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Critic's choice: Top five musicals
By Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard 03.08.07
Three's company in the cast of Carmen
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
The Drowsy Chaperone
Cabaret
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Nicholas de Jongh takes us through the top five musicals that are currently playing across the capital.
Carmen Jones
Festival Hall SE1
South Bank director Jude Hall's production of Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones - the 1940s all-black makeover of Bizet's Carmen - never quite musters the erotic excitement of the 19th-century original. Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi is the heroine taking the sexual high-road to self-destruction, an ideal fatal-attraction girl who glides and prowls about like a gaudy bird of prey in search of its victim. Both she and her smitten admirer, Andrew Clarke's stolid Joe, boast powerful, versatile voices but never seem harrowed or driven by desire, until the end when Maswanganyi is a revelation as Carmen finds fulfilment in violent death.
Prize-fighter Husky Miller, the object of Carmen's own desires, is played with swaggering vigour by Rodney Clarke, Andrew's brother, and Cindy Lou by Sherry Boone, who communicates real intensity in her lament for her lost man, My Joe. (0870 3800 400)
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Adelphi, WC2
For those of us who do not take musicals too seriously, the earliest of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's shows still does the comic-satirical business. This gawdy, hand-clapping, seductive revival, based upon the popular 1991 production by Steven Pimlott, offers a seductive blend of camp, kitsch and cool mockery, not to mention the sound of Lloyd Webber in romantic and triumphal form. Lee Mead, hero of the BBC series Any Dream Will Do, lacks acting energy but his powerful, melodious voice makes the best of Close Every Door, the show's one genuinely sad song. (0870 895 5598).
The Drowsy Chaperone
Novello Theatre (formerly Strand Theatre), WC2
It's a rare evening when a musical makes me laugh out loud and often. The Drowsy Chaperone surprises and delights, thanks to its central conceit. Bob Martin, who wrote the book with Don McKellar, puts on an effective act as the middle-aged narrator. He plays us an LP of an imaginary show called The Drowsy Chaperone, from the good old 1920s, bringing this musical to full theatrical life before us. It offers an affectionate and accurate pastiche of the juvenile inanities of a 1920s musical. If only there was a bit more satirical point to the gaudy, nonsensical plot. Elaine Paige burlesques her star-actress-as-scene-stealer role. (0870 950 0935).
Cabaret
Lyric, W1
Kander and Ebb's politically motivated musical revels in Berlin's hedonistic nightlife in 1930. It then attacks Germans who believe the Nazis are no concern of theirs. Rufus Norris's inventive production miscasts Anna Maxwell Martin as Sally Bowles, the good-time girl ready for a bit of bad, though Cabaret does shows itself to be a great musical full of alluring tunes and timelessly appealing. (0870 890 1107).
Mary Poppins
Prince Edward Theatre, W1
This dream of a musical, with the magical nanny who rescues a middle-class Edwardian family from emotional fall-out, is still flying high after more than a year in the West End. Scarlett Strallen has taken over as Poppins from Laura Michelle Kelly and though she lacks her predecessor's air of mystery, does emulate her stiff elegance and pert assurance. Flashes of humour, flights of fantasy and beautiful vignettes contribute to the serious attractions. (0870 850 9191).
