THEGAYUK

Author: Tim Baros

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Bend It Like Beckham

    ★★★★★ | Bend It Like Beckham

    Does a musical version of the hit film “Bend it Like Beckham” work? You bet it does!

    The plot from the film is successfully transformed into a fantastic singing and dancing musical with a clever set, memorable songs, superb costumes and an excellent cast.

    Natalie Dew is amazing as Jess, a young woman coming of age in a Sikh household in the Asian community of Southall, London in 2002. She loves the game of football, enough so that she’s got two large posters of David Beckham in her bedroom.

    One day Jess is spotted playing football by Jules (Lauren Samuels, playing the Keira Knightley role from the film) who plays for the Hounslow Harriers team. Jess goes along to one of the team’s practices where coach Joe (Jamie Campbell Bowen) takes in interest in her playing, as well as in her, and Jess decides to play for the team, without telling her parents. She knows that her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bhamra (Tony Jayawardena and Natasha Jayetileke), will forbid her from playing the game that she absolutely loves.

    Coach Joe feels that Jess is good enough to make the England team, and along with Jules, they urge her to stay in the game, even after her parents do find out. Meanwhile, Jess’s older sister Pinky (Preeya Kalidas) is about to get married to a man whose family thinks that Pinky is not suitable for their son. But all Mr. and Mrs. Bhamra want is the best for their daughters, they worked hard and have provided a good life for them and they want them to continue to live, and follow, their traditional Sikh life. But Jesse has a dream, and she wants to play for England, but will her parents stop her from fulfilling this dream?

    To say Bend it Like Beckham is a feel good show is an understatement. From start to finish we are treated to a very vibrant and colourful spectacle, the likes which we haven’t seen in the West End in a long time. And the cast is perfect. Drew brings just the right amount of vulnerability and youthness to the role of Jess – it’s like the part was specifically written for her. Kalidas as Pinky brings the show punch, sass, and vavavoom. Jamel Andreas is very good as Jess’s best friend Tony who is perfect for Jess, perhaps too perfect. Other standouts include Sophie-Louise Dann as Jule’s blond mom, she’s sassy, funny and a blond bombshell. And Rekha Sawhney beautifully sings a traditional wedding song called, Sadaa Chardhdi Kalaa that will mesmerize you.

    Gurinder Chadha, who wrote and directed the movie, which is set in the pre 9/11 era, also wrote (with Paul Mayeda Berges) and directed this stage version. She’s captured the spirit of Jess and her love of the game that most British people can relate to, and has given us a show that at no point gets boring or drags – it’s dialogue is very witty yet very dramatic. And the whole cast do wonders with it, and with the set that changes from a shopping street, to Mr. and Mrs. Bhamra’s living room, to an actual football field, all cleverly done. And the show wouldn’t have the name ‘Beckham’ in it if he didn’t make an appearance. The actual David Beckham is NOT in the show, but a lookalike is (along with a Victoria Beckham lookalike).

    Let’s hope the real David Beckham goes to see it, he will absolutely love it.

    Bend it Like Beckham is playing at The Phoenix Theatre.

  • THEATRE REVIEW | McQueen

    ★★★ | McQueen

    Fashion Designer Alexander McQueen committed suicide in February, 2010 at the age of 39. But his work and memory lives on, including in a new play simply called McQueen.

    Stephen Wight plays (and looks just like) McQueen, who was one of the most celebrated UK fashion designers of our time. McQueen, though very successful, had a troubled life; drugs, depression, the suicide of his friend and muse Isabella Blow, who practically helped McQueen become the success that he was, and the death of his mother are some of the factors that probably led him to take his own life in his Central London flat on Feb. 11, 2010.

    McQueen is written not as a play about his life but more about the journey McQueen took to build his career. The journey is brought on by fictional character Dahlia (Dianna Agron) – the idea taken from McQueen’s 2008 collection ‘The Girl Who Lived in the Tree.’ She’s basically a stalker who breaks into McQueen’s flat. He’s startled at first, but her childlike personality and beautiful looks and curvy body appeal to McQueen in a visual sense.

