London Road

[dgjbear]

I did try searching for a thread about this but can't find one. Just to say I went to see this on Saturday and thought it was the most remarkable piece of theatre I have seen in years. I know that Nick Hytner has avoided musicals mostly on his watch, but when all you get in the west end are bloated revivals or even more jukebox shows, surely they have a duty to promote new work when such obvious talent, as demonstrated by London Road, exists?

[bob8rich]

I think it's the kind of piece that people will either love or hate. I'm afraid I hated it. I found it incredibly pretentious and the stylized use of language was so annoying it almost drove me crazy. I can admire what it attempted to do - but I was literally bored witless and could not wait to get out of the theatre lol. (Though I will admit the incredibly uncomfortable seating in the Olivier Circle did not help my ability to sit through it - still in immense pain with the arthritis in my knees after having to try and become a contortionist for 2 hours in my seat lol).

[DeNada]

When it played the Cottesloe last year I raved about London Road. I thought it was incredible, and no more pretentious than any of Alecky Blythe's other plays which use the same conceit. The Verdict was as thrilling as any showstopping choreography, and I would actually have voted it Best Musical above Matilda for the Oliviers.

dgjbear did you buy the CD while you were there? I believe the production has been filmed based on something I read on Twitter; it'll be interesting to see if it's broadcast/released at all.

But then I frequently disagree with bob and that's the joy of opinions :)

The National does promote musical talent (although to say that Adam Cork, Tony-winning sound designer, and Alecky Blythe are "new talent" is perhaps a stretch, especially coupled with Rufus Norris as director et al). Hytner may not have given us any big budget revivals of American classics, but we've had Jerry Springer, Caroline Or Change, Fela and now London Road - with Light Princess to follow next year. It may not be a yearly commitment, but even if I haven't enjoyed all of those shows they're certainly far more exciting than Hamlet with Rory Kinnear was!

[Dubliner]

I think the National really did cover off the classic American musicals during the Eyre and Nunn years. I didn't see it but I think the reimagining of Carousel was the only essential one from an artistic perspective. That said I loved Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, A Little Night Music and Anything Goes as they were wonderful productions. I would however like an opportunity to see some of the forgotten R & H shows (Allegro perhaps) and also Lionel Bart's Blitz! and Maggie May.

[Phantom of London]

I did see London Road Saturday night and was left prtty much perplexed, the show didn't blow me away, but i thought the song about hanging baskets at the beginning, blew me away and I thought it set the standard for the whole show, except it didn't and went down hill from there, with three songs being memorable the array of the hanging basket display at the end was pretty awesome.

Perhaps the National cannot cover old ground and redo the revivals it has been done before, or not for a while, but I love to see the National do something like: Show Boat, Damn Yankees The Music Man or Fiorello, the National hasn't done The King and I yet.

[FrontRowDress]

Talk about one man's meat is another man's poison. I'm totally with dgjbear, I caught this today and thought it was an incredible piece of contemporary theatre. I only went as I was at a loose end and one of the £12 tickets became available, but I'm so glad that I didn't miss it. Kate Fleetwood was magnetic. I've eulogised at length on my blog.
London Road

[frazer]

Saw this yesterday. Skill of cast was incredible - must be a very technically difficult piece to perform. Some clever writing that was tastefully performed, and never got 'cheesy' which it certainly could have done, in the camera man's rap like section for example. Very powerful when the three sex workers stepped forward and stood in silence for three minutes. I felt genuinely uncomfortable - but that was the only time I felt anything. For a subject so intense, I felt the musical was void of any real emotional punch. The writing at times felt like it was trying to be clever for the sake of it. Framing the acts with samples of the actual interviews felt like a 'look! see what we have one and how clever we are!' from the production team.

very mixed feelings on this one.

[dgjbear]

Nice Blog FrontRowDress!

[FrontRowDress]

Thanks dgjbear.

[SoonerOrLater]

Interesting to hear thoughts-I saw it last year and I'm going again to see the re-staging next week.

I thought it was a fascinating piece of theatre, an interesting (unique? possibly) approach to verbatim theatre-I don't know any other that has used the musical format but please correct me if I'm wrong because I'd be intrigued to compare. Is the music astounding? no, does it sometimes feel a bit 'contrived' possibly but it also genuinely felt like a clever use of the material. You do need to concentrate-particularly if you didn't remember or follow the news story that closely at the time. But it is also quite poignant and moving at times too.
I'm interested to see how it translates into a bigger space because I actually felt the intimate space worked in its favour.

[bob8rich]

"I felt the musical was void of any real emotional punch. The writing at times felt like it was trying to be clever for the sake of it."

Precisely, Frazer. That's exactly how I felt about it. And I'd read so much about how fantastic it was, I was SO excited about seeing this. And when I did see it, it was probably the biggest disappointment EVER.

[dgjbear]

I think it packed a lot of emotional punch and people have made reference to that here. I did like the music and I bought the CD which I've played a lot since (something I haven't done to the Newsies CD which I got at the same time). I guess I like the realism element - and this is how people talk and act, though obviously we all don't burst into song at any given moment. More the pity

[bob8rich]

"I guess I like the realism element - and this is how people talk and act."

Isn't it strange how something can come across so differently to different people? One of the reasons I disliked it was because I thought it lacked ANY sense of realism lol And the dialogue was certainly not delivered in the way that anyone speaks - it was SO stylized and artificial to me with its clipped speech and constant repetition of phrases and stopping halfway through a sentence and repeating it again. As I wrote before, that aspect of it nearly drove me insane and is probably why I could not make any emotional connection to it. I could not suspend my disbelief because it was so "unreal".

[MusicalBoy]

^ I agree with some of that, in the sense that the verbatim score didn't always seem to make sense to me and occasionally came across as pretentious.

