There was an absoutely knock-out West End debut in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice last night.

And it wasn’t made by X Factor finalist Diana Vickers, good though she was in the Jane Horrocks role. No, the real star turn is that of Lesley Sharp as her mum, Mari Hoff, the blowzy, boozy mother from hell, or at least somewhere like Rochdale or Burnley.  

There are certain actors who, whenever you see them, you think, well, there is simply no one else better than this.

The thought crosses my mind whenever I see Miranda Richardson (too rarely) on the stage. Or Mark Rylance. Or Lesley Sharp.

And amazingly, despite a list of impressive credits at the National (where her performance in Simon Stephens’s Harper Regan won nominations in both the Whatsonstage.com and Evening Standard awards), the Royal Court and on television, she’s never been in the West End before. 

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The Evening Standard Awards for 2009 were decided on Friday and will be announced on 23 November.

Which means that important shows opening in the next few weeks — the Alan Bennett play at the National, new plays by Mike Bartlett and Michael Wynne at the Royal Court, the RSC Twelfth Night — won’t be considered.

And what about the brilliant new Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic, which opened only a few hours after the deliberations were concluded?

It’s the only possible rival to Spring Awakening in the best musical category, unless there’s a rush of blood for Sister Act or Priscilla.

Why are these awards decided so early? They never used to be. But when the Oliviers were brought forward to gazump the Standard gongs, the Standard promptly moved even earlier. This was pretty silly and showed instant loss of dignity.

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Sean Holmes’s fine revival of Trevor Griffiths’ modern classic Comedians is a reminder of how little great new work is produced on the regional theatre main stages these days.

The first night at the Nottingham Playhouse in February 1975 was an electrifying occasion, and not just because of the career-defining performance of Jonathan Pryce alongside Stephen Rea, Tom Wilkinson and Jimmy Jewel.
 
The premiere occurred slap bang in the first eighteen months of Richard Eyre’s artistic directorship, a period in which he premiered David Hare and Howard Brenton’s Brassneck, Adrian Mitchell’s Yorkshire version of The Government Inspector, Brenton’s The Churchill Play and Ken Campbell’s Bendigo.

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Last night over one hundred Whatsonstage.com theatregoers braved the first chill of winter to see Speaking in Tongues at the Duke of York’s Theatre and I for one can assure you that it was well worth the trip.

Andrew Bovell’s play asks a lot of the audience but if you are willing to give it you are sure to be rewarded. Telling the seperate but extraordinarily linked lives of four couples we are taken through a plethora of emotions and asked questions of love, truth, fidelity, dreams and the very way we live our lives. With only four actors playing nine parts, they work hard to deliver the very complex and emotional pieces but all four actors, John Simms, Ian Hart, Kerry Fox and Lucy Cohu are more than up to the challenge. The set is minimal but effective and use of filmic elements adds a haunting quality to this thought provoking piece. Under Toby Frow’s direction not a movement is wasted and every step has weight. Read the rest of this entry »

The National Theatre’s tribute to Ken Campbell last night was a delicious ragbag of capers including one I’d never seen before: Toby Sedgwick playing a rasher of bacon as it sizzled in the pan, flipped over, then sizzled again.

Sedgwick curled up into a crispy foetal ball, somehow reducing the length of his body into that of a well fried rasher.

We also relished the sight of Nina Conti proceeding to the back of the Olivier stalls with a fifty foot length of knicker elastic that she was stretching from the mouth of her “husband” in order to pang him out of his dangerous invasion of his own posterior.

Hubby gripped the lethal device in  his teeth. Was he ready? Yes. Knicker elastic rebounded at top speed in the wrong direction…

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The death of Stephen Gately is sad for many reasons, not least because the fellow was so utterly modest and charming. He was a joy to meet and more than just interesting to talk to.

Indeed, everyone who met him — fan, or fellow professional — sort of fell in love with him; as many people have said in the past twenty-four hours, his death makes no sense at all.

When Boyzone had their big hit with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Jim Steinman’s “No Matter What” from Whistle Down the Wind, Stephen became a regular at ALW’s Sydmonton Festival and was soon building a new career in the musical theatre in the revival of Joseph and as take-over casting as the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium.

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In a revealing moment at today’s Press launch of Love Never Dies, the Phantom follow-up set among the freak shows and big dippers of Coney Island in 1907, Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Jack O’Brien said they had “no idea what the budget is.”

Alongside the two leads, Summer Strallen is expected to be announced as Mme Giry, so I hope her agent is taking advantage of  lax accountancy at the Really Useful and pushing for a maximum wage with City-style bonuses.

The composer finished the score six weeks ago, and the two people he most wanted to hear it, Cameron Mackintosh and Sarah Brightman, have expressed their pleasure, Cameron writing him the most touching letter he can remember receiving.

And how will he measure the success of the show alongside his other big hits?

“I’m happy with it as a piece,” said a mellow ALW, looking spruce and fit in a grey suit and mauve shirt, “and that’s enough for me.”

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There was not much in the way of theatre in the Alicante region these past few sunny days in Spain, though an upcoming production of “Phedra – the Ballet” looked distinctly promising.

But two pieces of shocking news filtered through the heat haze: the death, supposedly by suicide, of Matt Lucas’s former civic partner Kevin McGee, and the adoption of free sheet status by the Evening Standard starting next Monday.

In comparison, the announcement that Michael Gambon has withdrawn, after minor illness, from the new Alan Bennett play at the National, though regrettable, seems footling.

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A delightful  little theatre book has just come my way about a place I’ve never visited but which has thrived on the shores of Derwentwater in the Lake District these past ten years.

It’s called Encore! and it’s a history of the Theatre by the Lake written by David Ward, formerly a Guardian arts correspondent and even more formerly my head boy at a Catholic grammar school in North London.

So it would be quite nice to take revenge on his authoritarian ascendancy over me and say that the book stinks. But it doesn’t. It smells lovely.

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It was all very civilised and low-key at the RSC’s update and “plans for next year” bash in the Hospital Club today.

The club is a media haven in Endell Street, Covent Garden, which must have cost a small fortune to hire, especially as we assembled in the Forest Room, which looked like Bill Dudley’s next “virtual” design of As You Like It, all photographic wrap-around trees and yellow lighting.

In the stated avalanche of information and good intentions, one felt too overwhelmed to wonder, yet again, what the hell is going on.

Michael Boyd and his associate David Farr wore their shirts outside their trousers, not a good sign, and Farr– who walked out on commitments to  the Bristol Old Vic and the Lyric, Hammersmith in order, finally, to join the RSC – confirmed his “adaptability” with obsequious remarks in Boyd’s direction.  Read the rest of this entry »