What If We Tried Something New? - Thoughts on Romantics Anonymous

For a little while in the last month or so, the world began to look like it did in January and February. An almost distant memory when the world made a lot more sense and there wasn't a 24/7 never ending sense of doom all over the news and the internet.

The main thing that the beginning of the 2020 had was a show that I truly could not have foreseen the effect it would have on me. A show that would cause me to travel a 150 mile round trip twice in a fortnight to see it three times (twice in one day) because I loved it so much.

That show, of course, is Wise Children's magnificent production of Romantics Anonymous.

If at any point this year I have spoken to you about theatre, this show has undoubtedly come up. I'm mad about it in every possible way, and its for a reason that is completely new to me.

When you watch theatre, it's not often that you find yourself staring back at you on stage. But that is what I find in Romantics Anonymous.
The central performances from Marc Antolin and Carly Bawden as Jean-Renee and Angelique stop me in my tracks, because I am these people.
Let me explain.

Romantics Anonymous, based on the 2010 French film Les Emotifs Anonymes, is the first musical from Emma Rice's production company Wise Children. It looks at the life of two socially anxious people: a woman who quietly works as a chocolate maker, hidden away from the world, and a man who is struggling to keep his chocolate factory afloat following the death of his father. 
It's a story where you know the ending from the beginning: you know these people are going to be together by the time we get to the end. It's more a musical about discovering why these people have the imperfections that they have, and how they learn to live with them, and each other.

The first time I watched the show, I was completely enamoured by the way Emma Rice's book, alongside Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond's music and lyrics created a world that revolved around chocolate, and then every so often you found your heart-strings tugged at so tightly that you can barely breathe. 
This is none more prominent in the number "If She Loved Me", sung by Jean-Renee. He has followed Angelique to the support group Les Emotifs Anonymes (which stays in French, because, as Angelique puts it, who would go to something called 'Emotionals Anonymous'?) because he has realised that he can't live without her.

It's all in Dimon's beautiful lyrics, alongside Marc Antolin's incredibly understated performance. The song is the show's '11 o'clock number' in a sense, but it's sort of not the musical that has one. It's the moment where the stakes are the highest, and he has one last shot to not lose the woman that he loves. 

"I'm not good with words, I'm just not equipped,
perhaps I'm afraid and so I stay tight-lipped,
but I could be something to see, if she loved me."

A song had never made me feel that way before.
Sure, I've had emotional reactions to songs before (the two main examples being Defying Gravity and Being Alive), but there is something about If She Loved Me that gets me in a way nothing has before. The lyrics honestly could have been written about me, especially me at  the beginning of the year. 
It's a feeling that I can't really explain, but it's just one of those moments in musical theatre where you see yourself looking back at you, and it's a lot to take it.
Je suis emotif and all that.

I'd be wrong to not quickly discuss the cast of this show (I could honestly write an essay on Carly Bawden and Marc Antolin and maybe I still will).

Bawden and Antolin have such a connection on stage that is like dynamite. There are no huge numbers that they belt to profess their love, it's all done through the smallest of gestures and the simplest of melodies. 

Sandra Marvin superbly gives life to Angelique's man-eating mother, and Magda (who has worked at the Chocolate Factory since 'the beginning of time'), alongside Me'Sha Bryan as Suzanne and Harry Heppel as Ludo (who's performance is so understated that you can't help but love him.)

But it is Gareth Snook who almost pulls the rug out from underneath everyone in his spectacular performance as Madame Marini, who is so over the top and ridiculous that the audience is in hysterics before he's uttered a word.
The world needs more Madame Marini's

 

So, lets talk about exactly what Wise Children managed to achieve last week. 

Emma Rice, Wise Children's artistic director, managed to pull together the majority of the cast, crew and musicians from the beginning of the year, got them to bubble together for a week, rehearse the show for another week, then tech and dress the full show. 

On top of that, they performed it to a digital audience for 5 nights, and then a socially distanced audience of around 150 on the final day.
Because of them bubbling together as a unit, the show was performed in it's entirety, without the need for social distancing.

Just let the logistics of that all sink in for a moment.

Even though we are in the strangest of times, these people have given up seeing any family or friends (I mean, anyone other than other members of the company) for three weeks. That might on paper not sound like a huge amount but it is when you think about it.

