London 2018: West-End Theatre

We wanted to watch some plays while we were in London, but found it surprisingly difficult to pick shows that we had not already watched in Toronto, or that we were interested in.  I love musicals but most of the musicals that would have appealed to me were retreads of ones that had already played in Toronto or would be part of our upcoming season’s theatre subscription.  These included Les Mis, Wicked, Aladdin, Young Frankenstein, Dream Girls, School of Rock, Matilda, Mamma Mia, The Lion King, Chicago, Chess, American in Paris, The King and I and Kinky Boots.  This made me realize what great theatre and especially musical theatre we have in Toronto!  Since we were in London for three weeks, we were hoping to watch three shows (one per week) including a new and original feel-good musical that we had never heard of before, as well as a comedy and one other production.  After much searching and researching, we came across three shows that fit the bill.  In fact, the third show was a bit of happenstance since we caught sight of an advertisement of it as we were touring London one day, looked into it and decided to give it a try.

Our first show was the new musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,  playing at the Apollo Theatre.  It deals with a spunky gay 16-year-old British teen named Jamie New, who stands up to bullying from fellow students and prejudices from adults as he plots to show up at his prom in drag, as a step to fulfilling his secret desire of being a drag queen.  The musical is based on the true story of Jamie Campbell, an outwardly gay teen from  Bishop Auckland, County Durham, a Northern ex-mining town, who does indeed overcome all obstacles in order to attend his prom in a dress, including learning to perform in drag.  Campbell’s journey inspired the 2011 BBC documentary “Jamie: Drag Queen at 16”, which in turn led to the musical.  At the heart of Jamie’s story is his rock-solid relationship with his mother Margaret, who is totally accepting and supportive of who he is and the choices he makes.  This relationship is reflected in the musical, transcending it beyond being just a version of “Billy Elliot in drag”, and resulting in several beautiful songs including “He’s My Boy” and “My Man, Your Boy”.

Using the documentary as a launching point, the musical expands Jamie’s world to include his classmates, such as his female best friend Pritti Pasha, who is Muslim and Dean, the class bully who picks on both of them.  The musical also adds a subplot regarding Jamie New’s absentee father, who cannot accept that his son is gay, and Margaret’s attempts to shield Jamie from this rejection.  The two songs opening each act, “And You Don’t Even Know It” and the titular “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” are so full of energy and pep that you want to jump up and dance with the cast.   One of my favourite songs is the one sung by Hugo, a retired drag queen who acts as a mentor for Jamie.  He sings “The Legend of Loco Chanel” to describe his former drag persona as he tries to help Jamie develop his.  Three drag queen friends named “Sandra Bollock”, “Tray Sophisticay” and “Laika Virgin” join Hugo and provide great comic relief.  Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is everything you could hope for in a musical, including an amazing feel good story that just happens to be mostly true, great songs, funny moments to go with touching ones and an excellent cast including a boy dancing around in killer red stilettos.  I would love to watch this fabulous show about inclusion and acceptance again if it ever comes to Toronto.  I hope it at least makes it to Broadway.

Part of the experience of attending London West-End shows is getting to see the interiors of the beautiful old theatres.  The Apollo Theatre was built as a musical theatre in 1901 and named after the Greek god of arts and leader of the Muses.  Its façade is designed in the Renaissance style featuring four stone carvings said to represent Poetry, Music, Comedy and Dance.  The auditorium consists of four levels including the dress circle and two upper box balconies and a ground floor which they call “the stalls”.  The interior is decorated in Louis XIV style featuring gold and red tones and the ceiling is painted with a dramatic moonlit night scene with a purplish sky.   We had purchased middle-priced tickets in the back of the stalls, but found out when we arrived for the show that we had been upgraded to much closer seats.  This happened again in our last show, making me think that it is not worth it to purchase the best available seat in the house for non-sold-out shows, since you might get moved there for free anyways.

While waiting for the Apollo Theatre to open its doors for our evening show, we looked at shops around Piccadilly Circus and stumbled upon Kingdom of Sweets Candy Store.  We actually spent quite a bit of time wandering around this store and found all sorts of interesting items for sale.  There was the talking coin-operated “Poppy Fresh-to-Go”  popcorn vending machine that produced freshly popped popcorn with a voice that entices you to buy something as you walk by.  I was freaked out by the gummy candy shaped like dentures and amused by the Simpsons inspired Flaming Moe energy drink and the temporary Minions tongue tattoos.  Then there was the shelves of sex and smut named candy including “Jelly Willies”, “Sexy Jelly Men”, “Cola Boobs”, “Grumpy Old Git Humbugs”, candied bras and g-Strings and more.

