London Theatre Watching III
Aug. 19th, 2025 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakNo, still not the Marlowe/Shakespeare one, that’s on tonight. Instead, two plays I had on my list as maybes, but not musts, hence only bought the tickets on the day and therefore cheaper. :)
Charing Cross Theatre: The Daughter of Time
By playwright named M. Kilburg Reedy, based on Josephine Tey’s novel of the same name which three quarters of a century ago stroke a mighty blow for Richard III in hte public imagination. Background here for people who haven’t read it: Josephine Tey wrote this as the last and most unusual of her series starring her detective, Inspector Alan Grant, who in the novel, which takes place then-contemporary to its publication in the late 1940s/early 1950s (pre Elizabeth II’s coronation at any rate, her father is still on the throne), fights off the boredom of many weeks in the hospital by getting interested in Richard IIII and deciding to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. More Background: Josephine Tey was a pseudonym for Scottish Author Elizabeth MacIntosh, who also was a playwright under the alias Gordon Daviot. Her most famous historical play was probably Richard of Bordeaux, about that other controversional Plantagenet royal named Richard, Richard II., which she wrote after having seen young John Gielgud play Shakespeareas Richard III. It was a smash hit and contributed to making John G a star. However, The Daughter of Time is a novel, by its very premise is confined to one hospital room and a lot of thinking about history, some of which, granted, presented via arguments with other people, but a lot also via thoughts and musings about text excerpts, and I was really curious how someone would manage to dramatize it in a way that works on stage.
The woman who undertook that task, Ms Reedy, not only found some clever theatre friendly ways to do that but got fascinated in the mystery beyond what the novel presents (and of course research marches on - it’s been the above mentioned many decades since Tey wrote her novel, with many a biography written and document debated since, plus of course Richard’s remains were found (more about this in a moment) - so daringly, she actually lets Grant arrive at a different conclusion in her play than the one Grant arrives at in the novel. (Where, spoiler for the book, he thinks Henry VII is the most likely killer.) (No, Richard didn’t do it in the play, either*, but neither did Henry. And no, Ms Reedy isn’t of the Philippa Gregory party of Margaret Beaufort bashing, either. Her suspect is my suspect, so of course I’m biased, but look, he also was Sharon Penman’s suspect, and for the same reasons Reedy lets Grant name. I think the first to suggest that particular theory in the 20th century was probably Paul Kendall, though.) The theatre friendly means in question consist of fleshing out the supporting cast - for example, the two nurses and Grant’s Seargeant who were more bit parts in the novel get beefed up to actual foils as characters with personalities beyond the Richard discussion and better arguments when talking with Grant; it’s also one of the nurses who theorizes Richard might have had multisclerosis (which the audience, though not the characters in a play that keeps the novel’s setting, knows to be the case and informs Grant why that would not have been the impediment to the soldierly life we know Richard led midst Wars of the Roses Grant thinks it would have been). (While we’re at quietly updating Tey’s research, the play also has a different opinion than the novel on what happened at Tonypandy.)
There’s also an entire new subplot to provide some more urgency beyond finding out what was up with Richard III. Now the novel did have Grant’s actress friend Marta as a prominent supporting character, but other than introducing him to the young guy who does his library research for him (this must have been a main reason for not updating the setting - today Grant could do his own research via the internet, of course), and providing some flamboyant colour, she doesn’t do much in the book. In the play, she realises she’s in love with Grant, and her gay bff and fellow actor Nigel Templeton who has just come off a successful run as Benedick in Much Ado and is about to embark on playing Richard III, has Shakespearean romance on the brain and decides to help her out by pretending an engagement in order to make Grand jealous and realise he loves her, too. Cue various twists, turns, misunderstandings and eventual happy resolutions. Nigel’s presence in the cast is also a way to include three monologues from Shakespeare’s Richard to remind the audience what the image is the play argues against. Now I’m not sure Tey would have been on board with this, but being an old stagehand herself, I think she would have appreciated the Marta and Nigel scenes as the entertaining fun they are, plus Nigel as a gay theatre star in the 1940s with a mellifluos voice is an obvious stand-in for her hero John Gielgud.
Generally, it comes across as an old school “well fashioned” play, not destined for stage immortality, perhaps, but highly enjoyable to watch, whether nor not you’re interested in Richard IIII.
* And here the play lets Grant use the same main argument as the novel: leaving all morality about nephew killing aside: if Richard’s main motive for killing the boys would have been so there would be no uprisings on their behalf and they could never be rivals, why would he have done it in such a stupid, self harming way - sudden disappearance, no one has any idea what happened to them, he looks suspicious and because nothing has ever been declared fake princes are guaranteed to and indeed would show up for years go come) instead of doing exactly what his brother Edward IV had done with Henry VI, i.e. announce their deaths as publically as possible (of course for a fake reason - Edward had it declard Henry died of grief, Richard could have said the kids died of the flu or any number of illnesses), display the bodies for all to see, then bury them so everyone knows they’re really, truly dead and any attempts to put either of them on the throne would be pointless. That would have been the cold but smart thing to do with a precedent from only a few years earlier, but not a disappearance without any explanation of all and no certainty for anyone as to their state of being.
