman) to whom, we're told, the buck is always passed for the nefarious goings on in the park.

Salad Days evokes an innocent Zuleika Dobson world mixed with cheerful, if rather upper class, costermongery influenced by Noel Gay and Vivian Ellis, as well as Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. However there is also a light touch but very definite patina of Cold War, sexual and old-boy-network politics.

It of course also pre-dated the jolly ambience in American movie musical Mary Poppins, similarly endowed with an English park ethos 😉, and held the fort for British musicals until the onset of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and then record-breaking Oliver!.

The show reflects its Bristol Old Vic origins, where musical director Julian Slade and actress Dorothy Reynolds built the musical Salad Days around the talents of their company.

The catchy songs here have a charming simplicity and directness played by musical director Elliot Styche's three-piece band with actor musicians Tom Self, Laurie Denman and Lewis McBean variously on piano accompanied by bass and drums.

This is a cheerful piece reflecting a mix of seemingly traditional flapper musical with the concerns of 1950s Britain within a weather vane summer confection.  The digs at the status quo are sly but never undermine the musical's jolly, fresh air ambience as a family show.

Even though Monty Python's Flying Circus famously and bloodily lampooned Salad Days, surely the groundbreaking 1960s and 1970s satiric sketch show owes something to its dancing and hugging police officers?   Ah, that was the musical that was 😉! An upper range tuneful and sunshiny  amber light!

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 Honk!

Honk!
Music by George Stiles
Lyrics and Book by Anthony Drewe

 A Quacking Good Show!
 http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

The little headlights of TLT's motorised companion lit up on hearing we were going to see Honk!.

If it proved to be a somewhat different show than our cute little jalopy with its own rootin' tootin' horn expected - it reminded TLT of a friend's more salacious tale of enticing her husband to see "Daisy Pulls It Off" ;) - we pair of theatre animals still settled down to a highly enjoyable farmyard evening at the Union Theatre.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Stiles and Drewe's likeable little show, the headlights only grew dim to stifle a little joyous tear as the ugly duckling, instead of becoming a feline villain's main meal and dessert, got his Happy Ending just deserts.

Going back to the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale for this adaptation with a few variations, the show's book has echoes of Disney's Pinocchio in Honk's wide-eyed naivety along with the ethos of The Muppet Show's Bein' Green.

It even at one point has a throwaway references to Frank Loesser's musical about difference, The Most Happy Fella and a Salvation Army vibe reminiscent of  Guys and Dolls. with shades of the underwater scene of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

The songs and the inventive design (set: Emily Bestow, costumes Rosemary Elliott-Dancs and puppets by Phoebe Hill) are the most successful elements of this production directed by Andy Room, along with a committed cast.

The book's use of corny gags is workmanlike rather than inspired, although there are some nice twists and turns to the story itself and it is a delightful children's and family show.

Hatching fully formed Ugly (Liam Vincent-St Bride) is a Mummy's boy - er - duckling wrapped in an outsize grey wool jumper and woolly hat topping the spectacles peeping out beneath.

There's strong work from Ellie Nunn as doughty Mommy duck Ida with a Blitz spirit and a voice with emotional punch in Every Tear A Mother Cries. Sam Sugerman makes for a suitably sleazy ginger tom baddie looking for lunch (and breakfast, tea and supper).

Different, Honk's plea for acceptance, has become almost a standard with its touching message

"No wonder they make fun of me/Life's harder when you're odd./But, different isn't scary/Different is no threat,/And though I'm still their brother,/ They forget/I didn't choose to look this way/I didn't want to be unique/I don't like these grubby feathers/And I hate my stubby beak ..."

Bullfrog (Robert Pearce) selling a version of a militant amphibian newspaper, Ribbit, brings plenty of fun and foot tappping together with a cute baby frog backing choir in Warts And All.

Meanwhile stiff upper lip Greylag (Leon Scott) and air crew chorus have a ball with the stirring Wild Goose Chase affectionately guying a certain type of  British war film.

With resourceful use of actor/musicians alongside the small band led by musical director Oli Rew and make-do-and-mend values in the ingenious costumes and props, this is a canny way to introduce kids to the magic of theatre and music.

How could we resist this sympathetic parody of wartime spirit with, after a series of adventures, the wall dividing Honk from his siblings torn down and the subsequent  re-union of Honk with his Mum and his real roots?

It's an amber/green light for a show which manages to stand on its own two webbed feet with its heartwarming take on The Ugly Duckling.

