Are we there yet?

I’ll give the answer first: no, not quite – but with a few fixes tweaks, this could turn into something really wonderful. There are a lot of wonderful things in it already.

If you read anything about theatre in the British press, the chances are that at some point over the past couple of months you’ve read something about Finding Neverland, the new musical that’s currently playing a tryout run at Curve in Leicester. Based, of course, on the 2004 film about the friendship between J.M. Barrie and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the production has attracted a great deal of media attention due to the celebrity of the lead producer, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Although future dates have yet to be announced, the show clearly has ambitions that stretch way beyond Leicester; it’s produced on a scale that would simply be unaffordable for any British regional theatre, and it has a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, whose musical adaptation of Grey Gardens found critical acclaim on Broadway in 2006. The thrust of most of the press coverage has been ‘Hollywood Comes to Leicester!’ – there were even wild rumours at one stage that Gwyneth Paltrow would play Sylvia – and that’s only partly accurate: Weinstein, yes, is Hollywood through and through, but the other major creative participants – bookwriter Allan Knee, director/choreographer Rob Ashford, designer Scott Pask and orchestrator Bruce Coughlin – are mostly drawn from the New York theatre scene. Leicester, then, is not precisely the first place you’d expect to find them putting the finishing touches on a new musical.

Except… actually, it makes sense. While it went shockingly over budget, Curve is an undeniably impressive facility with technical resources that rival or better any major regional theatre in Britain (not to mention a large proscenium stage, which is a rarity in modern institutional theatres). It also, under the artistic directorship of Paul Kerryson, has very quickly developed a name as one of the UK’s most exciting musical theatre venues. It’s become a destination, with an audience that is willing to travel a considerable distance to see their shows. I’m one of them; seeing a show at Curve, for me, involves a round-trip of a little over 200 miles. From where I live there’s no direct train service – it’s actually slightly quicker for me to get to London, which is more or less exactly twice the distance from here – and yet I seem to find myself back in Leicester at least a couple of times a year. So far, it’s always been worth the trip.

And it was certainly worth the trip this time. Although no West End or Broadway dates have been announced for the show, this is very definitely a tryout run, meaning that we’re not quite seeing a finished product; wherever the show ends up, it will more or less certainly have been somewhat revised from the version that’s on show here. That’s no bad thing, because the show as it stands definitely needs a little work; it has, though, terrific potential, and some of it is already quite wonderful.

It’s long enough since I saw the film that I can’t say with any certainty how closely the musical follows the screenplay; I’m not an expert on Barrie either, but I know enough to know that this is not a precisely accurate slice of his autobiography (for a start, Barrie’s acquaintance with the Llewelyn Davies family began some years before the death of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies’s husband, which is not the scenario we see in the musical – here, when Barrie and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies first meet, Arthur Llewelyn Davies has been dead for a year). That doesn’t particularly matter; what matters is that the story the musical tells us feels true. Allan Knee’s commendably economical book sketches a relationship between Barrie, Sylvia and her boys that is absolutely convincing and ultimately very touching indeed; the timeline of the growth of this relationship, the creation of Peter Pan, and Sylvia’s illness and death is (necessarily) compressed, but that’s not a problem – this is a musical, not a documentary. Frankel and Korie’s score is often very attractive indeed, and the Act One finale – “Set Sail”, an extended musical sequence in which Barrie invents Captain Hook – is genuinely thrilling (and has the most memorable tune in the show). The pre-opening preview clip of the climactic duet between Barrie and Sylvia, “In the Blink of an Eye”, presented a contextless performance of the song that, frankly, seemed rather wet; in context, though, it’s absolutely ravishing, and it’s gorgeously sung by Julian Ovenden and Rosalie Craig.

In fact, everything is gorgeously sung. This is very much Ovenden’s show – he’s almost never offstage, and he’s never less than superb – but everyone else, including the children, is working at the same level. The physical production is also very impressive – Scott Pask has provided a set of translucent panels and drops that, with the help  of Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington’s witty projections and Neil Austin’s subtle lighting, can move from a park to a drawing-room to the front of a theatre to an out-and-out fantasy sequence with dazzling speed. They’ve clearly spent a lot of money, and you can see where it went, but the spectacle, dazzling as it is, is always in the service of the story, even when we’re looking at a pirate ship that fills nearly the entire stage, or a full-size motor car driving through Richmond Park, or a kite-flying sequence that spills out above the audience.

And yet, and yet… the show isn’t quite there yet – but that, of course, is what a tryout run is for. Towards the end of Act One, Barrie gets a number called “Shadows and Fog” that’s everything you would expect from the title and less; it’s lugubrious and meandering, not to mention too long, and it doesn’t really work. There’s a confrontation duet between Barrie and young Peter Llewelyn-Davies early in Act Two that feels too self-consciously complex, both musically and lyrically; it’s impeccably staged and performed, but the lyrics are awkward and do not sit well on the rapidly-shifting, highly chromatic music, and the moment would be better served by something a little simpler. Later on in Act Two, there’s an opening night sequence at the theatre that feels flabby; the scene clearly needs to be a comic tour-de-force, and at the moment it isn’t. These are not fatal flaws; working through these issues is what a tryout run is for, and the show’s highlights – “Set Sail”, yes, but also a lovely, tentative duet between Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and Barrie’s wife Mary, a cricket match sequence, and a swaggering, swashbuckling tango for Barrie, Captain Hook and a band of pirates (two of whom enter by climbing down the chandeliers in Barrie’s study) – demonstrate that the show is very definitely on the right track. There are, here and there, a few moments in Knee’s book in which British characters are forced to deliver lines whose American idiom sounds jarringly wrong – Arthur Conan Doyle suggests going in to dinner by saying “let’s go eat”, and Sylvia tells Barrie that she would be pleased if he would “stop by” – but these, again, are minor fixes. This isn’t a show that requires major surgery. It’s a good show that, with a few tweaks, has the potential to become a great one.

Wherever it ends up, though, they need to keep Julian Ovenden on the payroll. There are many wonderful things in Finding Neverland already, and he towers above them all. He’s already giving a great performance, and he’ll only improve as the show continues – and he’s backed by an intelligent, experienced, hugely talented creative team, and there’s every reason to expect that they’ll make this show soar. Is it there yet? No, not quite – but I’d put money on them getting it right. Finding Neverland is already hugely entertaining; one day soon, it could be magnificent.

Mediocrity loves company

On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the Lowry in Salford to see a production of Cabaret. It was a bit of a mixed bag – a lot of things I liked very much, and two central performances (Will Young as the Emcee, and Michelle Ryan as Sally Bowles) that didn’t work for me on any level. I came home, wrote a review – in which I explained in some detail what I liked and what I didn’t, and why – and put it up on this blog, then went to bed.

That’s when the fun began.

Now, OK, I certainly didn’t mince my words in the review. What I saw, I’m afraid, was a mostly very strong production, with several excellent supporting performances and one – Sian Phillips as Fraulein Schneider – for which there are not enough superlatives, but whose two above-the-title stars – Mr. Young and Ms. Ryan – delivered work that wasn’t just poor, but barely of a professional standard. Mr. Young is a pop star, and a very good one, and he sang well and hit all his marks,  but he basically delivered a learned-by-rote imitation of the actor who originated his role in this production’s previous incarnation, and it just wasn’t very interesting to watch. Ms. Ryan was far worse – her un-performance was a stilted, wooden, dead-behind-the-eyes horror of epic proportions. She hit all her marks and most of her notes, but she wasn’t believable at all, and the excellent work from the supporting actors and the ensemble made her seem even worse in comparison. So yes, I came in for the grand slam – but I spent more time talking about the things I actually liked about the production.

Then the emails and comments started coming. I’ve left a couple of relatively mild comments up, although I closed comments on the post (I don’t like doing that, but I got to a point where enough was enough) – they’re childish (‘totally biased’, ‘biased, almost hateful’, ‘this person clearly has an agenda’ – because, obviously, anyone who strongly dislikes something you like must be bitter or biased or possessed of some kind of ulterior motive), but they don’t contain any direct insults, although the spelling and grammar are entertaining. The ones that just said ‘loser’ or ‘hater’ went straight in the spam file.

And then there were the tweets (none of which were from people who follow me) and the emails. A dozen or so of each, each more hilarious than the last (and, later, one polite, friendly, calm message from a lady named Rosemary who, while she didn’t agree with my assessment of these two performances at all, made her case without resorting to cheap namecalling – I enjoyed writing back to her, and it was an interesting conversation). Again, the words ‘hater’ and ‘loser’ and ‘biased’ were regular features; one enterprising individual suggested I should write Mr. Young a personal apology, another charming person suggested I was a ‘fucking idiot’, a couple used the word ‘cunt’, and one particularly hysterical (I assume, I didn’t read beyond the first line) email was headed “Who the FUCK do you think you are?” These messages, of course, were all deleted, and I used the ‘block’ feature in Twitter more in a single afternoon than I think I have in the past two years.

