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VANITY FAIR
 
Reviewing the revival of the musical originally seen at the Queen's Theatre in November 1962.
This revival was staged as part of the Covent Garden Festival in May 2001.

It's easy to forget that the musical of Vanity Fair was eagerly awaited in London in the winter of 1962. After all, it wasn't often that a really serious classical novel was tackled by British writers of musicals. Musical adaptations of Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities were not, in the way that Thackeray's novel is, really serious. I mean, you couldn't call Pickwick serious, or Ann Veronica (never mind that it dealt with female emancipation and - in its slapdash way - prison conditions). Thackeray demanded something else. The scope of a novel so dense as Vanity Fair, and with such a thick vein of social satire running through it, was completely outside British musicals, and expectations were high. Here, heaven knows, was an epic novel, and it needed an epic musical to match it.
 
There were other reasons why this show was so looked forward to. It was an elegant, grand production starring the most beloved elderly actress of the century, Dame Sybil Thorndike, starring in a musical for the first time at the age of eighty. Its leading lady, Frances Cuka, had made her name in A Taste of Honey, but this was to be her first musical. Much attention was also focused on the show's composer, Julian Slade, for this was the score that marked his breakaway from his long collaboration with Dorothy Reynolds. His collaborators now were to be Robin Miller (book and lyrics) and Alan Pryce-Jones (book). Could the creator of Salad Days and Free as Air, and the less successful Wildest Dreams (the work that ended his partnership with Reynolds), rise to the occasion?
 
In the event, Vanity Fair was troubled throughout its brief life. Its values as a musical seemed old-fashioned, even cumbersome. The provincial opening had to cope with the theatre's previous occupant, an ice show that refused to melt. Vanity Fair's content was changed throughout its tour. At some point, it may have dawned on the producers that they had a leading lady who couldn't really sing. Numbers had to be reallocated when another male member of the cast couldn't manage his big number. The director walked out, and had to be brought back off the street. In London, the critical reception was unfriendly, and severe winter weather finally did for Vanity Fair, closing it after 70 performances at the Queen's Theatre.
 
Now, thanks to the remarkable work of Stewart Nicholls in reviving neglected British musicals, Slade and one of his original collaborators (librettist Robin Miller;
Pryce-Jones' name has now completely vanished from the credits) have revisited their work and come up with a new version, revising the book, retaining most of the original production's musical numbers (as well as a contingent from a Cheltenham production with a revised script), but dropping others and inserting two new numbers.
 
The book must have presented very considerable difficulties, defying distillation in to an hour or so's dialogue, and there are moments when Thackeray's highly individual style of wit seems far away, but Miller's new version (almost certainly more fluid than that used in the original London production) decides the aspects of the novel it wants to concentrate on and goes for them with confidence. Sometimes, one wondered if a more kaleidoscopic, rather than a completely linear, approach, would have coped with the material better. For my own money I would have liked to have seen the book tackled more drastically. Thackeray didn't take us to the battlefields in his novel, but there seems to me to be no reason why the musical shouldn't go there, 'opening up' the book in a filmic way that would give more shade to the show. On the battlefield, we might have got to know Dobbin and the unfortunate George Osborne, rather better, and there may have been added poignancy to their songs. Perhaps Miller is too faithful to Thackeray, but I longed for this show to exist in more than one dimension.
 
There is no doubt of the commitment of Nicholls and his well-drilled team of experienced and youthful players in this welcome revival. As in every Nicholls' production, the musical standards are high. Of course, one longs to hear the Douglas Gamley orchestrations used in London in 1962 (Gamley was a colourful orchestrator with a style that is clearly recognisable), but Rowland Lee handles the score with confidence, and draws wonders from the cast.
 
Nicholls and his company take every opportunity to promote the many qualities in the material. Becky Sharp's numbers have never been heard to better advantage. Suzy Bloom imbues everything she sings with energy, and deals well with Becky's shifting machinations. Although Becky is the centre of the show, the other characters are brought in to focus, including a diminutive but skilful Miss Crawley from Josephine Gordon, a vulnerable George Osborne from Daniel Fine and a robust Rawdon Crawley from Andrew Halliday.
 
Nicholas Charters' as a warm-hearted Dobbin wins our vote for the most dependable man. He is enormously helped by having the two best songs, 'There He Is' (shared in a duet with Rosie Jenkins' affecting Amelia) and 'Someone To Believe In'. Charters alerts us to the passion that takes the show on to a different level, and we feel the genuine thrill that only good musical theatre can bring. 'There He Is' in fact provides one of the loveliest things of the evening, staged by Nicholls with imaginative simplicity. It's the moment when Vanity Fair leaps in to life.
 
In the original production, the show was threaded by a female Street Singer who served up the title song as a commentary on what was happening to the characters. It was inspired of Nicholls to turn this female balladeer in to a male singer - The Showman - sinuous and sexually suggestive. The effect of his frequent interruptions is to frame the show; he is the Regency version of the MC in Cabaret. Here, it works well on one level, but the sardonic attitude of The Showman doesn't always seem to reflect the tone of Miller's libretto, but stand in for it.
 
Of course, one of the main purposes of this revival is to give us the opportunity to reappraise the score, from which only two of the numbers were recorded, by Gordon Boyd (the original Dobbin). I think that Vanity Fair's score probably needs the full panoply of an orchestra to make it fully blossom, but 'There He Is' and 'Someone To Believe In' contradict those who think of Slade as a writer of inconsequential lightness, and the title song (with some of Miller's most deft lyrics) is persistently effective.
 
It is good, too, to have Slade writing so complex a number as 'How To Live Well On Nothing A Year'; it has a real theatrical thrust to it that isn't always evident elsewhere. How good, too, to hear 'Advice To Women' (sung here with direct feeling by Daniel Fine), a fine song with a cadence that underpins Slade's depth of feeling. But it is Dobbin who gets the lion's share of the score (in the original production, he also got to sing 'Advice To Women). The songs that concern Miss Crawley are more hybrid, and don't always have the scale of the enterprise. Becky's songs seem to me to lack individuality, and their effect is muted, although Bloom does everything to sell them.
 
In the new numbers specially written for this revival, Slade and Miller offer a nippy duet for Miss Crawley and Rawdon, 'The Wickedest Man In The World', and a second-act number for Rebecca and a gathering of Bohemians, 'La Vie Boheme', a high-kicking highlight that comes across as Slade with a dash of Jerry Herman.
 
Unusually for a British musical, Vanity Fair has been reworked and reworked, as it edges towards a completely satisfactory adaptation of that enormous novel. It may be its fate in British musical theatre, rather as it is Candide's fate in American musical theatre, to be constantly reinvented. There is certainly a gem here, but - to borrow a phrase that may even have been heard on the battlefields of Waterloo - it needs another great push.

Revival of Vanity Fair, with book and lyrics by Robin Miller and music by Julian Slade. Directed by Stewart Nicholls, with musical direction by Rowland Lee.
 

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