Anything for Oliver! and Oxford Blues
The news that Lord of the Rings is being “forced” to makes way for Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in the summer would only be distressing if a) Lord of the Rings was doing boffo business or b)Lord of the Rings was any good.
As it fits neither of these criteria, one can only sympathise with the theatre owners who have to keep the doors open somehow and although it’s a bit soon for another Oliver! one can think of worse musicals to look forward to. But come on, Really Useful, how about an Ivor Novello, or a new look at The Desert Song, or even a brand new Gypsy starring Kim Criswell?
My old friend Baz Bamigboye is continuing his campaign of querying the justness of the BBC collaborating for a third time, after the Maria and Joseph shows, with Andrew Lloyd Webber on his casting of Oliver and Nancy in this weekend’s new series, I’d Do Anything.
His complaint is one of using the licence-payers’ money for a glorified advertising campaign. But as the programmes have been fairly good — and a serious cut above the rest of the ghastly talent shows and X-Factor audition farces that now comprise “light entertainment” on television — the licence-payers themselves have not been too bothered.
I’m not sure it’s wise, though, to have Graham Norton, the presenter of I’d Do Anything (and he would, too) let loose on the concept of a Nancy School…the most worrying aspect of the Maria and Joseph shows was the ever increasing cosy campery going on between Graham and ALW.
Let’s hope the imposing presence of Barry Humphries on the judging panel will short-circuit the silliness. Barry played both Mr Sowerberry and Fagin in the original production, but as he was self-confessedly off his face with alcohol during that period he may not have too firm a recollection of what is needed to make Oliver! go with a swing of a more sober kind.
I’m much more depressed about what’s happening in our regional theatres than I am about another TV talent show lucky enough to have ALW involved with all his knowledge, experience and sheer indomitable enthusiasm. He’s proving to be the best musical talking head on the box since Leonard Bernstein, and who’d exchange him for the cloth-eared clowns on the BBC’s Late Review or Culture Show?
The new programme for the Oxford Playhouse makes sorry reading indeed, a drab, predictable list of touring shows leading in early summer to Agatha Christie and a blast of “Topless Mum” for the tabloid-reading academics in the city of dreaming spires.
What has happened to the exemplary repertory company founded by J B Fagan in 1923 — a company including Tyrone Guthrie, James Whale, Flora Robson and John Gielgud appearing in Shaw, Ibsen, Goldoni and De Musset — and the wonderful resident Meadow Players of Frank Hauser — often featuring Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Edward Woodward and Sheila Hancock — shamefully closed down by the Arts Council in the mid 1970s?
The present theatre was built in 1938, replacing the run-down former game museum that Fagan acquired and was then forced to abandon in 1929. The site then became “a midget golf course,” but fared no better than the brave enterprise it replaced. Any fool knows that midgets couldn’t care less about golf.
You’d have thought the Playhouse trustees — I’ve no idea if there’s any such thing as an artistic director any more — would have come up with something a bit more inspiring for the theatre’s seventieth anniversary.
Perhaps they need to get involved with the BBC in order to liven the place up…I’m sure Graham Norton would love to go into the woods for a new take on The Cherry Orchard. How do you solve a problem called Lopakhin?