    So McQueen and Dahlia travel through a few important milestones in McQueen’s life; the tailor shop where McQueen got his start and where, on the spot, he makes a dress for Dahlia. They go to his mother’s home, where she is upstairs in bed, sick. And McQueen gets to be reunited with the ghost that is Blow (a smashing Tracy-Ann Oberman), the woman who bought up all of McQueen’s first collection but who still wants to know why he didn’t take her with him to the top, and why did he leave her behind when it was she who made him what he was. In between these pit stops we are visually treated to very slow moving dancers who change the set and morph with, through and in between each other. Visually it’s stunning, you don’t realise the set is changing because the movements are so mesmerising. But this doesn’t make up for the fact that McQueen the play is a bit too thin and doesn’t provide the theatregoer with a true celebration and story of McQueen’s life.

    Wight is amazing as McQueen. In fact, he looks exactly like McQueen did in his later years. Wight captures all of his mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, including the scene where he instantaneously creates a dress for Dahlia. It’s an excellent performance. Agron as Dahlia is given lots of soliloquy dialogue to recite – is she talking to McQueen, the audience, or to herself? And yes, she does recite, likes she’s reading from a teleprompter. Hers is not a great performance as she’s with the amazing Wright during the whole show. But Oberman practically steals the show from Wright in her all-too-brief turn as Bow. It’s a showstopping performance, with Oberman dressed in a sexy negligee. Playwright James Phillips and Director John Caird have produced a play that is weak in biography but beautiful in its presentation, but we’re still left wanting to know more about McQueen and his life and his fashions. We will have to do with the V&A Museum’s Savage Beauty exhibition as well as the highly-acclaimed book about McQueen; Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin, by Andrew Wilson, as well as Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, by Dana Thomas.

    McQueen is playing at the St. James Theatre until June 27th:

    http://www.stjamestheatre.co.uk/theatre/mcqueen

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Carrie The Musical

    A musical adaptation of Stephen King’s supernatural novel Carrie, which was a hit 1976 film, has just opened, and it’s very good!

    It’s hard to believe that music could be used effectively to tell the story of Carrie White, a high school student who’s picked on by her fellow classmates. But the songs in the show work, telling the tale of this strange young woman, who lacks self-confidence and has an overprotective and very religious mother, helped by a super-talented cast who look like they have just stepped out of the pages of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.

    Evelyn Hoskins, in the role that made Sissy Spacek a star (as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for her performance) plays White. Timid, meak, and small in stature, she’s not like the rest of the girls in her school.

    Carrie the Musical, told in narrative form by one of the girls who survives the climactic ending, opens (as does the film) with Carrie experiencing her first period in the gym showers. She has no idea what is happening to her body, and this gives her female classmates the opportunity to ridicule her, and to call her names, including Scary White. Carrie is angry about this, and uses her supernatural powers to make the lightbulbs explode. Meanwhile, one of the girls videotapes it and soon enough the other students are watching it on their mobile phones.

    The female classmates are led by Chris (Gabriella Williams). She’s mean, evil, yet glamorous and very popular. She’s got a ‘thing’ for teasing Carrie, and the rest of her friends follow suit. Carrie is taken under the wing of gym teacher Ms. Gardner (Jodie Jacobs), who makes the girls reluctantly apologize to Carrie. All but Chris apologises, so Ms. Gardner bans her from the upcoming prom. Chris vows to get even with Carrie. Meanwhile Sue (Sarah McNicholas) feels sorry for Carrie, and feels bad for making fun of her in the locker room. So she asks her boyfriend Tommy (Greg Miller-Burns) to take Carrie to the prom. At first he says no, but then agrees to take her after Carrie is inspired by a poem he had written that he read aloud in class, which is one of the shows most poignant scenes.

    Carrie’s mom (Kim Criswell), just about treats her daughter like a small child, not listening to her but praying for her sins and singing religious songs. She’s fanatical yet motherly in a creepy kind of way.

    So Tommy asks Carrie to the prom, and she says yes, much to the utter dismay of her mother. There’s no surprise what takes place at the prom if you’ve already seen the film or read the book. Carrie and Tommy go to the prom and Carrie gets blood dumped on her as they stand on stage after being voted Prom King and Queen (with the vote being manipulated by Chris’s gang of girls). Carrie uses her powers to cause mayhem, death, and destruction, and it’s all expertly executed by the cast and crew of the show.