Review Out There

Out There
Music, Book & Lyrics by
Elliot Davis & James Bourne

Logan's Run
http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

Back in the day, TLT is of the television generation who watched the black and white images of an astronaut taking man's (yes  it had to be a man ...) first step on the moon. And then gazed at the moon in the sky and thought, "There's someone up there!".

So TLT and her own little space shuttle had high hopes of Out There, a musical about this great achievement filtered through three generations of one family.

It's 1969 and NASA has named Newman Carter  (Shane Gibb), to the pride and delight of his wife Hope (Thea Jo Wolfe) and young son David, as lead astronaut for the first expedition to the moon. He's the man in the news until earthly tragedy strikes the Newman family and Newman disappears, leaving his son to be brought up by his aunt Celia (Jodee Conrad).

Roll on 40 years and we discover David (Neil Moors) is now the hotshot American head of Carter Galactica, a company he runs with the help of lawyer Linda Wares (Melissa Bayern). The plan is to launch a commercial spaceline and allow tourist travel to the moon

However Linda's duties also include fielding off police and mitigating punishments meted out to David's talented but tearaway son Logan (Luke Street) who has chosen the life of a petty criminal over studying engineering at college.

When Linda can no longer keep Logan out of jail, he takes off, one step ahead of the law, with the help of his Aunt Celia who gives him a letter to deliver to an old friend, Ned Thomas (Dave Willets), in the stagnating Texan town of Hope.

The corrupt local sherriff Pack (Melissa Veszi), aided by henchmen Billy (Adam Pettit) and Stan (Rhys Owen) is out to sell all the land in Hope off to a chemical waste firm, but is blocked by Ned who refuses join in the party.

When Logan arrives in town with the letter he puzzingly finds himself rejected by elderly Ned. However after a rocky start he develops a relationship with him, finds love interest  in the local (female) mechanic Jaimie (Imelda Warren-Green) before discovering Ned's true identity and a further secret on Ned's farm.

The best-known name in the show is Dave Willets as Ned whose experience and control are self-evident.  The score, by James Bourne (of McBusted fame) is tuneful enough with a tinge of country and western  and keyboard and guitar accompaniement (musical director Joe Louis Robinson).

Director Michael Burgen takes us through the twentieth century story with gusto on a stage surrounded by the audience on two sides. The narrative flows, almost entirely sung through.

But it's when the story jumps ahead in time that it starts to fall apart and the shoestring production loses its bearings. A staging choice to use a corner entrance rather than the main stage area also doesn't do the production any favours.

In the end, no score, however good, can survive an uncertain book, even though there were indications of more characters and a more ample story, of which more later. As it stands, the makeshift style of the cardboard scenery (Nik Corrall's set), which could have been charmingly whimsical, becomes indicative of a makeshift plot clumsily combining fantastical elements with a supposedly more gritty, political tale mixed with slapstick.  

TLT can see this working if it were made clear everything we see and hear is percolated through the world evoked by TV series and films from the mid twentieth century onwards. In fact, the first scenes with young David Carter watching TV, playing with a space rocket and a cartoon rocket on the  back wall may suggest this.

The posible framework of a clever childlike, but not childish, patchwork of  popular TV and movie tropes never comes into fruition. Instead, we're presented with a clunky series of face-value clichés and indications that parts of the plot may have been cut.

The mid twentieth century Disney optimism about space travel and its benefits, the 1970s urban movie grit of Logan and his car thieving pals,  the successful father and his rebel-without-a-cause son, the comic "Dukes of Hazard" law enforcement, the town council's fight to save their town from a destructive corporation (the stuff of many a movie) all could have provided a witty structure with room for new twists.

The mention of environmental protestors and the putting into the mouth of the female sheriff of what are obviously the lines of a journalist made TLT and her automotive redneck wonder what had been cut.

A quick web search revealed a 2011 two-day production by the Youth Music Theatre with a fuller score. The journalist in this version appears on first blush to have been a villain in cahoots with the elected law enforcer. This may explain a verse about "smelling a story" sung, rather glaringly inappropriately, by the police chief. It seems to us quite appropriate to take away one villain in that case but leaving those lines in the mouth of the another just didn't fit.

The subjects of journalism and environmental damage are also strong subjects which  can last through the years. They seem to be present a tad more forcefully in the 2011 version and, with research and thought, could still have added depth without unbalancing the space story.

