A FUNNY VALENTINE

Chet Baker and Mike Maran at the Civic Theatre

28.03.09

“It seemed much darker on the page,” Mike Maran told me after this gripping and revealing portrait of a fallen angel.

Indeed. Blood-spattered bathrooms, an Italian gaol, back streets of Amsterdam, an abusive father. All part of the story of trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker. The only stage dressing: photos and outfits strung out on a washing line like notes on a stave.

But Maran's engaging lightness of touch, together with the magical music-making of Robert Pettigrew on piano and the excellent Colin Steele on trumpet, made this much less grim than it might have been. A key moment, for instance, is the picnic passegiata, with the citizens of Lucca listening as Chet plays Someone to Watch Over Me in his prison cell. Never the same way twice.

Quirky little details help keep the darkness and depression at bay: Chet the cat burglar, the Carnegie Hall, Chet the garage attendant, the awful novelty numbers, the dentures, the biscotti from Waitrose ...

Maran's narrator, crumpled white suit, red socks and shoes, is a key player, too. Always there for Chet, in the hotel rooms, in the gaol. A constant companion, guardian angel, buddy. Helping him to get in touch with the beautiful inner world of his own creativity. And of course bringing the supporting cast to life. Charlie Parker, Chet's father in jazz, Gerry Mulligan, cool jazz saxophonist in that first quartet, and pianist Dick Twardzick, who also died from drug abuse in a European hotel.

Music to die for. And music too, was a constant presence, underscoring the story, and giving its own, often ironic, gloss on the scene: A Small Hotel, Long Ago and Far Away, My Funny Valentine ...

photograph Sawood Pearce

ANYTHING GOES !
King Edward VI School Chelmsford

Jim Hutchon [Chelmsford Weekly News] was at the first night:

Cole Porter’s evergreen Anything Goes was given a new lease of life by producer/ choreographer Maria French leading an energetic and disciplined cast for KEGS Spring production. Within minutes it was easy to forget this was a school production because of the professionalism and commitment of the cast and band.
Key star in the production was the lead girl, Reno (Hannah Phillips), who belted out all the traditional standards – I get a kick out of you, You’re the top and Friendship etc. - with a great voice and personality like the professional chanteuse she was playing. Helping her was her hapless boyfriend, Billy (Matthew Lecznar) who has impeccable timing and also a fine voice which he used to good effect in a series of complicated plot turnabouts.
Excellent character playing came from Tom Childs and Katie Gormley as stowaway gangster and moll on the good ship SS American, backed by Alice Macfarlane and Hayley Camis as the mother and daughter hoping to marry into the aristocracy via Bart Lambert, who played the slightly unhinged English aristocrat with great aplomb.
The massive cast created spectacular chorus numbers – especially for the closing of the first act when the more than 50 cast were on the impressive set. In the midst of this they staged a truly awesome tap dance routine which brought the house down.
And from the smallest to the tallest, they all played their part in making this challenging production something special. Especial plaudits go to Tom Crowe, as a ‘camper than camp’ purser with some outrageous pouting and flouting, and magnetic stage presence, and to the lively and musically secure band led by Musical Director Tim Worrall.

JR was at the last night ...

A most enjoyable evening. Good cast with Reno and Billy particularly
outstanding .. Evangeline took my eye too. The band was EXCELLENT !
I was impressed with the lad's [Jamie Dent's] tap dancing, and in fact it would have been good to see him included in the middle of the girls' line-up at the end of Act One .. he was equally impressive in his later solo, if a little serious.

The purser [Tom Crowe] played with enthusiasm .. his face when he looked through the porthole was perfect .. and the moment where he pecked the Captain on the cheek priceless from both !

With his cut glass accent (eksent ?) Bart Lambert was the epitome of the silly twit and could have escaped from one of the Ben Travers farces - an impeccable portrayal.



The KEGS Newsletter review
by 'Richard Broadway'

How to follow “Oliver!” ? How do you top “Joseph” ?

Maria French and her team went back to musical comedy roots for “Anything Goes”, Cole Porter's feelgood show born in the recession, and still one of the most popular school productions in the US.

The result was a colourful, tuneful extravaganza, featuring some of the best performances you could hope to see on a school stage. James Russell, the Stage Director, was very much thrown in at the deep end, but proved an inspirational force for these enthusiastic actors.

Hannah Phillips was a diminutive, dynamite Reno Sweeney, selling all her numbers and lighting up the stage, ably partnered by Matthew Lecznar as Billy Crocker, relaxed, with an easy presence and real star quality. His last show with KEGS, alas; other swan songs from Robin Carroll, Maxwell Spence as the myopic buffoon Eli Whitney, Sam Booth as a strong Captain, Alex Duval as the real man of the cloth, and Tom Childs a great comedic discovery as Public Enemy #13. Alice McFarlane made a sweet Hope Harcourt, her Goodbye Little Dream moving in its simplicity, while Hayley Camis made a great character of her frantic mother. Bonnie Letour was another smouldering performance from the inimitable Katie Gormley. Chris Malton, an indefatigable techie, also signs off with this show.

We hope to see more of Bart Lambert, an upper-crust Lord Evelyn, and Thomas Crowe, the effete Purser. Not to mention the accomplished Sailor Quartet, and some very promising younger cameos.

