Be amazed: Jamie Allan exploiting high-tech illusions
❚ IN AUGUST WAS BOWLED OVER by an evening of 16 (I think!) fresh and original magical illusions under the title of Jamie Allan’s Amaze at London’s Marylebone theatre. This month it rightly transfers to the West End’s Criterion Theatre for a 47-show season. Declared “a master class in magic” by the Chicago Tribune, this superb live event thrills adults and kids alike as Allan blends state-of-the-art technology with timeless conjuring techniques, often involving members of the audience. In August he staged a baffling finale where he produced so many cards from nowhere to cover the stage’s floor, having removed his jacket so we could blatantly see there was nothing up anybody’s sleeves! I’ll be going again. ➢ Jamie Allan’s Amaze runs 18 Oct-23 Nov
at the Criterion Theatre, London
❚ WHETHER YOU LIKE ABBA’s SONGS or not, the scale of the West-End musical MAMMA MIA!’s success is staggering. Over 25 years it has been seen by 70 million people in 450 cities across the world, in 16 different languages. At the box office, the show has made £4.5 billion. Yes, billion !!!
So not to have seen this award-winning show is quite a feat, I am ashamed to admit. Yet on the 25th anniversary performance of MAMMA MIA! this weekend at London’s Novello Theatre I was blown away by the sheer energy and quality of this showbiz landmark, with its 34-strong cast of athletic dancers and powerful singers (especially Mazz Murray playing free-love mother Donna) plus an astonishing live orchestra. Here was the essence of full-on theatre.
What was rare for a stage musical was that the audience already knew almost every one of the show’s 22 numbers, written during the decade after ABBA won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 with Waterloo. Yet the lyrics repeatedly proved to be eye-openers during MAMMA MIA!, acting as dialogue to provide a dramatic family plot around a young girl’s marriage on a sunny Greek island.
Crucially many songs were injected with a comic twist, as with Take a Chance on Me and indeed Honey Honey which, the programme tells us, had Björn Ulvaeus – its co-author along with Benny Andersson – falling off his chair laughing and insisting “I didn’t write this as funny!” On an emotional level there were several truly tear-jerking moments as the family saga unfolded, prompted by songs such as Knowing Me, Knowing You and The Winner Takes it All.
Given that today the four members of ABBA are multi-millionaires, it’s ironic that I profiled them as the first entry in an A-to-Z Sunday Times partwork titled 1000 Makers of Music in 1997 by noting that as Swedish journeyman songsmiths in the Seventies their sing-along melodies epitomised Europe’s dreaded folkloric tradition – in contrast to Anglo-American guitar heroes who mouthed youthful dissent. Nevertheless during their breakthrough decade before disbanding ABBA scored eight consecutive No 1 albums in Britain and 25 Top 40 singles, so catchy that everybody could hum one. A decade further along, the quartet had acquired cult status as exponents of what we had grown to appreciate as “pure pop”.
In 2023 ABBA were awarded the BRIT Billion Award which celebrates musicians who have achieved one billion UK streams in their career. Today they stand tall among the best-selling artists in music history. Last month, all four members of ABBA were appointed Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This is the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood have been bestowed.
Duke of York’s, 2008: Michael Gambon, David Bradley and Nick Dunning in No Man’s Land. (Photograph: Tristram Kenton)
❚ MICHAEL GAMBON WAS UNDOUBTEDLY Britain’s greatest living actor for much of his career and remained so until his death this week. So, indeed, Harold Pinter had also become our greatest playwright by the end of his life. In the week of Pinter’s death at Christmas 2008, Gambon was playing in the West End in this, one of the master’s most enduring plays, No Man’s Land, and on Boxing Day he marked the theatre’s loss in ways I shall never forget.
That day, on Radio 4’s World at One, Michael Gambon promised to give the performance of his life, so I determined to go and see again the performance I’d already enjoyed the previous month in one of the Pinter’s most haunting masterpieces about two men in their maturity reflecting on their tenuous – or had it been non-existent? – friendship. As Michael Billington had written in his Guardian review: “Every new production of Pinter’s tantalising, poetic play yields new meanings.”