When I looked at the blog stats, I saw something interesting: that particular post had had significantly more readers than I’d usually expect to get on a given day (there are all sorts of things I could do to try to get more readers, I suppose, but that’s not really why I write here). A significant number of them had clicked from a Will Young fansite – BabyDevoted, an unofficial site which, the front page clearly informs you, has no connection to Will Young (if the obnoxious emails I received are any indication of what the people who post there are like, he’s probably quite relieved about that). I certainly never posted a link to the review there – anyway, their forums appear to be closed to visitors. I put it up on Twitter and Google+ (public) and Facebook (in my case, not public), but didn’t post the link anywhere else.

Now, of course, once you post a link anywhere online, it can travel, and you don’t have any control at all over where it might end up – and that’s true even if you post it on a Facebook timeline whose privacy settings are fairly tightly locked down. And, certainly, I imagine that anyone who identified themselves as a Will Young fan would be less than delighted by what I wrote about his awful performance in ‘Cabaret’. But, really – ‘hater’? ‘loser’? ‘fucking idiot’? ‘cunt’? Some people need to get a sense of proportion. Particularly given that, in this case, one or some or all of these people must have looked for this review that they found so upsetting. It’s childish of me, I know, but I keep seeing this picture of a gaggle of foaming-at-the-mouth Will Young fans sitting in a circle passing round the smelling salts. If they get this upset over a review, God knows how they’d cope if they were faced with any kind of actual crisis.

The thing is, I enjoy interacting with people here - most of the time. Some interesting conversations, and a few really great Twitter/Facebook friendships, have come out of responses to stuff I’ve posted here, and I’m really happy to have met those people, if only online. And, honestly, I’m more amused by all of this than anything – really, I have no influence. None at all. I’ve been (albeit briefly) on both sides of the theatrical fence, and it’s certainly no fun getting a bad review, but getting bad reviews is part of the deal, including from people whose writing has far more reach than mine does. I do also get – really – that sometimes you read something annoying online and a red mist descends – but there’s a fair distance between a red mist descending and sending a complete stranger an email with the F-bomb in the header. At least, there is if you’re over the age of about twelve.

I’m not a professional theatre critic. I don’t get press comps (I have, in the past, reviewed for a website and received press comps, but not in this country, and not for a while now). I pay for the tickets for the shows I see, and I make my choices carefully – theatre tickets are not cheap, and I don’t get out the plastic and pay for a ticket unless I’m reasonably sure I’m going to enjoy the performance. In this particular instance, I wrote an angry review of two performances (in a production, don’t forget, which I otherwise liked very much) very specifically because tickets are not cheap and the work these two actors delivered was not worth the money, and because – rightly or wrongly – I perceive a certain amount of cynicism in the increasingly common practice of casting TV actors and pop singers in touring productions of musicals in the hope that their C-list celebrity will draw in the punters, with little regard as to whether they are capable of giving a competent account of their roles. It’s not, actually, that I have any problem per se with pop stars or TV performers getting big roles in stage musicals – I’ve seen people from both arenas do very, very well on the musical stage (Vanessa Olivarez in the Toronto production of ‘Hairspray’, Marcus Brigstocke in the UK tour of ‘Spamalot’). I simply have a problem with spending a chunk of money on a ticket and seeing crap.

Another common theme of the first couple of lines of the emails (I didn’t read much further) was that the review was ‘subjective’. Well, duh. Whether they’re written by a blogger, or Michael Billington, or Ben Brantley, or God, that’s what reviews are. It’s one person’s opinion, that’s all – nothing more, nothing less. And that, actually, is what makes this whole petulant hissy-fit from some of the more childishly extreme members of Will Young’s fan community so hilarious: Michael Billington or Ben Brantley, if they write an unfavourable review, might have a noticeable effect on a production’s box-office performance. I don’t. I know how many readers I get here, I do this for fun (and, when I write about theatre, to keep some record of the shows I’ve seen), I’m not particularly looking for a wider audience (at least, not here), and I’m certainly not under any illusion that I’m delivering some kind of Big Objective Truth for an adoring readership. I react to what I see, I hope people are entertained by what I write here if they find it (and I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I have to say, here or anywhere else) – but it is, in the end, just one opinion. It simply isn’t worth getting that upset. It certainly isn’t worth getting worked up to the point where you send a complete stranger an email calling him a cunt.

And, really, if you object to something someone writes online, the best way to bring them around to your way of thinking probably isn’t to send them a badly-spelled, rambling email in which you call them names and swear at them. That, I’m afraid, is pathetic, and it will have precisely one effect: it will just make the recipient laugh. At you. A lot.

Life is an ersatz cabaret, old chum

[Note: there is a little more to this story. For what happened in the couple of days after I posted this, click here. It's never fun to get a bad review, but some of Will Young's fans, it turns out, are hilariously childish and petulant, particularly when they start sending email.]

 

Welkuurmen, beenvanoo, wilcam… eem cubaray…

No, my spell-check has not gone insane. Those are just a few of the words in ‘Wilkommen’, the opening number of Cabaret, that Mr. Will Young is apparently unable to pronounce, whatever accent he’s trying to do. You might suspect that it’s not a good sign when a show’s above-the-title star mangles the first three words he sings at the top of the first act, and you’d be right, but on this occasion it’s worth exercising a little patience. Not for Mr. Young or for Ms. Michelle Ryan, his leading lady – they’re both awful – but for just about everyone else. It isn’t simply that this London-bound revisal of Rufus Norris’s 2006 revisal is a mixed bag. It’s both better and worse than that. It’s a bold, intriguing, intelligent, stylish production with a strong ensemble and a couple of truly remarkable supporting performances, but with a pair of inept celebrity stunt castees shoehorned in to the two most prominent roles in order to pull in the punters because it’s only about four years since the show was last in the West End. What are they like? Put it this way: Rufus Norris, the director, might as well have cast Kermit and Miss Piggy. In fact, they’d probably be an improvement. At least they’d be interesting.

What saves the production is the fact that, unlike the film, Cabaret on stage has always been an ensemble piece in which the focus is split between several characters. Despite Michael York’s fine work, the film rests mostly on Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey – or at least, it’s their musical numbers that people remember afterwards. While the stage version has gone through, it seems, as many different permutations as it’s had major metropolitan revivals – really, you’d imagine from the show’s production history that Joe Masteroff, who wrote the book, delivered a piece of unplayable crap that directors have spent the past 46 years trying to fix, when in fact his original version is superior in nearly every respect to more or less all the revised versions that have followed – it’s always retained a far wider focus than Jay Presson Allen’s (overrated) screenplay. That’s especially useful here, because it means that this production’s hellish miscasting of the actors playing the Emcee and Sally Bowles does not take the rest of the show down with them. It’s not that they’re not that bad – they just don’t have as much stage time as you might expect. Thank God.

So what’s good? A terrific set of sliding panels, ladders, cages and translucent flats by Katrina Lindsay – we are not, in this production, aping the Sam Mendes staging in which everything took place in the Kit Kat Klub, even when it didn’t, and for that relief much thanks – and equally terrific atmospheric lighting from Mark Howett. This is as good-looking a production of Cabaret as you could ever expect to find, and it does not, thank God, bathe you in sleaze from the moment the curtain rises. You see plenty of people snort cocaine, but none of the dancers have visible track-marks. After the skank-overload that characterised the Mendes revival, trust me, that’s a blessing.

And the dancers are great. Norris and his choreographer, Javier de Frutos, have found a superb ensemble. The bit-parts in scenes are all expertly played, the singing is excellent, and de Frutos’s choreography is often genuinely revelatory. This is a rather more dance-centric production of Cabaret than previous major stagings – not a surprising route to take if you have a choreographer of de Frutos’s calibre on board – but it works, and works well. De Frutos has managed the difficult trick of reimagining each of the show’s iconic musical numbers without changing their intent or their subtext. For ‘Money, Money’, he presents the Emcee in a grotesque balloon fatsuit that gets pricked and deflated as the recession bites. The first ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ – which in this production is the Act One finale – is a truly creepy human puppet-show in which the singer manipulates the chorus line into performing the Nazi salute. We get ‘Mein Herr’ from the film, but there isn’t a wooden chair in sight. The gorilla number uses projections and sleight-of-hand rather than an actor in an actual gorilla costume, and is chillingly effective.