For it could have resonated now in 2016 with real-life current news about an environmental journalist, oil pipelines and and native American land which has caused international  disquiet concerning policing, local politicians, corporations and the impact on journalism.  Melissa Veszi playing the sheriff in Out There does have a native American look/Mexican look and the repetition of needing access to fuel in the musical also chimes with this news story.

A townsfolk comment about putting on a show, which seemed strangely out of place at the performance we saw, also fell into place when we realised that a song Step by Step had been cut. This bound the themes of space, the construction of a space rocket, the saving of a township, two young people falling in love, the putting together of a news story, the creation of a musical and the gradual coming together of grandfather, son and grandson.  

There were other incongruities. Logan, who is white, bridles at being called "boy"  by his father and grandfather, something out of sync with their other speech patterns,  in a strange Coriolanus-type theme which goes nowhere.

It is possible that the whole is a prescription-drug-fuelled fantasy of a dying old man with the town and corporate plot still outside the fantasy. But this kind of ambiguity is never allowed air to breathe and the different stories never fully integrated.

The cast of eleven all acquit themselves in the singing stakes, while there are a few very wobbly American accents. This, looking back at the 2011 production, seems be a musical pulled and pushed out of existence since then instead of developed. An amber light for the performances and such a shame that, with so much being lost in the process, something valuable may have been submerged out there.
    

Review The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice

The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice

by Jim Cartwright  

Soul Music 

http://www.uniontheatre.biz/  

Several years ago TLT and her tuneful little engine might have started this review with the "death of vinyl" and called The Rise and Fall Of Little Voice an "elegaic piece" along with a few other clichés. But now, with new turntables for sale on twenty first century shopping websites, she, or rather we, would have to eat their words along with their interval ice cream.  

Jim Cartwright's compelling 1992 riff on the relationship between divas and the recording industry is nevertheless a strange play. Part a showcase for the vocal talents of the actress (in this case Carly Thoms impressively belting out songs) playing the eponymous character Little Voice and part a kind of showbiz Carrie horrorfest. 

By 1992, it also strikes us, the female female impersonator (there is a reason for the double female)  was the domain of male impersonators and drag queens. Therefore this is a nag of a play which keeps on running because we don't think that's all it's about.

 If, like me, you've don't know the play before seeing it, here's a quick crib. 

Little Voice, also known as LV, (we never learn her full name in this inside out world) lives with her slatternly alcoholic Mum Mari (Charlotte Gorton turning caricature eventually into something infinitely more touching) in a Lancashire town.  

A fragile slip of a thing, LV spends her days listening to the long playing records she inherited from her late father Frank. At the same time, as if by osmosis, bursts of the songs in the divas' voices, come periodically from her thin frame. 

Her hidden talent is usually confined to her shabby bedroom with one of those, at that time, superseded turntables, with her Mum an unwilling listener along with a more neutral good natured neighbour Sadie (Mandy Dassa whose few monosyllables and huge saucer eyes almost make her a silent film stooge).

However, when her Mum brings home her latest boyfriend small-time variety agent Ray Say (Ken Christiansen in a nicely understated performance)  and LV's uncanny imitations of showstoppers stop their shagging, Ray believes he's discovered a star. 

Cartwright wrote the show as a tailor made showcase for the talents of Jane Horrocks star of the original production and the movie. Maybe that's what also gives the play its skinny stitched-together vinyl Frankenstein feel. 

Yet, while Little Voice channels all her frustrations into power ballads sung by a series of alter egos from Judy Garland through Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, Shirley Bassey Maria Callas to Cilla and Lulu, her pronounced lack of ego is what makes her especially distinctive .

For all its gritty Northern setting, we are also faced, surely deliberately, with well-worn stereotypes, at least when the characters first appear. Yet these become something more human and humane when LV is on the cusp of stage success and others live through her. 

So, maybe it also becomes a reflection of the  power struggles, bluster and debt-fuelled rise to fame that can make showbiz monsters and meglomaniacs of anyone?

The play, well-paced by director Alistair Knights with the grungy living room set design and interesting costumes, particularly for Mari, by Libby Todd, posed more questions than answers for your intrepid theatregoing duo.

 It begins with the installation of a first telephone in the home, something which we would think belonged more to the 1970s than the 1990s.. Mum's name, Mari also has music hall connotations while the name Sadie sounds like a character out of American vaudeville. 

Meanwhile, the obsession of Billy (Glenn Adamson showing touching grace in a slighter role), the young telephone engineer, has a zeal for lighting and Blackpool illuminations more akin to an idealistic pre-revolutionary communist than a child of the late twentieth century.  

