…as I was in my review of Sunday’s concert, I ought to point out his two CDs are available to buy.
If you haven’t heard his works before, the glories of Amazon.co.uk’s MP3 service means that you can hear preview tracks below (edit: doesn’t seem to work on Google Chrome for Mac - see below for some links):
If you want to buy full albums, you find the above widget a little confusing to navigate (I don’t blame you) or it doesn’t show up at all, try these links:
There are few modern composers of the musical theatre style better at crafting a heartfelt torch song than New York’s Scott Alan. He is returning to London on March 13 for a single night of performance at the Delfont Room in the Prince of Wales Theatre, but before then a group of young performers brought some of his songs to life in a patchy concert, The Distance We Have Come… The Music of Scott Alan at the New Players theatre yesterday.
One of the major reasons why Alan’s songs have gained such traction among musical theatre performers is that so many fit into a certain template: starting slow, gentle and contemplative, they’ll proceed in the same vain while slowly building towards a final chorus that allows the singer to demonstrate a great belt. And this presents two problems that this concert couldn’t quite escape. Firstly, ordering songs in the programme to provide maximum interest for the audience is essential - and second, all the planning in the world will go to pot if the singer blows the number’s big moment.
Breakingviews founder Mike Dixon, speaking to Chris Tryhorn in The Guardian (via Press Gazette):
The temptation if you’ve got to cut costs by 5 per cent is just to salami slice and everyone works a bit harder and quality just deteriorates a little bit more. What you end up with when you finally decide to put it behind a paywall is something that’s not good enough to persuade people to pay for.
Media groups have got to focus much more clearly on what is their unique selling point – keep the investment there, possibly increase the investment there, and everything else, which may be necessary as part of a package, because a newspaper is a package, they don’t have to produce themselves, they can buy that in.
I’m not convinced by anybody’s arguments that paywalls are a viable way to make internet services pay, particularly if current qualities are anything to go by. Once you lock away your newspaper content from a public gaze, you then have to devote much more energy and resources into marketing that content in order to gain conversions to digital subscribers — and that will likely eat up most, if not all, of any revenues which a paywall may generate.
Concentrating on a USP is far more likely to generate increased returns.
I wasn’t sure whether I would like Did You Hear About the Morgans?, the latest romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant opposite the American actress du jour (in this case, Sarah Jessica Parker). Ultimately, though, it won me over with some winning performances and a script that, for the most part, avoids the syrup that weighs down most Hollywood romcoms.
The plot itself — separated New York couple Paul and Meryl Morgan are placed into hiding after witnessing a murder — is something of a cut-and-shut amalgam of Sister Act and, well, pretty much every NYC-based comedy. Both high-flying executives, the only way they can organise dinner to try and talk out their differences is through their personal assistants (Jesse Liebman and The West Wing/Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss, stealing every scene she’s in).
Whisked away to temporary witness relocation in the depths of Wyoming (which the snobbish Morgans seem to regard with the same stereotypical disdain as English scriptwriters heap upon Norfolk), they are put up by gun-toting redneck couple Marshal Clay Weeler (Sam Elliott) and his wife, Deputy Emma Wheeler (Mary Steenburgen).
Naturally enough, they’re fishes out of water and have trouble adjusting to the country way of life, although in short order they realise that the friendly community spirit has a redemptive quality. Things pretty much proceed at the pace you’d expect from a movie of this sort, and indeed there are very few surprises, if any, in the way the plot develops.
What does surprise, though, is the script. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, but has a nice pace to it, with occasional bursts of one-liners or slapstick sequences that help offset the more serious discussions about the Morgans’ self-destructing marriage.
As a result, it feels a lot warmer and truer than most romcoms, almost like a mid-West version of Cold Feet. The final reconciliation is one exception, as the dialogue turns gloopily soppy without the witty undercutting that runs through the rest of the script.
Without giving too much away, there’s a “six months later” coda that works quite well — it at least stays true to the central characters’ personalities, rather than having two metropolitan types deciding they need to go completely native to be be fulfilled. But it’s rather a gentler end than I was expecting: I wanted the last line of the film to be a real humdinger, and it wasn’t.
Much like this review.
While everybody else is winding down in time for Christmas, every year The Stage offices get busier and busier. The reduced amount of time available to get our end-of-year issues out is compounded by the fact that, for our reviews section, we’re hitting the busiest time of the year.