Transitions between scenes are often choreographed, and some numbers – most notably ‘Why Should I Wake Up?’ and ‘Don’t Tell Mama’ – are woven around dialogue to create transitional montages (‘Don’t Tell Mama’, indeed, is seen from behind and only half-heard, as the first scene between Cliff and Bobby takes place ‘backstage’ at the Kit Kat Klub while Sally is out front performing the number). ‘Two Ladies’ features way more than two ladies, several men, and a bed with a trick opening through which any number of people and props can enter and exit. It’s clever, it’s funny, it’s appropriately raunchy and decadent, but it’s also – I keep saying ‘Thank God’, don’t I? – far subtler than the Mendes production was in either its London or North American incarnations, and far less self-consciously skanky (can you tell I really didn’t like the Mendes production very much?). You don’t see a Swastika until the last thirty seconds of Act One, or a Nazi uniform until midway through Act Two – Norris does a far, far better job than Mendes did of showing us the gradual, insidious growth in the Nazi Party’s influence. There’s a concentration camp tableau at the end, but unlike the one Mendes gave us, it doesn’t feel tacked-on or gimmicky. If you have to present a revised version of Cabaret, this is as good as any and better than most.

And yet, and yet… I liked this version of the show, the cuts and alterations are intelligently chosen, and the show plays briskly (theoretically two hours twenty minutes including an intermission), but there wasn’t anything much wrong with the original book and score, beyond the original book’s uncomfortable presentation of Cliff as unequivocally straight. This is not a show that needs extensive revision, but for some strange reason, it usually gets it – although, of course, these days it’s hardly unusual for a major revival of a post-1940s musical to incorporate significant revisions, and the revisions here are less egregious than some.

What else is good? Henry Luxemburg as Cliff. He’s the understudy, and he’s great. One of this particular production’s huge achievements is that it’s always clear that what we’re watching is primarily Cliff’s story – which it technically is in every other version as well, but Cliff often gets somewhat lost among a parade of more colourful supporting characters. That’s not the case here. Also, the wonderful, always-welcome Harriet Thorpe (you might have seen her in AbFab) is a sharp, brassy Fraulein Kost, and Nicholas Tizzard is a stealthily insinuating Herr Ludwig. They’re impeccable. Even better, there’s Sian Phillips and Linal Haft as Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz. He’s superb, she’s perfect. Her scenes in the second act, in particular, are so riveting that they’re worth the cost of a ticket in themselves.

Which is a good thing, because you won’t get much value out of Mr. Young or Ms. Ryan. Mr. Young is essentially delivering a Xerox of James Dreyfus’s performance as the Emcee in this production’s earlier incarnation. He’s a far better singer than Mr. Dreyfus – his best, most effective moment comes with the interpolated ‘I Don’t Care Much’, because he doesn’t have to do anything much except stand still and sing the damn song – but he’s no kind of actor at all, although he certainly throws himself into it. He has approximately the charisma of a 15-watt lightbulb, and he gives the impression of having learned every gesture, every line and every vocal tic by rote, with no sense at all of what the intentions behind them might have been. And he’s better than Ms. Ryan, who seems completely at sea. She hits all her marks and has the sort of voice and look that could be convincing as Sally Bowles – you don’t need to be a great singer to score in this role – but she is never believable for even a second. She begins the show with an overdone cut-glass accent that seems about to slip off at any moment, as if it was a dress that was four sizes too big – and that’s an interesting place to start with Sally Bowles, but it’s also more or less what Anna Maxwell-Martin did in this production’s previous incarnation, and Ms. Ryan never takes the idea anywhere. Her every line is stilted; the impression you get is less of a performance in character, and more of a child playing dressup. That, too, is potentially an interesting direction in which to take Sally Bowles, but she doesn’t. There’s simply nothing there at all, apart from an uncanny ability to suck all the energy and life out of everything within fifteen feet of her onstage. At any given moment, whatever she’s doing, saying or singing, Ms. Ryan is invariably almost completely blank.

And yes, that’s cruel, but there’s a serious point: Mr. Young is a very, very good pop star. Ms. Ryan can be quite compelling on television (she was great in her guest shot in Doctor Who). This is not their venue; they’re not here because they’re suitable for their roles, they’re here because producers – I’m looking at you, Bill Kenwright – think that punters will pay to go to the theatre to, essentially, watch them jump through hoops as if they were performing seals. There’s nothing at all wrong with casting stars from other branches of the entertainment industry in order to put bums on seats – as long as those stars are capable of giving a competent account of the roles they’re supposed to be playing. This afternoon, at the curtain call, I did something I haven’t done for a very, very long time: when Mr. Young and Ms. Ryan walked out to take their bows, I stopped clapping. I was not alone. The applause dipped noticeably when they walked out, and the chatter I heard around me as I left the building* rather strongly suggested to me that a significant number of people were significantly underwhelmed with these two performers. Regional theatre audiences are not stupid. We know what is good, and we know what is cynical stunt-casting  – and it was clear what people felt they got this afternoon.

If I sound angry, I am: to put it bluntly, Mr. Young and Ms. Ryan’s performances this afternoon were an insult to my Visa statement, because their work was not of a quality that was worth paying for. Tickets are not cheap, even for touring productions; it costs a fair amount of money even to sit in the nosebleed seats, and we’re entitled to expect, once we’ve plunked down the cash or the plastic, to receive something a little more evolved than an ersatz reproduction of a more interesting performance that someone else gave somewhere else five years ago. As it stands, I’ve no idea at all what Mr. Young might bring to the role of the Emcee – I only know that he can be coached to spend two hours hitting all the same marks James Dreyfus did. That’s not theatre, it’s 3D photocopying, and it’s a waste of time and money.

* Three minutes or so before the second act began, the fire alarm went off in the theatre. The theatre’s front-of-house staff did a very, very impressive job indeed of getting people out quickly and calmly, and it was either a false alarm or something very minor because we were back inside within half an hour, but God, some people are stupid. And selfish. NO, if a fire alarm goes off and a recorded voice tells you to evacuate the building via the nearest exit, it probably ISN’T part of the pre-show for Act Two. No, you probably shouldn’t try to shove your way back to your seat against the tide of people streaming towards the exit. When you leave the building, it’s probably not a good idea to mill around immediately in front of the doors. It’s certainly not a good idea to wait for the lift (for a start, if there’s a fire alarm, the lift probably isn’t going to come) or stand at the top of the staircase complaining about having to go outside. The staff, as I said, did an absolutely brilliant job; a small but significant number of patrons made that job harder by, essentially, being stupid or selfish or both.

Legally Bland

She’s ba-aaack!

All over Manchester, this week, you’ll see the faces of Gareth Gates and Jennifer Ellison peering down from posters advertising the return engagement of Legally Blonde at the Opera House. Since this is, of course, the stage version of the Reece Witherspoon sorority-babe-goes-t0-law-school movie, you might reasonably assume that Ms. Ellison – a bubbly blonde musical theatre actress whose wider fame is based on the five years she spent in the Liverpudlian TV soap Brookside -  is playing the central role of Elle Woods, the titular blonde who enrols in Harvard Law School in order to win back her man, but ends up finding herself instead.

Nope.

You might also reasonably assume that Mr. Gates – a reality TV contestant turned pop star turned musical theatre actor – is playing the largest male role, teaching assistant Emmett Forrest (the Luke Wilson role in the film).

Again, nope.

You might further assume, on entering the theatre, purchasing a programme, and reading these two actors’ magnificently pompous (not to mention l o n g) programme bios, that you are in the presence of stars the like of which you have never seen before, gifted individuals who can hold the audience in the palms of their hands, heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, and make the lame walk again. Mr. Gates, apparently, “was awarded Best International Male in 2003/4 from MTV Asia, MTV China and MTV Taiwan”, while Ms. Ellison, after appearing in Dancing on Ice, “proved so popular that she went on to skate her way around the country on the national tour.”

Gosh. And nope.

The real leads – Faye Brookes as Elle Woods (she’s local, born in Flixton) and Iwan Lewis as Emmett – are both young, only a few years out of drama school, and very, very winning indeed. Ms. Brookes has a strong pop voice, an easy charm, and sharp comic timing; if she doesn’t quite have the effortless star quality that the wonderful Sheridan Smith brought to the role in London (yes, this is not my first time seeing the show), she also, thank God, doesn’t emulate the unpleasantly robotic performance given by Laura Bell Bundy in the telecast of the Broadway production. Mr. Lewis is even better – he’s got charm, presence, timing, a great voice, and he can act. But, oops, neither of them have yet done a soap or a reality TV show, so they don’t get their faces on the posters. That’s showbiz, folks.

The show itself is… well, the kindest description is ‘passably OK’. It’s a solid, professional effort, and it plays well enough, even in this slimmed-down touring version. The musical and lyrics (by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin – both did both) are attractive and entertaining, but never much more than that, and Heather Hach’s book, give or take a few minor alterations, is a by-the-numbers retread of the source film’s screenplay. There’s effective but never quite show-stopping choreography by Jerry Mitchell, bright costumes by Gregg Barnes, appropriately gaudy lighting by Kenneth Posner and Paul Miller, and the remnants of what was, in London and on Broadway, a terrific cartoonish set by David Rockwell. Broadway and London got 3D buildings and an actual staircase; the provinces get slightly cheaper tickets, a much smaller band, and painted flats instead of moving set pieces. It does say something for the show itself that it still works in a less elaborate production.