The Other Palace: Saving Mozart.
It’s London, it’s theatre, there had to be at least one musical. In my case, a new one by Charli Eglington, which feels a bit like someone on Tumblr after watching Amadeus decided they wanted to write prequel fanfiction with a feminist slant, focused on the women. Which means that while we’re following Mozart’s life story from Wunderkind to early death, in the first half of the musical Nannerl has a claim to being the main character and in the second half Constanze. It’s about as historical as Amadeus (meaning it uses some facts with a lot of fictionalisiation), with a lot of laudable #JusticeforNannerl and #ConstanzeRules sentiment.
I don’t mean that as catty as it might sound. Nannerl as a girl was by all accounts a virtuoso player. (Whether she also could have been a good composer, we’ll never know, because no composition of hers survive.) And that post puberty, she was left at home while Leopold focused on only his son’s career was as unfair as the treatment of women generally was. Now I can see why the musical isn’t called “Nannerl”, because if you make Nannerl the main character, full stop, you have to either go completely fictional once she stops touring or deal with the fact that she did stay in Salzburg, she did, in fact, later side with Dad Leopold when he had the big argument with his son about the marriage to Constanze, she eventually got married and never ever left Salzburg or tried a return to the professional musician life, as opposed to private conerts. And while Constanze after Mozart’s death proved she was a marketing genius and very much contributed to making him the household name he became, the fact this happened AFTER he died means if you want to do a musical with her as the main character, he wouldn’t be much in it. So basically the musical tries to solve these problems by still using Wolfgang’s life as the red narrative thread BUT with the driving characters being the ladies, and it sort of works.
Leopold is the standard stage parent and relentless task master early on (and in fact shares antagonist duties with Salieri), and I was rolling my eyes a bit when they presented him as running his little son ragged with all the work and his wife was standard protective Mom calling him cruel; we do have letters between Leopold and Maria Anna, and no, she didn’t; Leopold certainly made his kids practice a lot (giving the lie to the cliché of genius not needing practice), but not to the point of nervous collapse, nor was his manner constantly stern and chiding; there were a lot of humour and jokes between all four Mozarts in the child prodigy years. Leopold didn’t get into the “after all I’ve done for you…” chiding manner and emotional blackmail until after Wolfgang had both biologically and emotionally grown up and sought his life elsewhere. But then the musical gave him a bit more dimension by making it clear he really thinks God speaks through his offspring’s talent, and in the second half he acknowledges to Nannerl he has wronged her and apologizes. Also, by making the sibling relationship so important and letting Nannerl first encourage and protect her kid brother and then resent him because he can leave and live the professional musical life and she after those few dazzling years never ever will, while child Wolfgang idolizes her and adult Wolfgang makes the mistake of assuming everything between them would remain the same despite him living the dream and her not, and being deeply hurt when she blames him and sides with Dad in the big showdown, and by making sibling reconciliation the big emotional climax along with the production of the Magic Flute, the show certainly hits a few of my fictional buttons.
(Oh, and Salieri, probably courtesy of his Amadeus fame, is the longest lived court composer ever and the only other composer or court official to be seen in the entire musical. He’s already on the job when Mozart is still a child prodigy and Maria Theresia rules. The actor wears his eyeliner and sneering manner beautifully, and at the very end gets a moment where he tells Wolfgang that okay, the music is great, after all, in fact, the Magic Flute is the best opera ever. I gulped. To each their own, but are there Mozart fans, let alone non-fans, who think the Magic Flute is his best work, let alone the best opera ever? If so, I haven’t met them. Most people go for either Figaro or Don Giovanni, I think. I guess our writer was following the convention that the grand masterpiece has to come at the end?)
Downsides: the music is enjoyable and works in various actual Mozart musical fragments where thematically appropriate, and/or transforms them into a pop song, but I can’t think of a unique to this show melody that has remained with me a day later. And “I will bring the music to the people” wasn’t how Mozart or any other musician of his day solved his income problem; it wasn’t that they had such high regard for the nobility and the court, but especially in an age before copyright, you needed patrons to support you.
All in all: not a must, but if you want a new musical where everyone sings soulfully in Steampunk Rokoko costumes, go for it.
