the times | Friday April 8 2022 11uptight but dedicated Nurse Apple
(Chrystine Symone, making a good
fist of a slightly difficult part) and
a blithely faux psychiatric doctor
named Hapgood (Jordan Broatch,
charismatic in a professional debut).
Unfortunately, their tentative yet
liberating love is played out with theA peppy outing for Sondheim’s cult early f lop
T
he rarity factor is practically
off the scale when it comes
to this cartoonishly bright,
buoyant revival of Stephen
Sondheim’s early cult flop.
It has been staged with emphatic flair
by Georgie Rankcom, the artistic
director of a young London-based
company called the Grey Area, which
focuses on musical theatre.
Materialising on Broadway in 1964
before audiences that were already in
thrall to shows such as Hello, Dolly!
and Oliver!, Sondheim’s audaciously
“fanciful” (his word) musical-comedy
closed after just nine performances.
Was the failure justified? It is more
than a mite understandable.
Sondheim’s score is memorable —
witty, sometimes touching and
melodious, but robust; Arthur
Laurents’s ambitious book, however,
is far trickier. An offbeat social
satire spun round a core theme of
nonconformity, it has a curiously half-baked romantic relationship
shoehorned into it.
The setting is a bankrupt town
run by a self-aggrandising female
mayor — a role originally
essayed by Angela Lansbury in
her first crack at a big musical,
and here played with camp
panache by Alex Young. Abetted
by a trio of equally bumbling
and conniving underlings, she
fakes a miracle that attracts
the tourists — euphemistically
referred to as “pilgrims” —
while appealing to the inmates
of the local psychiatric hospital. What
ensues is a debate — that’s very much
of its time (think post-beatnik, pre-
hippy era) — about who is, versus who
is not, sane, in which we the audience
are implicated.
Sondheim and Laurents’s lively
relic is a celebration of difference,
a philosophical stance teased out
through the love interest between thenurse in the guise
of her alter ego as a French
coquette, a character
device that seems pretty
unpersuasively silly. The show’s
underlying attitudes are
perhaps better embodied in
Rankcom’s otherwise likeably
sure-footed production by an
admirably peppy and diverse
ensemble.
Whatever you make of the
show’s flighty dramatic content,
there is always Sondheim’s
music and lyrics to savour.
These include the nurse’s
anthemic There Won’t Be Trumpets,
the tender titular ballad and a lovely,
seminal climactic duet, as well as
some of the more playful or rallying
numbers delivered by the mayor and
her corrupt cronies. Worth a look
and a listen.
Donald Hutera
To May 7, southwarkplayhouse.co.ukAnyone
Can Whistle
Southwark Playhouse, SE1
{{{((n o c d u u p R s a e sth
m
Ttheatre
Alex Young and Danny LanePretty Yende and
Angel Blue exude
pathos and power
in Covent Garden’s
double-cast revival,
finds Neil Fisher
These are two Violettas to die for
C
oughing is back in vogue at
the Royal Opera House, on
stage and off, as Covent
Garden returns to the rise
and fall of opera’s most
famous consumptive, Verdi’s Violetta
Valéry. She is expiring throughout
April, and an empathetically
spluttering audience were roused
to enormous ovations for the two
sopranos who head the revival — it’s
double-cast, and double-conducted.
The applause was deserved in both
cases, but my laurels go to the South
African soprano Pretty Yende, who
also takes the role when the
production is broadcast in cinemas.
The challenge for any Violetta is
finding the right vocal personality
for each of the very different three
acts while developing a character
throughout. Yende’s Violetta is
touchingly credible while singing with
silky, honeyed elegance. The party
girl who opens the night is flirty, giggly
and unaware of her fatal illness.
“No one looks after me,” she tells her
gawping admirer, Stephen Costello’swill welcome her
with open arms.
And, as she dies
in the arms of her
beloved, she uses her
last words to comfort
him, singing the
music like a lullaby
as she tries to shush
his sobs.
If I were making
an ideal cast out of
the Royal Opera’s
ingredients, I’d make
one swap. Vladimir
Stoyanov, cast with
Blue, is a superb
Germont in
thunderous voice;
the smoother voice
of Dimitri Platanias,
with Yende, is less
imposing. Neither of
the tenor heroes is
vintage material, but
Yende has been more
fortunate in Costello’s
“lost puppy” Alfredo
than Blue is with a
gargly-sounding
Dmytro Popov. And the battle of the
batons? It’s a score draw: conducting
Blue, Renato Balsadonna shapes
Verdi’s music grandly and draws
stirring playing from the orchestra.
Meanwhile, Giacomo Sagripanti,
Yende’s maestro, is more imaginative
in his interpretative touches, but
there are some bumpy tempo lurches
along the way.
To Apr 18, in cinemas on Apr 13,
roh.org.ukwhere her big voice is heading. She
attacks the music with authority as
well as agility.
Yet for the nuances, the little
touches that give Richard Eyre’s 1994
production a spark again (the revival
director is Bárbara Lluch, no more
than efficient), it’s Yende who digs
deeper in gesture and voice. There is
the brief, heartbreaking smile when
she first meets her prospective father-
in-law, Germont, naively thinking heAlfredo. Yet when she trips through
her monologue, Sempre libera, with
coloratura as bubbly as the
champagne in her glass, there is a
streak of vulnerability.
It’s this quality that’s ultimately
lacking from Angel Blue, the
Californian soprano cast alongside
Yende. It’s a long time since this house
has heard such a powerful Violetta:
Blue has been announced as Aida in
the ROH’s 2022-23 season, a sign ofLa Traviata
Royal Opera House
{{{{(Angel Blue with
Dmytro Popov, left,
and Pretty Yende
with Stephen Costelloopera
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
gets wrapped up in Sheila Hicks p13
Rebecca Franks
goes green with Joyce DiDonato p13
Clive Davis
is frustrated by a family drama p14
FIRST
NIGHT
the best
critics on
the top
shows of
the week
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AlfredoYet h h Sh DmytroPopovATRISTRAM KENTON