We try and cover as many of the professional Christmas and pantomime shows from around the UK as we can, and as they all tend to bunch their press nights into these first couple of weeks in December, it can prove a logistical nightmare.
This year, I’m doing the same three Buckinghamshire venues as I have done in previous years, but they’re also supplemented by a couple of London ones. This time last week, I saw Leicester Square Theatre’s pantomime Sinderfella. My review reflected, as best one can in 200 words, the overall sense of disappointment and frustration at a production with so many things wrong that could easily have been fixed at rehearsal stage. Unfortunately, the writer/director/producer/dame disagreed with my review.
Thankfully, since then the shows I’ve seen have been much more well-rounded. It’s never nice seeing a poor show, and with just a couple more on my list to see, it looks like my first panto of the review will be the exception rather than the rule.
This year’s panto bunch (links to the remaining shows will be added once they’re published):
Sinderfella, Leicester Square Theatre Basement, London
One of the keys to a raucously successful pantomime is a portrayal of barely controlled anarchy, which in turn needs a firm grasp on the reins. Unfortunately, adult panto Sinderfella has none of this…
Peter Pan, Elgiva, Chesham
There is something inherently difficult about turning an established stage play for children into a knockabout panto. Chesham’s effort just about manages to straddle both types of source material, but on occasion one wishes it would make up its mind what it wants to be…
Jack and the Beanstalk, Civic Centre, Aylesbury
Continued delays to Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre mean that the nearby Civic Centre is now on its third, and probably final, ‘last’ pantomime before demolition. It certainly has produced one enabling the venue to go out on a high…
Potted Potter, Trafalgar Studios 2, London
There is something gloriously childlike about the glee with which CBBC presenters Dan Clarkson and Jeff Turner throw themselves into their reduced retelling of JK Rowling’s series of Harry Potter books. Not for them the faux seriousness of the ‘adult’ hardback editions: they are devotees of the novels as children’s fare, and quite right too…
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Watersmeet, Rickmansworth
The importance of warming up a panto audience is highlighted by Rickmansworth’s latest rendition of Snow White, where the first act played out to a crowd seemingly unable to give anything back to the onstage cast…
All the above reviews, along with every other review I’ve written, are on my theatre reviews index page.
Cross-posted to TV Today
I saw Paranormal Activity at the cinema this weekend. For those who haven’t yet seen it, or heard about it from the large amounts of online buzz around it, it’s a supernatural film shot on a single video camera (a la The Blair Witch Project).
With all the best horror films, it’s the slowly creeping sense of dread that can turn a good movie into a great one. For me, Paranormal Activity doesn’t quite have that — while there are some genuinely creepy moments in the film, the scenes in between are more about tedium than tension.
What really killed the film for me, though, was the thought that I’d seen the whole concept — a family home tormented by ghosts or demons — done so much better. By the BBC, in fact, in 1992’s Ghostwatch.
It’s descended into notoriety now, of course, because despite being pre-recorded and broadcast in the Screen One drama slot, its presentation — as a live studio programme with outside broadcast links to a suburban housing estate — led some to overlook the (frankly rather dodgy) acting, and believe they were actually watching a documentary. Actors Sarah Greene and Craig Charles, on the “outside broadcast” duties, were then best known for their TV presenting roles, and in the studio Mike Smith (Greene’s husband) and Michael Parkinson were certainly no thesps. Indeed, remarkably it was the studio TV presentation that was the most plausible element of the whole setup, with the conceit only exposed by the stiff and much more tightly scripted response of the studio guests.
Never repeated on television, the British Film Institute released it on DVD in 2002
On the BFI’s website, they claim:
Seen today, following the advent of such tightly controlled ‘reality’ shows as Big Brother (Channel 4, 2000- ) and especially Most Haunted (Living TV, 2002- ), it is clear that the strong audience response Ghostwatch received at the time was due less to its dubious credibility as a factual broadcast than to the way that it tapped into audiences’ desire to be fooled, to be tickled by even the slightest possibility that a live broadcast could really go out of control.
Most Haunted (the creation, of course, of Greene’s fellow Blue Peter alumna, Yvette Fielding) does take the notion of fiction presented as fact to its most ludicrous extremes. Paranormal Activity is in no way as ridiculous — but as far as being creeped out goes, the BBC’s effort is hard to beat.
Below: a clip from Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Scary Moments talking about Ghostwatch.
