Scott Matthewman » Arts

Portraits: Terrie-May McNulty

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:16:48 +0000

Earlier this week, I did a photo shoot with my friend, actor Terrie-May McNulty. She will shortly be performing her one-woman cabaret, Oops!, as part of her fund-raising efforts to further her acting education.

Hollie Steel at the Roundhouse

Scott Matthewman — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:49:43 +0000

Last night, I went with Paul to the Roundhouse, for the launch of the debut album by 11-year-old Hollie Steel.

Hollie was, you may remember, a finalist in the 2009 series of Britain’s Got Talent. As Paul says, she has a tremendous vocal range, but at her young age she doesn’t really have the emotional connection to her material in a way that would get the best use of her voice. She also overdoes her vibrato, which is a pet hate of mine: I’m definitely in the ‘less is more’ camp in that regard. She seems a nice enough girl, and hopefully will continue to train, and learn how to best use her vocal abilities.

At risk of being overshadowed by his little sister, Josh Steel apparently stepped in at the last minute to MC the album launch, and given the short amount of preparation time he coped well. Talking to him afterwards, he told us he’s about to move down South to start a three-year course at Italia Conti, so good luck to him with that.

Streetdance 3D: two dimensions more than the script

Scott Matthewman — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:12:57 +0000

There is a point at which Carly, the plucky heroine of new British dance movie, Streetdance 3D, is taken to a classical ballet (Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet) by her dance school mentor. Sceptical at first, she finds herself drawn in. As they leave the theatre, she marvels at how they managed to portray an entire tragic love story without words.

Lucky them. The rest of us have to endure what passes for a Streetdance script. Dance movies are not particularly known for ever exercising the best screenplay judges at movie awards, but Streetdance drags the genre down to new lows. It’s been concocted by someone who saw Step Up 2: The Streets, went on an all-weekend bender and then verbally vomited up his hazy memory of the least worst parts.

Normally when I review things that other people may not have seen, I either warn them of spoilers or try to avoid them altogether. There’s no point doing either here, as the template for dance movies is so rigidly adhered to that you know what’s going to happen even before you walk into the cinema.

First, a brief diversion into some of the movie’s good points. Filmed to take advantage of street dance’s incursions into mainstream popular culture, it uses the most visible proponents of that breakthrough – Britain’s Got Talent winners George Sampson and Diversity and finalists Fearless – as a means of attracting an audience. Nothing wrong with that: they are all charismatic performers.

Unfortunately, Diversity are particularly poorly served. Given just one dance number to showcase the group’s work, the poor direction and editing actively works against the impressive choreography. One almost suspects that the directors only had access to Diversity for part of an afternoon, shot what they could and desperately tried to cobble together a decent edit. If that’s the case, they failed.

Flawless, who reached last year’s BGT final before being beaten by both Diversity and Susan Boyle, get a much greater slice of the action. Here, they become reigning champions The Surge, the biggest threat to Carly and her ragtag group of young hopefuls. Meanwhile, Sampson is the plucky young pal who keeps on insisting that he’s good enough to dance with the gang, if only they would give him a chance. Do you think he might prove his worth by the end of the film? Do you? (He does.)

The use of 3D actually does work quite well in the dance sequences. It allows the choreography (principally by Kenrick Sandy and Kate Prince) to be closer to stage work, where the live audience take that third dimension for granted. In the aforementioned scene where Carly is transfixed by the classical ballet dancers, the director keeps the camera on her while balletic forms flit between her and us, suspended above the auditorium.

If only the characters were three dimensional. As it is, they struggle to be even 2D. Everywhere you look there are characters that give stereotypes a bad name: the surly European ballet teacher, the prissy ballet dancers who struggle to eat a whole stick of celery for lunch, the obdurate boss who has a heart of gold.

Some of the writing is just lazy, but some goes further and just becomes almost offensively laughable. We have a ballet school where students walk around in tightly knit groups who all dress alike (three girls in purple leotards here, two guys in black unitards there). Apparently nobody at the ballet school has ever heard of any other dance discipline. And one girl ends up sobbing because she’s been told she’s too tall for her Royal Ballet auditions, a plot point which gets conveniently forgotten when said auditions come around. Which, of course, coincides with the big street dance competition that the former ballet dancers are now all heavily invested in.

The dancing may be high quality – alongside the streetdancers, the ballet school cast include Matthew Bourne protege Richard Winsor and former Ballet Black dancer Hugo Cortes, who also impressed in the audition stages of the BBC show So You Think You Can Dance – but someone, somewhere decided that it really wasn’t worth bothering with a script to match. Early in the film, sandwich delivery girl Carly notes that the ballet rehearsals lack something, because the dancers aren’t emotionally connecting with the material. If only the creative talents behind Streetdance 3D had listened to their own lesson.

Tracy-Ann Oberman: Playing the diva

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:20:32 +0000

“I didn’t want to be in this,” admits Tracy-Ann Oberman. “I’d suggested Catherine to the producer, I thought she’d be brilliant. But I didn’t want to be in it at all, so I was a bit nervous when the producer came to me and said Radio 4 would really like me to be.”

Oberman is talking about Bette and Joan and Baby Jane, her new play for Radio 4 which documents the bitter struggles between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the making of Robert Aldrich’s classic 1962 psychological movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

Davis is played by Catherine Tate, a long time friend of Oberman’s (they performed together in the second series of the BBC2 comedy sketch show Big Train), with the role of Crawford taken by Oberman herself.

The interview is taking place just after a full-scale photo shoot promoting the play and the pair have been dressed in the iconic make-up and costumes from the film. It is quite disconcerting to discuss Davis and Crawford with a woman who, her trademark blonde locks secreted under an impressively accurate wig, looks for all the world like Blanche Hudson, albeit one tucking into a chicken salad and sipping mineral water in a photographic studio in west London.

Somewhere in the background, Tate mills about in the pallid make-up and blonde ringlets that made Davis’ character all the more sinister. The subject matter of the relationship between the two Hollywood actresses is clearly close to Oberman’s heart.

“I’ve always been a massive Bette Davis fan,” she says. “I love all her films, especially Now Voyager. But one of the first films I ever saw of hers was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and I just loved the gothic, grotesque quality of it. It’s genuinely frightening and brilliant, and that lured me in to Bette Davis and I really became obsessed with her.

“And then the more I learnt about her, the more I realised how much antipathy there was between her and Joan Crawford, who I had never liked, I have to say, ever since Mommie Dearest [her daughter Christina’s memoir, published in 1978].

“I really hated her, thought she was nothing like my Bette. Then I realised that they were in this huge, 40-year feud at the point where they made this film. And what I think made this film is the genuine hatred that Bette Davis had towards Joan Crawford.”

That Oberman is passionate about the subject matter is evident. “God, I’m sorry, I can bang on for hours,” she says with a smile, and it has clearly fuelled her desire to tell the story behind the iconic film. “I wanted to de-campify it, if that makes sense, to claim it back and make it more believable and real.

“I think that fantastic as they are, these two brilliant gay icons, they are almost larger than life and diva-like. I wanted to try to show what was going on underneath.

“I said to Catherine, I don’t want an impression, we can’t do impressions of these two. But I sent some links… for her to listen to Bette and I listened to Joan, so we could get a flavour of them without impersonating them.

“I think the thing with Bette was that you would start off hating her, but by the end you grudgingly respected her because she just wanted everybody around her to be a perfectionist.

“Whereas everybody started off loving Joan because she was just so terribly kind and gracious, but actually, probably deep down, was the real monster.”

Stories about the events behind the scenes of the film have passed into folklore. Tales abound of Davis kicking a prone Crawford in the chest and head so hard that she broke several ribs and required stitches. In retaliation, Crawford sewed weights into the lining of her dress.

“Bette kept saying, ‘Please mind my back, dear’. And with the weights sewn in, they did the scene in one take and as the director shouted ‘cut’ Bette slumped to the floor, having slipped two more discs. And apparently, Joan… well, I slightly invented Joan stepping over her body, going, ‘Excuse me, dear’.

“But I found a lot of sympathy for both of them. This is a monstrous business and I think in Hollywood at that time it was more monstrous than ever. They were worked like pack horses, and God knows where they had to go, what they had to do to get where they were. You worked bloody hard to get to that point and you sold your soul to the devil a million times over.

“But once you got into that inner sanctum, you were given riches and power beyond imagining. And once you had that, you wanted to hold on to it and you had to fight. These women had to fight, particularly Bette. She fought to make that career, she took them all on. And Joan, in her own way, did as well. They gave their lives, their hearts and their minds for the industry.