I essentially wanted to write this as a bit of a love letter to Emma Rice.
I've always been a fan of her work, from the first piece of hers I saw at the Globe (her superb production of Twelfth Night - who'd have thought Le Gateux Chocolat singing I Will Survive would work so well?!) and then her Kneehigh production of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk (starring Marc Antolin). 

But it was when she started Wise Children that I properly discovered what an 'Emma Rice show' was, and realised it was absolutely my type of theatre. 

I loved Wise Children and I thought that Mallory Towers was one of the best pieces of theatre that I saw in 2019 (and was very much looking forward to seeing it again this summer until 2020 happened). She has such a distinct way of creating the worlds in which her pieces happen, and the quirkiness is what makes her style so unique and engaging.

In her pre-show speech before the show on Sunday, Emma (along with Tom Morris, the artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic) was met with a deafening applause that went on and on and on. It was an intensely moving thing, to be there in a small audience, to celebrate the achievement to playing to an online audience of 10,500 over the five shows and then get to do it to real people.
Emma said something that has stuck with me since Sunday, and it really is so true of how we are all feeling now.
"We are meant to be together, we are meant to be on this planet and we are meant to tell stories"

I don't think there was a dry eye in the house by the time she was done speaking, and that was before the show had started.
For a week, Emma Rice managed to create some normality in these weird times. Apart from there being less people in the auditorium, we saw a full production with it's full cast, and it was utterly wonderful

I love this show with all of my heart, and for it to be one of the first shows that I came back to after the longest period without theatre was incredibly special. 
These people, this show, this theatre, this music - it's all so personal to me in a way that I don't think any show has ever been (or possibly will ever be again.) You so rarely get a show that is 'your show' and I think this truly is mine.

We are being forced to adapt with the times for the foreseeable future, and in the grand scheme of things that is fine. We get that the world is going through a lot, and that we have to do things differently for a while. And we are capable of doing it. The thing we are not capable of is doing it without help.

I'm not gonna press any more on the last few weeks and the state of the world (mainly because I'm doing that in another blog post where I write a response to the absolute horror show coming from our Government) but know that it is still ongoing, like everything else...

Jesus Christ Superstar The Concert @ Regents Park Open Air Theatre - Review

Theatre was allowed to happen outdoors this summer, so Regents Park did the unthinkable and managed to stage a full musical, socially distanced, and make it more hard-hitting than it's original outing
 

It's not something that gets taken for granted at the moment - the experience of live theatre. Nobody could have predicted the situation we have found ourselves in this year, and with little to no end in sight, it's going to be a long road yet to recovery.
However, we were told, back in July, that theatre could happen outdoors, socially distanced (by both audience and actors) and so the Open Air Theatre team jumped into gear and have welcomed us back into the world that we love in the best possible way.

It's a strange, yet incredibly uplifting experience arriving at the theatre in the heart of Regent's Park. The team are working exceptionally hard to make the audience's time as comfortable but safe as possible. On a socially distanced capacity, the audience goes down from over 1,000 to 390, so it feels a little strange. Temperature checks are done before entrance to the site, and all patrons are required to wear a face mask throughout their visit. However, you soon forget any of this is 'not the norm' and settle in for an evening of musical theatre.

Drew McOnie has perfectly reconstructed his choreography from the previous incarnation of the production, and adapted it to fit the slightly different staging that is in use here. Rather than the original set, Sheader has repurposed the steps staging from last year's Evita to make keeping to the guidelines easier.
Nothing is lost, in fact everything is gained.
There's something so hypnotising about people standing in formation on levels going up, and dancing with their whole bodies. McOnie's movement is not what you would instantly imagine it to be, but the way he was manoeuvred his cast is mesmerising. 

The team have made the sensible decision to largely bring back familiar faces in order to stage this in a pretty short space of time. Director Timothy Sheader has cleverly double-cast the leading roles of Jesus, Judas and Mary Magdalene in order to cover themselves against illness and to give themselves maximum flexibility with no set schedule.
What that does mean, however, is that fans are playing a bit of a lottery trying to see specific cast members. A few weeks into the run, people seem to have spotted a pattern, but with reduced capacity, a  lot of tickets had already gone. Not a criticism, just an observation!

On this particular afternoon, I was lucky enough to see Pepe Nufrio as Jesus, Ricardo Afonso as Judas, and Maimuna Memon as Mary Magdalene - and I really mean lucky!