Charing Cross Theatre: The Daughter of Time
By playwright named M. Kilburg Reedy, based on Josephine Tey’s novel of the same name which three quarters of a century ago stroke a mighty blow for Richard III in hte public imagination. Background here for people who haven’t read it: Josephine Tey wrote this as the last and most unusual of her series starring her detective, Inspector Alan Grant, who in the novel, which takes place then-contemporary to its publication in the late 1940s/early 1950s (pre Elizabeth II’s coronation at any rate, her father is still on the throne), fights off the boredom of many weeks in the hospital by getting interested in Richard IIII and deciding to solve the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. More Background: Josephine Tey was a pseudonym for Scottish Author Elizabeth MacIntosh, who also was a playwright under the alias Gordon Daviot. Her most famous historical play was probably Richard of Bordeaux, about that other controversional Plantagenet royal named Richard, Richard II., which she wrote after having seen young John Gielgud play Shakespeareas Richard III. It was a smash hit and contributed to making John G a star. However, The Daughter of Time is a novel, by its very premise is confined to one hospital room and a lot of thinking about history, some of which, granted, presented via arguments with other people, but a lot also via thoughts and musings about text excerpts, and I was really curious how someone would manage to dramatize it in a way that works on stage.
The woman who undertook that task, Ms Reedy, not only found some clever theatre friendly ways to do that but got fascinated in the mystery beyond what the novel presents (and of course research marches on - it’s been the above mentioned many decades since Tey wrote her novel, with many a biography written and document debated since, plus of course Richard’s remains were found (more about this in a moment) - so daringly, she actually lets Grant arrive at a different conclusion in her play than the one Grant arrives at in the novel. (Where, spoiler for the book, he thinks Henry VII is the most likely killer.) (No, Richard didn’t do it in the play, either*, but neither did Henry. And no, Ms Reedy isn’t of the Philippa Gregory party of Margaret Beaufort bashing, either. Her suspect is my suspect, so of course I’m biased, but look, he also was Sharon Penman’s suspect, and for the same reasons Reedy lets Grant name. I think the first to suggest that particular theory in the 20th century was probably Paul Kendall, though.) The theatre friendly means in question consist of fleshing out the supporting cast - for example, the two nurses and Grant’s Seargeant who were more bit parts in the novel get beefed up to actual foils as characters with personalities beyond the Richard discussion and better arguments when talking with Grant; it’s also one of the nurses who theorizes Richard might have had multisclerosis (which the audience, though not the characters in a play that keeps the novel’s setting, knows to be the case and informs Grant why that would not have been the impediment to the soldierly life we know Richard led midst Wars of the Roses Grant thinks it would have been). (While we’re at quietly updating Tey’s research, the play also has a different opinion than the novel on what happened at Tonypandy.)
There’s also an entire new subplot to provide some more urgency beyond finding out what was up with Richard III. Now the novel did have Grant’s actress friend Marta as a prominent supporting character, but other than introducing him to the young guy who does his library research for him (this must have been a main reason for not updating the setting - today Grant could do his own research via the internet, of course), and providing some flamboyant colour, she doesn’t do much in the book. In the play, she realises she’s in love with Grant, and her gay bff and fellow actor Nigel Templeton who has just come off a successful run as Benedick in Much Ado and is about to embark on playing Richard III, has Shakespearean romance on the brain and decides to help her out by pretending an engagement in order to make Grand jealous and realise he loves her, too. Cue various twists, turns, misunderstandings and eventual happy resolutions. Nigel’s presence in the cast is also a way to include three monologues from Shakespeare’s Richard to remind the audience what the image is the play argues against. Now I’m not sure Tey would have been on board with this, but being an old stagehand herself, I think she would have appreciated the Marta and Nigel scenes as the entertaining fun they are, plus Nigel as a gay theatre star in the 1940s with a mellifluos voice is an obvious stand-in for her hero John Gielgud.
Generally, it comes across as an old school “well fashioned” play, not destined for stage immortality, perhaps, but highly enjoyable to watch, whether nor not you’re interested in Richard IIII.
* And here the play lets Grant use the same main argument as the novel: leaving all morality about nephew killing aside: if Richard’s main motive for killing the boys would have been so there would be no uprisings on their behalf and they could never be rivals, why would he have done it in such a stupid, self harming way - sudden disappearance, no one has any idea what happened to them, he looks suspicious and because nothing has ever been declared fake princes are guaranteed to and indeed would show up for years go come) instead of doing exactly what his brother Edward IV had done with Henry VI, i.e. announce their deaths as publically as possible (of course for a fake reason - Edward had it declard Henry died of grief, Richard could have said the kids died of the flu or any number of illnesses), display the bodies for all to see, then bury them so everyone knows they’re really, truly dead and any attempts to put either of them on the throne would be pointless. That would have been the cold but smart thing to do with a precedent from only a few years earlier, but not a disappearance without any explanation of all and no certainty for anyone as to their state of being.
The Other Palace: Saving Mozart.
