Tag: Les Miserables

The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales Theatre review ****

The Book of Mormon

Prince of Wales Theatre, 20th April 2019

Better late than never. Six years after it opens the Tourist finally gets to see The Book of Mormon. As all Tourists should. Thanks to LS and LGN.

Now the previous musical theatre adventures with the two of them have not been unalloyed successes. The Lion King visit predates this blog. Just as well as there would be no review for the simple reason that I don’t do reviews of stuff which is awful. Seems unfair. But it was. Sorry. Les Miserables was better, though not as good as I remember first time around, reflecting increasing age and pretentiousness on my part. Though I also think my misgivings may actually in part reflect the source material. Victor Hugo’s story is just too melodramatic and too chock full of coincidence for me to swallow. This was clear in Andrew Davies’s recent TV adaptation despite it being crammed with cracking acting talent. Mr Davies has penned many of the best things I have seen on the telly. House of Cards (UK not US), Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Daniel Deronda, Tipping the Velvet, Bleak House. His War and Peace also put in a strong showing, though maybe didn’t quite encompass the full scope of the novel. For that you probably need the full weight of the Soviet authorities behind you. On that note I see that the mid 196os four part adaptation by Sergei Bondarchuk has been recently restored and is about to be released on DVD. Can’t wait. Anyway the idiosyncracies of Mr Davies’s approach, focusing on key episodes and key character traits, which has worked so well in the past, didn’t quite cut it for me in Les Mis. But I was also painfully aware of just how contrived the story is. Which probably is the major reason for my resistance to the musical.

The other problem I have with popular musicals is that they are, er, popular. If anyone says “ooh you like theatre, they you must see this” and proceeds to recommend a West End musical, then the snob in me is guaranteed to dismiss their opinion. This is not because they are likely wrong. It is because I am a w*nker. But, in my defence, as with The Book of Mormon, where numerous people, whose opinion on all other matters I value very highly, have implored me to see it, I will eventually back down. As with TBOM.

(So on that basis, and having made a rash promise to LS, if you are prepared to wait a few years, eventually I will gush forth on Hamilton, most likely with a grudging admission that it is very good, though still not in the same league as Ben Jonson, Brecht, Edward Albee, Caryl Churchill, David Harrower, Ella Hickson or whichever “serious” playwright I am obsessed with at the time and wish to show off about).

Now the first thing I would say about TBOM is … what a very nice theatre the Prince of Wales is. The Tourist detests most West End theatres. I hate most late Victorian/Edwardian neo-classical architecture, (though I can get my head around Frank Matcham’s buildings), facilities are usually dreadful, seats cramped, sight-lines awful and sound poor. The Prince of Wales’s jaunty Art Deco vibe, dating from 1937, and expertly tarted up in 2004, is a delight. We were up in the Circle, the Tourist being a cheapskate, though to be fair even the best seats in the house here are not outrageously priced given the entertainment. Whilst the Circle may be pitched at an unnervingly steep angle, and the seats are ram-rod upright, this does mean the view is perfect, and, with the cast miked up to the eyeballs, even the hard of hearing Tourist could hear every word. Just a shame I’ll probably never go back as this will probably run for many more years until replaced by whatever the musical magpie Andrew Lloyd Webber can cobble together for his parting swan song musical.

So the Tourist, pleased with the accommodation, was open to persuasion on the entertainment. For the first ten/fifteen minutes or so however he was anything but. For that is how long it took him to adjust to the tone of the satire and depth of musical parody. Oh no, was it just going to be a bunch of crude, scattergun jokes that mocked the US and religion (permissible for us liberal, metropolitan elite smart-arses), but in doing so was needlessly and uncomfortably offensive about Africa (most definitely not permissible)? And was this childish music all there was? It didn’t take long though to realise that is much cleverer, and, despite surface appearances, much subtler than that. TBOM makes some telling points about the idiocy of Mormonism, and by implication, all religious dogma, but not in a snarky way. The irony in the portrayal of Uganda and its people is rapidly revealed; this is taking the p*ss out of the way we, Lion King I am looking at you, see Africa.

Every trope of musical theatre is trotted out but in an utterly disarming way. The songs are not so bad that they are good. They are so accurate in the styles that they are undercutting that they are good. And, on occasion, actually just good in themselves. The whole thing is suffused with a sense of knowing fun such that, by the end, it doesn’t actually feel like satire anymore, in fact the story and characters take over.

I hated South Park, (another reason for trepidation going into The Book of Mormon), but loved Team America and now loved this. So I guess I have to hand it to the Trey Parker and Matt Stone combo. They are far smarter than I thought. Mind you, based on the brilliance of the musical pastiche, (the whole history of comic opera and theatre seems to be be lovingly teasing somebody else), Robert Lopez might be the main man to thank. Maybe I need to see his other hit, Avenue Q. An extraordinary admission for a man whose idea of theatrical heaven would be Brecht in German in a car park.

There are about a billion people involved in creating The Book of Mormon named in the programme, (in fact, for once, I wish I hadn’t bothered to buy one since a list is about all it is), so I will just single out the cheesy choreography, (and original direction with Trey Parker), of Casey Nicholaw and the performances of Tom Xander as the hapless hero Elder Cunningham, Leanne Robinson as (correctly named) Nabulughi and, especially, Steven Webb, who has got stage sparkle and knows it, as Elder McKinley.