It’s not that I expect greatness every time I go to the theatre, but this is not a great musical, or even a particularly good one. It’s fun, but that’s not the same thing. It’s never bad, it’s always entertaining, but there is never, even for one second, any sense of what prompted the original producers and creative team to try and turn the source film into a musical. There’s a kind of effortless magic to a really good musical comedy, and it’s absent here (although Sheridan Smith, in the London production, managed to go a long way towards providing the spark that’s been missing from other incarnations of the show – really, whatever they paid her, it wasn’t enough). It’s a good-enough, entertaining-enough diversion with a wholesome message about self-empowerment, but that’s all.

So do this touring production’s two above-the-title supporting players supply the missing element of magic? It’d be lovely if they did, but no, they don’t. Ms. Ellison plays Paulette, the beauty-salon proprietor who becomes Elle’s friend and confidante (and, oh yes, falls for a hunky UPS delivery guy), and she’s perfectly OK. She sings well, dances well, gets laughs in all the right places, but this isn’t a star cameo, it’s a decent-enough supporting performance. She is, though, better than Mr. Gates, who plays Warner, the slimy ex Elle follows to law school. Admittedly, in the musical, it’s a bit of a nothing role, but Mr. Gates brings nearly nothing to it. He hits his notes and his marks, and preens on cue, but he’s neither charismatic nor funny (odd, since he managed to be both in Loserville at the West Yorkshire Playhouse earlier this year).

If all of this sounds like I had a terrible time, I didn’t. I’d seen it before, I knew what I was paying for, I had a discount code, and I was entertained, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with going to the theatre looking for empty calories every once in a while. Given the relative thinness of the writing, a bit more glitz (in the form of the bulkier set pieces that are missing from this incarnation of the show) might have been nice, but the show worked well enough without them. As I said, it’s a solid, professional, entertaining piece of work – it’s just that whenever I watch this show, or listen to the cast recording, I can’t shake the feeling that it should be better than it is.

Isles of…

It’s here. The opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. I’ll say upfront that I’m more than a little cynical about the games, and particularly about the relentless, neverending marketing of, well, seemingly everything to do with the games.

The team putting together this spectacle, though – headed by Danny Boyle – is intriguing, and it’s the biggest show this country will stage this year. So… liveblog, slightly edited, first, then commentary afterwards.

9.01pm  Opening credits – oh Gawd – start with a parody of EastEnders, mixed with Lloyd Webber’s Paganini variations and a snatch of Muse.

9.03pm Bradley Wiggins can cycle really fast for a long time, but can he ring a bell? Oh, yes he can. Good.

9.04pm Three minutes in, and we’ve got a choir of children singing already. Solo treble singing ‘Jerusalem’. He’s very good. Choirs of children from England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – they’re ordinary kids, not choral scholars, and they’re excellent. Rural scenes – grass, fields, farmers, peasants, geese. This might be who we were, but it mostly isn’t who we are today.

9.05pm – Is that Kenneth Branagh in a top hat? And look, there are some less famous actors dressed as poor people. And the choir is back to singing ‘Jerusalem’.

9.06pm – Yes, that’s Kenneth Branagh, and my God, he can mug to the cameras. There’s none of that in ‘Wallander’. Thank God. Apparently he’s playing Brunel; he’s delivering a speech from ‘The Tempest’, and clearly having the time of his life. Good job there’s a lot of scenery, because he’s leaving bite-marks in most of it.

Since this is directed by Danny Boyle, of course, the first thing I want to know is when someone is going to dive head-first into a toilet?

(Our national dignity already did that several days ago, so no, you’ll have to bet on something else.)

9.08pm – Oh, goody. Now we get a tableau vivant depicting the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent decline of rural Britain. No room in these three hours to go back through more than 250 years of our history, then.  Evelyn Glennie hammering the percussion dressed as a peasant, actors dressed as more peasants walking over turf… it’s huge. Drummers in the aisles, rising mill  chimneys… it’s undeniably impressive. And loud. Mill chimneys rising out of the ground; I’m from the middle of the area where the Industrial Revolution began, and it’s a part of our history that we don’t often show to the rest of the world. For better or worse, what happened here then changed the world, and it’s far more important, in terms of the makeup of our contemporary society, than the bucolic rural scenes we saw at the beginning.

9.13pm – As set-changes go, this one is pretty good. This section, apparently, is called ‘Pandemonium’. Here come the suffragettes. Goodness, we’re moving through history quickly here, aren’t we? The music is loopy, bombastic electro-dreck. Interesting, though, that what we’re seeing is mostly presented from the point of view of workers, with the industrialists/capitalists sidelined in a little group, apart from the main action.

9.14pm – There must be something wrong with my TV set. I can’t see any corporate logos.

9.15pm – Poppies. We’ve reached 1914.

9.16pm – Awww, cute. The Industrialists are pretending to be cho0-choo trains.

9.17pm – it’s the cover of ‘Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’! So two-thirds of the Twentieth Century can be summed up by a war memorial, industrial machinery, and the Beatles.  There’s a parade of (actual) war veterans walking through the middle of this, and it is, yes, entirely appropriate to put them centre stage. It’s a quick skip through history, from which the aristocracy and the Royal Family, so far, are conspicuously absent.

9.19pm – The grass that covered the – pitch? stage? – at the beginning is mostly gone, replaced by what looks like an iron foundry. This, actually, is interesting – a billion people around the world are watching this, and this is not the image of ourselves that we usually sell abroad.

9.21pm – The factory chimneys are sinking into the ground now, because the Tories killed our industrial base in the early 1980s.

9.22pm – and the massive iron foundry has brought forth the Olympic Rings, forged from the blood of peasant workers and Kenneth Branagh’s sweat. Or something. I think this is supposed to be moving as well as breathtakingly spectacular.

9.23pm – Film – ‘Happy and Glorious’ – about the Royal Family’s arrival at the ceremony. Couldn’t they have found something – anything – other than ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ to play behind the video sequence inside Buckingham Palace?

9.24pm – Yes. the Queen did just address Daniel Craig as Mr. Bond. She’s doing quite a nice job of not giggling at the absolute ridiculousness of it all.

9.25pm – Awww. Corgis.

9.26pm – Oh, bloody hell. The statue of Churchill just waved at HMQ’s copter (well, she’s not in it herself, obviously, it’s her body double and Daniel Craig).

9.28pm – the James Bond Theme. Heralding the Queen’s entrance into the Royal Box. Of course. NOT via parachute, that was a stunt double. And she’s introduced in French first. Like everything else.

9.30pm The Union Flag, brought in by servicemen and women. Flag raising accompanied by a performance of ‘God Save The Queen’ by a choir of deaf and hearing children. And they’re genuinely lovely, and it’s wonderful that they were given such a prominent moment in the ceremony. They get two verses of it as well. They could have gone for the usual suspects – a cathedral choir, trained choristers – and they didn’t, and the show is all the better for it.

9.33pm – ‘Second to the Right and Straight On Till Morning’. Mike Oldfield and a bunch of NHS staff, plus patients and staff from Great Ormond Street hospital. The title – the directions to Neverland that Peter Pan gave Wendy. I can think of plenty of worse things for us to celebrate here than literature for children. We’ve produced a lot of it, and a lot of it is justly celebrated throughout the world.

9.35pm – I’m a little less sure about a big dance number celebrating both kids’ literature and the NHS. The two themes don’t quite hang together. It’s very nicely staged, though. And I’m not sure whether spelling out GOSH in lights – Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital – will make sense to the rest of the world.

9.38pm – J.K. Rowling reading from Peter Pan. This is genuinely moving. If anyone shows that dreams can come true, she does.

9.39pm – Bad dreams, and things that go bump in the night, rendered via dance and puppets, with actors playing Voldemort and the Child Snatcher from ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. The flying work is terrific; this sequence is surprisingly dark, particularly given the number of kids involved.

9.40pm – and here’s a team of Mary Poppinses (what is the plural of Poppins?), chasing the bad dreams away… which unfortunately leads Mr. Oldfield to begin playing his terminally twee version of ‘In Dulci Jubilo’.

9.44pm – And the children are all safely tucked up in bed. So that’s that. It’s great that we’ve just spent nearly 15 minutes of this paying tribute to the NHS. It would be even greater if our current government wasn’t so hell-bent on dismantling it piece by piece.

9.46pm – ‘Chariots of Fire’, conducted by Simon Rattle, with Mr. Bean on synth.

9.47pm – two minutes of Mr. Bean is about as much as I can stand, and the parody of the beach scene from ‘Chariots of Fire’ is not particularly funny.

9.51pm. Gosh, a red New Mini. Which is manufactured by that well-known British company, BMW. I wonder what’s going to happen next?

Oh. A flashback to the most infamous moment of Michael Fish’s career. The 1987 hurricane that he didn’t forecast. Oops.

