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Posts Tagged ‘Alex Gaumond’

Sylvia

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It’s like a ball of energy has landed on the Old Vic stage. This is a powerhouse of a show which exceeded my expectations and brought me and the rest of the audience to our feet cheering. Who’d have thought 100-year-old history could have so much impact.

Sylvia is of course Sylvia Pankhurst, sister of suffragette leader Emmeline. After initially working together as suffragettes, together with sisters Christabel & Adela, Sylvia forms a breakaway socialist group in East London and their paths diverge. Sylvia is a friend of Keir Hardie, leader of the fledgling Labour Party, and takes a more radical stance on the same issues as her sisters.

The show covers the whole campaign period, showing the different reasons for opposition to suffrage as well as the divisions within the movement. It’s as much about class as sex, with some of the opposition voices afraid that giving the vote to women will mean doing the same for working class men. The story zips along, in private and public, in parliament and on the streets, covering much ground. With more than a nod to Hamilton, the score by Josh Cohen & DJ Walde is contemporary, hip hop and soul, and it works brilliantly.

Most of it is in black & white, but when Keir Hardie appears we get a flash of socialist red, a lot more of it when we’re with Sylvia’s breakaway group. The costumes reflect the period. Ben Stone has created a terrific look. Sometimes I worry that creative tension will suffer if someone takes multiple roles. Here, Kate Prince excels as director and choreographer but she’s also responsible for the book and lyrics and I do wonder if the show would have benefitted from some additional musical theatre experience with these.

As far as performances go, Beverley Knight is the big draw here, and she is indeed excellent, but Sharon Rose in the titular role gives a real star performance. In a superb supporting cast, it’s great to see Alex Gaumond back on stage as Keir Hardy and Jade Hackett’s terrific cameo as Lady Jennie Churchill.

A very welcome new British musical.

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Caroline, Or Change

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

How can you not like a musical whose characters include a washing machine, dryer, radio, bus and the moon?! That makes it sound silly, but it certainly isn’t. Tony Kushner’s highly innovative, ground-breaking, partly autobiographical Olivier Award winning show, with an operatic score by Jeanine Tesori, is ten years old, not seen since it’s NT UK premiere, and this is a hugely successful revival at Chichester’s intimate Minerva Theatre.

Caroline is the black maid in the Louisiana household of the Jewish Gellman family. Young Noah’s mum has died and he lives with his dad Stuart, with whom his relationship isn’t strong, his step-mom Rose, who’s trying hard but has yet to be accepted, and grandma and granddad Gellman. He’s fond of Caroline, who seems to spend most of her time in the basement doing a seemingly endless volume of laundry, where her appliances come alive to sing, her radio as an archetypal black girl trio. There’s often money left in trouser pockets and Rose tells Caroline to keep it, to teach the lazy a lesson, but perhaps as charity too.

Outside this world there is a lot going on, notably the civil rights movement and the assassination of JFK. It’s a time of change, represented by Caroline’s friend Dotty who is going to night school to attempt to improve her lot, and her daughter Emmie who challenges the servile, reverential attitudes of Caroline’s generation. We learn how Caroline became a single mom, and how she struggles to bring up Emmie and her two younger brothers on $30 a week. The blending of the personal stories of Noah and Caroline with the social history of the deep south in the sixties is deftly handled and Tesori’s sung-through score is packed full of lovely melodies rather than songs as such.

It’s a fabulous, faultless cast, with people of the calibre of Alex Gaumond and Beverley Klein in relatively minor roles. Nicola Hughes and Abiona Omouna are terrific as Dotty and Emmie respectively. Ako Mitchell, Angela Caesar, Me’sha Bryan, Gloria Onitiri, Jennifer Saayeng and Keisha Amponsa Banson are all wonderful in their various non-human, but far from inanimate, roles. Daniel Luniku is sensational as Noah, and there is yet another towering performance from Sharon D Clarke, the second in as many months, as Caroline. She is absolutely perfect for this role, acting of real power and soaring vocals. 

It’s only six month’s since Kushner’s great new play iHo at Hampstead and his masterpiece Angels in America is currently blowing people’s minds at the NT, all three proving his importance to world theatre. Michael Longhurst’s staging of this is masterly, Fly Davies design is brilliant and the musical standards under MD Nigel Lilley are sky high. I left on a high. This is why I go to the theatre. 

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Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Posted in Theatre, tagged , , , , , on August 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

It took me two visits to get to see this right through; on Wednesday, we hadn’t even Gone Courtin’ before rain stopped play. Boy am I glad I went back, on what turned out to be a glorious Friday evening. This is such fun.

