Snobs sneer but musicals make my heart sing!
As song-and-dance shows light up the West End...
AT THE gala performance of 42nd Street at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London this week, the focus of attention was undoubtedly the Duchess of Cambridge. She looked fabulous in that red dress.
My mind, however, was filled with a rather different image. It was of a chubby, sixtysomething man who had been sitting near me when I had seen the musical the previous night.
He was there with his wife and two daughters and they had made an effort to look smart. The daughters, in their 30s, were in party frocks, as was mum. The man had put on a collar and tie. These people were not rich. I was behind them in the ice-cream queue at the interval and I saw him wince at the £4 cost of the little tubs. But he was out for an evening with his ladies and was determined they would enjoy themselves.
Thanks to the amazing dancing, the luscious orchestra, classic songs and a fullblown production, they did just that. From its marvellous opening scene, when the curtain slowly rises on the 80 tap-dancing feet of a leggy chorus line, to the closing moments when the stage turns into a vast, almost celestial staircase, 42nd Street is a big, traditional spectacle.
It has catchy tunes (Lullaby Of Broadway, I Only Have Eyes For You, We’re In The Money) and, of course, a happy ending. Why do I say ‘of course’? Well, this is uncomplicated, classic musical theatre. Its plot may creak like the timbers of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hinde. Some characters may be as shallow as pub doubles. But it has energy, rhythm, a sense of life’s possibilities.
The alchemy of harmony and glamour, and the triumph of good over calamity do their work. You sense how a little love and understanding can make the world go around.
Look what it did to that chap with his wife and daughters. As the show ended and the cast took their well-earned bows, I made my customary early dash for the exit and I briefly caught sight of him. He was standing for the ovation, clapping his two, spade-like hands over his head, shouting, ‘ Hooray!’ Tears coursed down his cheeks.
WHYwas he weeping? It’s not as if 42nd Street is a particularly schmaltzy show. I guess it was sheer happiness that his evening had been a thorough success. He had probably built up his expectations, envisaged himself surrounded by his family, enjoying a wonderful night’s entertainment, and it had all gone according to plan.
More than that, the music had been tuneful, the script witty but wholesome, and everyone around him was feeling similarly upbeat.
That is what an old-fashioned, unashamedly entertaining show can do to you.
The West End is enjoying a purple patch right now, particularly for musicals. In addition to 42nd Street, we have recently had the opening of two other top-notch shows. There was An American In Paris at the Dominion and The Girls (a delightful British newcomer about those infamous Women’s Institute calendar strippers) at the Phoenix.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rebellious School Of Rock is raising the roof at the New London Theatre and the sometime Tommy Steele vehicle Half A Sixpence — with its rousing Flash Bang Wallop (Wot A Picture!’) — is doing good business at the Noel Coward.
In coming days we have Carousel opening at the Coliseum and Miranda Hart in Annie at the Piccadilly next nonth, which could be a disaster but could equally be a hoot. Let’s hope for the latter.
Dreamgirls is deafening its happy audiences at the Savoy (my head was spinning for hours after that one) and Kinky Boots is still kicking it up at the Adelphi. To that you can add such long-running smash hits as Mamma Mia!, Matilda, The Lion King, Les Mis, The Phantom Of The Opera and more.
The owner of one West End theatre group recently told me that her houses are averaging 90 per cent capacity at the moment. (It’s not just London either. At the Birmingham Rep last week I saw a stonking Bob Marley musical which had the entire theatre on its feet at the end, rapturous in its acclaim for the cast.)
Like 42nd Street, which was originally a 1933 Warner Brothers film, An American In Paris is adapted from a classic Hollywood rom-com (a 1951 picture starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron).
The similarities do not end there. Both are about young dancers being given a break and finding love against the odds. Do these plots stretch credibility? Yes. Does that matter? No. It is almost the point of the exercise. What is wrong with a little escapism?
Producers, if they are wise, will remember that most of their customers will arrive at the theatre after a long day’s toil and simply want to have their minds taken off work and worry for a couple of hours. They want to have fun.
As veteran American actress Shirley Jones once said, on being told there was not enough ‘reality’ in musicals: ‘ Who cares? There’s too much reality these days.’
The production of An American In Paris includes some fine balletic dancing. It is also blessed with young, British-born Leanne Cope, who starred in the show during its award-winning run on Broadway.
If An American In Paris has the edge over 42nd Street, it is thanks to Miss Cope. A really, really good musical must have a lead performer, male or female, with whom you can slightly fall in love.
Though I was slightly less enchanted by Clare Halse’s Peggy in 42nd Street, her tap- dancing is astonishing.
You clock the speed of her tapping and wonder how she can pump her feet so fast. Musical theatre’s artistry stems from intense training and physical stamina.
Let’s have no snobbery about classical theatre being its superior in terms of technique.
There are dissenters. Michael Billington, the Guardian newspaper’s theatre critic, took issue with what he saw as the sexism of 42nd Street, particularly in Al Dubin’s Thirties lyrics to the song Keep Young And Beautiful.
Billington felt that in this feminist day and age it was ‘astonishing’ to hear a chorus with the words ‘what’s cute about a cutie is her beauty, not brains’.
Now I have a high regard for Michael Billington, an elegant and expert writer who is the doyen of our critical trade, but I wonder if he has it right here.
THEsong Keep Young And Beautiful, which was, among other things, a favourite of Winston Churchill, strikes me as knowingly frivolous, not least because it occurs in this show in which an ageing prima donna (played by Sheena Easton) presents an example of fiery female power.
Repeatedly in musicals we have women who fight for survival and use all their guile and cleverness.
‘Don’t fail to do your stuff, with a little powder and a puff,’ the song continues. ‘Take care of all those charms and you’ll always be in someone’s arms.’
Here is savvy, Depression- era advice on how to endure and overcome. To watch a likeable dramatic character doing that can be terrifically uplifting and perfectly feminist.
Maybe some on the Left resent the sheer optimism and zest of classic musicals.
The Girls, co-written by Take That’s Gary Barlow, continues that tradition, showing how a group of Yorkshire ladies battle against the odds, raising a fortune for cancer research and plenty of gurgling laughter from the audience, too.
I defy anyone who has had close experience of cancer to go to The Girls and not be moved to chestheaving tears. You will be overcome with sadness, partly, but also hope and delight. There lies the genius mix of musicals.
Some of theatre’s snootier experts look down on such sentimentalism. They regard it as somehow vulgar, an opiate for the masses. They prefer to fill stages (often thanks to Arts Council subsidies) with tales of violence and subjection and discrimination.
Or, as I wrote this week, the story of a man who has a sexual love affair with a goat (starring that British darling of U.S. television, Damian Lewis). Well, good luck to ’em, but I prefer to have my emotions shamelessly manipulated.
And so, I sensed, did that man I saw at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane as the 42nd Street dancers took their curtain call. They had tapped not only the stage with their toes but, by their artistry and devotion to the noble duty of entertainment, had also tapped a hole in the audience’s heart.