    Hoskins is perfect as Carrie. Though while at times her singing is reminiscent of a watching a high school musical, she really comes into her own as the show proceeds, especially after showing some real emotion when Tommy asks her to the prom. As her mom, Criswell is superb. She’s Piper Laurie (who played the mother in the film) with pipes, especially when singing ‘ When There’s No One.’ Williams is fantastic as well. She’s the bully, yet she’s also the beauty. Carrie is Williams’s professional debut. But Miller-Burns is the standout among the cast. As the young man who takes Carrie to the prom, we see a sparkle in his eye, a richness and emotion to his voice, and he’s the perfect actor to play Tommy, the man every boy wants to be like and the man every girl wants to be with.

    The stage becomes, from one minute, the locker room, then a class room, then Carrie’s dining room, to the finale – the school’s gymnasium where the prom is held. The dumping of the blood on Carrie’s head and the mayhem that follows is superbly executed, and extremely intense. Director and Choreographer Gary Lloyd has done an amazing job in putting together this production. Carrie the Musical, with music by Michael Gore and Lyrics by Dean Pitchford (of Fame fame), was a big flop when it debuted on Broadway in 1988 and subsequently in an Off-Broadway production in 2012. But with its London debut the show looks ready to hit the West End. Let’s hope it does, with the same cast and crew – it’s bound to be a hit.

  • FILM REVIEW | Hidden Away, A Spanish Teenage Gay Love Story

    Don’t be fooled into thinking that Hidden Away is just another boy meets boy love story with a less than great cover photo of its two male leads. It’s a very well told and acted Spanish teenage gay love story that’s very heartwarming and enduring as well. ★★★★

    Hidden Away is not told as a simple coming of age story, and it’s not told in chronological order, which makes understanding and piecing the film together a bit confusing. Director Mikel Rueda has decided to tell the story in a way in which is supposedly meant for the viewer to put themselves into the characters shoes. So it opens with Ibrahim, a 14-year-old young man, walking along the road hitchhiking, escaping from something which we won’t know until the very end. He’s from Morocco, but had gone to Spain a few years back looking for a better future. He’s been living in shelters, hoping to get his official papers so that he can stay in Spain. He lives in Bilbao, fully settled, attending school and living in a shelter for boys just like him. Then there is Rafa, also 14, Spanish, living with his parents. Rafa hangs out with boys just like himself, yet there’s one thing different about Rafa. He doesn’t like girls. There is one girl in particular who practically throws herself at him, but he just doesn’t reciprocate, much to the horror of his friends. Even though Ibrahim and Rafa’s paths initially cross (at one point in a club urinal), they don’t meet until a bit later in the film. And there’s a spark. A spark that at first betells an evolving and very close friendship between the young men, but then evolves into more than that. While there is no actual sex scenes in this film, Rafa and Ibrahim’s bond appears to be more than just physical, it’s emotional as well.

    Ibrahim gets mixed up with a local gang that gets him to sell drugs, while Rafa whiles away the time looking for any reason to be with him. They initially bond over a cigarette, but their friendship, and romance, blossoms after they spend a day together hanging out and going bowling. It’s a relationship that we know is too good to be true. And when Ibrahim receives a letter from the government wanting to extradite him back to Morocco, he sees no other way but to run away, with Rafa by his side.

    It’s the performances that make this film fantastic. German Alcaruz as Rafa brings an innocence to his part, a young man who knows what he wants and doesn’t care what his friends think. His facial expressions will melt your heart – Alcarazu gives a believable and touching performance. Adil Koukouh is also very good as Ibrahim. He’s bigger and more mature looking than Rafa, but he also has a special something that makes Rafa’s attraction to him seem very credible. Also very very good is Joseba Ugalde as Rafa’s best friend Guille. He knows he’s losing Rafa to Ibrahim and he’s OK with it, even when Rafa and Ibrahim have to go on the run, there’s a very touching scene when Rafa and Guille say goodbye to each and Guille tells Rafa that’s he doesn’t quite understand what is going on.

