Tag Archives: darren hirst

All It Could Be

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All My Sons, written by Arthur Miller
Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London
18th August 2010

Arthur Miller was regarded with something approaching awe in the post-Second World War period. Seemingly critical of American capitalism, investigated by McCarthy’s Un-American  activities committee, married to Marilyn Monroe and the author of four hugely popular plays, he garnered a lot of media attention. Those plays – Death of a Salesman, A View From the Bridge, The Crucible and All My Sons – are still frequently seen  on the worldwide stage.

As the years went by Miller’s notoriety, critical acclaim and success receded very substantially even though the later years of his career saw him write many plays which were the equal of his earlier successes. If anything his later plays were subtler in their approach and had less of a tendency to attempt to sum up the moral issues of the day (and the play) in the death of a lead character in the final scenes  of the script.

Given all of this, it is no surprise that the play currently being seen by sold-out audiences in the West End of London is one of the four huge commercial and critical successes mentioned above which were written at the height of public awareness of his career. There is also no surprise that a review from the Telegraph observing the link between the story of the play – about a man who allows faulty aeroplane parts to be shipped to the air force for use overseas – and the current controversy about badly supplied UK soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq is printed large on the outside of the building. The play may have been written in 1947 but we are assured that it is still relevant for today.

Both that review and the conclusion of the play may be a little simplistic for my tastes but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that this is a very good production indeed. One of the reasons why it is hard to identify the best performance in this play is because the whole cast are producing work of a very high standard.

On the face of it there is nothing revolutionary about this production. Director Howard Davies previously worked on the play some ten years ago and the stage set here is very similar to others I have seen used for the play over the last thirty years. But it is the acting of the company which means that this version of the play is a huge success. David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker are well known to the audience from their TV work and are on outstanding form as Joe and Kate Keller. Ms Wanamaker displays the necessary mix of distraction, fatalism and strength which are part of the character of Mrs Keller while Suchet catches just the right blend of headstrongness and ebullience which are found in Mr Keller. The would-be-married couple of Chris Keller and Anne Deever, supported by Joe but stridently opposed by Kate, are captured excellently by the twin talents of Stephen Campbell Moore and Jemima Rooper.

This is a production where there are no real flaws. The play has its limitations and has dated but it is well worth its revival as would be virtually all of Miller’s work. On one hand it would have been nice to see some risks taken with the direction but with acting on display of this strength there is very little need to change a winning formula.

A play by any other name would smell as sweet…….

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 The RSC production of Romeo and Juliet which is currently playing in its Stratford-Upon-Avon base and which will transfer to the Roundhouse in Camden, London  later in the year is a golden opportunity to see one of the finest productions of Shakespeare in many a year.

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Circus! Brighton!

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Anyone in Brighton wishing to see Circolombia (it’s a circus, it’s from Colombia) at Freerange at the Fringe Festival, can get two tickets for the price of one for Thursday’s performance. Mention my name and the choreographer, Felicity Simpson at the box office and they’ll sort you out. I’ve seen them in rehearsal and they’re very, very good indeed.

Hicksville?

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Greg Hicks is at the heart and soul of the current RSC ensemble who are gathered to perform a number of Shakespeare’s classic works at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The ensemble began its work last year and will continue to work together until 2011 – although rumour has it that Hicks will leave early.

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Back From the Land of Ice and Snow

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I don’t like snow.

The members of Sad Cafe have been working on an album. Their lead vocalist, Paul Young (no, not the other guy of the same name – this one was also in Mike & the Mechanics) passed away. Before he died he had completed vocal tracks for around 30 new songs. A plan was put together to get the surviving musicians together to turn this into the fully fledged album that Paul had envisaged. I had been working on getting re-releases for the band’s back catalogue and so I became a key player in making this happen.

The only question is where we would make the album.

Manchester was mentioned – after all it is the guys’ hometown…….. Various other cities were put on the table and discarded. And then they decided on Gothenburg, Sweden. "Darren, could you come out and do your part of the work in January?" January in Gothenburg.

And I don’t like snow.

There’s a lot of snow in Gothenburg in January and I just got back. I’m glad the snow in London is gone.