9.52pm. British pop music, in the form of OMD’s ‘Enola Gay’. No lyrics. Then a verse of ‘Food Glorious Food’. And was that a brief clip of ‘The Cosby Show’?

9.54pm – we’re celebrating four decades of pop music, apparently. And we’re celebrating it with black-lighting and dayglo tights and leg-warmers.

9.56pm – musical segue from ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ to ‘My Boy Lollipop’. Ouch.

9.57pm – Glam rock. Spandex jumpsuits. It’s like the finale of ‘Mamma Mia’, only bigger and with less of a sense of restraint and decorum. It’s wildly silly, but also infectiously fun, and a good deal more tongue-in-cheek than these things often are.

9.58pm – Better musical segue: Bowie to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. There are dancers playing air guitar in the aisles.

9.59pm – Punk Rock is apparently being represented this evening by a gaggle of dancing leather-clad radishes.

10.00pm – New Order. ‘Blue Monday’. Then Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’. This is the quick-fire 80s musical nightmare. Musical chronology is off – the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ was two years before Frankie’s ‘Relax’.

10.02pm – the dancing radishes are now pogoing on spring-loaded stilts. There, that’s not a sentence you expect to write every day, is it?

10.03pm – a clip of ‘Trainspotting’, followed by everyone singing  ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, followed by Huge Grunt saying ‘I love you to a walking hatstand Andie McDowell in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’. Whatever this means, it’s something to do with drugs.

10.05pm – quick flip from hip-hop to Bollywood and back. Gosh, we’re multicultural, aren’t we? Then the obligatory Amy Winehouse clip. No, it’ s not ‘Back to Black’. Then Muse’s awful ‘Uprising’, entertainingly being used as part of the soundtrack of the biggest corporate shindig this country has ever thrown.

10.07pm – and the commentators remind us that the soundtrack will be available to download from tomorrow. Good. We’d gone almost an hour without anyone trying to sell us anything, I was beginning to get worried.

10.09pm – footage of the torch relay. Lots of footage of the torch relay. Because obviously none of us have been watching the news at all at any time in the last seven weeks. I suppose they need the film clips to cover a set change in the stadium.

10.11pm – You know what’s great about this? (Oh, wait, as I typed that there was a brief clip of Camoron. Oh well). It’s about our diversity, and our urban culture. That is to say, it’s about who we really are, and not about the mythical version of this country that we usually wheel out when we try to market ourselves abroad. It’s also a singularly un-Tory vision of Britain (to the point where I suspect that some of the bigger lighting effects might be powered by the spontaneous self-immolation of Daily Mail readers). It’s easy to be cynical about what is essentially a spectacle designed to market us to the rest of the world, but a lot of what I’m seeing is genuinely surprising, and refreshingly unlike the stereotyped version of Great! Britain! that we package to tourists.

10.15pm – memorial section, which apparently means dancers in black leotards writhing to what sounds like an Enya cover of ‘Abide with Me’. Only it’s not Enya, it’s Emeli Sandé.

10.18pm. Still not convinced by the musical arrangement, but her voice is gorgeous, and this is absolutely stunning to watch. It’s even better when the backing track cuts out and she sings the last verse acapella. And I’m impressed by what this is not leaving out – this choreography is about 7/7, and it’s absolutely right that the show is acknowledging that part of our recent history.

10.20pm – and now we’re into the entrance parade of athletes of all nations. This’ll take a while.

10.22pm – Greek kid with a collection bowl. Ouch.

10.23pm – need the loo. Back in a moment.

(Move on, there’s nothing to see here.)

10.26pm – I’m back. That’s better.

10.28pm – the part of me that occasionally had to walk in processionals in church services when I was in choirs as a child/teenager/undergraduate slightly frowns on the sight of athletes filming the audience in the stadium on their smartphones/cameras as they parade in. But this is the biggest thing they’ve ever done, probably, and why the hell not? I’d want footage of it, if it was me.

10.30pm – nice matching cream suits for the Belarus team.

10.34pm – 14 minutes in to the parade, and we’re still only on Brazil. I needn’t have rushed to finish loading the dishwasher before this started.

10.38pm. The Canadian team all appear to have been shopping at Roots.

10.39pm – ooh, ‘West End Girls’. Accompanying the entrance of the teams from Chad, Chile and China.

10.44pm – Did Costa Rica recycle Belarus’s outfits?

10.46pm – the Czech team have chosen to accessorise their very smart blazers with incredibly camp shiny blue wellies and umbrellas, because it always rains here. Ha. I’m actually smiling.

10.50pm – just a reminder: the people who created this spectacle BEGAN THEIR CAREERS IN SUBSIDISED THEATRE. I know I’m shouting. Arts funding is important, and you only develop the kind of imagination you need to do this sort of thing well by learning the ropes away from the commercial arena.

10.52pm – Finland, Finland, Finland… the country where I quite want to be… pony-trekking or camping… or just watching TV… sorry, spaced out there for a moment.

10.54pm – So glad we have Aidan Burley MP’s twitter feed to lend comedy to the proceedings. What. A. Maroon:

10.55pm – Germany: campest outfits so far. Team Germany looked like a gaggle of off-duty dancers from a road production of ‘Footloose’.

11.01pm – the Queen looks like she wants a cup of tea. Can’t say I blame her.

11.05pm – Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Usain Bolt! Finally.

11.10pm – those drummers must be getting very tired.

11.13pm – Team GB won’t be up for another 45 minutes or so, apparently.

11.17pm – couldn’t Team Montenegro iron their jackets?

11.20pm – Bloody hell. It’s like the voting in Eurovision, only longer. And without the actual voting.

11.27pm – ELO in the background, irritating commentary in the foreground. The BBC’s presenters seem to feel they should deliver a constant voice-over discussion of the procession. They shouldn’t, less would be more.

11.31pm – on the one hand, the sheer number of countries involved is fascinating, and this is probably the only opportunity to show the global reach of the games. On the other hand… a parade this long is not great television, particularly coming after the first hour and a quarter of the show.

11.40pm – those poor sods from countries beginning with ‘A’. They’ve been standing now for an hour and twenty minutes, and there’s a good half-hour to go.

11.45pm – Bonsior, Tunisie!

11.47pm – quick, just time to get a drink before Team GB comes in.

11.48pm – Team USA. They, of course, have had their jackets pressed for the occasion.

11.50pm – Placing Team GB under ‘U’ in the alphabetical procession of nations obviously just a dastardly plot to get us all to watch the whole sodding show.

11.51pm – “Let’s hear it for the drummers, they’ve been at it now for hours.”

11.53pm – Oh. We’re not under ‘U’. Presumably, as host nation, we’re last.

11.55pm – Team GB. White tracksuits with gold lamé armpits. Seven billion bits of biodegradable confetti, representing everybody on the planet. It’s numbingly kitsch, absolutely staggering, and oddly moving, all at the same time.

11.56pm – Dear BBC, please stop showing us David Cameron. You get enough opportunities to do that on the News.

11.59pm – Team GB look very, very happy indeed. That’s because they got there via the Olympic VIP lanes rather than the Central Line.

12.01am – and we move from the procession to the Arctic Monkeys, and fireworks – none of which, unfortunately, are loud enough to drown out their lead singer.

12.03am – someone on Twitter just pointed out that most of the teams looked like airline cabin crew in their uniforms. Yes.

12.04am – Oh my. Cyclists with glow-in-the-dark wings.

12.06am – they were doves. Obviously. Because doves are noted for their love of cycling. It’s… odd, but also oddly lovely. One of them flies over the middle of the stadium, looking strangely like ET on his way to Phone Home.

12.07am – enter Seb Coe. In glasses. Enunciating carefully. Unfortunately he has the charisma of a bowl of Shreddies.

12.11am – Ooh. Platitudes. A bland speech, boringly delivered. Sorry, Seb. You worked very hard to make this happen, but public speaking is not your greatest strength.

12.16am – Speech #2 from Jacques Rogge. Not as good as Coe’s, and in French as well as English. It’s getting late.

12.17am – the Queen looks very, very tired. Not surprising.

12.19am – Doreen Lawrence is the first of the flag-carriers. Brilliant, and having her, of all the people who could have been chosen, lead the entrance of the flag is incredibly moving – cynical as I am about all of this, I have a lump in my throat. She’s a remarkably brave, dignified lady, and she’s absolutely the sort of person who should represent us to the world.

12.20am – and Muhammad Ali, battling Parkinson’s Disease and accompanied by a carer. Powerful.

12.23am – Lord, they’re raising this flag slowly.

12.24am – Becks. Speedboat. Canal. Meeting the final torch-carrier: Steve Redgrave. And quite right too. If anyone deserves to do this, he does.

12.27am – the oaths. These people look very nervous as they read. Huge audience watching all over the world. That can’t be easy.

12.28am – and, yes, the Olympic Torch is introduced in French.