    Hidden Away is a bit difficult to comprehend in the beginning as the scenes do jump around, and the subtitles on this film are quite small and at times hard to read, but stick with it till the very end and you will be rewarded with a love story that’s unique in it’s telling and at it’s very core is a film that tells the story of young love, young love that we’ve all experienced.

    Hidden Away is now available to buy on DVD.

     

    by Tim Baros

  • FILM REVIEW | Hidden Away, A Spanish Teenage Gay Love Story

    Don’t be fooled into thinking that Hidden Away is just another boy meets boy love story with a less than great cover photo of its two male leads. It’s a very well told and acted Spanish teenage gay love story that’s very heartwarming and enduring as well. ★★★★

    Hidden Away is not told as a simple coming of age story, and it’s not told in chronological order, which makes understanding and piecing the film together a bit confusing. Director Mikel Rueda has decided to tell the story in a way in which is supposedly meant for the viewer to put themselves into the characters shoes. So it opens with Ibrahim, a 14-year-old young man, walking along the road hitchhiking, escaping from something which we won’t know until the very end. He’s from Morocco, but had gone to Spain a few years back looking for a better future. He’s been living in shelters, hoping to get his official papers so that he can stay in Spain. He lives in Bilbao, fully settled, attending school and living in a shelter for boys just like him. Then there is Rafa, also 14, Spanish, living with his parents. Rafa hangs out with boys just like himself, yet there’s one thing different about Rafa. He doesn’t like girls. There is one girl in particular who practically throws herself at him, but he just doesn’t reciprocate, much to the horror of his friends. Even though Ibrahim and Rafa’s paths initially cross (at one point in a club urinal), they don’t meet until a bit later in the film. And there’s a spark. A spark that at first betells an evolving and very close friendship between the young men, but then evolves into more than that. While there is no actual sex scenes in this film, Rafa and Ibrahim’s bond appears to be more than just physical, it’s emotional as well.

    Ibrahim gets mixed up with a local gang that gets him to sell drugs, while Rafa whiles away the time looking for any reason to be with him. They initially bond over a cigarette, but their friendship, and romance, blossoms after they spend a day together hanging out and going bowling. It’s a relationship that we know is too good to be true. And when Ibrahim receives a letter from the government wanting to extradite him back to Morocco, he sees no other way but to run away, with Rafa by his side.

    It’s the performances that make this film fantastic. German Alcaruz as Rafa brings an innocence to his part, a young man who knows what he wants and doesn’t care what his friends think. His facial expressions will melt your heart – Alcarazu gives a believable and touching performance. Adil Koukouh is also very good as Ibrahim. He’s bigger and more mature looking than Rafa, but he also has a special something that makes Rafa’s attraction to him seem very credible. Also very very good is Joseba Ugalde as Rafa’s best friend Guille. He knows he’s losing Rafa to Ibrahim and he’s OK with it, even when Rafa and Ibrahim have to go on the run, there’s a very touching scene when Rafa and Guille say goodbye to each and Guille tells Rafa that’s he doesn’t quite understand what is going on.

    Hidden Away is a bit difficult to comprehend in the beginning as the scenes do jump around, and the subtitles on this film are quite small and at times hard to read, but stick with it till the very end and you will be rewarded with a love story that’s unique in it’s telling and at it’s very core is a film that tells the story of young love, young love that we’ve all experienced.

    Available to by from Amazon

     

  • FILM REVIEW | Drown, a film that sinks to new depths

    ★ | Drown

    Three lifeguards pal around until things turn ugly one night in the new film ‘Drown.’

    ‘Drown’ is a film with very ugly overtones. And it’s not even a positive portrayal of a young gay man who continues to get beaten up and up by an evil homophobic asshole. Handsome Jack Matthews plays Phil. He’s the newby lifeguard in a team that includes the unpredictable and very volatile Len (Matt Levett). They form a trio with fellow lifeguard nick-named Meat (Harry Cook), and together all three bond, in some sort of strange way.