The album sounds excellent (if I say so myself) and with about 10 tracks completed, we enter into the tricky business of getting the right record company on board. All this in what is a difficult climate for the music industry. Did someone mention climate……bbbrrrrrrrrrr…………

Along Came…… Alice

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Alice Cooper

The Theatre of Death Tour 2009

Hammersmith Apollo

6th December 2009

A couple of years ago I did an interview with Alice Cooper when he was touring the UK promoting an autobiographical volume “Golf Monster” which taught me more about that game with the stick, the little ball and the hole than I’ll ever need to know. As a consequence, I was invited to write a little promotional material for his SPV release “Along Came A Spider” which is for my money the best album he has made for several years and one of the best of his career. After that there was talk of touring the album which came to nothing and in its place, Alice has been touring a show called “Theatre of Death” which finally reached London this weekend.

“Theatre of Death” is essentially a Greatest Hits show with the added visual attraction that Alice dies five times during the course of the show. Support for the tour is Manraze. Manraze feature Phil Collen from Def Leppard and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols and certainly have the fire and panache to carry off a great visual show but on this evidence, they just don’t have the songs. If you were going to return home after the show with memories of any of the choruses, they were certainly going to come from Alice’s portion of the night and not from Manraze.

Alice’s set was being filmed for a prospective future DVD release and he showed that, like him or hate him, he is still the consummate showman. Tonight he was given a lethal injection from a huge comedy syringe, he was hung by the neck until dead, he was executed by guillotine and died in a magician’s sword trick or two but still came back to thrill the audience with a full-blooded encore of “Schools Out”.

The songs ran the whole gamut of his career from his first group of albums through his commercial rebirth with “Poison” to “Vengeance is Mine” from the recent “Along Came A Spider” record I mentioned.

However, that song aside the set was light on songs from his most recent albums and this is the downside of playing the hits. The commercial market for singles from someone like Alice is dead and so while the albums continue to sell well you’re unlikely to see him locking horns with Lady GaGa in the UK Top 40 singles chart anytime soon. If I was selecting Alice’s set I would choose more material from the new album, from “Last Temptation”, from “Brutal Planet” but it is a small complaint when we have just a rich smorgasbord in front of us.

And it is the visuals with Alice that will keep you coming back for more. He goes through more costume changes than anyone in the rock world this side of Stevie Nicks. He waves a sabre at the crowd, unloads “Alice” dollars in their direction and throws out necklaces of “Dirty Diamonds”. That he manages to do all this without hardly missing a beat is truly a feat of energy and stagecraft. Alice is not going to see 50 again but he is lean and has enough momentum to carry him for the beginning of the show to the end and then some.

Vincent Furnier with his golf club and his Bible has, thankfully, cleaned up his act, but Alice is still the reprobate villain of the stage we know and love and long may he run.

Past or Present…… Tense

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Gary Numan

The Pleasure Principle Tour 2009

The Junction, Cambridge

1st December 2009

Numan has decided to perform “The Pleasure Principle” album as it was, back in the day, in 1979. Out comes the skinny tie and digital synthesizers with patches to emulate the sounds produced by the analog models that were used on an album that has become highly esteemed in recent years. In 1979, Gary Numan was disparaged by the critics. Now they love him.

When Numan toured two previous classic albums – Telekon and Replicas – he updated the sound of those albums to fit his current style. This time there is no such tampering but there will be a second set featuring songs which are not from The Pleasure Principle and those songs will be presented in Gary’s current modus operandi. It will be interesting to see which wins – the new against the old – not only artistically but in the view of the crowd.

The Junction is a fairly bog standard rock venue. Standing only. Cramped. Dark. Your shoes keep sticking to the floor where drink has been spilled on a previous night and little effort has been made to clear up. The sound reproduction is good but the stage is small. This, in itself,is a problem. Numan is jammed behind a keyboard for most of this first set and reproducing the old keyboard sounds on the modern synths takes little effort on the part of the band. All very static. This used to work in the old days on huge stages with vast light shows. It is a testimony to the ability of this band that they still manage to hold your attention.

The songs are well performed but the performance is rather sedentary and there is a great sound but not much to watch. The set list has its brave moments, not too many acts would open their show with two instrumentals. The second of these is “Airlane” which heralds an in-order run through of the album. High points? “M.E.” and the seldom performed “Conversation”. On “Tracks”, Numan blows the lyric completely. During “Asylum” the stage is rearranged for the second half. Once the table that Numan’s keyboard is stood upon is taken away and Chris McCormack straps on his electric guitar the whole feel of the show changes.

Whether because he is now able to perform in his preferred style or whether because being out from behind the keyboard frees him, Numan is now much more energetic and moves around the stage with poise, mystery and momentum.