HOWEVER, as far as the performances and direction goes, I found it to be incredibly realistic and lifelike.

[DeNada]

The score for London Road is like an oratorio (if that's the right word) - it's like the Messiah or a mass setting, really, small phrases being repeated over and over again. I don't know whether I'd class that as "pretentious"; the words are banal, sure, but then we talk in banalities all the time. I don't know how the writing can "try to be clever" when it's verbatim theatre - everything is something that someone actually said, with all the ums and errs that go with it (I can only imagine what it was like for the poor journalist in the "Using his hands to demonstrate, Peter Wright explained..." song!).

I thought it quite remarkable that when they played the bursts of speech from the actual interviews that Alecky Blythe recorded that the interviews had the same cadences and rhythms as the music and "dialogue" in the show itself.

[dgjbear]

Me and Bob8 have disagreed before, but understand what he said. But people do speak with pauses/repeat themselves/use 'erm' and 'uum' all the time. I think with new work that has more chance to connect with a public that wouldn't ordinarily like musicals. I saw Sweeney Todd in June and thought it OK, but kept thinking that the production was so bloated and literal, that it was almost pantomime (far preferred the National version in the 90s). Sondheim hasn't written anything decent in over 20 years and prior to London Road I always thought he was the saviour. So, nice to see the musical genre moving forward. And I imagine Steve S would approve...

[bob8rich]

dgjbear, it seems we disagree on almost everything lol
I don't agree that Sondheim has not written anything decent in over 20 years. I think Passion is a fantastic piece, full of stunning songs. I also love Roadshow and IMO its score includes a few songs that rank amongst Sondheim's very finest.

And I honestly think London Road has set musical theatre back rather than moved the genre forward. Nothing about it to me suggested it had any reason to be sung (and I found the music pretty much dissonant and tuneless). But, as I said before, more than anything I found it annoying and incredibly pretentious in its concept and the overbearing way it tried to scream "look at how clever we're trying to be". Obviously we have to agree to differ and I certainly don't presume that because I did not like it, that it can't be any good. All I know is that - despite its quite brilliant staging and an array of great acting performances - I have honestly never found a piece of musical theatre so excruciatingly annoying and mindnumbingly boring in my life. I really did feel as if I had died and gone to hell lol

Luckily I found the perfect antidote the following night when I went to see Soho Cinders - the best new musical I have seen in a VERY long time.

[frazer]

As a piece of musical theatre, would you agree that it was fairly inaccessible, particularly for people who aren't necessarily experts on the genre?

[DeNada]

I guess I'd agree it's "inaccessible" in that it's not a crowd-pleaser or Baby's First Production Of Fame. I don't think it has anything to do with whether or not someone's an expert on the genre - it's documentary theatre where they sing instead of speak, it's hardly a jolly spectacular.

But I don't think that's a negative thing. Experimental theatre shouldn't only be the product of tiny pub theatres or the Lyric Hammersmith or whatever, and the only reason London Road's the least bit "difficult" is because it's sung instead of spoken. If you presented the content on film - whether the actual interviews cut together in a documentary format or as a docudrama - or as a straight play, I don't think it would be particularly inaccessible at all.

[AddisonMizner]

Still haven't been able to see this. Is there any chance that it will be filmed?

[mallardo]

I would not agree that it's inaccessable. My god, what show could be more of-the-people? There's nothing dissonant or forebidding about the music. The crowd I saw it with ate it up. As did I.

[bob8rich]

Sorry, mallardo - I didn't think it was "of the people" at all. I found nothing to connect to emotionally and the characters came across as robotic with the whole piece being an excuse to show how intellectually clever the creatives were being - as someone else wrote earlier, "clever for the sake of being clever". I really did feel it was emotionally empty.

And, if not dissonant, I certainly found the music quite painful to listen to. Obviously, it's personal taste as always (as you know, I find your hero Michael LaChiiusa's music like listening to someone scratching a blackboard with their fingernails - this had the same effect on me). I really did want to scream, "please, no more" by the end of Act One! And I'm not the only one - I've spoken to a number of people who saw it and were as underwhelmed as I was.

[mallardo]

Well, Bob, an emotional connection is obviously subjective - I certainly connected to it. As to the "intellectually clever" thing, how is organizing, annotating and musicalizing Real Words spoken by Real People in a Real Situation in any way pretentious? It could not be more demotic.

As to the music, if there are no traditional big tunes there is a lot of melody, recurring motifs and themes that are standard fare in musicals and, in this case, serve the words in a remarkable way. I'd have thought that you, a writer of musicals yourself, would appreciate that.

As to the genius that is LaChiusa, have you heard Queen of the Mist? I'm thinking it might be more to your taste - and I don't just say that because there is a character called Mr. Mallardo!

[dgjbear]

Isn't it funny, I was welling up a couple of times during it I was so connected. But we can't all like the same things and it would be pretty boring if we did!

[Scripps2]

To me, this felt like a sung documentary or, as DeNada rightly observes, an oratorio. It was a show for my head but not my heart. But I do feel it was very authentic. Having grown up in the shadow cast by the Yorkshire Ripper I can well remember the fear and paranoia of the time, and also the shock when he was arrested living in a "nice" suburb.

What I question is whether its writing techniques are original or innovative. A Chorus Line was based upon tape recordings of actual experience and many of the lyrics are taken directly from those tape recordings.

[MusicalBoy]

^ There are two major differences between A Chorus Line's score and libretto being created from those interviews and the score to London Road.

- The way in which London Road's verbatim score is set to music, to mirror the cadence of human speech patterns is almost completely revolutionary, I gather.

- The recordings are repeated by the actors in a style which was already existing (created by Anna Deveare Smith, I think?), copying the exact 'um'ing and 'ah'ing and intonation.