Othello grizzle and Chicago dazzle
It is always tricky when a critic alleges an actor can’t act, or that what he or she is doing cannot be defined as good acting. Charles Spencer has had a right old go at Ewan McGregor whose Iago in Othello at the Donmar is both interesting and unconventional and completely devoid of the outward vestiges of evil as embodied by Tim McInerney at the Globe this summer.
However much critics huff and puff, there is no agreement on what constitutes good acting, or indeed bad acting. On Othello himself, some people at the time of Olivier’s performance thought it was dreadful. I thought it was the greatest piece of acting I’d ever seen (and it remains so, still).
Personality, as opposed to celebrity, is often the key in the great roles. And McGregor, it seems to me, has onstage personality in spades and has proved this not only as Iago, but also as Malcolm Scrawdyke and Sky Masterson (though the singing let him down a bit in the second role).
Within twelve hours of the curtain coming down on the Othello first night, I was back at Seven Dials for a press call and full dress rehearsal for last night’s tenth anniversary gala performance of Chicago. You want personality? Here was some more.
Some of these guys in Chicago have personality to burn: on they strode, Ute Lemper and Ruthie Henshall, Denise van Outen and Annette McLaughlin, Josefina Gabrielle and Bonnie Langford, all reprising Velma and Roxie in their various ways. Henry Goodman called by en route to a Fiddler matinee in full Tevye costume (”Don’t tell Golda,” he quipped as he canoodled with chorines) and Nigel Planer took the day off Wicked to give his beautiful, swaying tree in the wind version of “Mr Cellophane.”
Among recent Billy Flynns, pop stars Tony Hadley and Duncan James both made excellent impressions, and Sue Kelvin’s Mama Morton raised the roof. Kelly Osbourne’s Mama didn’t try to do this, but sang “Class” (as in whatever happened to…) very well indeed in a duet with Anna Jane Casey.
Chicago has grossed over £120m alone in London since it opened, and over $850m worldwide. Which is presumably why producer Fran Weissler can afford to keep her hairdresser on constant call, even in the theatre foyer at lunchtime. Husband and co-producer Barry Weissler is no slouch in the slick appearance department, either. His suit was so sharp you felt a cut just looking at it.
Chicago has defied all the odds. It’s a great dance show with no room on the stage for anyone to dance (the band are all in their way). It mocks the criminal justice system in America as unfair to women while glorifying a cult of murderous adultery. And it isn’t really a musical at all, just a jumped up concert performance (which is how it started in New York).
When Chicago was first produced in London — at this very same theatre, the Cambridge — in 1979 it made no waves at all and received only one rave review, as far as I recall, from Jack Tinker. It was an import from the Sheffield Crucible and the cast included Ben Cross, Janet Mahoney and Jenny Logan. It was fairly good, but it wasn’t really sexy.
This version is so sexy it still makes me tingle to think about it, and to have the multiple cast strut their stuff for us in daylight hours seemed vaguely indecent of them. Something to do with long legs and flat white milky stomachs, I think. And the sight of Denise van Outen sliding down a ladder is borderline provocative while Ute Lemper disporting herself like a pair of intertwined pipe cleaners is an incitement to riot.
Technique and talent have a lot to do with it, of course. But the bottom line is not just the bottom (oh, and don’t get me started on that topic). It’s also the personality. The actors’ personality. That’s why they light up the stage and pin us back in our seats. And it’s why people want to pay over the odds to see Ewan McGregor as Iago. If he’d put on a pair of fishnet tights I bet old Spencer would have changed his tune.