12.30am – no, even better: Steve Redgrave is not the final torch-carrier. He’s handing the torch off to seven young athletes from this year’s team. Quite right, too.

12.33am – OK, yes, this is magnificent. There’s been a lot of insanity surrounding the run-up to this moment, but I doubt anybody has ever staged this part of the proceedings better than this. It’s a dazzling spectacle, and it has real emotional weight. And the flame in the stadium – lit by multiple young athletes, rather than one VIP -  is extraordinarily lovely.

12.37am – and that’s quite a fireworks display.

12.40am – Paul McCartney. Lip-synching, badly. For the first verse of ‘Hey Jude’, his mouth movements and the vocal track are a good four bars apart.

12.43am – at least the crowd are singing live. Unlike Sir Paul.

12.45am – na na hey Jude. Milking it a bit. Particularly since he’s mostly not singing. When so much of what has gone before has been so striking, this is a let-down. It’s a very, very bad performance.

12.47am – aaaand that’s all, folks.  Show’s over.

So… I was expecting a full-evening version of a Debbie Allen Dance Number from the Oscars. This was better than that, often much better, and some of it was genuinely remarkable and surprisingly moving. The stage-management was faultless, the lighting design was superb, and above all else it’s very clear that Danny Boyle and his team have thought long and hard about precisely how they want to present contemporary Britain to the rest of the world. This was mostly not the tourist-board, chocolate-box image of Brand Britain that we peddle abroad. This was very British (and not just English, either), to the point that some of the nuances probably aren’t going to travel abroad terribly well. It very deliberately presented nearly everything from the point of view of everyday people, and it put forward the best version of what we are: a hard-working, secular, multicultural society with a rich history and a vibrant cultural heritage. Of course there was a certain amount of schlock – that’s inevitable – but this was, overall, a far more thoughtful presentation than I think anyone was expecting, and while it was sombre when it needed to be, it was carried off with a genuine sense of fun.

It’s also, of course, important to note that – a few name actors and significant figures aside – the cast was almost entirely made up of volunteers. The performances – apart from Mr. McCartney – were faultless, and the message throughout was very clear: this is for everybody (a slogan that, at one point, was actually spelled out in lights in the stands). My cynical side notes that this of-the-people-for-the-people approach stands in stark contrast to a sporting event whose financing and marketing appears to have been designed mostly to benefit multinational corporations rather than the ordinary inhabitants of the very depressed area of east London where it’s being staged, and the presence in the stadium of Bahrain’s Prince Nasser bin Hamad al Khalifa, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Alyev leaves a rather sour taste in the mouth, but it’s still very heartening to see that the directors make a very deliberate choice to place volunteer performers and people who have made a significant contribution to society front and centre, rather than a parade of celebs, politicians and pop stars.

So no, not perfect – but striking, surreal, often gripping, occasionally very moving, and far, far better than we had any right to expect (for one thing, Wenlock and Mandeville, thank God, were nowhere to be seen). I’m surprised and genuinely impressed. This wasn’t simply a by-the-numbers retreat of a series of tired patriotic tropes. It at least attempted to show who we are and where we come from. I expected to giggle, and I mostly didn’t, and some of it was genuinely extremely powerful. By the end, my cynicism had mostly dissolved – at least, in relation to the opening ceremony. This was remarkable television. For once, we really did present our best face to the rest of the world – and it wasn’t quite the face I was expecting to see.

The geeks shall inherit…

Geeks, dorks, the invention of email, and a 2005 rock album. That’s the unlikely combination of ingredients that form the basis of Loserville, the new rock musical currently playing at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. On paper, it looks like it could be deadly. It isn’t. Actually, it’s always entertaining and sometimes wonderful. This is the rock musical equivalent of a labrador puppy – wide-eyed, full of energy, and out to have fun.

It’s based on a rock album, but it’s not really a jukebox musical (thank God). Songwriter James Bourne and his collaborator Elliot Davis started with a 2005 album called Welcome to Loserville by Bourne’s post-Busted band Son of Dork, but they haven’t simply constructed a show around the album’s ten tracks. Instead, they’ve jettisoned half the album, taken five songs that strongly suggested characters or dramatic situations, and used those songs as the starting-point for an original musical (the five songs from the album that are used in the show are considerably transformed from their original recordings).

The result is yet another rock musical set in an American high school. Yes, from Grease to Glee to High School Musical, we’ve been here before; the twist, here, is that Loserville is told mostly from the point of view of computer geeks and sci-fi nerds. It’s 1971, and Michael Dork, a teenage computer hacker/programmer (think Steve Jobs or Bill Gates) is on the brink of inventing email, but wealthy jock Eddie, the son of the CEO of a computer company, is out to steal his idea. Can Michael win the race to send the first-ever email, and win the heart of Holly, a fellow computer geek who wants to be the first female astronaut? It’s not giving anything at all away to say that yes, he can, because you’re more or less always two steps ahead of the plot. That, though, is almost beside the point.

The thing is, this very slim story is delivered with such energy and charm that any failings in the writing – and there are some – are ultimately curiously irrelevant. Bourne’s songs (which are co-written with Davis and a number of other collaborators) sound nothing at all like the pop music of 1971, but they’re fresh, sharp and tuneful (you will come out of the theatre humming ‘Ticket Outta Loserville’), and they manage the very difficult trick of transforming authentic contemporary rock music into something genuinely theatrical. Davis’s book is fast-paced, funny, commendably economical (each act runs about fifty minutes), and sprinkled with sci-fi/pop culture allusions (many Star Trek references, an extended and suitably over-the-top scene set at a fan convention, and one character – named Lucas – is writing a book that will clearly become a very well-known film franchise. Hint: it’s set in space, and he’s beginning his story with chapter four). The characters in Loserville are all stereotypes, true, but when they’re drawn this colourfully, who cares? The show never takes itself too seriously (although it stops short of being an out-and-out spoof), and in Steven Dexter’s production it’s so exuberant that you can’t help being carried along for the ride. The cast (of 20) and the tight, appropriately loud five-piece band deliver pitch-perfect performances, to the point where it’s unfair to single any individual out for special praise. These actors – all of them – have singing voices with character – there’s no glossy, robotic Lea Michele-style belting here, and thanks to Simon Baker’s impeccably clear sound design you can hear all the lyrics, which is depressingly unusual at rock musicals these days. Nick Winston’s hilariously dorky choreography is so energetic that I think I lost five pounds just watching it, and the show is presented on a marvellously inventive set by Francis O’Connor that mixes early-70s futuristic backdrops (flashing LEDs, printed circuits, spinning data tapes) with outsize educational supplies (notebooks and pencils used to suggest everything from doors and windows to bowling pins) to tremendous comic effect. In a planetarium scene in the first act (lighting by Howard Harrison), it’s even beautiful.

It’s not quite perfect. The character arc for Holly could use a little sharpening, and there’s the occasional maladroit lyric or one-liner that doesn’t quite land. What’s required, though, is judicious tweaking rather than a major rewrite: the show is almost there, and it’s never less than thoroughly entertaining. It certainly deserves a wider audience and a life beyond Leeds.

And, dammit, I want a cast album!

Get Baku! Get Baku! Get Baku to where you once belonged!

Yes, people, it’s here again! It’s the event we’ve all been waiting for! It’s the year’s most glittering televisual extravaganza! It’s a breathtaking transnational celebration of human rights abuses the very best in popular music! It’s an occasion so exciting that by the end of it I may very well have run out of exclamation marks! It’s! It’s! It’s…

…oh, right, the ibuprofen and the antihistamines just kicked in. It’s the Eurovision Song Contest. Again. And I’m not live-blogging it because jamming red-hot pokers into my eyes and ears would make a mess of the carpet. I recorded it earlier, and while I have managed to remain spoiler-free I reserve the right to make judicious use of the fast-forward button because, really, how much trauma can one person reasonably be expected to take in a single evening?

Also, I don’t drink, so I can’t numb the pain by doing a shot every time something ridiculous happens. Yes, folks, just for you, I am watching this sober. I hope you’re impressed.

And no, before you ask, I did not watch the semi-finals. What do you think I am? A masochist?

ANYway. So. We’re in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. And yes, I can find it on a map (Caspian Sea, left-hand side, about a third of the way up). Azerbaijan has vast, vast quantities of petrodollars. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan doesn’t exactly have an unblemished record when it comes to basic human rights, but never mind. They won Eurovision last year, so here we are. We open with a panning shot across Baku’s skyline, a prominent feature of which is a trio of skyscrapers that are designed to look like gas flames, just in case anyone was in any danger of forgetting where Azerbaijan’s money comes from.  Don’t mention the torture, or the intimidation of journalists, or the… no, really, don’t. There’s bound to be lots of glitter, so who cares about basic concepts of freedom as enshrined in all manner of international conventions and treaties?

