Becky Shaw Photo: Hugo Glendinning
asides to the audience which are, unconventionally, also sometimes audible to some of the other characters. It all adds up to an unsettling experience. Despite excellence performances, the play is balancing on a thin dividing line between broad black comedy and tragedy. With impressive young actor Joshua Williams playing the damaged fragile boy at the centre of the child abuse accusations, the darkness of the central theme threatens to overwhelm the comedy.
Becky Shaw
There’s no doubt that tackling a subject like Oz will leave many purists hurling abuse, Jeremy Sams production is bubbly, fast moving and quite emotional. Danielle Hope as Dorothy is assured and delivers the showstopper Over The Rainbow with confidence and emotion aplenty. Her trio of companions give solid performances bringing life to some of Arlen’s beautiful melodies as they seek a brain, heart and courage respectively. The real star of this show however is Hannah Waddingham. Her take on Miss Gulch and The Wicked Witch really stop the show. Whether it is onstage or suspended above the audiences heads, she is almost unrecognisable beneath the green make up and prosthetics. She is truly wicked (no pun intended). The show does have moments though where it lets itself down. Primary amongst these is the closing of the first act where the entire Wizard’s Song is performed offstage with only an indiscernable video image onstage to keep an audience occupied. With a running time of just over two hours, Lloyd Webber’ production team have succeeded in reimagining this classic. It’s a first rate family show that I hope will leave children enamoured with the theatre and wanting more. This Oz is a production worthy of the London Palladium. The enormity of its staging will have you captivated from start to finish.
ONSTAGE Million Dollar Quartet Noel Coward Theatre
Inspired by an actual event that took place when Sun Records music producer Sam Phillips managed to get Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins into the same studio in 1956, this show could be called the ultimate juke box musical. What drives Million Dollar Quartet is it’s casting. Sure the show has some of the best Rock N Roll numbers ever written as its core, but it is the quartet themselves that make this show great. Ben Goddard doesn’t just play Jerry Lee Lewis - he IS Jerry Lee complete with the type of combustible stage presence that made the man great. Derek Hagen delivers a more than credible Cash, close your eyes and you could be listening to a recording of the man himself. Where Million Dollar Quartet might come unstuck is in the fact that as a one act musical in tough economic times many may feel it is overpriced when compared against other shows. That said, the entire audience were on their feet at this show, they could have kept the cast on stage for hours longer!!
Almeida Theatre
Becky Shaw, which was a big hit off-Broadway, uses a mix of comedy and drama to dissect the nuances of personal relationships. It focuses on a somewhat dysfunctional family whose fragile existence is thrown into sharp relief by the arrival of the eponymous Becky. She is invited by newly married couple Suzanna and Andrew to go on a blind date with Suzanna’s adopted brother Max. When the date proves a disaster, the fall-out forces the characters to look more closely at themselves and how they relate to each other. Set in and around Rhode Island, the Almeida’s production includes David Wilson Barnes who created the role in New York. He brings out Max’s deadpan humour, delivering many of the play’s hilarious one-liners, but also his vulnerability. Anna Madeley combines strength and brittleness as the emotionally damaged Suzanna while newcomer Vincent Montuel shows that enviably good people can also be wrong. Becky Shaw herself, played to perfection by Daisy Haggard, demonstrates most of all how writer Gina Gionfriddo is examining how our perceptions of people shift in their different relationships – she is initially a sympathetic innocent but emerges as being needy and subtly manipulative. While Daisy Haggard, a leading comedy actor, is in the title role, it is not just about her – in fact, her character is not even mentioned until several scenes into the play. Instead, it is an ensemble piece, completed by Suzanna’s jaded mother played by Haydn Gwynne, that cleverly presents us with a set of characters we don’t know whether to love or hate.
Million Dolar Quartet
the Wizard Of oz Photo: Keith Pattison
The Wizard Of Oz London Palladium
There have been many attempts over the years to stage the classic MGM film The Wizard Of Oz. It’s no easy feat given the magic that celluloid created with the talents of Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton, Ray Bolger and others with a magical score by Harold Arlen. This time it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber who has tried and in the most part succeeded in creating a brand new OZ that successfully follows yet another televised search for new talent. Not a penny has been spared in the creation of this new Oz. Whilst most of the film score remains intact, Lloyd Webber has turned to original writing partner Tim Rice to provide new material. In this new version there is an opening number to set the scene in Kansas, a wordy patter song for Professor Marvel, songs for the Wizard and a showstopping moment for the Wicked Witch.
www.amateurstagemagazine.co.uk | 17
westendmapr11.indd 3
28/03/2011 10:29:54