“And at the point we’re meeting them for the film and for this play, it was kind of over for them. They could not believe that they were being treated this way and were having to tout for work. They were poor, had made bad investments, their marriages had failed, they were lonely women who had given up their lives for an industry that could not love them back.”

The reasons for the start of the actresses’ feud are shrouded in rumour, Oberman says. “Was it because when Bette first came to Hollywood, she was told she wasn’t a Joan Crawford, she wasn’t sexy and yet she had come from the stage, she always felt that she was a better actress. She called Joan ‘the mannequin from MGM’. She never saw her as a proper actress.

“And then there was the other rumour that Bette had been in love with Franchot Tone, her leading man. He had also come from the New York stage and he was the one leading man in Hollywood that she truly looked up to and admired. She thought they were intellectual equals and that there was a genuine love between them.

“And he went off and married Joan Crawford, who, in Bette’s words, ‘slept with every leading man in MGM bar Lassie’. Or was it plain jealousy, that Joan was a star, very beautiful and sexy, while Bette was always seen as ‘the actress’?”

There certainly seems to be much on which to base a radio play, so much so that the staging itself needed to be simple, she says.

“Just these two women in their dressing rooms, talking. I wanted to make it as simple as possible. There is a little bit of re-enactment of the film, but a lot of it is in reported speech.

“The other thing is the way those two spoke. They were used to 40 years of people listening to their voices. So they speak in these great big speeches, which gave me room to expand, particularly on radio.”

While Oberman has a long track record on stage and television (including playing Chrissie Watts in EastEnders and a prominent role in the 2006 series of Doctor Who) she is something of a Radio 4 mainstay. “Over the years, I’ve probably done about 600 comedies, sketch shows and dramas,” she estimates.

This, however, is her first radio writing commission, and her first solo writing credit after the 2007 stage drama Three Sisters on Hope Street (co-written with Diane Samuels). The drama is being produced by CPL Productions, the production company formerly known as Celador and known for making shiny floor shows including All Star Mr and Mrs.

It is one of four radio drama commissions won by the company under Radio 4’s new batch commissioning regime. Other radio productions in the pipeline include a Ronnie Corbett sitcom.

Directing and producing Bette and Joan and Baby Jane is CPL’s Liz Anstee, a veteran radio hand who, along with experienced radio writer David Spicer, helped Oberman through the writing process.

The challenge of having two hats on the production was something she says she relished. “Every time I wasn’t in a scene I’d run into the box where you hear it being recorded so I could hear the performances and give notes. And then when it was my turn I’d have to go in and put my acting head on. But it was fine, I really trusted the team.”

After this project, Oberman intends to continue writing as well as acting. She is co-writing a television project with fellow EastEnders alumna Kacey Ainsworth, and there have been discussions about whether Bette and Joan and Baby Jane will have a life beyond radio, potentially as a stage play.

Of the balance between writing and acting, she says that “the two will always go hand in hand. Acting will always be a passion, but creating this work has been very interesting. Seeing this thing come alive from a little spark in my head, and during the recording hearing the play come to life has been just amazing.”

Bette and Joan and Baby Jane is on Radio 4 on Thursday, April 29 at 2.15pm

Originally published in The Stage

Such Tweet Sorrow: website-specific theatre that works

Scott Matthewman — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:32:59 +0000

I have to admit that when I heard a modern day version of Romeo and Juliet was to be ‘staged’ on Twitter, I was sceptical. Not necessarily that it would be possible to play out a series of characters posting online as if they were real — that has been done before. YouTube had lonelygirl15, which continued for some time before being revealed as fictional. On Twitter itself, the characters behind web-only crime thriller Girl Number 9 conversed with each other in the run-up to the release of the first episode online.

That latter experiment didn’t really work for me, because it involved characters I did not know talking to each other about a crime case I knew even less. As such it proved hard to get drawn in.

And I thought the online Romeo and Juliet, punningly entitled Such Tweet Sorrow, might actually suffer a reverse problem. The story of Verona’s two houses both alike in dignity is so well known that it couldn’t possibly work.

Not for the first time, I was incredibly wrong. Such Tweet Sorrow (aka @Such_Tweet) is an utterly compelling retelling. But the kicker is that for it to work, you have to have it playing alongside your existing Twitter conversations. If you dip in via the official website, it just doesn’t work.

You may have heard of site-specific theatre, a “performance which can only be done in a particular place or site”. Such Tweet Sorrow is the first, truly successful, online version - website-specific theatre.

In its first few days, it was hard to adjust to some of the representations of the characters we know from Shakespeare’s play. Most of the characters’ names have been retained from the original — but apart from Juliet @julietcap16 (and, to a far lesser extent, Romeo, @romeo_mo) none of the characters’ first names really work in a modern context. When was the last time you met a Tybalt (@Tybalt_Cap) or a Mercutio (@mercuteio)?

That disparity, between medieval names and dialogue that fits in naturally with life in 2010 London, provides an initial barrier to suspension of disbelief. Some of the other characters’ integration to the storyline required more massaging. Friar Lawrence becomes @LaurenceFriar (not the most common of surnames), an internet café owner and small-time drug dealer. More successfully, the Nurse becomes Jess, Juliet and Tybalt’s older sister, who had to take on a more matronly role towards her siblings when their mother died ten years ago (explaining her @Jess_nurse username)

And just reading the characters’ tweets, either on the Twitter list page @Such_Tweet/such-tweet-sorrow or on the official website timeline, doesn’t really present the story in the correct light to get over that feeling, because it removes from the narrative the most important aspect of Twitter — that it’s a real time messaging system.

Instead, I elected to follow each of the characters, so that their tweets would show up in my own Twitter timeline, jumbled up amid those of everyone else I follow. It means that events play out at a more believable pace: Romeo had to be coaxed onto Twitter because he was too busy playing an online game with an American girl called Rosaline, and didn’t even show up in the ‘play’ for the first couple of days. A brawl between some of the Capulet and Montague boys saw abuse being hurled long after the event, just as it would in real life.

Throughout Friday, Juliet started to stress about her 16th birthday party that night (coincidentally, the youngest Capulet shares her birthday with the Bard), while the Montague boys debated whether to crash it. It may sound trite, but with events unfolding alongside your own friends planning their own Friday evening jollities, it works surprisingly well.

The story has bled out onto other websites, too, just as non-fictional conversations on Twitter do. Sites devoted to sharing photos and videos via Twitter make regular appearances, while a Tumblr-driven blog provides some insights from @Jago_klepto, a classmate of Juliet’s who provides some additional commentary.

As it stands, Romeo and Juliet spent the night together after bumping into one another at the birthday party, so we can expect the fall-out any day now. Which brings another factor into play. In the latter stages of the play, much of the tragedy comes about through the main characters’ ignorance of the others’ intentions and motivations. Juliet fakes her death; Romeo, believing her dead, poisons himself; a waking Juliet, seeing her dead lover, stabs herself.

Given the way the play has unfolded so far, I feel sure that the people planning Such Tweet Sorrow have worked out how to cope with such big secrets in an arena that is intrinsically open to everyone. It’ll be a test of their creativity, for sure — and if that closing act fails online, it will have an effect on how this venture is remembered. Right now, though, to steal a phrase from one of Shakespeare’s other masterpieces, Such Tweet Sorrow is a palpable hit.

UPDATED: Love Never Dies, in more than 140 characters

Scott Matthewman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:25:15 +0000

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest West End show, Love Never Dies, receives its formal press night tonight, which means that the papers tomorrow will be full of reviews. Over at my place of work we’ll have a special podcast in which I talk about the show with Matt, our reviewer, as well as looking at the overall critical reaction. To catch it, subscribe in iTunes at http://bit.ly/stagepodcast and you’ll get it as soon as it’s available.

I saw the very first preview — breaking set automation and all — as the guest of a friend. At the time, I wasn’t particularly impressed and tweeted as much, in rather scatalogical terms that amused my friends - which is what it was meant to do. Unfortunately, that single tweet was done via a phone whose battery has been totally erratic over the last few weeks, and no sooner had I sent that than everything went dead and I had no chance to elaborate further on the night. However, the following morning I did discuss with my friends what my misgivings were, all the while conscious that, as a preview, there was scope to tweak some aspects of the production and fix others.

Unbeknownst to me, that tweet was being dissected on the message boards of another theatrical website — and as such, by people who were deprived of the context of my Twitter stream. It’s important to remember, I think, that individual posts on Twitter aren’t discrete, but part of a larger, longer, multi-threaded conversation that frequently heads off and continues on other websites or (gasp) the real world.