Even the initials LV  had a different connotation in 1992, especially after the breaking of salacious news stories about "Madame Cyn", brothel keeper Cynthia Payne 

Events seem to have come full circle for this time-travelling play. James Peake's portrayal of a club impressario can channel Peter Kay's retro working men's club shtick. Apart from the return of vinyl, we've also had the rise again of the talent show and, far more tragically, the demise of the outwardly brash but insecure Amy Winehouse through drink and drugs.  

It's almost as if recording, of sound and on film, is also circular, encouraging the talented to live up, or down, to tropes about previous goddesses of song. 

 In accurately trying to record the impetus behind the diva, Cartwright's play has shown it still has something to say about transatlantic showbusiness's cruelty towards, and conquest of, the human soul.  An amber/green light for a sensitive and humorous production of a difficult  but rewarding piece.

Review Road Show

Road Show

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim 

Book by John Weidman

Brothers Up In Arms

http://www.uniontheatre.biz/

Underneath the arches this time - a trip to the Union Theatre for a lesser known Sondheim musical, Road Show, directed by Phil Willmott, accompanied by a three-piece band led by musical director Richard Baker on piano with accompanying drummer and violinist.

With no less than three former incarnations as Wise Guys, Gold and Bounce, it's based on the true story of American Addison Mizner and his brother Wilson, entrepreneurs or crooks, dependent on your point of view, in the first half of the 20th century.

It's a "can't live with him, can't live without him" tale with the indissoluble ties and irreparable rifts of the two men, artist and conman, at the centre of the story, used as a reflection of American aspiration. 

Urged on by their dying politician father, "It's In Your Hands" and their ambitious mother, the two men take to the road to make their fortunes. Suffering the vicissitudes of won and lost riches as gold prospectors, in gambling dens and various ill-fated business ventures, they finally make their mark with over hyped Florida real estate  - before the property bubble bursts.

TLT and sidekick are "we know what we like" audience members rather than musical theatre experts. And drawing on their previous theatregoing, this musical struck them as having some of the same assets and liabilities as Jerry Herman's Mack and Mabel. The same awkward uneasy see-saw between two protagonists with no consistent focus. A dark true tale  but at the same time a shoo-in archetypal story in conflict, rather than integrated, with the accurate history.

Nevertheless there's a lot to like in the Union production. Howard Jenkins takes on the role of architect Addison, the fall guy compared to the opportunist rogue Wilson, played with relish by André Refig, variously a gambler, prize fight promoter, playwright and Hollywood screenwriter.

Jenkins as Addison, who finally finds success as an architect of kitsch Spanish-style mansions for the wealthy, leads the audience through the story,  even if he is more youthfully slimline than at least one line of the lyrics suggests.  Steve Watts is suitably authoritative both as the older Addison and the Mizner brothers' father. Meanwhile Cathryn Sherman makes the most of the role of spikey Mama Mizner and Joshua LeClair brings an emotional power to the role of love interest Hollis.   

The problems, like Mack and Mabel, seem to be mostly with the book. Maybe the key lies with the original conception. According to internet sources, Sondheim first came across the story of the Mizners in the 1950s in the New Yorker magazine, but found  the rights to their biography already snapped up by Broadway producer David Merrick. Merrick had Irving Berlin, who had known Addison, on board to write the songs when it was mooted as a possible vehicle for comedian Bob Hope.

It came to naught and Sondheim stepped in again in the 1990s intending to use the template of the popular wisecracking "Road" movies with Hope and crooner Bing Crosby.  A kind of double act Rake's Progress, scenes from lives and eras: the gold rush, to India and then Hawaii, Guatamala, New York and finally Boca Raton, Florida.

If  the Road movie framework had remained  as more of an ironic commentary, maybe it would  have given Road Show a steelier structure and consistency of tone rather than leaving the bare bones linear story of the two men. As it is, designer Nik Corrall introduces a tarnished gilt mirror or picture frame in the background on the ragged Union stage, which along with suitcases and a typewriter, gives a desolate riches to rags "Citizen Kane" feel to the production.

Overall, TLT and her own road companion enjoyed the show, even if at times the choreography felt a little over egged and the story sometimes like a house with ad hoc extensions.

But it was a pleasure to hear unmiked singing in the intimate venue and additionally individual cameos such as Damian Robinson's boxer ensured an engrossing 105 minutes without interval. So it's an amber light for an uneven but enjoyable show.