I’d seen it premiered in 1975 with those grandees John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson at the Old Vic and again when transferred to the Lyttelton in 1977 – several times. The great air/earth partnership of Gielgud/Richardson undoubtedly brought compassion to the roles of Spooner and Hirst, yet when Pinter himself played “the Richardson role” at the Almeida in 1993, opposite the sprightly Paul Eddington, the author turned his second act opening almost into a two-handed farce that had us aching in our seats with continuous laughter and subsequently wondering whether he’d always longed for our two greatest actors to loosen up a bit in the original production.
By the time this day’s greatest living actor Gambon put on the mantle of Hirst, a litterateur haunted by dreams and memories, in this new production at the Duke of York’s, we had learnt to laugh heartily at the humour in Pinter, yet now both Gambon and David Bradley as Spooner were also suffusing the prose with more poetry which the renowned “Pinter pauses” punctuate than I could recall from the past.
Almeida theatre, 1993: Paul Eddington and Harold Pinter in his own play No Man’s Land. (Photograph: Tristram Kenton)
A month earlier, I’d been caught short by the intensity of Gambon’s stage presence as he made his demons all but tangible before us. Then on Boxing Day, after the hilarious Act 2 recollections of the men’s seemingly shared past, Gambon suddenly changed gear and dropped timbre to whisper the crucial “Good Ghost” speech about the passing faces in his photograph album with an ethereal beauty and clarity of Shakespearean proportions. It was an unparalleled moment to witness.
Following the curtain calls, the cast paused to pay brief onstage tributes to Pinter. Gambon told us that, after rehearsals, the playwright had asked him if he would read the Good Ghost speech at his funeral (which indeed he did only days later). Suddenly for the second time this night, Gambon delivered the speech again there and then. Alas the words lost something of the ineffable truth they had touched when, minutes earlier, Gambon had been in character and had delivered them “trippingly on the tongue”.
Without doubt, the actor brought greatness to the role of Hirst this night – in fairness, all the cast were on the balls of their feet too. More satisfying, in the fleeting moments of live performance, fresh glimpses had been revealed of Pinter’s bleak insights into memory and ageing. All in all, the essence of theatre.
Spitting Image Saves The World at Birmingham Rep: Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak given life by puppeteers wearing grey. (Photo PA)
❚ THE MAJOR MIRACLE about Birmingham Rep’s new show Spitting Image Saves The World is that the move from satirical television to live theatre stage succeeds brilliantly. And hilariously. Not only are the puppeteers visible (though clad in grey from head to foot) while animating their giant plastic caricature heads and arms and indeed lending them “legs” – from superstars to cabinet ministers to royalty. They also execute physical illusions and perform exacting song-and-dance routines that fill the stage. And for the hundred or so celebs depicted, most are voiced by equally superb impressionists. Seldom before have we witnessed a stage show as ambitious as this involving complex scene changes.
As with the Central TV series that created Spitting Image in the Eighties, satire fuels the comedy, while two hours on-stage require a storyline. The mission improbable is quickly identified as rescuing the dicey state of the nation – or more whimsically, “the fabric of society”, epitomised by King Charles III waving a pair of soiled underpants aloft.
The puppet heroes recruited to meet the challenge run from a tiny Tom Cruise to Ru Paul, Stormzy, Idris Elba, Greta Thunberg, Angela Rayner and a robotic Elon Musk. An adversarial establishment is led by Rishi Sunak in school uniform, Rees-Mogg as a very tall stick insect, a dancing Gove, Javid, Truss, Raab, Patel, Carrie and Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman as a haunted child from The Exorcist. All are mercilessly sent up along with Harry and Meghan, Wills and Kate, Edward, Ant & Dec, Kier Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon, Presidents Xi Jinping, Zelenskiy and Putin. Sir Ian McKellen opens the show as Narrator, while HM QE2 closes it on electric guitar, riffing on Queen’s We Will Rock You.
Click any pic to launch slideshow
Just before the late Queen’s finale, the storyline had run out of steam. The previous three scenes had nothing to add, yet each closed with a red-curtain flourish as if each was the last. They could be cut completely. So too could the many four-letter expletives used frequently throughout the script. These were not laugh-lines, but mainly casual exclamations. Birmingham Rep is proving as foul-mouthed as London’s National Theatre, where its production of Phaedra is lubricated by unnecessary hard-core expletives. Do these theatres really believe swearing somehow ticks the trendy “diversity” box?