Tim Worrall, MD, and the 16-piece band made the most of the familiar show-stoppers. But this was really all about the hoofers. Not just the polished principals, or the augmented Angels [Dance Captain Sian Cripps], but every one of the forty students, from year 7 to year 13, who pounded the decks of the SS American, tapping and stomping through the title number at the close of each act.

Congratulations to everyone involved on a five-star production. As Wodehouse wrote for the 1935 West End première: You're the grace of a Brontosaurus, you're the pace of a Cochran chorus, you're the green and gold and the mauve of the old school tie, you're the top !

BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1943

BLONDE BOMBSHELLS OF 1943

Colchester Mercury

23.03.09

The lady in front of us was baffled by the pay terminal in the multi-storey. Not surprising, really, since she’d clearly been teleported from the 40’s – sensible brogues, tweed skirt, hair net …

She was on her way, via the Balkerne Gate, to the Mercury to watch the Blonde Bombshells of 1943.

The original Bombshells film had Judi Dench struggling to arrange a reunion for the wartime girl band she’d joined as a girl of 15.

The stage spin-off, almost a tribute show, has the band recruiting three new girls, replacing members lost to the depredations of GIs. Alan Plater, who penned both scripts, was inspired in turn by the all-female orchestras epitomised by Ivy Benson. The live version has been on the road since 2006, including a tour of duty in the Far East.

The format is simple. Betty [Charlotte Armer] sits in a grim rehearsal room. Vaguely feminist/filthy chit-chat is exchanged with other members of the band as they drift in. The three novices – Miranda the upper-class tart [a brilliantly dim Rosie Jenkins] Liz the innocent schoolgirl [a gawky Laura Staveley] and least likely but most amusing, Lily the nun. From a liberal order which embraces the Melody Maker and the cheeky innuendo of George Formby.

They do their audition pieces, and are magically melded in a moment into the Valentino Sisters [Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree]. Then, in a tune-filled climax, the BBC wireless show broadcast live from somewhere in England [ alright, Hull ]. As in the tv film, the other plot line is Some Like It Hot draft-dodging drummer [Matthew Ganley] who is shamed into joining the colours [Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye].

The show’s secret, and what made this such an enjoyable evening, is the comedy skills and consummate musicianship of the eight actors, and of course the powerfully nostalgic tunes. Number Fifteen on your News Chronicle song sheet ...

RIVERS AND SEAS

The Essex Symphony Orchestra at Christ Church

21.03.09


Starting with a tiny trickle, the source of the Vltava, and ending with the mighty struggle of the wind and the waves, Justin Doyle and the Essex Symphony Orchestra took us on a water-borne journey, navigated by five composers.

Besides Bohemia, we sailed the grim grey North Sea, the Med at Capri, the Loing near Fontainebleau and the Channel off Eastbourne.

Smetana's great poem was superbly played, with noble strings and brass, and nimble dances on the riverside.
The Delius, Summer Night on the River, despite some evocative woodwind playing, never quite achieved the gossamer texture this music needs. The bracing Britten, though, was very successfully caught, especially in the glacial dawn opening, and the brass-rich storm at the end, with its tantalising moments of calm.

The ESO's guest leader for this concert was Philippa Barton, and the soloist was mezzo Clare McCaldin, who gave us a powerful set of Sea Pictures, with the orchestra making the most of the great surges of Elgarian melody. And the evening ended with Debussy's familiar evocation of the sea in all its moods, especially impressive in the closing elemental dialogue.

This was Justin's last concert with the ESO before he leaves for Opera North, and in lieu of an encore, he joined Clare in a Grossmith ditty, referencing many of the motifs from the programme, and aptly titled Baby on the Shore.

Were this Radio 3, we should be begging you to text or email your suggestions for an actual encore for this themed concert. So why not add a comment - costs nothing, can be anonymous . Maybe "Calm Seas and a Prosperous Voyage" for Justin, or, my favourite, Arnold's Padstow Lifeboat ...

HOT MIKADO

Billericay Operatic Society at the Brentwood Theatre

19.03.09

Eighty years ago, this very society staged their first ever show, the Mikado. Only ten years later an all-black Hot Mikado hit Broadway, and this was the inspiration for Rob Bowman's ingenious, and hugely enjoyable, re-working.

“If Gilbert and Sullivan could see me now …” mused the J Edgar Hoover of Japan [Ian Rainsby’s not very menacing Mikado], as he tapped his troubles away in Act Two. Well, they’d certainly recognize the plot, though it was trimmer and slimmer in this low-fat, full-flavoured version. 

And the tunes, too, though it was here that the really clever changes were made.

So Katisha [a barn-storming performance from Gail Carpenter] had a big Gospel number, and a very witty arrangement of her first entrance, and the Three Little Maids,fronted by Gill McGarry's knowing Yum Yum, owed a lot to the Andrews Sisters.

The coolest cat in Titipu, Poo Bah, no less, was played with sleek charm by Brian Plumb, but the stand-out male performers were director and choreographer Wayne Carpenter as Nanki-Poo, a clean-cut college boy with enormous specs and an ego to match, and Philip Cousins' perfect Koko, neatly capturing a vocal style somewhere between lyric and lounge. His little list included revivalists and ragtime.

The show looked great in this relatively intimate space, with technicolor zoot suits and print frocks; the invisible band, under MD Derrick Thompson, was a constant delight.