    Len has some kind of strange fascination for Phil, it’s either because Phil is gay and Len doesn’t like it or because Len is secretly attracted to Phil, though won’t admit it to himself. Len is also jealous of Meat, because of his very large penis (not shown unfortunately). But when Phil beats Len in a Lifeguard competition, it causes Len to fume with anger and more jealously because he was beaten by a homosexual.

    Len’s anger grows even more after Phil’s very handsome boyfriend Tom (Sam Anderson) enters the picture.

    Drown is told in flashbacks beginning with their night out to celebrate Phil’s win. But it’s a night out that turns out to be both dangerous, and extremely absurd.

    In flashbacks taking us away from that night out, we see Len beating Phil up, but Phil denies Len ever doing so, and we’re not told why. Surely an extremely homophobic lifeguard with sadistic tendencies needs to be shown the door? And perhaps arrested? Meat is an accomplice to Len’s evil doings – he’s the bitch that Len seems to desperately want. Len even orders Meat to take off injured Phil’s clothes off on a deserted beach? Including his underwear. And most of the time the dialogue is ridiculous, especially in the moments when Len and Meat are discussing Meat’s large penis.

    I was just hoping Len would either put it in his mouth or take it up his arse, just to relieve some of his sexual anxiety. And while there are beautiful images of the men swimming, and sunsets, and a woman who swims and swims out to the ocean with the likelihood that she won’t be coming back used as a metaphor for Len’s personality, it all makes for a highly uncomfortable and almost unwatchable 93-minute film.

    Available from Amazon

    Order Drown from Amazon | Amazon Instant | iTunes

  • BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival wrap up

    The BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival has unfortunately come to a close after a highly successful nine days of films and events. It was perhaps the best festival in a long time. Tim Baros takes us through the highlights:

    – Dior and I: An exquisite (and nail biting) documentary of Raf Simon’s first eight weeks as artistic director of Christian Dior, in which time he has to put together a collection. Director Frederic Tcheng uniquely blends voiceovers of an actor speaking excepts from Dior’s memoir intertwined with the pressure Simons and his staff are under. Dior and I is one of the better fashion documentaries ever made. It is now in wide release.
    Read our review of Dior And I

    – Portrait of a Serial Monogamist: Canadian Directors Christina Zeidler and John Mitchell’s tale of 40-something year old Lesbian Elsie (a perfectly cast Diane Flacks) who breaks up with her girlfriend but is not so sure that she’s done the right thing, especially after meeting another woman right away who appears to be ‘the perfect one.’ Portrait is funny and clever and will leave you laughing out loud of its portrayal of Lesbian relationships amongst friends.

    – Drunktown’s Finest: 34-year old Native American Director Sydney Freeland’s well done portrait of three Navajo Indian characters all coming of age and exploring not only their identities but also their relationships with their families and their culture. An amazing job by Freeland, who also wrote the script.

    – 54: The Director’s Cut: A highlight of the festival – this is the film that gay director Mark Christopher shot and intended to release in 1998 but was not able to due to pressure from the studio to ‘degay’ it. Literal cutting room floor and lost footage has been incorporated into the original version of this story of a young man (Ryan Phillippe) being accepted into the historic NYC club’s inner circle, and includes the gay scenes originally taken out. This film still takes us back to a time when it was all about the music and the dancing.
    Read our review of 54

    – Tiger Orange: A sweet tale of two gay brothers, one – Chet (Mark Strano) who looks after the family hardware store in a small town in California while younger brother rebel Todd (porn star Johnny Hazard – real name Frank Valenti) comes back home because nothing’s happening for him in Los Angeles. Chet and Todd are opposites in every way – Chet is very subdued and simple and plain looking, while Todd is hot and sexy with a body to die for and a naughty personality to match. Valenti is the true star of this film – not only does he light up the screen when he’s one, but he can act as well.

    – Match: Sir Patrick Stewart is an older dance teacher (Toby Powell) whose life is shaken up when a straight couple show up one day on his doorstep to supposedly interview him about his life as a dance teacher. But what they really want from his is to find out if he’s the father of the husband. Stewart has never been better in a film that’s stretched a bit too long and with a cast that can’t quite match Stewart in the acting department.