As it is, my overall impression of Love Never Dies is somewhat more diverse than a single tweet probably suggests. The Daily Mail, however, rang me earlier today to check that I had actually written the aforementioned tweet, so it may be mentioned in the national press tomorrow morning. Frankly, there are more influential and worthier people whose opinions matter more than mine, so quite what the Mail is doing sniffing around my Twitter stream I’m not too sure. Whatever they say, though, tomorrow’s podcast should demonstrate that my actual opinions are more well-rounded and thorough than a single, post-preview, tweet that gets repeated out of context would suggest.

UPDATE: The aforementioned podcast is now online as a streaming MP3 as well as available as an ‘enhanced’ podcast via the iTunes Podcast Directory. I’ve also - a little warily - reopened my Twitter feed.

Closing my Twitter feed didn’t stop the Daily Mail misrepresenting my eight-word tweet as a ‘review’, nor did it stop one rather over-hopeful individual attempt to start a campaign to have me sacked (wasn’t going to happen, but you’ve got to his admire his chutzpah). It did, however, help ensure that today, I was able to communicate with my usual Twitter friends in my usual Twitter style without worrying what tabloid hacks may misrepresent as ‘news’.

Sherlock Holmes

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:26:21 +0000

When choosing a film to watch at the local cinema yesterday, there was no way I was going to go and see Valentine’s Day on my own (maybe later, but not on the inappropriately-abbreviated V.D. itself). I’d heard so many dire things about The Wolfman that I’m in no great hurry to put myself through it, and I have no desire to sit through Avatar again. So I ended up finally seeing Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie’s take on Conan Doyle’s private detective.

That the film itself is still showing, having been released on Boxing Day 2009, seemed just as surprising as the fact it’s taken me this long to see it. But now, after having watched it, I can see why — it’s an enjoyably entertaining romp. Robert Downey Jr. clearly revels in the absurdity of the character’s near super-human skills of observation, allowing him to play the role with the sort of deadpan humour he also brings to Iron Man’s Tony Stark.

Jude Law’s Watson is a younger incarnation of the character than we’re used to seeing, but it’s satisfying to see him written and played as an intelligent man, with the sort of fighting skills that a veteran of war would have and with an intelllect befitting the one person Holmes would be able to bear as a friend.

The main plot revolves around a quasi-Masonic cult obsessed with black magic rituals, with Mark Strong suitably chilling as an adversary for the cunning Holmes. Of course, this being a 21st century interpretation of the Sherlock Holmes canon, Professor Moriarty has a pervading presence, despite his being a much smaller part of Conan Doyle’s fictional world than common folklore suggests. Inspector Lestrade has a substantial role, too, of course, here being played by the wonderful Eddie Marsan — and the typical depiction of him as a bumbling policeman, while intact, has been given a couple of nice spins that play out well.

This being a Guy Ritchie film, women know their place, with just three characters to speak of. Blink and you’ll miss Geraldine James as Mrs Hudson. Kelly Reilly is a little too two-dimensional as Watson’s fiancée, leaving the lion’s share of female screen time to Rachel McAdams as the smart-witted thief to whom Sherlock is attracted, but who is working for someone else. It’s a character that doesn’t quite work, but one has to admire her ability to find the one exit from the sewers underneath the Houses of Parliament that emerges at Tower Bridge a couple of miles down river. And not only that, but which emerges at the top of the bridge. Still haven’t quite worked out how that one works, save to set up a dangerous location for the film’s denouement.

The film contains several of my gripes about the depiction of Victorian London, including the depiction of buildings which would have been new at the time as if they were in the same half-decrepit state they are over a hundred years later. For more noticably, all the printed materials, including several newspapers and flyposters, all use typography that is far too regular and cleanly printed. Hours of perusing The Stage archives from the period has convinced me that any depiction of headlines that fill the front page in perfectly rendered block capitals are as accurate as depicting the front page of the Daily Express with actual news on it.

Small points, I know, but in a film that does attempt to capture the spirit of the age, anything which jumps out like that detract from what is otherwise a fun period thriller.

Six days, five shows, some dancers and a requiem

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:24:25 +0000

After Monday’s attendance at Richmond Theatre for Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, this has turned into a theatre-packed week.

On Tuesday, I went to the Soho Theatre to review gay theatre legend Bette Bourne being ‘interviewed’ by Mark Ravenhill. The inverted commas are because, although the evening was based on transcripts of interview conversations between the pair of them, Ravenhill then took those transcripts and cut them down into scripted conversations. Last year, the conversations took place over three evenings: this current production further cuts them down to a single evening. It’s not a particularly successful approach to investigating what is a spellbindingly personal story — but being in the presence of Bourne recounting tales from his life is a privilege, in any case. Wednesday’s outing was to the West End transfer of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem from the Royal Court to the Apollo. I saw it in its original staging, and I have to say it’s one of the few theatrical productions where a second viewing not only brings out new levels of understanding of the script’s many layers, but also suggests that a third visit would reveal even more. As a metaphor for the changing state of England, some of those levels on my Australian friend Chad. Ah well, his loss.

Thursday was an odd day. During the day, the wonderful feeling of experiencing the St John’s College, Cambridge Choir in the college chapel singing elements of Fauré’s Requiem was tempered by the performance being part of the funeral service for my uncle John, a Fellow of the College, who passed away a couple of weeks ago after a long battle with cancer. Family pre-Christmas trips to the West End helped fuel the interest in theatre I’m lucky enough to be able to draw upon in my working life today, so that’s thanks in part to John. Further connections emerged in that Jez Butterworth went to St John’s, Jerusalem was one of the hymns during the service, and the chaplain ruminated on the implicit meanings of Blake’s words during his sermon.

Later in the evening and back in London, it was off to Hampstead for a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods by the MA Music Theatre students of the Central School of Speech and Drama. A creative use of clothes racks and storage trunks showed that you don’t need a huge set budget to convey a sense of place. The whole piece was characterised by some imaginative staging, from quick changes and disappearing witches to expressionistic dance allowing the ensemble to represent the woods and the beanstalk. The quality of performance did vary quite a lot, though — while we may have seen one or two future West End stars, I won’t feel too disappointed if one or two others decide to pursue other careers.

Tonight sees a break from the relentless theatregoing, which starts up again tomorrow with a trip to see Ghosts starring Lesley Sharp and Iain Glen (who is also directing), in previews at the Duchess Theatre. It will be by first experience with Ibsen, I have to admit, and I don’t know what to expect. After that, it’s back to television, and the grand final of So You Think You Can Dance, which I’ll be live tweeting and writing about, especially after the week’s offstage dramas, which saw finalist Robbie White felled by a dislocated shoulder, briefly replaced by last week’s loser Alastair Postlethwaite, and now replace by Alastair and two other, non-competing, dancers to couple with the three remaining competitors.

And that’s most likely the end of this particular glut of theatrical outings. But there will, in the weeks to come, doubtless be more…

Speaking of Scott Alan…

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:58:32 +0000

…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:

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Scott Matthewman — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:36:28 +0000

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.

Panto season again (oh yes, it is)

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:23:22 +0000

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.

Paranormal Activity? Pah. Sarah Greene is scarier

Scott Matthewman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:15:08 +0000

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, the tenth anniversary of the programme’s broadcast (the DVD is now deleted, but you may be able to find second-hand copies online).

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.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHxibm7nTPk

The lights aren’t quite out on Avenue Q

Scott Matthewman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:35:27 +0000

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.

And you can quote me on that

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:22:56 +0000

Over the last week or so, my name’s popped up in a couple of places. Firstly, in Sunday’s Observer I was quoted in a feature on television’s propensity to remake old series.

My quote, taken from a much longer conversation, rounded off the article:

Scott Matthewman, assistant editor of the trade paper The Stage, who writes its TV blog, explained the sudden vogue: “A lot of these are the dramas that people commissioning at the moment grew up with, so it appeals to them. Doctor Who transformed from being the butt of so many jokes to become the BBC’s highest-rated drama, so they are trying to match that. Also, with the severe financial pressure broadcasters are under, they are going for productions that will generate the ratings.

“But you wonder if all this means better, newer ideas out there won’t be produced – there’s only so much drama that can be commissioned at any one time.”