The first song in this section of this set is the yet unreleased “The Fall” which bodes well for forthcoming releases. “Halo”, “Jagged” and “Haunted” from recent albums are all performed well but it is ironic that the high points of the second half are a storming “Down in the Park” and a version of “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” which alternates between a gentle piano-like sound and thunderous keyboards and guitars. There is clear evidence that whatever the quality and energy of his performance, Numan’s songwriting is no longer what it once was. Too often his recent lyrics address his dislike of religion and playing on this one lyrical note can soon become tired whatever your own views. In this regard using a burning cross on his video screen – an image with racial and Ku Klux Klan overtones as well as religious ones – was not exactly his most sensitive decision.

Aside from this the visual elements of the show work well and the show builds towards a dynamic conclusion with “We Are So Fragile” (old) and “A Prayer From the Unborn” (fairly new). Ironically, the restricted movements of the first half giving way to the torrent of activity of the second gives the illusion of a build in energy which works well. In reality, both halves of the show work well in their own way and the performance is a huge success.

This is likely to be the last of these album-revisited tours that Numan will do. It is hard to see him performing the excellent “Dance” album with the current configuration of his band. The last model of combining the old and the new has worked well and will hopefully bring some of his old audience to a greater appreciation of the newer material and performance style. Hopefully, they won’t notice the falling away of the songwriting content as much as this reviewer does. But that is something only Gary can address and the increasing gap between his studio albums suggests he is not close to finding an answer..…….

Eleventh Hour for Twelfth Night

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I normally get to see the RSC’s productions at the beginning of their run and I’m then able to prepare the review early. This one is unusual as, because of my personal workload, I didn’t get to see Twelfth Night until three nights before it finished. I decided to prepare a review anyway – even though it’s likely to influence exactly nothing.

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Judie Tzuke – 30 years – A Chronology

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Sunday night was a good night to celebrate an anniversary with a lady who has been a consistent presence in the UK music industry for 30 years and who has simply one of the greatest voices in rock. More of that in a little while but first let me give you a bit of chronology and a bit of background for those who came in late.

Judie Tzuke first rose to public view (after a couple of false starts) with her album, “Welcome to the Cruise”, in 1979. The single taken from the album, “Stay With Me Till Dawn”, remains her only success on the UK singles chart. After that she was known mainly as an albums’ artist – but because of “….Dawn” she was principally recognised for her ability to compose and sing ballads.

“Welcome to the Cruise” had some great songs but lacked a little in cogent direction in the production department. Her second and third albums, “Sportscar” and “I Am the Phoenix”, took her in a rockier direction. These albums closed out her contract with Rocket (a label owned by Elton John).

Her first album for her new label, Chrysalis, was “Shoot the Moon” in 1982. It was followed by a live set “Road Noise” which showed that her and her band could certainly rock out. Her audience had expanded to include the fringes of the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” brigade and whilst each of these albums charted, she had become cast as another “rock chick” appreciated by those who liked their Stevie Nicks and Heart albums. Trouble was that too narrowly defined Judie’s talents and it was a mould that she was to seek to break out of, even if she lost her audience in the process.

1983s “Ritmo” was an effort to take her music in a more keyboard dominated but funkier and rhythmic direction. It didn’t sell as well as its predecessors and Chrysalis withdrew their backing.

Another label move followed as she switched to Legacy for an album “The Cat is Out” which sought to combine the synthesizers of “Ritmo” with the rock and ballads of her commercial successes. Crucially, Judie was to leave most of the composing to her band on this one giving a suggestion that she was not convinced by what might be perceived by some as a backward step. Bad distribution and a lower profile label led to a further decline in sales despite a successful tour. This 1985 album was to be her one and only for Legacy and heralded the beginning of the splintering of her touring band:bassist John “Rhino” Edwards left and joined Status Quo.

The cat may have been out but Ms Tzuke seemed to be heading for cover. It was four years before she resurfaced with a new long term deal with Polydor, a new album and a promised new tour. The album “Turning Stones” gave her the most disappointing chart placing to date and was more esoteric than “Ritmo” and a much more determined effort than its predecessor. Whether because of disappointing sales or some other reason the tour was swiftly cancelled, the album disappeared from the shelves after one pressing and the much talked of long association with Polydor was brief indeed.