On the night where the BBC concentrates on raising money for Children in Need, time to celebrate children who are raising money for others…
To commemorate their school friend who was killed in a road accident earlier this year, pupils at Guisboroush’s Laurence Jackson School initially raised £5,000 for the local air ambulance, and have now supplemented that with a further £1,000 by doing a sponsored swim in the North Sea.
I don’t know much more than that, other than what is in this news story. And that only came to my attention because one of the pupils presenting the cheque is my namesake, Scott Matthewman.
I don’t know him. If we’re related, we’ll be very distant relations indeed. But to even share a name with someone who’s doing such good work for charity is humbling.
If you’ve come to this site looking for someone who does good work, you’ve found the wrong Scott Matthewman. You don’t want me, you want the other one.
Reviewed for The Stage
Jermyn Street, London
November 17-December 20
Author/director: Garry Lake
Producer: Jest End Productions
Cast: Jodie Jacobs, Laura Brydon, Chris Thatcher, Stuart Matthew Price
Running time: 1hr 40mins
Jest End’s sideswipes at London’s most loved (or at least best known) musicals may be affectionate, but no punches are pulled.
Taking well known melodies and fashioning humorous lyrics around them is a joke that works throughout, thanks to the acuity and skill of the satire. It also helps that all four cast members are exceptionally strong vocally.
The show works best when it deals with current shows - references to Phill Jupitus’ Hairspray role and John Barrowman’s turn in La Cage aux Folles are both acknowledged. Indeed, it is Chris Thatcher’s portrayal of Barrowman, along with similarly wicked send-ups of Michael Ball and Cameron Mackintosh, that steals the show. The latter is part of a sequence of numbers that uses Oliver! to mine a rich seam of material, whether of producers reviving old adaptations, or hard-working actresses being overlooked in favour of reality TV show winners.
One or two numbers feel a little dated, such as a number about Jersey Boys usurping Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward. And ironically, it is a song about the West End’s numerous flops that strikes the only duff note of the evening. But these are small issues in an evening full of riotous comedy.
As the final part of our Show and Stay theatre quiz prize, Ade and I last night ventured to the Gielgud Theatre to see Avenue Q. We had great seats — pretty near the centre of the Row F stalls — but there were elements of the show we couldn’t see. Nor could anyone else, though - as a result of the earlier power cut in the West End, the video screens and some lighting banks weren’t working correctly.
Rather than cancel the whole performance, we were offered free interval drinks — great news for us, possibly less well-received by people who had pre-ordered their beverages before the announcement was made. Despite the technical problems, the show was as fun as ever. And Rachel Jerram, who was understudying as Kate Monster/Lucy the Slut in place of regular Cassidy Janson, was absolutely superb (as, indeed, was Taofique Folarin, understudying for Edward Baruwa as Gary). I haven’t seen Cassidy in the role yet, as this was my first revisit since Julie Atherton left — but it’s hard to imagine how she could top Rachel’s performance last night.
Avenue Q’s days at the Gielgud are numbered, as Hair is transferring from Broadway and starts previewing on April 1, 2010. Whether it will transfer to another West End venue or head out on a UK tour, I don’t know — but I hope that the Avenue doesn’t shut down for good.
Image of Daniel Boys with Rod taken from my West End Live 2009 collection.
Reviewed for The Stage
King’s Head, Islington
November 12-January 10, 2010
Author: Glenn Chandler
Director: Terence Barton
Producer: Boys of the Empire Productions
Cast: Brage Bang, Christopher Birks, Mark Farrelly, Christopher Finn, Alastair Mavor, Timothy Welling
Running time: 1hr 50mins
Every sketch show has scenarios which, while amusing in moderate amounts, outstay their welcome. Imagine such a sketch stretched out to the best part of two hours and you have Scouts in Bondage.
Glenn Chandler’s comedy, a sequel to last year’s Boys of the Empire, sees a troop of 1930s Boy Scouts crash land in Afghanistan while on their way to a jamboree. They end up caught in a plot between British intelligence and the local warring factions in one of several satirical swipes at 21st century attitudes to Britain’s involvement in the region.
Narration is provided by Mark Farrelly as the editor of Scout Magazine, whose increasingly anarchic performance is the highlight of the evening. The scouts, though, work on a more one-note level which, although it pastiches the Boys’ Own stylings of the era, quickly begins to grate and actively works against any attempt to portray anything deeper.
On several occasions, the production seems unable to find the line between lampooning the casual racism of the age and just joining in. And while there are good laughs to be had throughout, the overall impression is of a production that got too carried away with the title’s double entendre to tighten up the script as much as needed.