There was a lot more I said — stuff about how it’s important to have a strong creative vision (Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica) or things could go seriously wrong (Minder, for example). None of that made it in to the piece, but I would have my opportunity to say it…

On Sunday, I was in town to see Josh and friends in Proud to Say I Love You, when I got a message, via Facebook, from someone who said they were from LBC and asked whether I’d be willing to come on their Breakfast show on Monday morning to talk about the subject of TV remakes.

A couple of phone calls later (themselves somewhat miraculous, as my mobile’s battery life was negligible at best), it was all arranged — I would be a guest, by phone, on Nick Ferrari’s morning show sometime after 9.30.

I have to admit I don’t listen to LBC — not actually living in London kind of puts paid to that — but I knew of Nick Ferrari: I think he’s a great broadcaster, even though I don’t always agree with his opinions or the spin he puts on some news stories. As talk show hosts go, though, I could have been subject to a lot worse.

In the end, I was following another phone interview with a legend (and one of my heroes), Peter Purves, on the same topic. I’d been imagining that I’d be put up against someone with completely divergent views, but Peter is a very reasonable man (I met and interviewed him back in February) and made some good points.

After that, it was my turn. After listening back to it, I realise I say “Um” far more than I thought, but ultimately I got my points across reasonably, had a fun bit of banter with Ferrari, and didn’t make a complete arse of myself.

Which I think counts as a tick in the “win” column. But judge for yourself below:

ferrari-2009-10-26.mp3

Quick theatre round-up

Scott Matthewman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:05:38 +0000

I know I haven’t been blogging here much lately: these things tend to come in fits and spurts, so I may do some more posts for a bit. That said, it’s coming up to my annual attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo so I may go quiet on the blogging front again.

Anyway, over the last few weeks I’ve had quite a few theatre trips, either for work as a reviewer or — gasp! — for fun. I’m so far behind that I can’t possibly review everything I’ve seen, but here’s a quick round-up:

September 26: Into the Woods, Landor

My first encounter with this Sondheim classic, and it wasn’t a disappointment. One of the most imaginative uses of the Landor’s restricted space, turning the stage into a giant bookshelf from which the classic fairytale characters sprang to life. A joy — Robert McWhir and the Landor team are never better when dealing with Sondheim.

September 30: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical, Palace

My second time seeing this musical (with tickets won via a competition held by the show’s Twitter account). The set pieces are just bonkers (in a good way), the costumes as inventive as ever, and in many ways it’s the perfect way to take a film with lots of music and turn it into a stage musical.

A couple of niggles: Jason Donovan seemed, in a couple of numbers, to be slightly disinterested, almost as if he were channeling a slightly more interested version of Terence Stamp (who scowled through virtually every dance number in the film). The same malaise seemed to be affecting two of the three backing dancers, which made Zoe Birkett’s enthusiasm all the more bizarre.

There were a disconcerting number of hearty laughs from the audience at some of the demonstrations of homophobic abuse, which was worrying in a show which embraces difference. And the boy who was on when we saw it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the lad who played the role on our first visit, who was breathtakingly good (I wish I knew what either of their names were).

October 11: Scott Alan, Leicester Square Theatre

As a birthday treat to myself, I took Paul and myself to see New York-based composer Scott Alan in an all-too-rare visit to the UK. Scott played a number of his songs, accompanied by a number of West End luminaries, including Patina Miller (Sister Act), Ramin Karimloo (Phantom of the Opera), Oliver Thompsett (Wicked) and Alison Jiear (Jerry Springer: The Opera).

I love Scott’s music, so I was rapt from start to finish — even through the first number, when the sound blew midway, forcing Patina and Scott to skip to a hastily-improvised acoustic performance. However, Scott did tend to concentrate on the more intensely emotional numbers in his repertoire. While they are what he’s most known for and certainly part of the reason I adore his two albums Dreaming Wide Awake and Keys, the inclusion of one or two of his lighter numbers, such as Seventeen or What Was His Name?, would have provided a greater variation of pace, which I know Paul (a Scott Alan virgin) found a bit wearing by the end.

October 12: The Unimportant History of Britain, Above the Stag

I didn’t have this down in iCal and wasn’t reviewing it, so forgot about this when I first wrote up this post. Which maybe gives you a clue as to how memorable this sketch show, which purports to portray the history of Britain from the stone age to the present day, is.

Most sketch comedy is hit and miss — sadly, this was more miss, miss, miss, could be a hit with a bit more work, miss, miss.

October 14: The Woman in Black, Fortune Theatre

Ade and I won tickets to Susan Black’s thriller in the Show and Stay theatre pub quiz (a live version of their weekday quiz - follow @WestEndUpdates to join in Monday-Friday at 2.10pm). Ade had seen the production before with a different cast, so some of the “surprises” were not new to him — I don’t think it’s really a show you can see more than once. We were also quite far back in the stalls, such that we were bathed in permanent emergency lighting, which doesn’t really help the atmospherics.

And for me, any sense of suspense was completely eradicated by the behaviour of the large number of teenage girls in the audience. If they weren’t talking to each other in loud stage whispers, they were screaming at anything that might possibly be considered slightly creepy. It was happening so often that anything that could have genuinely be a frightening moment was drowned out. When you get an audience ready to scream at the dimming of the house lights at the start of Act 2 there really isn’t anything you can do.

Still, to the audience’s credit, no mobile phones went off during the show. Well, one did — but it belonged to a very embarrassed member of the front of house staff. Oops.

October 18: Crazy for You, London Palladium

A one-off charity performance, organised by Showtime Challenge. Although roles had been cast in advance and cast had received scripts and scores, rehearsals only started 48 hours before curtain up (while everyone was expected to be off-book by then, they had been forbidden from rehearsing with one another). Sunday’s show was a miracle by any standards.

In many ways, Crazy For You is a perfect show for the format, its “let put on a show right here” themes allowing for a few rough edges here and there. Not that it really needed them: there were a couple of moments where things headed towards the am-dram end of the scale, but mostly it was an incredibly impressive show by any standards. And the sight of 130 actors tap-dancing in unison on the Palladium stage is a sight that remains with you long after the final curtain call.

October 20: Silence! The Musical, Barons Court Theatre

My first exposure to this musical version of The Silence of the Lambs was in Above the Stag’s Blink!, which featured a couple of numbers. The show suffers from not quite deciding if it’s going to be a complete send-up of the film or to be a faithful retelling in song and dance. Other faults included burying the most able cast members in the chorus while giving the lead roles to people who struggled to live up to the iconic portrayals by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins on screen.

There were also some quite bizarre blocking decisions, including a whole solo number delivered with the singer’s back to the audience. A discussion with a couple of the production team suggested that at least one of the badly blocked moments was unintentional, but overall the impression one was left with was of wasted opportunity.

The Above the Stag theatre is mounting its own production in the New Year, with the assistance of some of the original New York team, so hopefully we’ll see a production which doesn’t succumb to the same pitfalls.

October 21: Sister Act, London Palladium

Back to the Palladium for Alan Menken’s new work. I think I’ll in all likelihood do a full review of this, as there’s a lot I want to say about it. For now — the first act drags a lot, never really taking flight until Raise Your Voice (the number in which Patina Miller’s Deloris Van Cartier takes charge of the nuns’ choir). The second act is joyous throughout, although the cartoon villainy of the gangster, Shank, and his henchmen, limits the range of the show.

October 22: Zombie Prom, Landor

The one piece of my recent theatre marathon to require a professional review for The Stage. I won’t repeat that here.

October 25: Proud to Say I Love You, Above the Stag

A revue of gay love songs from the shows, performed by my good friend Josh as part of a company of four. By turns side-splitting and heart-breaking, it was an hour of unalloyed pleasure. This was the last of a series of one-off performances: I hope that a longer residence might emerge in 2010, as it’s a cabaret show that deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

October 26: Scenes From My Love Life: A Year of Above the Stag, Above the Stag

A compilation of highlights from Above the Stag’s first year as a producing theatre. Excerpts from some of the musicals and plays that have occupied this new, adventurous space helped accentuate how adventurous the programming has been. We were also treated to a preview of Busted Jesus Comix, which opens next week, and Silence! — which, as I said above, also featured in Blink! before it returns in the New Year.

Which brings us more or less up-to-date, full review of Sister Act notwithstanding. Coming in the next few weeks: a gala concert showcasing the songwriting talents of Michael Bruce, Busted Jesus Comix at Above the Stag, Scouts in Bondage at the King’s Head, my umpteenth visit to Avenue Q, and no doubt much more.