One further source of irritation was that of the dozen voices providing vocals during Spitting Image, half of their microphones sounded so fuzzy as to be useless. Words and lyrics were seriously less audible than the other half dozen. Ruinous when wordplay is key. (Coincidentally, the same went for last August’s musical Counting & Cracking which suggests a technical fault might lie with Birmingham Rep as the House, not the individual company performing.)
That said, this Spitting Image show is highly original and is directed by Sean Foley with great imagination (congratulations to Alice Power for those costumes it would be a spoiler to describe). Along with plenty of other show-stopping highlights, Putin’s tap-dance routine deserves a rollicking long future. As do the 12 grey-clad puppeteers. When they stepped down-stage together to take their curtain call – their names arguably unknown to most of the audience – it came as a sudden epiphany to accept that their skills had created every one of the characters and driven the entire performance.
❏ THE PUPPETEERS were Kate Bradley, Paula Brett, Kaidan Dawkins, Bertie Harris, Jojo Lin, Pena Iiyambo, Chand Martinez, Will Palmer, Helen Parke, Rayo Patel, Tom Quinn, Faye Weerasinghe.
Spitting Image Saves The World at Birmingham Rep: Stormzy and Tom Cruise given life by puppeteers. (Photo: PA)
Joe Allen at his regular spot at Joe Allen NYC, opened in 1965, before his block was christened Restaurant Row. (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times)
❚ JOE ALLEN, THE RESTAURATEURwho splashed bazzazz across theatreland, has died aged 87. His photograph confirms the memory of him being a double for Humphrey Bogart, who as Rick also sat alone at his own table in the film Casablanca – though Lauren Bacall always denied any similarity! He pioneered his empire in 1965 with two outlets in New York City on a strip of West 46th Street that would become known as Restaurant Row. Then in 1972 he took the Joe Allen brand to Paris and in 1977 to London, opening both Joe Allen’s in a former orchid warehouse, as well as Orso’s Italian brasserie, during the revival of Covent Garden which had idled since 1974 when the vegetable market moved out.
Immediately lunchtimes became social hubs for publishers from Bloomsbury and newspaper hacks from Fleet Street, both a short walk away. By night both places were packed with stars coming on from their West End shows and I only ever managed to sit on star table No 1 once which was in 1984 when I met Hollywood’s legendary Dorian Gray, the actor Hurd Hatfield, visiting from his home in Ireland, who told a very bawdy joke (sorry, unrepeatable)! On Saturday nights Andrew Neil, editor of The Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994, held court round a large table at Orso with his top team awaiting a courier bringing first-edition proofs for the next day’s paper.
Joe Allen’s personal style was laconic, his restaurants unpretentious and clublike, from red brick walls to an inexpensive hamburger-led menu, and waiting staff who were invariably resting actors. Most famously the walls were lined with theatre posters – of productions that had flopped. Notable patrons have included A-listers such as Al Pacino, Stephen Sondheim, Elaine Stritch, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery and Sir Ian McKellen, while the restaurants maintained a strict no-photograph policy to protect the privacy of its high-profile guests.
Though Joe himself was very visible during the first year in London, often sitting at the table beside the kitchen, in fact the day-to-day operation was run by the baker Richard Polo as a partner, who died in 2019.
❏ Joseph Campbell Allen, born 20 Feb 1933, died 7 Feb 2021.
Informality the keynote: Joe Allen’s restaurant on West 46th Street. (Photo: Robert Stolarik/The New York Times)
➢ Less about the food than about the atmosphere – Obituary by Joyce Purnick in the NY Times: “West 46th Street’s proximity to New York’s theater district made it viable, and Mr Allen, concluding that actors, directors, writers and theater patrons would always want to eat, created a relaxed pub aimed at attracting the theater crowd. There was nothing quite like the restaurant in the mid-1960s, and it took off.”
➢ A magnet for actors, journalists and royalty – Obituary in The Times of London: “Allen kept a flat in Chelsea, visiting London several times a year. Business meetings occupied his mornings. At night he perched at the end of the bar quietly draining a case of his favourite American imported beers and observing more than conversing with a studied determination not to “inflict myself on the customers”. If he sat at a table it was always the worst one in the house.”
Poster wall of flop shows at Joe Allen’s: at centre, “Got Tu Go Disco” a short-lived musical from 1979. (Photo: Sara Krulwich)
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MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
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VINCENT ON AIR 2024
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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