There’s a four-hour time difference between Azerbaijan and the UK, so the show began at midnight local time. Given that Eurovision usually involves a level of kitsch that could not be brought forth without someone on the production team calling on the dark arts, this seems oddly appropriate. We start with fireworks, then ten seconds of a traditional singer, and then… oh my. It’s a troupe of male dancers in floaty white rainwear, some of which glows under a black light. And two of them fly over the audience.

Clearly, this year’s telecast is going to be even less restrained than usual.

Now there are traditional dancers. They’re elegant. They’re graceful. They’re obviously doomed. This section of the opening is tasteful, and yet it’s been allowed to go on for more than twenty seconds. That’s disappointing. And we haven’t even met the presenters yet! Well, apart from Graham Norton, snarking in the background.

Things kick off in earnest with a repeat performance of last year’s winning song, ‘Running Scared’. There are two people on a trapeze over the singers’ heads. Fortunately, we only get one verse before the number ends with big jets of flame shooting out of the sides of the stage. The subtext we’re meant to take away from this, presumably, is that any act unlucky enough to score Nul Points will  be barbecued.

And now, finally – Finally! – it’s time to meet our hosts. Leyla and Nargiz. Nargiz, apparently, is a lawyer. She should sue whoever measured her for her dress, which seems to be squeezing one of her boobs out like toothpaste from a tube. And they’re joined by the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabulous Eldar Gasimov, last year’s winner. He’s a bit like Nick Jonas, only bland.

Ooh. Change in the rules. Phone voting doesn’t open until every act has performed. You’d think this would be the sensible way to do things, but no, it’s a first.

Aaand we’re off. And Britain’s first, represented by a face off Mount Rushmore Engelbert Humperdinck. The outside of the hall is lit up with Union Jacks. The song is in 3/4 time, and magnificently cheesy, and Mr. Humperdinck – who really does sing ‘luurve’ – looks a bit like a chipmunk in a black single-breasted suit. There’s a pair of black-clad ballroom dancers behind him, and Mantovani wants his string section back. The song’s not bad, but Mr. Humperdinck’s big money notes at the end, I’m afraid, are a bit approximate. He’s 76, maybe he should have dropped the key a tone. It’s not embarrassing – which puts it several steps above our last few entries – but it’s also, I think, not a winner, and performing first won’t help his chances.

Now we’re off to Hungary. And yes, the outside of the hall lights up in the colours of Hungary’s national flag. Compact Disco (geddit?) with ‘Sound of our Hearts’. Power ballad, sounds like an odd cross between early Boyzone without the harmonies and late Ultravox, sung by a less charismatic Marti Pellow clone who’s wearing an oddly rigid black leather coat. Competent but uninspiring, nicely sung, could have come from any country in Europe at nearly any point in the last twenty-five years. Move on, there’s nothing to see here.

Albania. She’s a ‘devoted experimental jazz singer’, apparently. Mr. Norton tells us that she can ‘do extraordinary things with her voice. Not pleasant things, but extraordinary’. And she seems to be wearing a cruller on her head. Rona Nishliu, she’s called, bringing us ‘Suus’. The tinkly piano intro isn’t bad. Her singing, however, certainly is, although it pales next to her astonishing gown, which seems to be modelled on a British Airways club class seat circa 1993. She seems to be simultaneously channeling Bjork, Enya, and Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, with some startling high notes thrown in, presumably to bring every dog in Azerbaijan to heel.

Now. Lithuania. Donny Montell. ‘Love is Blind’. We’re in Mathis territory. He’s wearing a sequinned blindfold. I’m kind of hoping he’ll lose his footing and go crashing over the front of the stage, because the song he’s singing is stunningly boring. Oh – no, wait, a beat has come in, he’s ripped off the blindfold, and now he’s started dancing. He’s about 22, and he dances like… well, imagine Zac Efron impersonating Miss Piggy while receiving electroshock therapy.

Five. Bosnia-Herzegovina. Maya Sar, singing ‘Korake Ti Znam’. Big shoulder-pads, grand piano, pretty voice, meaningfully tortured facial expressions. As the song gets more and more overwrought, she gets up from the piano and a wind machine kicks in. At Eurovision, this is what passes for restraint.

Six. Russia. The grandmas. Buranovskiye Babushki, bringing us ‘Party for Everybody’. Oh dear Lord, there’s a prop oven onstage and they’re wearing traditional dress. Yes, it’s a novelty act. They look like they’re having a nice time, and the oven is spinning behind them. Perhaps it’s Satanic. As the number approaches what – please, God – I hope is the climax, they pass a tray of pastries around. It’s simultaneously completely horrendous and absolutely irresistible. This, I’m afraid, is the kind of moment that makes us watch Eurovision.

Iceland. Greta Salome and Jonsi, with a song called ‘Never Forget’. According to Mr. Norton, their song is possibly more suitable for a musical than for Eurovision. Jonsi might be a vampire – he seems to have fangs – and Greta is toting a violin and grinning like she’s under hypnosis. The song reminds me a little of ‘Which Witch’, the Norwegian Operamusical, which I actually saw, and which I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to forget. It’s bland, bombastic, and not bad enough to be memorable. Unlike ‘Which Witch’.

Ooh. Cyprus. I’m going there later this year. Ivi Adamou, with ‘La La Love’. Standard-issue Mediterranean-resort Eurodisco, for some reason performed on and around a pile of books. It’ll go down a storm in the beach bars, but it won’t win this evening.

France. Anggun, singing ‘Echo (You And I)’, performing with the French Gymnastics Olympic team, whose shirts seem to still be in the suitcase they forgot to pick up at the airport. Anggun is wearing a bronze breastplate with matching net curtains (by Jean-Paul Gaultier, apparently), and she’s wasted on this song, which is another slab of white-bread Europop.

Italy. Nina Zilli, ‘L’Amore e Femmina (Out of Love)’. Nice bluesy beginning. She’s sort of like a clean Amy Winehouse. She can sing, the song isn’t bad, and she and her backing singers are clearly having fun with it. In fact, I think she might be having Albania and Iceland’s fun as well. This is about as classy as Eurovision gets, and I hope she does well. Which means she’s obviously doomed.

Estonia. Ott Lepland, with ‘Kuula’. You know what’s nice, Mr. Lepland? Singing with your eyes open. It’s terribly, terribly sincere and meaningful, and he does, at least, hit his high note dead on… oh, wait. No. He hit his first high note dead on, but not the second, third or fourth. Never mind. I feel less bad about fast-forwarding through the rest of his very, very boring song now.

(Who am I kidding? I don’t feel bad about fast-forwarding through the rest of his boring song at all. I recorded it specifically so I could fast-forward through the boring songs.)

OK. Norway. Tooji, with ‘Stay’. Norway have won a couple of times in recent-ish memory, but they also gave us Jahn Teigen, who scored nul points in 1978. This could go either way. Ooh. Acrobats. A guy in a hoodie with big rings on his fingers. Synths and a drum machine. He’s so… clean. It’s like watching Justin Bieber trying to cover the Beastie Boys. I lasted twenty seconds, I hope you’re grateful.

A momentary pause. Nargiz – whose boob is still trying to break free of the side of her dress – is interviewing Mr. Humperdinck. He had a great time and sang from the heart, apparently. That’s nice.

Now it’s the home team. Sabina Babayeva, ‘When the Music Dies’. This is Eurovision, so that title is probably redundant – music died here in rehearsals, long before we tuned in. She’s wearing a pair of dead swans as reimagined by Dynasty-era Joan Collins, and her song sounds like every power ballad you’ve ever heard. She can sing, but she doesn’t quite have the power to slam it home in suitable melodramatic style. Fortunately, there are lighting effects that can do that for her.

Oh. I just found out precisely when the music died: at the beginning of her big high note at the end of the song. Ouch. Well, to be exact, it didn’t die so much as commit hari-kiri. You can actually see the note’s entrails flailing across the front of the stage. Someone get a mop before the next act comes out. There could be a nasty accident.

Romania. Mandinga – apparently, a Romanian-Cuban combo – with ‘Zaleilah’. The singer is gorgeously curvy, the song is a giant slab of Latin-tinged Euro-cheese, and her backing band look like a gaggle of flamboyantly gay Energizer Bunnies who have somehow stumbled into the Pet Shop Boys’ video for ‘Go West’. One of them is carrying a set of toy bagpipes. Another has a bright red accordion. It’s… amazing. More like this, please.

Denmark. Soluna Samay, ‘Should’ve Known Better’. Yes, than to dress like Captain Sensible. The song is competently-executed guitar-driven indie-ish pop. Fast-forward time. That’s not what we’re here for.

Greece. Eleftheria Eleftheriou, with ‘Aphrodisiac’. There are bouzoukis – or a bouzouki synth setting, at least – along with hyperactive dancing and a catchy aa-aa-aa oh-oh-oh chorus. It’s bonkers, but possibly not bonkers enough.