CBS was the next label to take a chance on Judie and in 1991 they released the patchy affair “Left Hand Talking”. This had a re-working of “Stay With Me Till Dawn”, covers of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and Judee Sill’s “Jesus was a Cross Maker” and seven new compositions that were good in their own right but didn’t necessarily feel like they belonged together. It was the first album in Tzuke’s career that hadn’t charted and the record company promoted the preceding single (the Beach Boys song) with much more vigour than they did the album.

Another year, another label. Castle Communications were the parent company behind Legacy who had released the 1985 album and it was back to them and their “Essential” imprint that Judie headed in 1992. “Wonderland” was a much more thought out affair than its predecessor and was accompanied by some live concerts, TV promotion and a couple of singles. Still sales were unremarkable despite guest appearances on the album by Queen’s Brian May and the current classical darling of the moment, Nigel Kennedy. This was Tzuke at her most mature and thoughtful and still the public wasn’t biting. It was becoming clear that Judie’s days of charting albums and big sales were behind her. If she was to carry on in the music industry then the emphasis would need to be on artistic integrity and a refusal to bend to the whims of the major labels – whilst retaining the support of a dedicated fanbase. It would take a couple of years to figure this out but when it happened Judie Tzuke’s internet-only, artist-owned label, Big Moon, would be a pioneer of its kind.

The second part of Judie Tzuke’s career saw her produce a series of thoughtful studio albums and several live recordings each accompanied by a tour of small-to-medium sized venues around the UK. By this time Judie had settled into domestic life with two children, Bailey and Tallula, by her bandmate, Paul Muggleton. The rest of her original touring band had gone their separate ways with last man standing Mike Paxman soon to be heading in new directions too.

Four years had again elapsed before the appearance of 1996’s Under the Angels. The album couldn’t be found in the stores but healthy promotion was achieved at live concerts where the fact that Judie had a new album, and her own label was notified to everyone who attended. This was alongside “Wonderland” the most accomplished set of Ms Tzuke’s career and her new artistic freedom fitted her well.

Tours in February and June 1997 were recorded for the live album “Over the Moon” which covered the whole of her career to date and when the touring was finished and with sales of the live album healthy, Judie set to work on the next studio album “Secret Agent” which was released in 1998.

This formula of studio album – tour – live album was obviously the way to go and so the last leg of the “Secret Agent” tour was recorded for “Six Days Before the Flood” which was released immediately before the next studio set “Queen Secret Keeper” in 2001.

Another outside label, East Central One came sniffing around this album and promised to make a single out of “Drive” from the record. Its failure to materialise can only have further battered Tzuke’s opinion of record labels.

Undeterred, “Drive Live” was 2002’s live document of the 2001 tour of the album. By now, Judie’s recording studio, label and home had become the nurturing ground for another generation of musicians who were learning their trade, co-writing and being mentored by Judie. Their presence was seen increasingly on her tours and also began to reflect itself in the music charts as first Lucie Silvas and then Judie’s daughter, Bailey Tzuke began to make their presence known.

But everything has its time and this cycle of activity was about to slow down and give way to another chapter. But first there were some loose ends to tie up. First an album of covers “The Beauty of Hindsight – Volume 1”, again accompanied by a tour – this time with a tour programme partially written by yours truly.

2004’s album “The End of the Beginning” had a title which said everything. This was probably one of the three best albums of her career but it was also the last of its kind to date. If Big Moon was to continue it was going to need to move in a new direction which would allow Judie to break out of the constant cycle of touring and recording and allow her to concentrate on her work developing others’ talents, songwriting with her circle of friends but also with the increasingly large number of acts that the majors were pushing in her direction. The beginning of Big Moon had been one thing and that time was at an end and now there was a new thing but first time for one last regular tour (again accompanied by a tour booklet in which my writings were featured).

It would be three years before there would be another Judie Tzuke album on Big Moon and with “Songs 1” and its follow up “Songs 2”, the emphasis was away from a thematic album and back with a much looser collection of songs which just reflected the songwriting prior to its release. When a tour came, it was much less Judie and made room for performances from the stable of talent she was developing with Ms Tzuke like a proud mother hen pushing her associates out into the limelight.

Now in 2009, I hear whispers of a new development with talk of an album partially made up of old songs and to be released into the stores by a label other than Big Moon……. Haven’t we heard and seen this before….. and it didn’t work then.

Only time will tell whether this latest chapter in the career of the unsinkable Judie Tzuke will be a high point or a low point.

In the meantime, there was a gathering of friends and fans to help her celebrate her thirty years in the business and I’ll tell you about that in a subsequent post……….