    – The Last One: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt: A film, half about the AIDS quilt and the other half about statistics and other AID’s organisations, it would’ve worked better if it stuck to its main subject – the quilt. We’ve seen so many documentaries about AIDS and statistics, as well as the quilt, and this documentary gives us nothing new.

    – The Golden Age of the American Male: This film is just a series of images and videos from the archives of the Athletic Model’s Guild, which was created by Bob Mizer. The Golden Age is pretty much 65 minutes of soft porn, if that’s your thing.

    – Frangipani: The first LGBT Sri Lankan film, it tells the tale of two men (very good Dasun Pathirana and Jehan Sri Kanth) who fall in love with each other in spite of one of them getting married to a woman. Beautifully shot and easy to identify with – Director, Writer and Producer Visakesa Chandrasekaram) has made a lush film that is highly recommended.

    – Everlasting Love: A strange, eerie Spanish film that can be best described as Stranger on a Lake (without the Lake) meets Twilight. Throw in some flesh eating and many boring moments and what you have is a film that should be missed.

    – Fulboy: A documentary about the unseen world of football, Director Martin Farina was given full access to a professional Argentinean football team. He speaks to them in their hotel rooms and in their locker room, when, lucky for us, they are not shy about displaying their athletic bodies, from head to toe, for the camera. Not much a narrative on this one, but it’s worth watching as you feel like a fly on the wall in a very straight male environment.

    There was an excellent selection of shorts, and a few stand out:
    – Hole: Gay disabled actor Ken Harrower plays a man who frequents video booths but gets frustrated when he’s unable to receive sexual pleasure, so he enlists the help of his male carer to get it.

    – Limanakia: The strangest yet sexiest short film I have ever seen. Gay men frolic on the rocks of a beach somewhere in Greece, all naked and all having sex, shot in motion-moving imagery with the sun providing a hint of gold on the bodies and on the rocks.

    – been too long at the FAIR: Who would’ve guessed that there is a gay cinema in Queens, New York? This short documentary exposes the FAIR Theater in Jackson Heights as one of the oldest continuing running gay establishments in New York City.

    All in all, it was a great festival and we’re looking forward to next year. Well done FLARE gang!

  • FILM REVIEW | Kissing Darkness

    ★★ | Kissing Darkness

    New gay film Kissing Darkness can be summed up as summer camp meets the Twilight movies.

    Five college boys decide to skip the gay pride festivities in their hometown of Los Angeles to spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods. They are young, cute, sexy and believe it or not one of them is straight Vlad (the very hot Nick Airus). He’s vile, unhappy, homophobic and luckily for us spends more of the film with his shirt off. Why he would want to go on a camping trip with four other gay men is beyond me. Of course, all of other men fancy him, but Vlad’s nipples aren’t the only things lurking around. There’s also Malice Valeria, a local woman (ghost?) who, after catching her boyfriend in bed with another man decides to bite Vlad (and the rest of boys one by one) to turn them into her slaves.

    In between all of this we see the men in the house in various states of undress, it’s pleasing to the eye and takes away from a story that’s pretty bad. Unfortunately, it’s all Kissing Darkness has going for it – the eye candy (did I mention how hot Airus is)?

    The plot is quite ridiculous, the acting mediocre, and luckily for us it’s only 87 minutes. Gay Director and writer James Townsend, who plays one of the boy’s lover in the film (he shows up near the end), has put together a film that’s so bad that it’s not even good. Hey, but at least there are lots of young male bodies to look at.

    The tagline of the film is ‘Love Has Never Been so Cruel’ – that pretty much says it all!

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Beautiful

    ★★★★ | Beautiful

    Will you Still Love me tomorrow. I feel the Earth Move. You’ve got a Friend. These are just a few songs written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin that are included in the new West End Show Beautiful – The Carole King Musical.

    While Carole King might not be known to the younger generation, anyone 50 and older know her, and her music, very well. In the 1960s she, along with her husband Goffin, wrote dozens and dozens of hit songs including The Locomotion, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, and Up on The Roof. Beautiful tells the story of King’s life, how when she was a young girl and sold her first song to music producer Don Kirshner, to meeting her songwriting partner, and partner in life, Gerry Goffin, to being a single mother as well as a very very successful singer and songwriter. In Beautiful, King is played by the energetic Katie Brayben, from the piano playing right down to the curly hair, the resemblance is very good.