Oh, and I was a guest on Nick Ferrari’s LBC radio show earlier this week. Really should write that up as a blog post, too… (Update: I have)

Style guide wars: actress vs female actor

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:26:13 +0000

It’s such a shame when an injudicious choice of words overshadows the points that someone seeks to make. That’s what happened when, last week, The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman wrote an article for the paper’s G2 section about why Katherine Heigl would executive produce a film like The Ugly Truth after trashing Knocked Up, in which she starred opposte Seth Rogen, for being “a little sexist”.

The whole of Freeman’s piece makes some valid points — not that I agree with all of them. I liked The Proposal far more than she did, but I found myself nodding internally at this paragraph:

Hollywood romantic comedies have become the Primark dresses of cinema: disposable, crap and likely to make you wonder why you spent £10 on that piece of rubbish in the first place. It is tragically easy to see the thinking behind both Bullock and Heigl’s movies: “Hey! I’m a comic actress and I want a role that doesn’t involve me being a personality-free love interest, a shrewish wife/girlfriend, a hooker with a heart of gold, or a dumbbell. So why don’t we go back to the old school and make a Rock Hudson/Doris Day-type movie in which — and this is the real feminist kicker — I play the boss in the movie and he plays my subordinate. Amazing!” But no amount of sharp skirt suits can compensate for vibrating knickers.

But many of the comments attached to the article did not concentrate on the substantive points of Freeman’s article, but the headline. This is the part of the article which is least likely to have been written by Freeman herself, but would have been created by a subeditor. In this instance, it was given the headline

Even when they produce their own Hollywood romcoms, why do female actors still allow themselves to be humiliated?

Straight away, you can see the contentious element. Why “female actors” rather than “actresses”?

Freeman herself commented:

To all of you who are getting so exercised over the term “female actor”, take it up with the Guardian style guide.

…and later reiterated:

My goodness, the female actor / actress debate continues. As I say every flipping week it seems, take it up with the style guide. On the other hand, if that’s all most of you can think of to criticise here, my piece must be amazing.

And in Peter Preston’s media column in yesterday’s Observer he took up the cause:

Last week I was less than ecstatic about newspaper style books in general, and one in particular that saw a Hadley Freeman piece in the Guardian headlined: “The ugly truth about female actors in rom-coms”. Helen Mirren, female actor? Kindly leave the stage. And Hadley agrees with me. She’s blogged back to “all of you who are getting so exercised over the term” saying “take it up with the Guardian style guide”. Not with her, because she never wrote the two duff words; not with the sub-editor who wrote the headline and was merely following orders, but with the sacred book of ordained coinages.

Why do newspapers churning out hundreds of thousands of words a day - some of them as new as last night’s television or a blog from Tahiti - need to set living English in concrete blocks of disapproval?

Erm, let’s just look at the Guardian style guide, shall we? It’s easy to do, as it’s all online. Of the term ‘actor’, it says:

actor

for both male and female actors; do not use actress except when in name of award, eg Oscar for best actress.

One 27-year-old actor contacted the Guardian to say “actress” has acquired a faintly pejorative tinge and she wants people to call her actor (except for her agent, who should call her often). As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper: “An actress can only play a woman. I’m an actor – I can play anything.”

As always, use common sense: a piece about the late film director Carlo Ponti was edited to say that in his early career he was “already a man with a good eye for pretty actors” … As the readers’ editor pointed out in the subsequent clarification: “This was one of those occasions when the word ‘actresses’ might have been used

I’ve added the emphasis to the start of the final paragraph. Good style guides recognise that there are situations where the “rules” are not hard and fast. I think that the clumsy structure of the headline to Freeman’s article is brought about by one instance where common sense was not applied. Indeed, note how the article itself describes Heigl both as an actor and an actress, depending on the context.

In Preston’s example of “Helen Mirren, female actor?”, “Helen Mirren, actor” would suffice. The style guide says that is preferable to “Helen Mirren, actress”, and I would agree. Preston seems to have a chip on his shoulder about style guides, and uses this example to justify his own prejudice. The error, though, is not in the guidance, but in the dogmatic following of such guidance without recourse to common sense.

On a related note, we recently had a flurry of letters over the same wording in a news story on The Stage, which was headlined Female actors get less pay and shorter careers.

This is a different case, though — as the headline implies (and the opening paragraphs confirm) there is a comparison to be made between female actors and their male counterparts in the same profession. If the term “actresses” had been used to change the headline to Actresses get less pay and shorter careers, that implication is lost and a longer, clumsier headline would have been needed.

Education by X Factor

Scott Matthewman — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:08:20 +0000

Watching this year’s revamped version of The X Factor was an experience. For those who missed it, the “audition room” section of the show has been opened out into a Britain’s Got Talent-style show, complete with highly vocal audience.

BBC News reporter Genevieve Hassan detailed her experience of the initial audition stages — the ones we don’t see, as the production team select the acts that will get onto the televised stages. It really lays bare how the show takes the notion of the cattle call to real extremes.

The more one hears about the off-screen audition processes, the more one must wonder about the apparent sense of self-belief that even the worst acts exhibit once they get on to screen, and how much of that self-belief has been fed to them by the audition process. What we, the general public, see is the third audition — and if you got two callbacks you’d have a degree of confidence, no matter how rubbish you were.

In that light, the baying audience clearly add little to the actual selection process — although one could argue that the worst acts are brought down to earth with an even more dispiriting bump than in previous series.

Speaking of previous series, last year I wrote 10 things we learnt from… The X Factor over on TV Today. While the references are now a year out of date, the essence remains.

So you can either read the piece at its original location, or continue reading below.

It’s horribly compulsive watching, even if at times it does seem to be on a par with a daytrip to Bedlam to point and laugh. Yes, The X Factor is back, and we have weeks of audition shows left before the competition proper gets underway.

Watching last week’s show, though, it struck me that there is something to be learnt from the show, even (or especially) when some of the acts who don’t have a chance are on screen.

And so, in the grand TV Today tradition of starting semi-regular features that end up appearing only once, here we bring you 10 things we learnt from… The X Factor.

Audition tip 1: Know what to expect

Let’s face it, this is the fifth series of The X Factor. You’d think by now that people would have worked out what’s in store for them, but every year we get stories about contestants who feel they’ve been treated badly by Simon and his fellow judges. It’s become quite clear that the acts who get the most success out of the process are the sort of acts that pop impresarios like Simon Cowell know how to package.

You should always go into an audition knowing exactly what to expect. For most jobs it’ll be more about the job at the end of the process, but you should also be clear what is required of you.

Audition tip 2: Have an appropriate audition piece prepared

R’n’B vocal harmony group JLS did the right thing, choosing a song and arrangement that showcased each band member’s talents, as well as illustrating how they worked together. Whether you’re doing a singing audition or an acting one, your choice of material should put you and your abilities in the best possible light.

Also make sure your material is appropriate: if you’re up for a part in a Ray Cooney farce, you wouldn’t audition with a soliloquy from Hamlet. An audition for a part in a chart-based boyband or girl group isn’t going to go well if you go in with your favourite show tune, with all jazz hands blazing.

Audition tip 3: Don’t do too much

If you’re auditioning for a singing job, then at some point you may also be asked to undergo a dance audition (or vice versa). That’s fine. But in the singing part of the audition, the people will be listening to your voice. Even if you’re the best dancer in the world, and have been singing and dancing since before you could toddle, the audition panel will not get the best impression of your voice if you’re high kicking at the same time. Concentrate on giving what you’re being asked far as well as you can. If you have more to give, you may get the chance to show it later.

Unfortunately, I don’t think standing still would have done Mark Darkside any good, though…

Audition tip 4: Dress appropriately

As Ian Flintoff says in The Stage Guide on How To Pass an Audition, “Don’t wear hotpants if they’re casting Mother Teresa.” Dressing wackily may get you your 15 seconds of fame on The X Factor, but it’s unlikely to help you get the recording contract.

If you go to an audition wearing something completely off the wall, it’ll be that much harder for the audition panel to think of you as the ‘type’ of performer they’re looking for. And why make life hard for yourself?

Audition tip 5: Get an outside eye to give you impartial advice

How many X Factor contestants have stood in front of the judges and said that their friends and family have told them they’ve got a good voice — only for us to find out that they can’t sing for toffee? As last week’s auditionee Rachel said, what your friends think doesn’t matter — it’s the opinions of the people you’re auditioning for that really count.

Don’t rely on the comments of people who are unlikely to want to hurt your feelings. Whether it’s a singing teacher or a drama coach, getting professional advice on your audition performance will stand you in much better stead.