Playing at the Criterion Theatre, our second show was a hilarious farce called “The Comedy About A Bank Robbery”, which pretty much sums up the plot.  Mitch Ruscitti is an escaped convict aided by Neil Cooper, his goofy prison guard turned accomplice.  Together they plot to steal a precious diamond from the vault of Robin Freeboys, the father of Mitch’s con artist girlfriend Caprice. Caprice is stringing along three men who each think they are her boyfriend and send her rent cheques.  While Mitch is in jail, Caprice meets and falls for Sam, who unbeknownst to her is also a pick pocket and con artist.  Eventually they too get roped into the caper and hijinx ensues.  The play opens with a long sequence of juvenile puns and deliberate misunderstandings that are so silly that you cannot help but laugh.  For example, every time Mitch calls out “Neil”, the guard takes it literally and kneels.  There is also an extended sequence worthy of Laurel and Hardy’s “Who’s on First” bit, where the banker’s name “Robin Freeboys” is confused with the words “Robbing three boys”.  The humour in many jokes are also achieved through endless repetition.  When Mitch is first discussing the heist with Neil, he asks if Neil told anyone?  Neil replies  “Well, only Tom..”.  This sequence repeats until soon the entire precinct and their spouses are in on the plan.  A similar idea is used when Officer Randal Shuck, the agent sent to oversee the safety of the diamond, is being chewed out over the phone by his superior, who in turn passes to the phone to a more and more senior officer, each sporting a larger and larger mustache.

From there comes some acrobatic feats that need to be seen to be believed.  In one extended scene set in Caprice’s bedroom involving a faulty Murphy bed which keeps closing accidentally, the bed and overhead bin generate great humour when Sam needs to hide after Mitch arrives to interrupt his tryst with Caprice.  While attempting the robbery, the heist team crawls through air ducts while looking down from overhead to see Robin Freeboys in his office with his assistant Warren.  The robbers are actually crawling along a platform above the stage.  Meanwhile the set onstage is created to give the audience the same overhead view as the heist team.  The furniture and props are nailed to a “floor” that is tilted at almost a 90 degree angle to the actual floor, and actors playing Freeboys and Warren are held in place with wires.  The effect was really cool to see and very funny, especially when Warren tries to move around and everything he touches falls backwards (onto the real floor).  Finally the diamond heist itself plays out like a scene from a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible Movie with Mitch, Caprice and Sam falling on top of each other and all dangling at different angles from a rope.  In an interview, the cast reveals that they received advice from circus performers on how to accomplish some of the stunts.

Part of the play becomes a farce in the true classical sense of the word.  A component of the plan for the heist is for Sam to impersonate Freeboys, but when something goes wrong with that scheme, Neil steps up to the role.  It didn’t seem to matter that the real Freeboys is a plump old man while Sam is a thin young man and Neil an extremely tall black man.  We are supposed to suspend reality and just go with the idea that a grey wig and glasses would transform each of the impostors and this suspension of belief makes the interactions even more funny.  So there are many mix-ups and mistaken identities as the real and two fake Freeboys came in and out of various doors, sometimes with and sometimes without pants (don’t ask.. you had to be there).  Slapstick is introduced as well, as poor Warren gets smacked around multiple times.  Some old standards including “Why Don’t You Do Right” and “Sh-Boom .. Life Could Be a Dream)” are sung between scenes to move the action along.

We chose to watch A Comedy About A Bank Robbery because it received great reviews, but also because it is performed by the same troupe behind the hit show “The Play That Goes Wrong”, which we will actually be watching next year as part of our annual Mirvish Productions theatre subscription.  We watched an excerpt of The Play That Goes Wrong on Youtube and it was so funny that we had high hopes for this show as well.  We were not disappointed, as we started laughing from the first spoken line of "The Comedy About A Bank Robbery" and continued to roar with laughter for the entire show.  I enjoyed this production so much that I sent a message to the Mirvish Twitter account advising them to consider adding this show to a future subscription series.

Opened in 1874, the Criterion Theatre was first designed as an underground concert hall topped by a restaurant before being converted to a live theatre.  In WWII, the underground theatre was used as a safe broadcast site for the BBC during the London Blitz.  Renovated and restored several times, today it has a capacity of 588 seats across 3 levels with ornate lobbies including one lined with drawings or caricatures of former British actors who presumably played in the theatre?  The last time we were in London in 2000, we watched the comedy “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in 90 minutes” at the Criterion Theatre.  In fact, that same show ran from 1996-2005 and then the mystery thriller “The 39 Steps” ran from 2006-2015.  So lets hope “The Comedy About A Bank Robbery” gets an extended run as well.