So there you have it. A show that mocks its subject, its characters, its genre, its audience and itself. But also loves all of them. And is very, very funny, (unless you are a blue rinse conservative or grim class/identity warrior), very entertaining, musically diverse and even, surprisingly, uplifting. Though maybe not in Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, my particular song highlight. I see from the original 2013 reviews that all the papers bar, predictably, the Daily Heil, loved it. That should have been the only recommendation I needed.

Don’t be a dick like me and make sure, if you haven’t seen it, that you add it to the bucket list.

Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre review ***

show_lesmiserables

Les Miserables

Queen’s Theatre, 16th September

I first saw Les Mis at the Barbican some three decades ago (gulp). I seem to remember me and TFF were perched up in the gallery and the view was obscured a bit by lighting rigs. To use the vernacular it blew me away. Between now and then, as my cultural elitism ballooned along with my waist, I have become rather sniffy about it, as I am generally with West End musicals. However underneath my snobbish carapace I have always yearned to re-visit just to see what the older me would think. The SO, the D’s and MS had no interest so it was up to LS, with LGN in tow, to provide the excuse.

LS loves this sort of stuff. She dips in to the film at regular intervals and has the soundtrack constantly shuffling on her phone. So, happy faces on, we set off for LS’s belated birthday treat. Now before we get to the show a word about the Queen’s. I have yet to find a West End theatre I like. There are a few I can tolerate. The Queen’s is not one of them. Public spaces are tired, seats are uncomfortable, though legroom was just about OK, and the queue for the ladies was a joke. Indeed the ushers were basically issuing ultimatums to those poor women who didn’t cross the lavatorial threshold before the firm 20 interval, as it were. That’s just b*llocks. You can wait a few minutes and extend the interval. Tut, tut Mr Mackintosh.

Having said that we managed to secure some pretty decent seats near the front of the stalls with my aisle seat, (always an aisle – don’t ask, it’s a long story), losing only a fraction of the action. Prices here are just shy of gouging but I guess this part of the London market can bear it. This though is a show where paying up is worth it, given the set, and a little bit of research pays dividends.

Now the sound (Mick Potter) is very good. Obviously the cast are all miked up to the eyeballs. I see some sweet reviewers complaining about the miking. Trust me if the production team reigned this in, or even, as some suggest, dispensed with it, the poor punters in the gods would be watching a mime show. The lighting (David Hersey) is also dramatic, although all the action does emerge from some dark Stygian gloom, and they are very heavy on the dry ice. I guess we have to assume that France in the first few decades of the C19 had a very long run of bad weather.

I won’t bother with the story. You will know even if you don’t, by which I mean it shamelessly trots out some hoary dramatic staples, (unrequited love, mistaken identities, letting the baddie off the hook, belated realisation by baddie that he is a sh*t). But it does really work. Even if you try your level best to remain unmoved by the tale of Valjean’s redemption, (unless you are one of those blokes who is hard as nails and thinks theatre generally is suspect), you will get sucked in.

I had also forgotten just how simple the score is. That is not a criticism. When you break down Mozart’s operas, (or, if you can stomach them, Wagner’s), you see how the material is pushed and pulled into different shapes throughout. (OK maybe there is a bit more going on in The Marriage of Figaro than Les Mis, but the point still holds up). Ask a musicologist. I counted six or seven repeated melodies that crop up, with little variation, in two or three songs. That though is why the music is so powerfully direct. I had the privilege of LS bobbing about next to me and, just about still inaudibly, singing along in the second act, and she was not the only one. And there were tears aplenty as Eponine, the little cherub, the students and finally big JV himself, popped their clogs. It is nice to see an audience enjoying their theatre though my eyes stayed dry (and I am a perennial blubber).

So what holds the Tourist back. Not the singing. That all appeared up to snuff and what would I know anyway. If I had to highlight a couple of voices it would be Hayden Tee’s Javert and Charlotte Kennedy’s Cosette. No the problem lies in the acting. There are no inadvertent jazz hands but hands definitely get wrung, there are deaths from gunfire worthy of a 1950s cowboy movie, “woe is me” faces abound, legs are manfully thrust and skirts are assertively swished. The choreography and movement are impressive but all is still in service of the big numbers. To be fair this is why I dislike most opera that isn’t from the C20 or contemporary, and avoid most musical theatre. Here though none of the cast really connect with the characters IMHO, with the notable exception of Steven Meo’s Thenardier. Unlike the rest of the cast he seems up to now to have been working in “straight” theatre. It shows. Obviously the character is a preposterous villain straight our of Victorian melodrama, but at least I got a sense of a personality beyond the belters and balladers.

So there you have it. It’s pretty good. I drifted a bit but no more than many operas I have put my self through (for when opera works, as many observe, it is a sublime art form; it is just a shame it is so dull a lot of the time). If you like it you will really like it, but if you are wary of such entertainments, save your money. Hardly helpful advice but that’s the facts, folks.

You may be asking dear reader why such different reactions to the show from first to second viewing. My answer; the passage of time. I have learnt that the theatre can do so much more. Thirty odd years ago I confess to yawning through Othello, having barely any idea what was going on (like so many things you only get out what you put in with big Will) and desperate to get out before the pubs closed. I was, in so many ways, a twat then. The pity is, albeit in different ways, I still am.

Note this review is tardy even by my lax standards. I figured this show ain’t going anywhere.

Final note. I see that some of the supporting cast are termed Urchin/Whore and some Whore/Urchin in the programme. Not sure which is better.