London Spotlight: July 2005

Theater-loving tourists heading with great anticipation to London often have very specific destinations in mind. Many of them want to see nothing but musicals. At the moment, the West End has a number of likely prospects for eager scouts. Mary Poppins remains a hot ticket, and added in the last month or so to the list of musical hotties are: 1) Billy Elliott — about which many local critics have made a noisy fuss; and 2) the great Frank Loesser-Abe Burrows Guys and Dolls, which gets frequent revivals here and has Ewan McGregor starring in the current one — with Broadway’s (and television’s) Jane Krakowski present as perennially unmarried Miss Adelaide.

Obtaining a seat to these productions may be difficult for enthusiasts who haven’t planned ahead, however, and aren’t interested in dealing with touts. Hopefuls who do get in to these clicks may still not have their fill afterwards and will poke around for additional fare. Even newer attractions are in store. H.M.S. Pinafore will be offered at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park this month. There was a time when W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were the only names worth mentioning if the subject of English musical comedy came up. Though that’s changed since the end of the 19th century and Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, Vivien Ellis, Sandy Wilson, Lionel Bart, and Andrew Lloyd Webber emerged, Gilbert and Sullivan remain seminal and — more significantly — entertaining. The collaborating eminent Victorians are worth a look and a listen for anyone who truly claims to be interested in the genre. There was also a time when the Motown Sound was all you heard on the radio. Well, a new revue called Dancing in the Streets that draws attention to Detroit’s major music export is at hand. These sorts of compiled exercises are extremely popular in London, although they frequently have a tacky aura about them and tend not to impress the critics. Still, there’s no gainsaying the power of the basic material.

Some visitors heading to London box offices — or the half-price tickets booth in Leicester Square — are primed to see first-rate actors working in happy profusion. This month they’ll find what they want at the Donmar Warehouse, where Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter debut a new Peter Oswald translation of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart. It’s a talky play, if ever there was one (lots for translator Oswald to grapple with), but McTeer and Walter have proved in the past that they can talk the talk. Neither of them is a household name stateside, but they’re both known and admired by any Englishman or Englishwoman who follows today’s theater. The confrontation between Elizabeth I (the sinuous Walter) and Mary, Queen of Scots (the imposing McTeer) should have sparks flying.

Some theater fans on the prowl want to see established English and Irish works done on their home turf-or near their home turf. Satisfaction here, too, since Joe Orton’s scathing and hilarious send-up of English manners What the Butler Saw bows at the Hampstead in the middle of the month and Brian Friel’s Aristocrats returns at the National’s Lyttleton. While the Hampstead has been in shaky shape since the new and enlarged theater opened, the National is on an amazing winning streak. Perhaps the former is playing it safe with Orton’s acclaimed farce, and the latter is merely planning to extend its list of triumphs with Friel’s examination of life among the shabby upper-class. Just like Motown, the basic material is A-OK, and Aristocrats cast member Gina McKee is also a bit of all right.

Some determined visitors to the emerald isle are in the mood for new plays. At the Soho Theatre there’s Shoreditch Madonna. The play is evidently not concerned with the famous singing mogul’s latest address but is described as “a modern tale of love and loss set against the underground art world of London’s East End.” Playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz won the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright 2004. That’s something to go on. The locals are mad as hell about current situations in the Middle East, which gives Talking to Terrorists at The Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs the sound of something ripped from the headlines. And the same might be said for The Arab-Israeli Cookbook at the Tricycle. This last one may be framed in a more conciliatory fashion, since food will be prepared while stories of real Muslims, Jews, and Christians are told. According to advance notice, one of the dishes is “Fadi’s testicles.”

Mention of the Tricycle brings up another reason tourists flock here in droves, although it may not be the pressing reason it deserves to be. The Tricycle in Kilburn is a fringe theater and as such isn’t heavily plugged by various chambers of commerce. Neither is the Bush Theatre, now at the southeast end of Shepherd’s Bush Green for 33 years. But a startling number of successful playwrights have sprung fully finished from both venues. In July, the 90-seat Bush is presenting something called The Obituary Show, and five will get you 10 it’ll be rewarding in unexpected ways. Regular patrons glad to sit knee and knee and head to knee for the goodies offered are quite rewarding in themselves.