They probably didn’t blink an eye at the dubious sexual politics when the film came out in 1954. Some might have been a touch offended by the sexism and misogyny when it hit the stage in 1982. Today it just seems nostalgic for less politically correct times and all in fun!

Adam’s courtship of Milly lasts an implausible five minutes. He’s come to town to do some trade and bags himself a wife while he’s at it. He doesn’t tell her about his six brothers though, so when she finds out their marriage gets off to a rocky start, but Milly soon sets about civilising the uncouth mob, coaching them in courtship and taking them to the town dance where each is fancied by a girl, much to the consternation of the local lads. Girls is sparse in these lands.

Back home’ pining for their new loved ones, Adam suggests that the boys kidnap them. When they return with their hostages, Milly kicks off, resulting in Adam heading off to spend the winter in the hills. By spring, the girls are intent on staying, but the townsfolk turn up with other ideas. A clever ruse ensures the girls get their guys and Adam and Mlliy are reconciled, with an addition to the family, in time for the customary happy ending.

The stage is surrounded by trees (extra ones supplementing the real ones), on which designer Peter Mackintosh has placed two large buildings which transform from town square shops to home & barn brilliantly. Director Rachel Kavanagh uses the auditorium to great effect, with a coup d’theatre in the second half. Gareth Valentine’s new orchestrations are terrific and the band sounds great. It’s lovely to see two favourites like Alex Gaumond and Laura Pitt-Pulford in the lead roles and they both deliver with bells on. The large ensemble is uniformly excellent.

The Open Air Theatre again proves its versatility, turning itself into Oregon for a right old hoedown. Last week. Don’t miss!

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Sweeney Todd at ENO

Posted in Contemporary Music, Theatre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I wasn’t going to blog this because I considered it a concert and I confine those to my monthly round-ups (life’s too short!). I changed my mind because it’s more than a concert, I’ve got a lot to say about it and I woke up with it going round in my head. I’ve seen this show more than any other, including Pimlico Opera, The Royal Opera and Opera North (with Welsh National Opera already booked for later this year), but mostly fully staged by theatre companies, latterly Chichester Festival Theatre, the ill-fated Twickenham Theatre and Harrington’s Pie Shop here in Tooting, now ‘up west’ and I will confess to being a touch biased, though still I think objective.

I was in the US when the original US ‘production’ was aired on PBS, but it was timed for the east coast and I was on the west coast and couldn’t stay awake for the whole thing. It starts as a seemingly straightforward concert with the orchestra on stage and the singers mostly in DJ’s and gowns. In a superbly audacious move, they throw down the scores, overturn the music stands, tear off the formal clothes and generally rough the place up. What follows is semi-staged with a few props, some cleverly purloined from the orchestra, banners from the boxes announcing the location of the scenes and a graffiti backdrop. It works, but it isn’t staged.

One of the chief pleasures is hearing this score from a full orchestra on stage; it does sound brilliant. The chorus too is full throated (sorry!) and by moving around the stage and auditorium it animates the ‘staging’. I’m a huge fan of Bryn Terfel and I’ve seen him as Sweeney before, in another semi-staged production at the Royal Festival Hall. His booming baritone suits the role superbly, though he isn’t as scary as he was closer up at the RFH (or as Scarpia in Tosca) and his operatic style of singing sometimes loses words, as opera singers often do. Emma Thompson proves to be a terrific comic actress, relishing Mrs Lovett’s brilliant lines and lyrics, though I’ve seen better vocal Mrs Lovett’s. It’s great to see Philip Quast again and he’s wonderful as the Judge, as is John Owen-Jones as Pirelli and Katie Hall as Johanna, singing the role beautifully. I’m also a fan of Alex Gaumond, but I thought he was too young and not oily enough as The Beadle, and the Beggar Woman isn’t a role which does justice to Rosalie Craig’s extraordinary musical theatre talent. Matthew Seadon-Yoiung and Jack North were good rather than great as Anthony and Tobias respectively, the later with a very off-putting Rod Stewart wig whilst working for Pirelli!

It was a much-hyped show and the audience reaction was ecstatic, saving the biggest ovation, quite rightly, for Mr Sondheim himself. I’m very glad I went, though I don’t consider it the pinnacle for this show that some do. I wasn’t as scared and I didn’t laugh as much as I did down the road and that’s the one I would return to – and will, fully accepting accusations of bias.

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