Audition tip 6: Listen to any feedback you get

In the audition, you may get asked to do something in a different style. How you react to this will help show how well you can travel in terms of rehearsal and direction. Stubbornness and belligerence won’t do you any good here.

The comments from the X Factor panel tend to be more of a judgement on the audition piece, which you rarely get in other forms of audition — but the principle still applies. It amazes me how rude many X Factor contestants are to the judging panel. You may think that because they dish it out, they should be able to take it — but this isn’t a meeting of equals.

Audition tip 7: Everybody gets nervous. It’s how you deal with it that counts

If you’re walking into an audition with not even a butterfly in the stomach, you’re either very lucky or your heart’s not really in it. Nerves aren’t bad things to have, but keeping them under control is essential. We’ve all seen auditions where the nerves take hold, the voice falters and the brain goes into shutdown, locking away the details of the performance piece you’re sure you know so well.

There are many ways of staying in control of your nerves. The Stage’s resident agony uncle, John Byrne, looks in depth at this topic in How To Control Your Nerves in our advice section.

Audition tip 8: Believe in yourself

You’ve got to have some degree of self-confidence if you’re ever going to convince the people you’re auditioning for to have confidence in you too. When the judges ask contestants if they have what it takes to go all the way in the competition, the successful ones are always able to answer an honest, “yes”. Of course, some of the rubbish ones can say the same thing, but one thing’s for sure — if you can’t answer “yes” to that question, even if it’s not explicitly asked in your own audition, that lack of confidence is going to show through.

Of course, there comes a point where self-confidence becomes ridiculous — in week 1, look at Ant and Seb. Which brings me to the next point…

Audition tip 9: Learn to take ‘no’ for an answer

There’s no indignity in not being right for the role. Yes, it’s frustrating, especially if it’s a job you’d especially set your heart on. But begging and pleading will never win you any favours — and if you do it on national TV, that footage will follow you round for the rest of your life.

Whatever branch of the performing arts world you work in, you’re more likely to get turned down at audition than you are to get the job. Unfortunately, most auditions outside the glare of the TV casting process won’t give you any feedback as to why you weren’t right for the role this time; that’s something that you may have to figure out for yourself. But remember…

Audition tip 10: There will be other auditions

All those people you see in tears on The X Factor, wailing about how this is their last chance? Like Nikk, who made a big deal of it being his last big chance. At the age of 24.

It’s not true. If you’ve got the ability and the inclination, you’re always going to have another chance if you let yourself. Look at Austin Drage (video), who got as far as the boot camp stage in last year’s X Factor. He picked himself up, got a job working in a glam rock tribute band, and is back this year more determined than ever.

For more advice, check out our FAQs, How-to Guides and Dear John Columns in our website archives. And for support, encouragement and discussion with other people going through the same process as you, head for the StageTalk message boards.

Batman: The Animated Series

Scott Matthewman — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:46:33 +0000

Recently, I’ve been enjoying a reunion with 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series on DVD.

Coming as it did after Tim Burton’s successful two film adaptations, it continued and refined the art deco-meets-high tech world of the big screen world, and combined them with a drawing style which owed a lot to the 1940s Superman cartoons.

Watching the first few episodes back, it really does seem as if the animation was drawn fifty years ago. It’s crude in the extreme - outlines seem to change width whenever a character moves, and there seems to be no attempt to make mouth movements coincide with the actors’ dialogue. But right from the word go, there is clearly something very, very right. It’s quite clear why it made such an impact at the time, as it really looks unlike anything else that was on screen.

The backgrounds, often painted onto black paper, help contribute to the dark, moody atmosphere. Whereas other animations start off bright and get darker with the application of paint, with Batman, the world is in shadow by default. There aren’t many series where such a technique could work, but it’s perfect for the world of the Dark Knight.

The quality of the drawing improves markedly as the first season progresses - although Batman himself works best as just a silhouette and chiseled jawline. Kevin Conroy’s voice work, bringing distinctive qualities to Batman and his “real world” persona of Bruce Wayne, is much better than Christian Bale’s (frankly ridiculous) attempts to do the same. Indeed, the dialogue fizzes throughout — something due not only to the script quality, but the method of recording each script with all the actors together, as if performing a radio play. And with guest stars including Ed Asner, Tim Curry, Mark Hamill and Diana Muldaur, the characterisation could hardly be better.

Talking of characters, the series created two characters who would go on to take on pivotal roles within the “real” DC Universe of the comic book continuity. Police officer Renée Montoya would go on to become a detective, her ex-girlfriend Kate Kane would assume the mantle of Batwoman, while she herself would don the featureless mask and become The Question.

And on the supervillain side, the delightful Harley Quinn is introduced here as a kooky sidekick to The Joker, but has such a sparky personality that she would go on to be a delightful presence in comics in her own right.

Oh, and the other good thing about this series of Batman? The opening titles. Which aren’t really anything of the sort: there is no title - the name “Batman” does not appear once. All that is needed is the silhouette, white eyes burning out from beneath the black cowl and cape. It’s just brilliant:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEx9r5enZsk

Oh, and Robin’s only in two episodes. Another tick in the plus column, then.

Batman: The Animated Series, Season 1

Lessons from The Street: We had a bargain, and we forgot

Scott Matthewman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:30:10 +0000

Cross-posted on TV Today

And so we say goodbye to The Street, Jimmy McGovern’s remarkable series of standalone, but inter-related dramas relating the extraordinary tales of neighbours on the most ordinary of streets. After three years, ITV Studios, which made the BBC-commissioned series, has made so many talented people redundant that McGovern doesn’t want to try and continue.

But while the series drew to a close last night with a moment of sad reflection, it also went out on a dramatic high — one that, in a way, reflects not only the end of The Street, but the end of an era.

Given that many people may have the episode stacked up on their Sky+ or on iPlayer, I’m going to continue this after the jump — so be warned, from hereon in there are spoilers…

In last night’s episode, Eddie McEvoy (Timothy Spall) and wife Margie (Ger Ryan), the only principal characters to have featured in all three series of The Street, are again put through the wringer. Margie goes to stay with her father, who has just had a stroke, despite him being a frightful man who abused both Margie and her late mother.

While she’s away, Eddie’s friendly ways lead to him befriending Sandra, a colleague from his minicab office, who takes a shine to him. When she makes advances towards him, he tries turning her down — but his charitable nature sees him turn back to apologise, and then end up in bed with her because he’s too kind-hearted to break her heart a second time in one night.

On paper, it sounds just silly, but Spall is able to convey Eddie with such charm that his foibles become believable. As usual with The Street, it was full of nicely observed character moments, such as Margie’s father, who realises his daughter should go home to her husband, forcing her to leave by revealing just what a monster he has been in the past. Twisted it may be, but it’s an act of love nonetheless and generates as much conflict in the mind of the viewer as in the characters themselves.

The last fifteen minutes are the most shocking, though. As Margie comes to hear of Eddie’s infidelity in the local Indian restaurant, she locks herself in the ladies — but has left her inhaler behind. The scenes of Ger Ryan lying prone on the cubicle floor after a particularly vicious asthma attack as Spall attempts to clamber in to help her are shocking, not least because Spall’s physicality is such that you want to laugh, even though you know how serious the couple’s predicament is.

Eddie is too late, though, and we quickly move to Margie’s funeral. After pub landlord Paddy (Bob Hoskins) fluffs the eulogy, Eddie stands up and delivers his own:

Four, five times a day, seven days a week, over twenty years of marriage, I fought the urge to throttle her… I even fantasised about it, how to kill her and make it look like an accident, how to kill her and dispose of the body…

I handed over my licence to roam, my freedom, in exchange for Margie. And I got a bargain. I got a bargain. Years went by, and I forgot what a bargain it was. I forgot. I forgot that I loved her.

Then something came along. A lump [seen in series 2]. And it was the prospect of losing her that made me realise how much I loved her. Well, it was a happy ending.

But when there’s no happy ending, when it’s not the prospect of losing her, but actually losing her… it’s devastating.

And with those heartfelt words, we arrive at a metaphor not just for The Street, but for drama of this calibre from what was Granada (since renamed ITV Studios). While the company still makes Coronation Street and some non-drama commissions including University Challenge, there is a real sense that a door has closed. ITV Studios said last month that they would produce another series of The Street if it was wanted, but McGovern’s point is that the people who made the programme the success it is will no longer be there. Indeed, with ITV shedding 600 jobs this year, it feels as if the funereal mood on screen is reflected in real life too.