    Beautiful covers King’s life from age 16 to the age of 29, when she’s at Carnegie Hall performing So Far Away – a hit single from her mega-selling and multiple grammy winning album Tapestry. It’s just Brayben and the piano on stage. The show then goes back in time, the time when teenager King (Brayben) is at home in Brooklyn wanting to go into Manhattan to sell songs to Kirshner, but her mom tells her that she’s not going into Manhattan all by herself. When King does get to Kirshner’s (played by Gary Trainor) office, she meets people there who will be the key players in her life. She meets Cynthia Weil (Lorna Want) and Barry Mann (Ian McIntosh), a songwriting couple, but more importantly she meets Goffin (Alan Morrissey). They start a romance, but King gets pregnant so her and Goffin (played by Alan Morrissey) get married. He loves her, and they literally make beautiful mussic together – they are at their best when writing songs, and they write some of the biggest hits of the 1960s. But over time Goffin starts to feel like he’s being tied down and wants to take advantage of their new celebrity status, while King wants them to go home at the end of each day and spend time as a family. It’s a stressful situation for King, and it doesn’t help that Goffin is having mental problems to go along with his infidelity. And this is the plot of Beautiful – the relationship between King and Goffin and their very close friendship with Weil and Mann.

    But in between this storytelling we get great musical performances by the ensemble in the show – the actors who play the musicians that King and Goffin write songs for. And this is when Beautiful comes alive. The ensemble really lets it rip, and brings life and colour to the show when they perform songs such as 1650 Broadway Melody, Some Kind of Wonderful and On Broadway, among others.

    Beautiful is a female singer, songwriter, mother, daughter, an American, and British-born Brayben does a fine job in portraying King. Recently seen in American Psycho, Brayben can sing and act, and can hit all the notes, and like King, Brayben writes her own music. Her hairstyle changes throughout the course of the show, most of these styles, however, make her look much older than the character she is playing.

    Morrissey is fine as Goffin, excited about their love yet still not sure that’s he’s happy or not in their relationship. Want and McIntosh are excellent as their best friends, and even more so when they provide emotional support after King’s breakup of her marriage. The staging of the show is fine, moving from living rooms to recording studios to Kirshner’s offices – but it’s Peter Kaczorowski‘s lighting that literally and figuratively lights up the stage. If only the book of the show was as good. By Douglas McGrath, the book is very mundane and not very dramatic – sure we care about King’s life but give us more of the music and razzle-dazzle and less of their bickering and conversations.It’s a musical that should be a musical, yet Beautiful plays more like a drama show with bits of music thrown in. But the show redeems itself when near the end, Brayben (as King) and the ensemble bring down the house with the song ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” – it’s a moment when you realize that King really is the greatest female songwriter of all time.

    Beautiful The Carole King Musical plays at the Aldwych Theatre,  until 5th August 2017

  • THEATRE REVIEW | Superman The Musical, London

    ★★ | Superman The Musical, London

    It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no – it’s Superman the Musical.

    Playing until this weekend at the Leicester Square Theatre, Superman is not just a musical but it is also a comical look at the man we all know and love as the saviour of Gotham City, preventing disasters and capturing criminals.

    Originally produced for the Broadway stage in 1966, and coming directly from Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre where it played last year, its transfer to the West End brings with it a set made up of cardboard props, and a cast who mostly struggle with the all-encompassing singing, dancing and acting.

    Craig Berry plays Superman. Sure, he’s got the look down – the black gelled-back hair and the chiselled chin, but Berry just doesn’t have much stage presence for playing such a larger than life character. Sure, the costume fits him, but that’s about it. Michelle LaFortune doesn’t fare much better. Her Lois Lane is bland. LaFortune can sing, but it doesn’t help when she forgets a line or two.

