New York New York
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about Manhattan as a movie lot. It doesn’t mention On the Town because it doesn’t have to: Times Square is teeming with sailors in pristine white uniforms on shore leave. I think they’re part of a mass audition for the next revival of the Bernstein, Comden and Green musical; it will have to be good to rival George C Wolfe’s here ten years ago (forget Jude Kelly’s at the ENO).
It is amazing how New York, like Venice, always lives up to its own predictable reputation. I therefore always think I owe the city a certain amount of appropriately predictable response: I fly into town at lunchtime, check into the hotel, whizz round the box offices to collect my tickets, have pre-show supper in Joe Allen and see my first show…last night it was Jersey Boys, the perfect production to stay awake through when it’s already twenty hours since you left home.
When Jersey Boys arrives in London next spring, will audiences think it’s about Channel Island hipsters and their Guernsey girlfriends? But once oldsters realise it’s about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – and the songs include Walk Like a Man, My Eyes Adored You and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You – the box office will be mobbed. This is certainly the best jukebox compilation show since Mamma Mia, though it’s dramatically crass and much more like (in that respect) the Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison tribute musicals of a decade ago.
My, haven’t Americans got fat? Allow twice as long as you did two years ago to push your way along Broadway or 8th Avenue and just pray you won’t find yourself sitting next to someone whose stomach is resting on your knee (I was unlucky). At least, I thought, as Jersey Boys roared to its climax, this lot won’t be able to get to their feet for the ghastly, cheaply awarded standing ovation that has been de rigeur for everything for at least fifteen years. But they could, just about, and they did, after a big corporate heaving struggle. Then it seemed like a fortnight for us all to get out onto the street again. Theatre seats won’t be able to take the strain for much longer. What on earth is going to happen?