It’s London, it’s theatre, there had to be at least one musical. In my case, a new one by Charli Eglington, which feels a bit like someone on Tumblr after watching Amadeus decided they wanted to write prequel fanfiction with a feminist slant, focused on the women. Which means that while we’re following Mozart’s life story from Wunderkind to early death, in the first half of the musical Nannerl has a claim to being the main character and in the second half Constanze. It’s about as historical as Amadeus (meaning it uses some facts with a lot of fictionalisiation), with a lot of laudable #JusticeforNannerl and #ConstanzeRules sentiment.
I don’t mean that as catty as it might sound. Nannerl as a girl was by all accounts a virtuoso player. (Whether she also could have been a good composer, we’ll never know, because no composition of hers survive.) And that post puberty, she was left at home while Leopold focused on only his son’s career was as unfair as the treatment of women generally was. Now I can see why the musical isn’t called “Nannerl”, because if you make Nannerl the main character, full stop, you have to either go completely fictional once she stops touring or deal with the fact that she did stay in Salzburg, she did, in fact, later side with Dad Leopold when he had the big argument with his son about the marriage to Constanze, she eventually got married and never ever left Salzburg or tried a return to the professional musician life, as opposed to private conerts. And while Constanze after Mozart’s death proved she was a marketing genius and very much contributed to making him the household name he became, the fact this happened AFTER he died means if you want to do a musical with her as the main character, he wouldn’t be much in it. So basically the musical tries to solve these problems by still using Wolfgang’s life as the red narrative thread BUT with the driving characters being the ladies, and it sort of works.
Leopold is the standard stage parent and relentless task master early on (and in fact shares antagonist duties with Salieri), and I was rolling my eyes a bit when they presented him as running his little son ragged with all the work and his wife was standard protective Mom calling him cruel; we do have letters between Leopold and Maria Anna, and no, she didn’t; Leopold certainly made his kids practice a lot (giving the lie to the cliché of genius not needing practice), but not to the point of nervous collapse, nor was his manner constantly stern and chiding; there were a lot of humour and jokes between all four Mozarts in the child prodigy years. Leopold didn’t get into the “after all I’ve done for you…” chiding manner and emotional blackmail until after Wolfgang had both biologically and emotionally grown up and sought his life elsewhere. But then the musical gave him a bit more dimension by making it clear he really thinks God speaks through his offspring’s talent, and in the second half he acknowledges to Nannerl he has wronged her and apologizes. Also, by making the sibling relationship so important and letting Nannerl first encourage and protect her kid brother and then resent him because he can leave and live the professional musical life and she after those few dazzling years never ever will, while child Wolfgang idolizes her and adult Wolfgang makes the mistake of assuming everything between them would remain the same despite him living the dream and her not, and being deeply hurt when she blames him and sides with Dad in the big showdown, and by making sibling reconciliation the big emotional climax along with the production of the Magic Flute, the show certainly hits a few of my fictional buttons.
(Oh, and Salieri, probably courtesy of his Amadeus fame, is the longest lived court composer ever and the only other composer or court official to be seen in the entire musical. He’s already on the job when Mozart is still a child prodigy and Maria Theresia rules. The actor wears his eyeliner and sneering manner beautifully, and at the very end gets a moment where he tells Wolfgang that okay, the music is great, after all, in fact, the Magic Flute is the best opera ever. I gulped. To each their own, but are there Mozart fans, let alone non-fans, who think the Magic Flute is his best work, let alone the best opera ever? If so, I haven’t met them. Most people go for either Figaro or Don Giovanni, I think. I guess our writer was following the convention that the grand masterpiece has to come at the end?)
Downsides: the music is enjoyable and works in various actual Mozart musical fragments where thematically appropriate, and/or transforms them into a pop song, but I can’t think of a unique to this show melody that has remained with me a day later. And “I will bring the music to the people” wasn’t how Mozart or any other musician of his day solved his income problem; it wasn’t that they had such high regard for the nobility and the court, but especially in an age before copyright, you needed patrons to support you.
All in all: not a must, but if you want a new musical where everyone sings soulfully in Steampunk Rokoko costumes, go for it.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-19 04:12 pm (UTC)....Beethoven I think? Or maybe it was just his favourite. I guess they wanted to go for the opposite of Don G.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-20 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-20 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-19 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-20 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 03:16 am (UTC)Marriage of Figaro is clearly his best opera, and I suppose I must admit all the da Ponte operas are probably superior in craft... but I absolutely love Magic Flute in a way I don't love any of the others. (I mean, I love Marriage of Figaro too, but in a very different way. I don't love Don Giovanni or Cosi fan tutte nearly as much.)
no subject
Date: 2025-08-21 05:01 pm (UTC)(I also doubt Salieri would have been into The Magic Flute specifically, but that's neither here nor there, historical accuracy not being the point of the musical.)
According to another comment, your choice was Beethoven's choice as well. I note none one is speaking up for Too Many Notes, aka Die Entführung aus dem Serail...