    So what’s the plot you ask? We should know it as we’ve all seen those Superman movies. Lane is in love with Superman but not with Clark Kent, who works with her at the Daily Planet, and you see Clark Kent is actually Superman! Another man in the office – Max Mencken (a good Paul Harwood) – is the office lothario and vies for Lane’s affections, though he’s with Sydney (a good Sarah Kennedy), a clueless co-worker who’s looking for love in all the wrong places. However, when Mencken teams up with Dr Abner Sedgwick (an excellent Matthew Ibbotson) to devise a plan to turn Superman into an ordinary mortal, one who would obey Dr Sedgwick’s every command, things don’t look too good for Superman, and it is Lane who happens to fall in love with Dr Sedgwick’s assistant Jim (Charlie Vose), and forgets all about Superman.

    Superman plays like an amateur production (a high school production) with a few talented members of the cast (Harwood, Kennedy and especially Ibbotson), but it’s the ones who aren’t as talented that bring this show down. And the backup dancers do their darndest, all trying very hard to keep things moving (especially the adorable Christine Harris), but they just can’t save this production. Music by Charles Strouse with lyrics by Lee Adams help the show move along, but the end just doesn’t come soon enough.

  • FILM REVIEW | American Sniper

    ★★★★ | American Sniper

    Add American Sniper to the list of good Clint Eastwood movies.

    While it’s not his best film ever (see Unforgiven and J. Edgar) nor his worst film (see the recently poorly received Jersey Boys), it’s a loyal and factual re-telling of the true story of Chris Kyle, a member of the elite Nave SEALS. He was the most lethal sniper in the history of the US Military, having 160 confirmed kills. He was also a husband and the father of two children, but being the best sniper and serving his country were the most important things in his life.

    Kyle (played valiantly and accurately by Bradley Cooper) in the beginning of the film is a ranch hand in Texas. His life doesn’t amount to much, especially after he finds his girlfriend in bed with another man. But after injuring his arm, he decides to join the navy. His commitment for his country becomes embedded in him after the catastrophic events of 9/11. After months of gruelling training, he and his team are sent to Iraq to fight the enemy. And they are tasked with some of the most dangerous missions in the military. This includes heading directly into enemy territory and looking for a man called Shiekh Al-Obodi (Navid Negahban), one of the leaders of the Taliban.

    Kyle serves four tours, in between each one going home to be with his family but getting the pull to serve again. He’s urged against it by his pretty wife Tanya (an amazing Sienna Miller). Even the birth of his two children doesn’t keep him home. He continues increasing his sniper kill tally, which includes women and children who threaten to kill US soldiers. Kyle is also determined to kill a man called Mustafa (played by Sammy Shiek). Mustafa is a Syrian shooter who had competed for his country in the Olympics. He’s also killing the insurgents (the Americans on the ground). Kyle is determined to kill him as he has killed one of his fellow soldiers. The film then becomes a cat and mouse story to dramatic effect, where Mustafa aims to shoot the soldiers but Kyle aims to shoot him. It all culminates in an amazing shootout between the US soldiers trapped on a rooftop in Sadr City while the enemy comes in from all sides, all in the midst of a massive sandstorm. It’s one of Eastwood’s best film sequences I’ve ever seen.

    However, American Sniper doesn’t end there. Kyle, after getting shot in the massive shootout, returns home, but has a hard time rejoining society, and his wife has a hard time getting connected with him. He’s a changed man, but seems to slightly recover after he starts helping soldiers at a local veterans hospital and also helps to train them on weapons and combat tactics to lift their spirits. American Sniper would’ve had a better impact if the film ended after the shootout in Sadr City. This last bit of the film seems to be tacked on to tell the rest of Kyle’s story.

    Cooper plays Kyle to great effect, however, he’s a bit too old to be playing Kyle in his younger years. But Cooper is believable as a soldier during the war, he holds his gun and interacts with his fellow (younger) soldiers very well. It’s a performance that has just won him a nomination for the Best Actor Oscar. Miller is the standout of the film, she’s excellent as Tanya – it’s the best performance of her career. And while American Sniper looks and feels like a good film, the last ten minutes don’t need to be there. American Sniper is adapted by the book of the same name by actor turned-screenwriter Jason Dean Hall. Kyle was shot and killed in Texas in 2013 by a 25-year old Marine Corps Veteran, a veteran he was trying to help.