This score is no easy ride for either man in terms of vocal load, but Pepe Nufrio really flies high with his performance as Jesus. The first moment we see him - when the entire cast pull down their face coverings (such a brilliantly thought-through piece of direction by Sheader) - you see Jesus full of hope and full of love for his followers. His character arc certainly builds throughout the show, until he stops the show with his unbelievable performance of the legendary Gethsemene.
It truly is the definition of a showstopper - watching a man in pain and anger ask the question he will never receive an answer to: "why?"
Nufrio is wonderfully supported Maimuna Memon as Mary, who is gives such a round performance. With a beautiful rendition of "I Don't Know How To Love Him", Memon manages to perfectly capture the confusion Mary finds herself in.

But for me, the show belongs to the sensational Ricardo Afonso, who's portrayal of Judas is one of the best male musical theatre performances I've seen in the last couple of years.
The vocal load of Judas is one thing, but to see the emotional horror that Afonso goes through is magnificent. He gives mind, body and soul to that performance and it's utterly breath-taking to watch. 
Opening the show with an almighty rendition of Heaven On Their Minds, his performance builds and builds to the 11 o'clock showstopper - Superstar. Afonso deservedly has the audience on it's feet. The crowd have missed being able to cheer at spectacular performances, and this is one that deserves the recognition.

It's not just the three leads of this production that need mentioning. 
It is ridiculous the ensemble of people they have bought together, even in smaller parts. Seeing Cedric Neal as Simon singing for his life is sensational, as are Ivan De Freitas Nathan Amzi as Caiaphas and Annas. Shaq Taylor brilliantly plays Herod in a way I had never seen before (head to toe in gold!) and the stellar David Thaxton blows the metaphorical roof off the Open Air Theatre as Pilate. Thaxton truly comes on and storms the stage and it's fantastic to hear a voice like that.

The shows is currently in it's final week, and has been sold out for pretty much it's entire run. So much so, that an option to sit out on the lawn and watch it on a screen was added. 

It's been really exciting to see theatre quickly adapt to our new surroundings and constraints, and still be able to come together to show our appreciation for the thing that we love: theatre.

I will never take for granted again just how lucky we are to have theatre, and just how important it is. If the Government could cotton on to the fact that it's a  'viable' business sometime soon, that'd be super great.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

It's A Return

 

Just when you believe things may be slowly getting back to normal, the world looks like it's going to go absolutely mental once more.

From Monday, I am going back to work for the first time in over five months.
Now lets not get ahead of ourselves. I'm only going back to cover someone's holiday, and then sporadically for another couple of weeks. There is still no part of my actual job to do yet (or not enough of it to justify having to start paying my wages again) but I'm grateful for anything right now.
Our theatre is also a cinema, and we are re-opening three days a week, to test the waters and see what the appetite is for our audiences. We are one of the lucky ones in the fact that we have the facility to do that whilst we cannot stage full theatre/comedy/music. Cinema is significantly cheaper to run, and we need approximately 20 people per screening to cover our base costings. With a capacity of around 65 with social distancing, it's a gamble we are going to take for now.

Theatre is not really functioning in any way yet, and that is one of the points I wanted to make mainly here. 
It's great to hear this morning that Nimax and Nica Burns will be reopening some of their theatres from the  end of October, and with that Everybody's Talking About Jamie looks set to be the first West End musical to return before the end of the year. 

But it's important to remember that this is far from over. 
A second wave is looming. Whether the country will go back into lockdown remains to be seen. Personally I can't see it, because there is no way the economy would survive and the Tories couldn't magic another furlough scheme out of the air - that was a one time thing. Everyone  is still struggling, and unable really to plan with any certainty, and with winter on it's way, everything just feels that bit more gloomy...

I've been at home now for 27 weeks, and not working for 23 of them. 
In some ways this all weeks like it's gone on for about 10 minutes, but in other ways I truly feel like I've lived through a millennium. I know people are talking about mental health a lot at the moment, and I imagine most people are getting fed up of it, but it really has been hard. 

It was all semi-manageable because we thought we could see an end in sight. There was talk that the summer might kill it off (that was just optimism I guess), but we got through it because we had good weather, could spend time in our gardens, and had an hour a day outside. With the winter on it's way, and the  the threat of going back to where we were once more, it's hard to think positive.

But, work tomorrow. 
A little bit of normality, even if it's just for a short while...

So let the sun come streaming in
‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again
If you only look around
You will be found

Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek and Paul