When I was growing up, Granada set the standard for dramas from commercial television, with other regions struggling to match — London-based Thames and LWT, otherwise so dominant, always seemed to play second fiddle to the emotive powers of anything from the Manchester-based powerhouse. Over the years, that power has diminished. Manchester remains a hub of creative energies, with independent companies such as Red and Paul Abbott’s Tightrope (now Abbott Vision) springing from the Granada tradition, and the BBC’s plans for its own drama unit in the city under the aegis of former Doctor Who producer Phil Collinson — but it feels like something has slipped from our hands. Drama has never been cheap to produce, but we had a bargain — and somewhere along the line, we forgot.

While McGovern may have resisted using the end of his series to deliver a heavy-handed allegorical speech as Phil Redmond wrote for Brookside’s closing minutes, the words he gave to Eddie McEvoy resonate for the broadcasting industry. Commercial drama can be a hard beast to like, but the prospect of losing it reminds us how much it truly is loved, and how much we need it.

And, as Eddie said of Margie, to actually lose it would be devastating.

Destiny, Death, Delirium and Despair: Drabbles a decade on

Scott Matthewman — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:12:05 +0000

The beauty of using my blog to keep track of stuff I’ve written elsewhere is that it allows, when time permits, to reflect on the writer I used to be. As I’ve been explaining on Twitter, I usually think that what I wrote in the past is better than what I write now, whether it’s ten years old or ten days.

Perusing some of the neglected categories in my blog (of which there are many - if you’re reading this on the page rather than in a feed reader, the full list is at the bottom right as you scroll down) I came to realise that three very short pieces of fiction are almost exactly a decade old.

They are drabbles - short stories of exactly 100 words in length. These particular ones are ‘fan fiction’ (or fanfic for short), unlicensed exploration of other people’s fictional creations. As you scour the internet, you discover that much fanfic is unremittingly awful - but some is not. And from that minority, an even smaller proportion has spawned writers who have gone on to write professionally for the same characters (yes, this is a hint to buy The Ghosts of Christmas while stocks last. I still savour that review in DWM, even if my story was summed up in three words, one of which was “and”).

In this case, the subject was Doctor Who crossing over with the Endless family from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic books.

Reading them again, they do hold up quite well - although of the three, one relies on a punchline that no longer packs the punch it once did and one just has me a feeling a bit meh. The third, though, includes possibly my favourite sentence in Doctor Who ever. That sounds like egotism, and it may be, but it feels like the line was written by somebody else. Which, I suppose, it was (I hope he won’t mind if I nick it, should the possibility of ever using it again arise).

Anyway, the three drabbles - to be read in no particular order - are:

If you have no idea who Neil Gaiman’s Endless characters are, a guick google should set you aright. And if you’re a fan of great storytelling, remind me to lend you The Sandman novels some time (or buy your own)…

The dark side of Eurovision bloc voting

Scott Matthewman — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:06:08 +0000

After years of the concept being stoked by commentator Terry Wogan, pretty much everyone in the UK believes that the contest has been hijacked by ‘bloc voting’, with all the East European states voting for their neighbours, effectively ensuring that the UK entry will always place near the bottom of the finals.

There’s an element of truth in there, although it does ignore that for the last several years few of the UK’s Eurovision entries have been worth voting for in the first place. A revised voting system, in which each country’s final votes were tallied from a mixture of phone voting and a jury made up of music industry professionals, helped the UK this year, even if the song itself wasn’t great.

But while we mock bloc voting, for some people voting for your neighbouring country’s songs actually has negative consequences:

Rovshan Nasirli, a young Eurovision fan living in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, says he was summoned this week to the country’s National Security Ministry — to explain why he had voted for Armenia during this year’s competition in May.

“They wanted an explanation for why I voted for Armenia. They said it was a matter of national security,” Nasirli said. “They were trying to put psychological pressure on me, saying things like, ‘You have no sense of ethnic pride. How come you voted for Armenia?’ They made me write out an explanation, and then they let me go.”

Hopefully that explanation will have included, “I couldn’t vote for Azerbaijan anyway, due to Eurovision rules — and what was I going to do, vote for that awful Lloyd Webber/Diane Warren number?”

The apparent sensitivity seems to be rooted in long-standing disputes over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Still, perhaps this can spur on the UK to keep improving its entries, so that people in high tension countries can choose us as a safer option?

Found via The Daily Dish

Guys, gals and gender-swapping Gershwin

Scott Matthewman — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:20:41 +0000

Last night, I went with Steve to see The Great American Songbook at the New End Theatre, a concert performance by three singers of classic songs by the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and more.

My review is online on The Stage website now. But on this blog, I want to concentrate on how a line in one of the earliest numbers reawakened a long-dormant irritation with concert performances of such songs: switching the gender of the singer, and adjusting the lyrics to suit, even if it ruins the rhyme of the carefully crafted lyrics. Or, in some cases, changes the sweetest romantic line into a non sequitur.

In this case, the trigger for my thoughts was a minor change which Sinatra also made when performing I Get a Kick Out of You. Both Ol’ Blue Eyes and last night’s performer, Paul Roberts, sang:

Flying so high
With some gal in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do…

While changing the original “guy” into “gal” preserves the rhyme at the end of each line, it ignores the internal rhyme fly/high/guy/sky that gives the couplet such power, and which matches the natural crescendo at that point in the music.

As I say, it’s a minor point, but it was enough to act as a trigger to this post.

A much more grave gender swap occurs on the otherwise excellent 1998 album The Glory Of Gershwin, which saw legendary harmonica player Larry Adler perform with numerous pop and rock icons in covers of George Gershwin numbers. The result is variable: Kate Bush singing The Man I Love, for example, is sublime. Elton John sings a medley of two Gershwin numbers on the album - Love is Here to Stay and Someone to Watch Over Me - and it’s in the latter that the most grievous lyric changes occur. Ironically perhaps for one of music’s most out gay performers, the lyrics have been changed from talking about a man to talking about a woman, and that’s where the problems start.

In many cases, a simple change of he to she, or his to her, doesn’t matter too much. But what does this line mean, once the gender has been changed?

I’d like to add her initial to my monogram

In the original version, its meaning is clear — the woman singing desires marriage, so that the initial of her husband’s surname becomes her own. But the other way around makes no sense.

That’s minor, though, compared with the abuse this couplet receives. The original:

He may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
But to my heart he carries the key

With a change of gender, this becomes

She may not be the girl some
Men think of as handsome…

On what planet does “girl some” rhyme with “handsome”? Far more egregious than the disruption to the fly/high/guy/sky rhyming sequence, here the gender change actively disrupts the main rhyme. Not only that, but it presupposes that being called “handsome” is something that women would aspire to — when in fact it’s more likely to be a put-down at best.

Eleven years on, it’s hard to imagine that Elton John would indulge in such gender-swapping nonsense. And there are other out gay performers who have taken songs originally sung by women and produced fine works. For example, John Barrowman’s recent album Music Music Music includes the Chess duet I Know Him So Well, with Barrowman performing with Daniel Boys. No change of lyrics, just a beautiful rendition of the song.

With so many great songs out there, from the Gershwin catalogue to the whole Great American Songbook and beyond, there are many songs that can be sung by men or by women with no lyrical changes necessary. There are some where switching the occasional pronoun will have no consequence. But there are some songs which we should just accept need to be sung about a man, or about a woman, and we should not attempt to change that.

Sunshine and Moon

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:10:14 +0000

Over the weekend, I saw two British science fiction films for the first time: Sunshine, directed by (the now Oscar-winning) Danny Boyle and Moon, directed by Duncan Jones.

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to see Sunshine. It’s been out on DVD for ever: my copy was bought a while ago on impulse in one of those 3-for-2 deals from HMV or somesuch, and has lain in the original cellophane ever since.

That’s changed now, of course. And in a way it was the ideal weekend to watch it, as it provides a great counterpoint to Moon, which by some miracle actually made it to my local multiplex this week.

Both films wear their visual inspirations on their sleeves - Sunshine’s Icarus II has many echoes of Alien’s Nostromo, while Moon takes obvious cues from the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But, as with the best SF, it’s the human interactions that make the pieces work, and in both films the themes are simultaneously huge and intimate, both contemporary and eternal.

Sunshine asks us to consider the boundaries between the science of physics and the faith of spirituality as somewhat more blurred than we usually accept. For Moon, it’s a consideration of what makes us the person we are. I really don’t want to go into too much detail on either, as you really do need to go into both films without any forewarning of what’s to come.

