Assassins, 25.11.14

It’s a strangely consistent phenomenon but London Sondheim productions have the knack of out-classing the original New York ones (judging those from their cast recordings).

The Menier did it before with landmark productions of “Sunday in the Park” (2005/6) and “A Little Night Music” (2008/9).  Jamie Lloyd's stupendous production of “Assassins” was no exception. Quite simply it never put a foot wrong, speeding by in 105 minutes, no mean feat for a show whose ‘bitter-and-twisted’ complexity has a reputation for being difficult to bring off. And Motley was fortunate enough to have front-row preview-week seats only inches away from the performers.

 

Director Jamie Lloyd

Sondheim’s tartly pungent 1991 musical imagines a fraternity of U.S. presidential assassins encouraging each other in their serial attempts to change history at the point of a gun (“All you have to do / Is move your little finger”).  Nine assassins, one composite blood-spattered President (hunky Simon Lipkin) and a chorus of five ordinary Joes were complemented musically by an octet directed on piano by Alan Williams.  The even-cleverer-than-usual libretto paid meta-theatrical hommage to that other famous stage failure Willy Loman (“Attention must be paid!”). 

Aaron Tveit as Lincoln's
assassin John Wilkes Booth

Soutra Gilmour’s fairground set, overlaced with a cobweb of multi-coloured light-bulbs, brought out the ludic elements in the piece, while her period costumes anchored each assassin to their specific historical context.  Neon bulbs lit up the words “Hit” and “Miss” either side of the stage after each assassination attempt, proceeding non-chronologically from John Wilkes Booth (silky-voiced Broadway import Aaron Tveit) to Lee Harvey Oswald. Successful assassins were rewarded with a shower of scarlet confetti before expiring on stage in their ensuing executions. 

Mike McShane (almost unrecognisable without beard or half his former bulk) was particularly unnerving as Nixon’s failed assassin, Samuel Byck, the epitomy of brooding Seventies suburban menace in Santa costume and dodgem-car, pouring bile into a tape recorder (appropriately enough) for onward transmission to his (imaginary) “friend” Lenny Bernstein. 

Catherine Tate taking pot-shots at
Colonel Sanders in readiness for her character's
failed attempt on the life of Gerald Ford

Catherine Tate provided more evidence of her impeccable comic timing and talent for accents playing failed Ford assassin, cooky West Virginian Sara Jane Moore.  Lithe and hirsute Stewart Clarke (a National Youth Music Theatre newcomer) did a mean accent as Zangara, FDR’s failed Italian assassin, expectorating vigorously over the stage in mid-electrocution.  Ex-“History Boy” Jamie Parker doubled up as a bluegrass banjo-playing Balladeer, initially a voice of popular reason who transmogrifies sinisterly for the finale into Lee Harvey Oswald (presented here as a kind of ‘assassin’s assassin’). 

Jamie Parker (Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald) &
Simon Lipkin (Presidential composite)

A succession of toe-tappingly good musical numbers lifted a show always at risk of being ‘brought down’ by its cast of losers, revealing properly to Motley for the first time the quality of Sondheim’s score. From Leon Czolgosz’s “Gun Song” (pitch-perfect Polish accent from David Roberts) to Charles Guiteau’s “I am going to the Lordie” (an alarmingly manic Andy Nyman) to John Hinckley’s “Unworthy of your love” (Harry Morrison and Carly Bawden duetting in Seventies polyester) the singing was uniformly great. 

The show bowed out with the full troop of assassins singing the deliciously dark choral number “Everybody’s got the right to be happy ..  everybody’s got the right to their dreams”.  It may seem odd given the subject matter but you left the intimate Menier auditorium on a real high, conscious of having seen something special. Motley's nomination for best London show of 2014.
 

[Preview week so no shots yet of the cast in character]

Porgy and Bess, 23.7.14

Timothy Sheader’s new production of the Gershwin opera at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, based on a musical adaptation by Diedre L Murray, condensed the original, successfully bringing it, like the 2006 Trevor Nunn London production, much closer to musical theatre.

Rufus Bonds' crippled Porgy (centre) at the centre of the action

Rufus Bonds Jr and Nicola Hughes (who was Bess in the Nunn production) took the title roles. They were supported by Tony-award winner Phillip Boykin as baddass Crown, the magnificent Sharon D Clarke as matriarch Mariah, Golda Resheuvel as church elder Serena and, resplendent in natty yellow suit, the diminutive Cedric Neal as “happy-dust” dealer Sportin’ Life.  Bonds, Boykin and Neal were all on loan from Broadway. 

Phillip Boykin as Crown,
the alpha male with the voice to match

In an open-air setting, the vocal plaudits went to the powerful Boykin and Clarke and the acting plaudits to Neal and Hughes, who really inhabited their characters.  In contrast, Bonds and the orchestra were a little under-powered. 

Nicola Hughes' Bess samples the goods
(Phillip Boykin as Crown)

The show opened with Nicola Hughes, all taut sexual appetite, coming on silently in a black one-piece and donning a dress as dangerously red as her “loose woman” character.  Wrapped erotically around the big-bellied Crown, Bess is initially treated with disdain by the married women of 'Catfish Row'.  But when Crown kills Serena’s husband Robbins for his winnings from a game of 'craps' and has to go into hiding, Bess has an opportunity to come off the happy dust and “live decent” with crippled beggar Porgy.  Dealer 'Sporting Life' eventually tempts her back onto dope to snatch her away to NY, but the work ends with a hint of optimism as the besotted Porgy sets off in hot pursuit (cleverly staged here by Bonds walking tall over a series of strategically-placed tables). 


Cedric Neal struts his stuff as dealer Sportin' Life

Although Motley, like the rest of the planet, knew the main numbers (“Summertime”, “It ain’t necessarily so”, “I loves you, Porgy”), shamefully he'd never seen the whole work before.  It was fascinating to see how everything fitted together and to discover the lesser-known numbers (“My man’s gone now”, “It take a long pull to get there”, “Oh Doctor Jesus” & “A red-headed woman”).  And all at much less length than the operatic version!

With on-stage racial assaults, two murders, drug use and some fairly explicit crotch-grabbing, it was strong meat, both sexually and politically (which is probably why it took forty years to be accepted into the operatic repertoire).  Aside from baddies Crown and Sporting Life, the black residents of 'Catfish Row' were nonetheless sympathetically depicted as a coherent community, thrown together by poverty and white oppression. 


A set which came alive as the evening darkened

Staged against a cleverly-lit Expressionist luminous metallic backdrop, which changed colour according to the mood, this 1935 Depression-era work came across as more vividly sexual and political than Motley had anticipated: Brechtian in ambition.  (A hurricane, for example, was successfully simulated with only a few stage props.)   

Judging from the standing ovations, if this doesn’t turn into the London hit of the summer, Motley will eat his hat!

[Personal note:  many thanks to DP for the wonderful fourth row stalls seats and catering]