REVIEW: DIRTY DANCING- KING'S THEATRE, GLASGOW

Dirty Dancing, the 1987 coming-of-age film has found a new rhythm in a spin-off musical which came to Glasgow this month- accompanied by the infectious beat of the summer of 1963 and Johnny and Baby’s classic love story. From the opening lines “that was the summer we went to Kellerman’s”, the audience were hooked.

The hit stage show follows 17-year-old Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman who wishes to save the world, one starving Southeast Asian country at a time. While at a summer camp with her family, she falls for Johnny Castle, the resort’s resident dancer. When Baby decides to help out one of Johnny’s friends, she is forced to hide the budding romance from her father and the resort owner.

The story also contains elements of class struggle and preconceived gender notions, as well as subtle nods to the generational divide and civil rights movement still to come. As Baby reveals in her opening monologue, the story occurs “before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn’t wait to join the Peace Corps and I thought I’d never meet a guy as great as my dad.”

Roseanna Frascona is wonderful as Baby- not only because she displays an uncanny resemblance to Jennifer Grey- but because she achieves the right balance of innocence and stubbornness. Dirty Dancing made Patrick Swayze a star and his charisma is difficult to translate to the stage. However, Gareth Bailey brings a sensitivity to the role of Johnny Castle that the audience instantly falls for. 

Fans of the film will be pleased that the stage version sticks relatively close to the original plot with the addition of a few added scenes to move the plot along. The water scene where the couple practice that famous lift, for instance, is done in an exaggerated fake way. Baby and Johnny stand behind a projected image of a lake but this works surprisingly well and injects a bit of humour into the production.

Where this version of Dirty Dancing truly excels is in presenting the exquisite dancing which compliments the sing along hits that this musical is full of, including ‘Hungry Eyes’, ‘She’s Like the Wind’ and ‘Do You Love Me.’ Johnny’s dance partner, Penny (Claire Rogers) makes the intricate choreography look effortless.

 It is a feel-good ride from beginning to end, with the audience joining in and even shouting out lines sometimes. In the lead up to the unforgettable finale, Bailey runs through the stalls, much to the audience’s delight, to deliver his immortal line to his would-be father in law, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” This proves that the story of Dirty Dancing possibly works better on stage in front of a live audience.

It is unsurprising that the musical has been seen by more than six million people since opening in London in 2006. From the opening beats of ‘Be My Baby’ to the much anticipated finale with ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’- Dirty Dancing has the audience captivated.

REVIEW: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST- HAROLD PINTER THEATRE, LONDON

Lucy Bailey’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest gives the classic comedy a fresh new update, ahead of a national UK tour.

The Importance of Being Earnest details the lives of two upper class bachelors, Algernon Moncrieff (Nigel Havers) and John Worthing (Martin Jarvis) who alter their identities in an attempt to pursue eligible- yet shallow- young women, Cecily Cardew (Christine Kavanagh) and Gwendolyn Fairfax (Cherie Lunghi), who adore the name Earnest.  

Set in the present day, the play includes ‘additional material’ by Simon Brett. WH Auden labelled the production ‘a pure verbal dialogue.’ It is, therefore, unsurprising that Brett made the wise decision to keep most of Wilde’s original lines. The production has been given a play-within-a- play structure which works surprisingly well and sidesteps audience concerns that Havers and Jarvis (aged 65 and 73 ) may be too old to play young bachelors. This framing device is provided by ‘The Banbury Company of Players’ (which is presumably an in-joke invented specifically for this production). It is a clever notion which is given added appeal by the fact that Jarvis and Havers played the same roles in Peter Hall’s 1982 version at the National Theatre.

Image credit: Ciarán McGeady

The play opens with Nigel Havers sauntering on stage in a suit and bright red trainers, answering a mobile phone. It soon becomes clear that he will play Algernon (his-character-within-character), a role he has played for thirty years. We first meet the ‘Banbury Company’ during their final rehearsal of Wilde’s play which they have been performing for decades and, despite their advancing years, are unwilling to give it up. There is as much drama in the fictional cast’s lives as in the play itself. Costumes are still being fitted. Dicky is becoming increasingly agitated about the lack of cucumber sandwiches. Actors are sneaking alcohol between lines.

However, some of the moments from the surrounding drama lets the production down. For instance, the moment where Kavanagh’s Cecily picks up a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey and the melodrama surrounding Havers’ character’s affairs with various cast members are not as humorous as the rest of the play.

Despite its minor flaws, The Importance of Being Earnest features an impressive cast of British actors. As expected, Havers and Jarvis have wonderful chemistry as the two Earnests. Fresh from performing the role in Washington to critical acclaim, Siân Phillips plays the intimidating Lady Bracknell. Rosalind Ayres gives Miss Prism the sternness her character needs and Christine Kavanaugh’s Cecily is appropriately simplistic and innocent, waiting for the day Earnest will propose to her.

Subtitled ‘a trivial comedy for serious people’, the story is both brilliantly witty and undeniably silly.  This updated version of Wilde’s play that has endured- even though the Victorian audience it elegantly satirises is long gone- is worth seeing.