Of the two, though, I think I prefer Moon. Sunshine, for me, veers from a claustrophobic character study to a more traditional action film — albeit one with a remarkable camera effect that emphasises the philosophical aspect of the film — while Moon retains its sense of creeping unease throughout, building the tension until the very end. Sam Rockwell gives the sort of performance that, if it were in a non-genre based drama, would be a shoo-in for awards.

Both films have faults — including liberal artistic licence with the laws of physics — but as examples of thought-provoking SF, they’re right up there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIexG8179K8

This is the end, but was the moment prepared for?

Scott Matthewman — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:16:17 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, in the regular list of notable radio programmes I prepare each week, I plugged Radio 2’s relay of a recent live performance of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. That mention spurred me to listen once more to the album. This prog rock opera contains some of the most well-known riffs and melodies, but what really makes it is Richard Burton’s narration — and even more so, HG Wells’ original story.

It’s not for nothing that the original novel has become known as one of the greatest in the history of science fiction literature. It has a real sense of terror occurring in the most mundane of places — Martians landing in Woking, of all places. And while the anonymous journalist who is our narrator makes his way to a similarly ravaged London, it’s the effect on individuals that still resonate.

The ending, though? The ending sucks.

(Despite the novel being over 100 years old, I should warn you now — there be spoilers ahead…)

Devoid of all hope, the journalist heads for the Martians, to sacrifice himself because there is now nothing left to live for. Humanity is being routed, and he effectively chooses suicide rather than waiting for exterminaton to come to him.

And the machines start to die. Exposed to Earth’s bacteria to which they have no resistance, the invaders suddenly grind to a halt, and the Earth is saved.

And that’s it. The ‘defeat’ of the invading Martian hordes bears no relation to anything that has preceded it in the novel. I’d always found it deeply unsatisfying in book form, and listening to Burton’s narration in the Jeff Wayne version just reminded me how annoying that abruptness is. It’s one of the best examples of a deus ex machina plot device in science fiction.

The use of deus ex machina devices is a criticism often levied by fans against Doctor Who’s outgoing head writer Russell T Davies. It’s a charge which, with the possible exception of Series 1’s Boom Town, he has always resisted, as far as I know. And if you compare his stories against Wells’s invasion story, you can see that Russell’s right.

That’s not to say his endings are perfect. As I said in my write-up of Doctor Who Series 2’s first episode, New Earth:

In both [New Earth and The End of the World] it’s as if the production team are saying to us, “forget the sci-fi, it’s not important; look at the character work, that’s the real story”. And they’re right, in a way. In both cases, the subplots that benefit from the extra screen time (the fate of the Doctor’s people, the redemption of Cassandra) involve superb writing and acting from both leads and guests. But the rushed endings leave the whole episodes with the impression that they’re missing something.

I pretty much stand by that. As faults go, though, “so much going on that one has to concentrate on character rather than ‘plot’” isn’t a bad one to have. And no matter how many times I rewatch them, or how may times I reread War of the Worlds, I will always prefer Davies’ endings to Wells’.

Ella sings Rodgers and Hart

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:23:45 +0000

At the end of my last post about Cadogan Hall’s Rodgers and Hart tribute concert, I said:

searching Amazon or iTunes for some Rodgers and Hart numbers would make for a fruitful weekend.

Let me help you in that task. The best album of Rodgers and Hart songs is by the peerless Ella Fitzgerald:

You can use the widget above to listen to excerpts from each track and to buy the album (or individual songs) for download in MP3 format.

Alternatively, you can go to the Amazon.co.uk website for MP3 download or as a physical CD.

Sing For Your Supper, Cadogan Hall

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:10:47 +0000

On Wednesday night, Paul and I went to Cadogan Hall to see Sing For Your Supper, a concert celebrating the music of Rodgers and Hart.

It was my first visit to Cadogan Hall, and to be honest I’m surprised at its use as a venue for this sort of event. The former church’s acoustics just don’t work for a small number of voices, even when amplified. I can see how choirs could really make use of the space acoustically, but individual voices or duets felt lost in the cavernous space.

That said, the selection of songs was superb: from the more well-known numbers including Blue Moon, Isn’t It Romantic, My Funny Valentine, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered and The Lady Is A Tramp to Thou Swell, What Can You Do With a Man? and There’s a Small Hotel, it was a great showcase for a songwriting partnership that helped define the modern musical.

Of the performers, Maria Friedman was, as one would expect, far and away the most effective, always able to get to the emotional heart of a song and bringing out every nuance. From the emotional complexity of Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered to the amusing tale of a murderous, many times married vamp in To Keep My Love Alive, the show itself came alive whenever she was given a central role. For my tastes, though, that didn’t happen often enough, and her fellow performers struggled to match. In particular, Simon Green, who helped devise the show and also acts as narrator, struggled at times to hold a tune, while fellow performer Graham Bickley dried on two separate occasions at the start of the second act and never quite recovered.

Those criticisms aside, the musical selections more than compensated for the rough edges. The last concert in this run is on Sunday, and while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend rushing to buy a ticket, searching Amazon or iTunes for some Rodgers and Hart numbers would make for a fruitful weekend.

Building a trailer

Scott Matthewman — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:19:03 +0000

For the fourth year running, The Stage has joined forces with Ewan Spence and The Podcast Network to produce The Edinburgh Fringe Podcast, a daily podcast covering the best in theatre and comedy from the world’s largest arts festival.

The top and tail of each show will include adverts for various parts of The Stage’s publishing activities. I’ve made the first, which heads up Friday’s first full episode, to promote The Stage Podcast, using excerpts from some recent interviews:

Advert for The Stage Podcast

The excerpts are, in order:

Sally Lindsay, talking with Neil Bartlett about the Manchester International Festival about Everybody Loves a Winner
Arthur Smith, who talked about his autobiography, My Name is Daphne Fairfax
Omid Djalili, interviewed just prior to taking over as Fagin in Oliver!
Daniel Dae Kim, the star of Lost who played the King of Siam in The King and I
Suranne Jones, who I interviewed about Unforgiven (although the clip concerned mentions her role in Coronation Street
And we finish with a great quote from Arthur Smith again.

The Stage Podcast is available in iTunes, as is the Edinburgh Fringe Podcast.

Russell T Davies and Euros Lyn talk Doctor Who and Torchwood

Scott Matthewman — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:34:31 +0000

Cross-posted to TV Today

Over on US TV blog Televisionary, Jace has been interviewing Torchwood and Doctor Who writer/producer Russell T. Davies and director Euros Lyn. After all the Comic-Con madness and the ‘Save Ianto’ hubbub, it’s nice to hear them talk about more general matters regarding both series — and for Euros to get some attention: both Russell and John Barrowman have such large personalities that he was on the verge of being ignored at some recent press events.

The video that Jace shot is embedded below, in two parts (if you’re using an RSS reader, you may need to click through to the blog to see it). The sound level’s a little low, but it’s well worth watching.

(NB: contains some spoilers for future Doctor Who episodes)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkIDKw8CDe0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6sQEuSwzw

Last post

Scott Matthewman — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:35:50 +0000

One of the first poems the new Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has published since taking on the post is Last Post, a BBC commission to mark the passings of the last British World War I survivors.

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.

The full poem is on the BBC website.

Blink! – the double-take

Scott Matthewman — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:26:05 +0000

Last night, Paul and I went back to the Above the Stag theatre in Victoria to see Blink!, a revue about songs from musicals that closed early. For both of us it was our second time to see the show, although we’d previously seen it on different nights. My first was on press night, when I reviewed it for The Stage.

When I reviewed the show, I said:

The weakest elements come when the actors must drop out of character and narrate the history of the dud shows direct. While there is an element of humour to be had from their frequent fluffs, more work clearly needs to be done

Thankfully, those bits did seem to have improved since press night - there were certainly far fewer occasions where the actors dried. They still feel clumsy and stilted, though, and it feels wrong to ask a performer who’s just finished belting a number to then switch to a straight narration.

The core of shows like this is not the narration, though, but the performances of the songs. There were points which didn’t work quite as well as on press night, but then you always get variation from show to show. And although there was a full house last night, as there was the last time I saw the show, the audience wasn’t quite as receptive, which has a big impact on the onstage performance.

Blink! is on at Above the Stag until August 16 — which means that current West End flop Too Close to the Sun, which will have closed by then, qualifies for inclusion…

To finish, here’s a YouTube version of Debra Monk performing one of the songs included in the show, Everybody’s Girl, from Kander and Ebb’s Steel Pier. In the show, it’s performed by Julia G Addison (and in the after party, Legally Blonde star Sheridan Smith proclaimed, “I’ve found my new audition song!”)