- HARD TIMES INDEED -
A new British musical at the Haymarket.
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- A programme note for the new British musical at the Haymarket
tells us that Hard Times is ‘a very British musical’.
I would like to have half an hour with the creators of this dire
effort to ask exactly what they mean. Do they see the British
elements of pantomime and music-hall that permeate the proceedings
as defining ‘a very British British musical’? Have
they, indeed, seen any musicals since the low days of the 1970s?
Perhaps they have, but they have learned nothing from them.
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- Dickens has always been an easy touch for musicals - no copyright,
and the freedom to do whatever one wishes with the material.
Adaptations of his novels have never been completely artistically
successful, although some (Oliver! and Pickwick)
had commercial success. The programme (a dubious bargain at £3)
takes several pages to give us social history, leading us to
think that we may be in for a pungent, intelligent treatment
of the old storyteller’s account of exploitation in the
dark satanic mills. But it is intelligence that is almost totally
missing here. The story of Stephen Blackpool’s goodness
against the terrible factory conditions is reduced to a highly
embarrassing sub-plot, sung and acted by leading ladies who have
found time to varnish their nails beautifully. When Hard Times
moves into serious mode the effect is completely bogus, with
music that is totally anonymous and lacking in colour or melody.
My companion and I could not recollect a single line of the score
we had endured for three hours. It’s an unforgivable achievement.
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- The old device of a play-within-a-play is worked to death,
and the episodic nature of the production is emphasised by Roy
Hudd (the show’s only saving grace) continually coming on
to announce a new segment. Mr Sleary’s circus gives the
chance for movement and invention, but the choreography is deadly,
and the clowns are lacking in personality - how sad, too, to
see among them Ray C. Davis, an actor who has worked so well
in so many British musicals. At one point, in desperation, a
pantomime camel is brought on. The audience seemed delighted
by this frivolity. Peter Blake then proceeded to whip it. Even
in the most unkind circuses, I doubt if camels were subjected
to such treatment, but this is the level on which the piece operates.
The mindlessness is numbing.
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- The hopelessness of it all becomes evident only a few minutes
after the curtain has risen. The opening number, that should
envelop our interest, is interrupted by the appearance of no
less a being than Dickens himself (Brian Blessed), and the number
never gets going again. The show can’t even come up with
a good first act closer. Instead, a girl comes on with a sign
proclaiming ‘Interval’ and Hudd, with some justification,
tells us that this is the moment we have all been looking forward
to. The chorine then kicks her legs up and exits. I thought I
was at the Windmill. Other low-points include a song called ‘Spring’
(were we about to have something as entrancing as Elizabeth Barrett
sang in the garden of Robert and Elizabeth? - not likely!).
A swing festooned with flowers descended from the wings. A characterless
leading lady sat and swung and sang a song that I have thankfully
forgotten. The chorus came on dressed as petals with little taps
on their fingers. They laid on the stage and tapped out a rhythm.
Busby Berkeley might have made something of it.
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- Many of the cast work their socks off, and one’s heart
goes out to them. Malcolm Rennie explodes with energy, but his
songs are dreadful. Ann Emery as Mrs Sleary (replacing Patsy
Rowlands, who has vanished before the show’s opening, perhaps
because she didn’t want to sing a frightful number upside
down on a bed) gives a performance of huge vulgarity, quite enjoyable
in its unimportant way. I hope Miss Emery has got a good book
on the go, because she vanishes almost completely from the second
act. Peter Blake’s cad has style but his songs, too, are
appalling, and he is not helped by Susan Jane Tanner as a Dickens’
grotesque. This is a horror of a performance that might have
seemed better with a gifted comedienne in the role. The younger
leading men (Matt Rawle and Glenn Willcox) look strong and acquit
themselves with enough presence to suggest they might be worth
watching in something else. The younger leading ladies, one of
whom seems to have stepped on stage straight out of Les Miserables,
have little chance to establish themselves.
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- This leaves us with Mr Hudd and Mr Blessed, the twin stars
of Hard Times. Mr Blessed as Dickens and then Gradgrind
looks as if he wishes he were somewhere else. Perhaps this is
one mountain the marvellously larger-than-life actor cannot climb.
At one point, to the evident consternation of his fellow-actors,
he forgot which character he was playing, addressing Hudd as
Mr Dickens (the role Blessed was himself playing). Blessed also
gets to sing a thing called ‘When I Was A Boy’, at
which point the expensive programme gave one something to bury
one’s head in. He is also reduced to getting through a song
of Gilbertian rhymes that sounds like ‘A Modern Major General’
- quite awful. When his co-star faltered, Hudd - as he tries
to do whenever he can - used his familiar music-hall comic persona
to get some fun going, but even he can only do so much. And when
he sings a song about the alphabet (and the chorus make up the
shape of the letters with their bodies) there really is no charity
left.
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- At the matinee I attended, the stalls were one third full,
and the rest of the theatre closed. I fancy that Hard Times
will have to work hard to gain a foothold, but it doesn’t
deserve to run. In these hard times, when British musicals are
so thin on the ground, this show amounts to a crime against humanity.
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- HARD TIMES
Written by Christopher Tookey and Hugh Thomas, presented at the
Theatre Royal Haymarket by Christopher Tookey and Penny Penny
on June 6. Directed by Christopher Tookey
The cast comprised Roy Hudd, Brian Blessed, Susan Jane Tanner,
Peter Blake, Russell Wilcox, Philip Cox, Malcolm Rennie, Ann
Emery, Jan Graveson, Helen Anker, Matt Rawle, Alicia Davies,
Matthew Storey, Tim Laurenti, Steve Fortune, Ray C Davis, Leon
Webster, Lucy Harris, Lesley-Anne Johnson, Jamie Read, John Stacey,
Rachel Spry, Rebecca Ryan and Delia du Sol.
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