CULT FILM: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

  

Central to the tragic yet compelling world of The Virgin Suicides are the five doe-eyed, angelic Lisbon sisters (Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese). Based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ cult novel, Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film has gained the same cult status since it captures both the triviality and grandeur of youth.

Set in an American suburb in the 1970s, a maths teacher (James Woods) and his uptight Catholic wife (Kathleen Turner) are parents to these seemingly perfect girls. All illusions of normal suburban life are, however, shattered following the unsuccessful first suicide attempt of their youngest daughter, Cecilia (Hanna Hall). This acts as a catalyst for these already strict parents to become even more overbearing and insular. This results in a captivating story of the girls’ brief lives narrated by the teenage boys who live on their street.

It is obvious from the title that the girls will kill themselves but Coppola provides us with an unanswered mystery as we are given subtle clues but no hard facts. However, this lack of explanation is the point: the girls have altered the lives of the boys, now men, who preserve the Lisbon sisters as the kind of perfect ideal they present to the outside world. Through studying the sisters, the boys gain a rare insight into “the imprisonment of being a girl.” This gives an unexpected perspective on what should be regarded as a difficult subject matter.

The novel is famed for its third person plural narrative and Coppola gives this hauntingly complex story the smooth transition into film it deserves. The film is mostly constructed through flashbacks, focusing on the rebellious Lux (Kirsten Dunst), the most charismatic of the sisters. After Cecilia’s suicide attempt, the Lisbons’ seek the advice of a psychiatrist (Danny DeVito) who advises the girls to socialise with the opposite sex. As a result, the Lisbons allow their daughters to attend a dance despite Mrs Lisbon adding extra fabric to the girls’ prom dresses and imposing a strict curfew. Trouble ensues when the school heartthrob, Trip Fontiane (Josh Harnett) fails to bring Lux home on time, seducing and then abandoning her on an empty football pitch. The girls are consequentially locked up, like princesses in a tower, deprived of contact with the outside world. An ordinary life is tantalisingly out of reach to the sisters and Coppola’s exploration of adolescent loss of innocence is made more shocking by Mr Lisbon’s assertion that “there was always plenty of love in our house.”

“Cecilia was the first to go”, we are told right at the beginning. “You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets,” Dr. Hornicker tells her following her first suicide attempt. Cecilia’s matter-of-fact response is “Obviously doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen year-old girl.” The film’s cult status perhaps stems from the fact that it climaxes on the concept that youth does not necessarily equate to happiness.

Previously published here  

FILM REVIEW: A LONG WAY DOWN

Nick Hornby’s bestselling novels – About a Boy, High Fidelity and Fever Pitch – have been successfully adapted into films, perhaps due to their simple narratives. However, his 2005 novel, A Long Way Down, fails to make a smooth transition to film.

A Long Way Down follows four strangers who intend to jump off ‘Toppers House’, an infamous London suicide spot, on New Year’s Eve. They find themselves talking to each other instead of jumping and make a pact to remain alive until Valentine’s Day, the next popular suicide day in the calendar.

Pierce Brosnan plays Martin, a disgraced breakfast TV host, briefly imprisoned after a liaison with a 15 year old (“she looked 25”). Toni Colette plays Maureen who is mistaken for a lonely cat lady but is actually single mother to a disabled son. They are joined on the roof by Jess (Imogen Poots), manic depressive daughter of an MP (Sam Neill) and JJ (Aaron Paul), a failed rock musician working as a pizza delivery guy.

This results in a suicide comedy which is disappointing from when the ‘Toppers Tower Four’ form a supportive ‘gang’ to when they jet off to Spain together to escape media intervention after they become minor celebrities.

 

There are humorous moments: when they appear on national news, “professional liar” Jess speaks of how they saw an angel resembling Matt Damon on the roof. Rosamund Pike shines as Penny, Martin’s former co-host who interrogates the group on their experience. It is these humorous moments that stop the film from taking itself too seriously, a concept Hornby was conscious of when penning the book:  “If I wrote a book about depression that was incredibly depressing, why would anybody want to read it?”

This may have worked well on paper and, in theory, should have worked on screen, but Jack Thorne’s screenplay feels clumsy at points. Take, for instance, the multi-stranded narration which is presumably supposed to give us insight into each character. Instead, it is clunky and disjointed rather than moving seamlessly from character to character and we somehow feel slightly detached from the characters’ lives.

With an intriguing premise and a talented cast, the film should have been a success. As always, Toni Collette plays the single mother role well and it is interesting to see Pierce Brosnan in a more emotional role. Poots and Paul have exceptional chemistry but that was to be expected since this is their second film together following Need for Speed.

Ultimately, A Long Way Down is not as funny or moving as it should have been. In the same way Jess describes JJ, the film can be summed up as “cute but infinitely forgettable.”

