Pulling on a jersey for Minghella
It was a rip-roaring first night for Jersey Boys tainted with sadness over Anthony Minghella. The death of the film director will cast a long shadow, not just because he still had so much to offer but because his very presence seemed to make other people feel better about themselves and their work. In other words, he had a unique talent as a producer.
Before his breakthrough in film, Minghella had worked extensively in theatre, radio and television. I hope that the Arts Council chairman Christopher Frayling, now mouthing glib platitudes about Minghella, notes that two of his early plays were first seen at the Northcott in Exeter and the Derby Playhouse, two theatres Frayling and his apparatchiks have tried their best to destroy.
Minghella would have loved Jersey Boys, though he might have got a lot more story our of it had he been hovering at the librettists’ shoulders. Certainly the climactic, joyous explosions of hit numbers carry the same sensual musical theatre clout as his own staging of the “humming” chorus in Madame Butterfly for ENO.
The first night audience was stiff with celebs, from Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio themselves — joining the cast onstage at the curtain calls — to Brian May, Barbara Windsor, Denise van Outen, Ruthie Henshall, Lionel Blair, Christopher Biggins and Arlene Phillips.
I hadn’t seen the balletic Blair for a long time, and certainly not since Humphrey Lyttelton cracked a splendid joke about Lionel’s new pilot for a television series about air travel going down so well with (and on) the audience.
Did you know that the Bush Theatre was once Lionel Blair’s dance studio? It’s about time the great man was acknowledged as a seminal influence in our new plays culture; his shadow surely dances through the work of countless cutting edge dramatists.
It’s interesting about the music in Jersey Boys. It’s transitional pop, from crooning to Motown, from Sinatra to Billy Joel, with an almost classical simplicity of structure and melodic invention. But I wonder how widely the show’s going to appeal. Will it break through the barrier or will it remain, like Rent, an exclusively New York phenomenon?
The experience of going to the Prince Edward, sensationally refurbished and spruced up by Cameron Mackintosh, is an unalloyed pleasure, though I must say I had already put myself in the mood by having coffee and cakes in Amato next door beforehand.
And Cameron himself extended the party atmosphere by hosting a free bar in all parts of the theatre during the interval, which was a bit of a downer for people like me struggling towards the end of Lent on the wagon.