Ah. Sweden. A favourite, apparently. Loreen – not Soreen, Loreen – with ‘Euphoria’. She’s like a cross between Kate Bush and Kate Ryan. No, really, she’s obviously seen Kate Bush’s dance moves from ‘Babooshka’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’. The song is another slab of by-the-numbers Eurodisco, and the performance ends with her getting felt up by a dancer. It’s not completely horrible, but if this is the favourite to win, it’s a bad year.

And now Eldard’s back, introducing Turkey. Turkey’s entries are often very, very special, so I have high hopes. Can Bonomo, ‘Love Me Back’. The choreography resembles an international breakdancing class taking place in an iron foundry, flying sparks and all. The dancers have bare sleeves and grey cloth bat-wings attached at their wrists. No, I don’t know why either. It’s camper than Butlins, and the homoerotic subtext would be off the charts if the performance wasn’t so completely sexless. It’s like watching six Ken dolls do the expurgated version of a Turkish-themed disco medley. You can’t get this anywhere else on television.

Spain. Pastora Soler, ‘Quédate Conmigo’. It’s power ballad time again. It starts very soft, and builds to the pitch of a declaration of war. They’re getting a lot of use out of the wind machine this evening, or maybe her top notes caused an earthquake. She did, at least, hit very nearly all of them, which is more than can be said for several of this evening’s contestants. I think I liked the quiet bit of her song better. It was very short.

Germany. Song co-written by Jamie Cullen. Roman Lob, ‘Standing Still’. Pleasant, boring pop song. No staging tricks, just the singer, drums, piano, bass and guitar (and, um, the orchestra in the background). Where’s the cheese? There’s nothing distinctive about it at all – good or bad – which means it almost certainly won’t win.

Home stretch now. Malta. Kurt Kalleja, ‘This Is The Night’. More Eurodisco, but it’s fun – this is a very entertaining slice of disposable pop music with a catchy chorus, performed without any kind of pretentious concept by people who can actually sing, and who look like they’re having a good time on stage but don’t grin like they’ve hoovered up every illegal substance within a half-mile of the stadium through their noses.

Macedonia. Kaliopi, ‘Crno i Belo’. Another quiet, emotional beginning with a tinkly piano in the background – that and cheesy Eurodisco are this year’s two recurring musical themes. She can sing – really well – but the song goes to hell when the guitars and drums come in. What started as a pretty piano ballad very quickly descends into something that Bonnie Tyler would have rejected for being too unsubtle. Shame.

Aaaaand they’re back. Yes, it’s Jedward, the Irish entertainment industry’s joined-at-the-hip punchline, assaulting the senses with a ditty called ‘Waterline’. They entered last year as well. This year, they’ve ditched the vertical hairdos, and seem to be dressed as gold toy soldiers off a Christmas tree. The song is written-by-rote Anglo dance pop, they can’t really sing, the choreography is ridiculous, and – just like last year – they do it with magnificent conviction, even though I think I just saw the word ‘tacky’ get redefined. And yes, that’s a real fountain in the middle of the stage. They get soaked at the end, which given their costumes brings new meaning to the term ‘golden shower’. Unfortunately, the water doesn’t short out their radio mikes.

Serbia. Zeljko Joksimovic, ‘Nije Ljubav Stvar’. Everybody looks terribly serious, and he’s not the first singer this evening to start singing with his eyes closed. This is, however, the first performance tonight to feature a man in a skirt playing the clarinet. As for Mr. Joksimovic, I’m sure his mother thinks he’s wonderful, but it’s fast-forward time.

Second-to-last song now: Ukraine, Gaitana, ‘Be My Guest’. She’s dressed entirely in white tassels (OK, apart from the flowers in her hair), men in day-glo dresses break-dance behind her (sometimes they have trumpets), the video projections are a bad acid trip gone wrong, and the song is the evening’s worst contribution to the Eurodisco canon. It’s completely, magnificently deranged. Possibly more deranged than the Russian grandmas.

Last country. Waaaaah!  Moldova, Pasha Parfeny, bringing us a gem called ‘Lautar’. There’s some kind of accent on that first A but I can’t be arsed to go and find the right ASCII character. He’s dressed as the woodcutter in a fairytale – yes, including a leather toolbelt – and his backing singers appear to be five big-breasted extras from ‘The Flintstones’. The song is very… Moldovan. He’s selling the song as if his life depends on it. It possibly does. The choreography is insane – at one point he does strong-arm poses while the backing singers writhe on the floor. It’s the most ridiculously kitsch performance of the evening so far, including the grandmas.

So that’s it. The presenters are back to explain the voting rules. Nargiz’s boob apparently finally escaped from the clutches of the white ballgown somewhere in the later part of the show, so she’s had to confine the girls in something a little more restrictive. Her current dress – flesh-coloured, the better to disguise any escaping boobage that might occur later -  is basically underwiring with a skirt attached. Eldar looks like he’s auditioning for the role of Billy Flynn in a non-Equity road company of ‘Chicago’.  The voting is now open, so we get a recap of all the songs, so it’s now time for me to fast-forward. A lot. Unfortunately, I’ve just had another snatch of Ms. Albania’s public primal scream therapy. Don’t ever say I’m not prepared to suffer in the name of writing.

The presenters are plugging the CD and DVD of this year’s songs, because of course this is music you’ll want to take home and treasure forever.

And now we have another quick reminder of all the songs. Whoopee. More Albanian shrieking.

And the voting lines have closed. This year, you only got fifteen minutes to make your futile gesture.

Interval act. Lots of lasers, a parade of torches (no pitchforks, which is perhaps lucky for Ms. Albania), traditional Azerbaijani instruments. In an astonishing coincidence, Mr. Norton informs us, the pop star who will sing the lead vocal in this interval act just happens to be married to the Azerbaijani President’s daughter. Gosh. How… coincidental. This is the sort of Big Production Number they used to do on the Oscars, only twice as big. In case you might be wondering why I put myself through this crap every year: this. This bit. There’s nothing else like it on television. Dancers, drums, exploding fireballs, singers entering suspended on a wire from the flies, a light show that makes Las Vegas look like something you’d get at Wal-Mart to put on a Christmas tree. It’s amazing. It would be more amazing this year if it wasn’t being fronted by Mr. related-to-the-President-by-marriage Azerbaijani pop star, who is – how can I say this nicely? – a bit crap. Golly, I wonder how he got this gig?

And now Nargiz is terrorising people in the green room. She’s nice to the Azerbaijani singer, who seems to be chewing gum. She doesn’t really speak to anyone else much, although she does say hi to Norway. No nationalism here, then. Oh no, not at all.

I’m going to fast-forward through a lot of the scoring, because really, who wants to sit through an hour of this? Sweden takes an early lead. The voting, as usual, at least partly plays out along weirdly nationalistic lines. Jedward got a point before Mr. Humperdinck did. Given the nature of this contest, that’s not a surprise. Belgium threw him a bone, though – he doesn’t have nul points.

Nargiz has changed dresses again – black, with everything between her neck and her knees chained rigidly into place. Probably a good idea. A spillage could have proved fatal. Not to her, obviously – I think she’s remote-controlled – but perhaps to a cameraman or a member of the audience. We’re still in the bottom three, with one point; Macedonia gave Albania twelve points. That’s utterly terrifying. Denmark, after 25 countries have voted, still have nul points. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to win. Then Iceland vote, and the tables turn slightly. The UK is now bottom, nobody has nul points.

The woman announcing the Swedish vote is amazing. She has an Estuary accent and big glasses, and looks a bit like the middle-aged love-child of Kate Copstick and Giant Haystacks.

Gosh. Now we have six points. We’re still bottom. Oh, no we’re not, we’ve got another two points from Latvia. But there’s ten more countries to vote, so there’s still plenty of time for us to hit bottom again.

Nail-biting, isn’t it?

The Finnish vote, announced by Lordi (if you don’t know already, go to Google). He’s dressed as some kind of demon from the final season of ‘Angel’. And he keeps doing things with his tongue. Why is there never a giant anvil when you need one?

And the winner is… Loreen. Not the best song in this year’s contest, and not the best performance either (come to that, it’s nowhere near as good as either of the last two winners); the UK came second-to-last. Loreen, to her credit, has apparently spoken in the press about Azerbaijan’s human rights record, which – as Mr. Norton points out – is a topic that most other contestants have avoided. So Loreen gets to do her song again, and next year’s show will come from Sweden. Lucky Sweden, they get to pay for most of it.

Overall: not a vintage year. Too much bland sludge, not enough catastrophic kitsch. No dresses that sprout butterfly wings halfway through a song, no perspex pianos, no bondage gear, and a seemingly endless succession of Eurodisco songs that all sounded pretty much the same. Disappointing, although the jaw-dropping opening number and interval act slightly redressed the balance.

Still, at least we didn’t come last ( which we did two years ago). I’ll be tuning in next year, because even in a bad year there’s nothing else quite like this on television; in the meantime, here’s Loreen. No, I don’t know why she won either.