CULT READ: AMERICAN GODS

 Neil Gaiman has made a career out of restitching old myths from the old DC comic characters he brought back for his bestselling series, The Sandman, to his latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. First published in 2001, Neil Gaiman’s ode to America, American Gods, became an instant cult classic. This may stem from the fact that it blends the best aspects of fairy tale with the most captivating aspects of a road novel.

Fresh from serving three years in prison for aggravated assault, Shadow learns that his wife, Laura, has been killed in a car accident with his best friend, the man who had promised Shadow a job. The two had been having an affair during Shadow’s sentence. Without a job, a home or a wife, Shadow finds his life more or less non-existent. He is essentially a living ghost, navigating the world without purpose. When an older man, claiming to be a refugee from a distant war and the king of America, offers Shadow a job as his bodyguard, he has no reason not to accept. ‘Let’s see. Well, seeing that today certainly is my day — why don’t you call me Wednesday?’ is the man’s reply when Shadow asks who he is.  Anyone with a basic knowledge of mythology will be able to figure out Wednesday’s true identity as a manifestation of Odin, ruler of the Norse Gods.

Odin’s quest allows Gaiman to explore the history of America, mythology and the power of belief, as Wednesday says: ‘This is the only country in the world that worries about what it is… No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique… They know what they are.’  Gaiman exposes the stand-out aspects of American culture which don’t exist anywhere else- the roadside attractions and concealed worlds that exist only in the depths of a nation built around highways- without wasting time on the clichéd icons of the main American cities.

Interestingly, Gaiman wrote American Gods while travelling across America in an attempt to understand American beliefs and ideologies. Perhaps the best element of the novel is the way in which Gaiman portrays his own thoughts on his experience with America through the fantasy genre. This is revealed through the alternative, dream-like universe Shadow inhibits where he meets Gaiman’s many representations of Ancient Norse myths including Mr Nancy (a manifestation of the spider God Anansi) and Czernobog, the Slavic God of darkness.

Contemporary American gods – TV, the internet and credit cards – have announced war on the old ones resulting in an epic battle of the gods. The novel climaxes on the idea that Gods do not exist on an external plane but adapt with the culture and people who worship and believe in them, as Gaiman writes, ‘Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.’

Part of American Gods’ enormous success – and, by extension, Gaiman’s – is the way in which it fuses concepts which are not ordinarily combined: humour and horror; reality and fantasy; the fairy tale and the novel. Gaiman spoke of his attempts to ‘describe the experience of coming to America as an immigrant… watching the way that America tends to eat other cultures.’ In this way, the novel portrays all of the contemporary aspects of American ideals through the lens of ancient cultural myth.

Previously published here

REVIEW: MISS JULIE- CITIZENS THEATRE, GLASGOW

Dominic Hill’s version of Stridenberg’s 1888 classic battle of the sexes gives Miss Julie a much needed update.

It is a relatively small scale production, giving it the tension it requires. Neil Hayes sparse, minimal set keeps the focus on the lives depicted within it. Miss Julie details the short affair between Julie (Louise Brealey), a privileged and uptight Lord’s daughter and her father’s servant, John (Keith Fleming). John’s faincée, Christine (Jessica Hardwick) is the only character who grasps the hopeless reality of the situation as she says, ‘All I know is that this is the system we have got.’ This results in an alluring game of sexual power which ultimately ends in tragedy. 

Known for her role as lab assistant, Molly Hooper, in BBC’s Sherlock, Louise Brealey’s performance is captivating from start to finish. Willing to defy the social class barrier, Brealey’s Julie possesses a sense of danger, yet vulnerability since she was raised by a physically abusive father and a mother who encouraged her daughter to kill small animals in an attempt to overcome the gender roles in the 1920s. In contrast, Citizens intern, Jessica Hardwick’s Christine is sensible and unwilling to cross social conventions. John, the object of their affection turns from displaying decency to brutal malice and aggression towards both Julie and his practical fiancée.

Portraying universal themes including love, class, power and gender roles, Miss Julie has previously been set in post-apartheid South Africa in Yael Farber’s rewrite (staged as simply Julie.) Now spun out within a backdrop of social conflict at the time of the 1926 General Strike, Hill’s Scottish take on the upstairs-downstairs liaison feels surprisingly relevant. Those who have seen Farber’s version at the Edinburgh Festival two years ago may not appreciate this Scottish take on events but it is these rigid British class values that keep Miss Julie compelling.

Less than ninety minutes long, with the absence of an interval, the play is an intense and intimate affair. The trio often have their backs to the audience, making us feel as if we are intruding on their lives. Brealey herself spoke of the horrifying nature of the play, ‘something putatively domestic suddenly feels like Greek tragedy.’ The production’s brutal and subtle climax in which Julie takes a knife to her throat brings this to the fore. The oppressive midsummer heat permeates the production, adding to the tension as it is inevitable that there will be no happy ending. Someone has to win this sexual game of cat and mouse.

Miss Julie climaxes on the concept of sexual politics: battle of the sexes, sexual desire and the extent to which men and women manipulate each other in order to get what they want. Hill has established a reputation for updating classic stories and this one does not disappoint.

Previously published here