We could not find another new musical that we wanted to see, so initially our third show was going to be Dream Girls, which I had watched before, but not since 1998.  Then while walking around Piccadilly Circus, we spotted the large advertisement for the musical Brief Encounter, playing at the Empire Cinema.  Since this show was playing in a movie cinema, it was unclear whether this was a live performance or a movie.  As it turns it, it had elements of both.   We had never heard of this musical before, but it is actually a revival of a show first performed in 2008.  Brief Encounter is based on a 1945 movie of the same name, starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, which in turn was based on Noel Coward’s 1936 play Still Life.  The storyline remains the same in all three versions.  Laura is a housewife with two children who takes the train into town each Thursday to do shopping, while Alec is a doctor who comes by train to attend to his practice once a week.  After a few chance meetings, Alec and Laura start to plan their get-togethers and contemplate having an affair as they begin to fall in love.  The happy-go-lucky, uncomplicated dalliances of two other couples who work in the train station serve as a counterpoint to Alec and Laura’s forbidden romance, which is doomed from the start by social mores of the times and the burden of duty and responsibility.  It has been noted that Noel Coward could not have provided this couple a happy ending, since such scandalous behaviour for the times would not have made it past the censor boards.

While this plot sounds like a typical syrupy and predictable melodrama in the vein of “An Affair to Remember”, what elevates the musical is the unique staging that incorporates element of both film and live performance.  Before the play even starts, cast members dressed as 1940s movie ushers and ticket takers wander throughout the cinema, singing and playing musical instruments before taking the stage and informing us that the show is about to begin.

But when the show starts, we are actually watching the opening credits of a black-and-white movie called “Brief Encounter” on the cinema screen.  Suddenly the two actors playing Alec and Laura, who were seated in the front row watching the movie with us, jump up and start arguing about their ill-fated romance.  Laura insists that she must return home to her husband, who appears on the movie screen.  Laura seems to walk through the screen (actually a curtain on which the movie is projected) and suddenly appears as part of the movie while Alec remains on stage looking on helplessly… neat trick!  The interaction between live performance and projected video reminds me of the play Helen Lawrence which used a similar effect, except in that show, the actor could be seen on stage and in person at the same time.

The trick with the actor disappearing from stage onto the screen is performed once more in a scene where Laura is saying goodbye to Alec as he boards his train to return home after one of their encounters.  The pair speak to each other on the “platform” in front of an image of a train, and then Alec steps through the curtains at the spot aligned to the door of the train and in the next second, his projection is shown waving goodbye to Laura as she waves to the screen.  The timing of this illusion is impeccable.

Other than these two occurrences of a very cool gimmick, the rest of the show is performed in person, with the occasional projection playing in the background to show activities that could not be easily staged, or to convey hidden depths of emotions (usually with a water motif).  The constant use of crashing waves reminds me of the movie “From Here To Eternity”.  For Laura, water also represents a time of innocence and freedom, as she recalls swimming in the ocean in her youth.  Another creative piece of stagecraft was the use of puppets to represent Laura's two peevish and combative children.

When the unique staging techniques are not on display, the show is weighed down by the sappy romance of the central characters.  Luckily musical interludes and comic relief are provided by the supporting cast who play the train station workers, including Myrtle, owner of the tearoom in the train station, Beryl her lowly assistant, and their beaus Albert and Stanley.  The music and lyrics of the songs sung in Brief Encounter are actually ones written by Noel Coward.  This show was entertaining and interesting to watch, but we were disappointed that one of the highlight scenes that is featured in all the promotional material for the show did not come about.  During one of their trysts, Alec and Laura are so giddy about their love for each other that they grab onto chandeliers and are literally lifted up in the air.  Except in our performance, only Alec was lifted into the air while Laura just sat there.  I’m not sure whether there was a technical difficulty or a missed cue or the actress had an injury and could not perform the stunt, but it was a big letdown and diluted the effectiveness of the scene.

As usual, part of the fun of seeing a West-End show is getting to see a beautiful old theatre and the Empire Cinema was no exception.  As seems to be the case in many of these old theatres, the Empire Cinema was constructed for one purpose but renovated multiple times through the years to support different genres of entertainment.  It was built in 1884 as a variety theatre, became a music hall in 1887, was rebuilt as a cinema in 1927, was given a 70mm screen in 1959 in order to screen Ben Hur, became a dance hall in the 1960s, and refurbished again as a cinema in the 1980s and 90s.  Today it has 9 screens including an IMAX and a 4DX screen and is used for film premieres and first run movies.  The Cinema has an interesting bar and waiting lounge that is made to look like a massive library.