West End:
Frost Nixon (Gielgud Theatre)
Spamalot (Palace Theatre)
The 39 Steps (Criterion Theatre)
Don Juan in Soho (Domar)
The History Boys (Wyndham’s Theatre)
Musicals still dominate the theatres here as in New York and it seems increasingly in South Africa. Covered in previous blogs, but still pick of the crop and recommended if you’re visiting, are Billy Elliot (Victoria Palace) and Mary Poppins (Prince Edward). Having only seen the New York productions, I can’t comment on The Producers or Wicked, though both continue to good reviews. Word of mouth is less favourable on my previous recommendation of Jerry Springer – the Opera. Cast changes seem to have harmed Rock’ n’Roll with several people puzzled as to why I raved about it when it opened. Cabaret and Dirty Dancing are also getting frowns, while Avenue Q remains invincible matinee fun. The Seagull has transferred from the National to the Royal Court, though without Ben Wishaw – who does rather well in the recent film Perfume. South Africa’s own Spice Drum Beat – Ghoema has been rapturously received by London audiences at the Tricycle and deserves to be recommended to all friends in London.
Topping the list this time round is Frost Nixon by Peter Morgan. It has transferred from the Donmar Wareouse, but with the original cast on which its success has hung. Frank Langella gives an unchallengeable impression of president Richard Nixon, without attempting to imitate him exactly. He allows the essential glimpse into the defeated man and the old adage that politics in the end brings out the worst in people. After Watergate, these were the watershed interviews conducted by Frost in the spring of 1977. Nixon – pardoned by the recently late Gerald Ford – thought he had the upper hand with Frost, the celebrity, talk-show host playboy, as interviewer. At first he did, until a vital piece of evidence, overlooked by countless journalists and investigators, landed in Frost’s profligate lap. Whereas Nixon’s adversaries wanted a ruthless third degree trial by media, Frost understood television and letting the person reveal themselves in camera close-up. In the end, Nixon must come face to face with himself.
Alan Bennett’s The History Boys has just opened (January 3) at Wyndham’s Theatre with a new cast, after several sold out runs at the National (premiere was in May 2004). The new cast, still under the direction of Nicholas Hytner, and led by Stephen Moore (as Hector, the retiring teacher) are fresh and vital. There is no sense of this as a tired or second tier production. Thematically it’s filled with English clichés – the class conscious, priggish establishment, eccentric individualism, and the repressed homosexual schoolmaster – but with Bennett’s admirable scripting, this north England grammar school of the 1980s is given an unexpected immediacy. Ben Barnes (the sexually precocious Dakin) and Steven Webb (the gay boy Posner) lead the field of boys, though all are overly self-conscious when not speaking their parts. They act as ordinary people do when they know they are being watched. This kind of facial subtitling and underlining of whatever is happening elsewhere on the stage is not an uncommon fault in young professionals, but something Hytner needs to catch.
The greatest disappointment – not least because the Donmar as a general rule never disappoints – is Patrick Marber’s Don Juan in Soho (after Molière). It appears to have already been trimmed by fifteen minutes and with good reason. There is little to recommend it, or to justify it’s adaptation of the original. Ironically, the original Molière would have more currency. Celebrating decadence when it has already been celebrated in every possible way – to the point of boredom, and preaching prudery in what are currently conservative times, misses making any kind of meaningful comment on today’s morality. The kind of Soho debauchery it depicts is as out of date as the morality it teaches. Where it is faithful to the original, it is to a fault. There’s not a hint of HIV or AIDS in its entire promiscuous, drug binged flaunting.
In sharp contrast is Patrick Barlow’s derring-do stage adaptation of The 39 Steps – John Buchan’s adventure spy story and a classic 1935 Hitchcock film (widely available on DVD and worth watching). A cast of four play all the characters, with Charles Edwards (who I recently saw in Coward’s Hayfever with Judy Dench) in the lead. This entertaiments success pivots around the extraordinary theatrical partnership of Simon Gregor and Rupert Degas. The style of direction – actors playing multiple roles, clowning, physical theatre, mime, even shadow puppets, delighted the London audience. One had the distinct impression this was all very novel here, whereas this stylisation is commonplace in South Africa. Alan Swerdlow’s Around the World in 80 Days was as, if not more, inventive. The difference was in the calibre of the actors, though Catherine McCormack disappoints.
Monty Python fans will not be disappointed by Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Originally staged for New York, this essentially British musical has benefited from Broadway know-how in a way few London musicals get it right, however not everything has crossed back across the Atlantic successfully. A key number about it being impossible to stage a musical without Jews, simply doesn’t work in London. With Tim Curry as King Arthur, a kind of mischievous teddy bear who ‘you could eat with a spoon’ as my companion remarked, Spamalot has much to recommend it. Hannah Waddingham as the Lady of the Lake is sensational, whose vocal high jinks form a parallel, mini-musical all of her own within the production, largely making fun of Lloyd Weber.
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