Theatre
Disenchanted
Giles Gordon
Blonde! (Old Vic)
Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and The Actor's Nightmare (Ambassadors) False Admissions (Lyric Studio, Hammersmith) An Evening with Paul Daniels (Prince of Wales)
The bad news is that neither Tim Rice, lyricist of Blondel, nor Prince John can find a rhyme for Richard, as in Lionheart. The good news is that Ed Mirvish's refur- bishment of the Old Dick is glorious. The £2.5 million which he has spent on buying and tarting up the lady has made him the proud proprietor of the most gorgeous theatre in London. The exterior, with slender pillars, now resembles the 1818 facade. Clare Ferraby has modelled the in- terior on engravings of the Vic in the 1880s. She has reinstated the twinned boxes, the proscenium arch, the ceiling dome and painted the whole in ivory, apricot, coral pink, pewter, gold and silver. The curtains are red velvet with twinkling stars (which I could do without). It's all as light as a Pollock's toy theatre. There's lots of leg room, air conditioning, and the bars and foyers are spacious. The entrance is lavish, welcoming and elegant.
'Come back with us to the Middle Ages,' sing the four joke monks (Cantabile) in plainsong in front of Tim Goodchild's cod mediaeval stained-glass-windowed set with portraits of Norman and Plantagenet monarchs as if by Francis Carruthers Gould. The trouble is that nothing in Tim Rice's and composer Stephen Oliver's musical is precise. We're in the Middle Ages of Shaftesbury Avenue or the Victoria Palace ('Saladin Days' is the least instantly forgettable song) rather than in 1189, although that date is invoked.
Blonde! (Paul Nicholas, bejeaned and codpieced, husky and vaguely embarrassed) is an unmotivated wandering minstrel with a backing group called — wait for it — the Blondettes. They look like the Weird Sisters, decamped from Macbeth's Scotland, with the best legs, or tights, in 12th-century England. Blondes girl, Fiona (Sharon Lee Hill), is a simpering serf, slightly less wet than him. Chris Langham is sprightly as the assassin with bow and arrow (Robin Hood lived then) who tries to rid Bad Prince John (David Burt, saturnine looking, too loud of voice: it's a very old theatre, the Vic; and wasn't made for mikes) of the troublesome minstrel. But the anachronisms in the book and on stage — with the exception of the mediaeval legs, or tights — jar: French onion men have joke Gallic moustaches and bicycles, Spanish dancers flamenco skirts and castanets, and the grande finale presents the most ghastly neon-lit disco.
Peter James's restless direction does what it has to but Blonde is a vapid memorial to all
that is mediocre, smug, vulgar, tawdry, bland, anti-mind and uninspired in show biz.
From monks to nuns, or one Nun. If the editor of Private Eye were to be so reckless as to spend an evening with Sister Mary Ig- natius (Maria Aiken, miscast but more than competent — indeed, swingeing — as a rav- ing, murderous Irish nun) he would, I suspect, be less surprised that American author Christopher Durang, or an unacknowledged British adapter, has con- signed him to Hell than dispirited by the company he'd keep in Old Nick's place, in- cluding Tim Rice and the much missed (in the Waterloo Road) Andrew Lloyd Web- ber. Sister Mary, before shooting dead ex- convent pupils who have sinned, nails a plastic doll to a cross. How daringly hilarious. Nevertheless, the play — and its companion piece, The Actor's Nightmare, which has Christopher Timothy as an actor playing without benefit of rehearsal in hackneyed stage vehicles from Hamlet to Endgame (with plastic bags in the dustbins) — is surely less offensive to Christians than to theatre-goers.
Paul Dart has designed for Shared Ex- periences enervating production of Marivaux's 1737 masterpiece, Les Fausses Confidences (sensibly translated by Timberlake Wertenbaker), a set which resembles a box of Black Magic, with costumes of black silk and satin which make the eight actors look like chocolates, only one (Arlequin: Nick Dunning) with a soft centre. I suspect the play is a kind of classical Last Year in Marienbad which, to work in English, has to be done with style, elegance, fine speaking and a modicum of humour. Mike Alfred's cast (other than the experienced Philip Voss) mutter and mum- ble the lines sotto voce as if improvising a play. Dorante (John Price, in need of a haircut) is in love with Araminte, a wealthy widow (Holly Wilson, who expresses pas- sion by rolling her eyes). By the end of the brooding evening — all the characters are edgy neurotics who treat the world as a maze, truth and love beguiled by etiquette — he wins her. The company are also doing a livelier Marivaux, Successful Strategies (L'Heureux Stratageme).
For me, to be a proper magician you have to have a foreign moniker and demeanour. Paul Daniels, from Cleveland, England and television, is as much stand-up comic as conjurer. His abrasive northern humour Panders to his audience's prejudices — a Japanese gentleman was constantly insulted but an MP who'd written for tickets on House of Commons notepaper was left unscathed. A nice joke about the newish 50p piece: it's made the shape it is so that a spanner may prise it from a Scotman's fist.
Two members of the audience, one a surveyor from Orpington, the other a bookie from Cornwall, who went on stage were told: 'Don't stand with your hands on your hips, the stage hands get excited.' Mr Daniels had established, before inviting them on board, that both volunteers were sitting with their wives. The tricks are well enough timed, and if you don't know how the last one is done — Mr Daniels being levitated by his gleaming female assistants, dressed in Star Wars gear — I suspect you wouldn't be able to work it out even if you attended every performance.
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