The Woman who wails

Well, I decided to treat my wife to a visit to Lloyd-Weber’s latest “epic” – the “Woman in White” last night which was an interesting but sadly disappointing experience. Having seen a few of his previous shows – Cats, Starlight Express, Joseph, Phantom, Sunset Boulevard, I had thought that the quality was improving, and his shows are usually entertaining if nothing else, so I was looking forward to a pleasant evening and forked out for 2 top price tickets.

Quel erreur!

Based on the novel by Wilkie Collins, the show is supposed to be a mysterious, suspenseful psychological thriller, which the press quotes would have you believe is a well written masterpiece full of lush romantic melodies. To be fair – one should always ignore the press quotes though. For example the quotes from the Telegraph are:-

1) "Big, lush romantic melodies"

from this sentence:-

“It therefore gives me no pleasure at all to report that The Woman in White is a terrible disappointment. Yes, there are moments when Lloyd Webber comes up with the big, lush romantic melodies that are his forte, though these days they tend to sound alarmingly like retreads of his own earlier work. The composer once accused of plagiarising others now seems content to plagiarise himself.”

2) "Maria Friedman is a great musical actress"

now finish the sentence…

“Maria Friedman is a great musical actress who seems doomed to appear in second-rate shows.”

And…

3) "Michael Crawford..undeniably funny"

“Michael Crawford, wearing a fat suit and facial prosthetics, is undeniably funny as the villain of the piece, the obese Italian Count Fosco, and he delivers the show's most entertaining number with great comic panache, a live rat crawling round his neck. But he entirely misses the character's sinister side. Fosco should make you shiver as well as smile. Crawford is content merely to amuse.“

Never believe the press quotes!!!

The show itself is fairly bland with some irritatingly repetitive melodies and some really crass lyrics. But let’s look at the show in depth:-

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Synopsis (contains Spoilers!!)
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Walter Hartright, an artist has been hired by Mr Fairlie, an aging aristocrat who is the guardian of his brother’s child, Laura and his own child Marian. The show opens with Hartright’s bizarre encounter with a strange railway man at a seemingly deserted train station. In typical Lloyd-Weber recitative (i.e. completely pointlessly sung lines that would have been better spoken) he tells of a premonition of danger on the line and that he had a dream about bodies on the tracks (He speaks in an odd northern accent but sings in the queen’s English – weird huh?) . As if this isn’t enough to put the willies up Hartright, he then sees a woman dressed in white who talks about having a secret. She reveals that she is not a ghost by getting Hartright to cop a feel, but before Hartright can find out more, she runs off.

Arriving at the house we are then treated to a rather ludicrous tour of the mansion as Hartright is shown to his room. This is so silly that even the cast cannot help but be apologetic. Let me explain…

The set consists of massive white curved walls (one of which pops out to become a central curved barrier) onto which digital projections are cast. These are animated so that with the aid of a revolving / scrolling stage area it can be made to look as if the cast are travelling through the house.

Unfortunately the projections are quite cheap looking at times – rather Playstationish – and for some bizarre reason, the designer elected to make the main staircase a winding sideways on affair. This means that the actors don’t look like they are on it (as they are in front of the banister for starters) but nevertheless have to make “I’m walking up invisible steps” motions. They laughed – we laughed… Oh how we laughed.

Anyway, over the next few long scenes Hartright falls in love with Laura, Laura falls in love with Hartwright, and Marian falls in love with Hartright. We are treated to some pleasant (if overlong) exposition scenes of them all falling in love as they draw things. Just to give the chorus something to do, they pop out and have a folk dance to a folk pastiche of something that sounds like the Macarena.

Next we learn that Laura is betrothed to an Aristocrat called Sir Percival Glyde, her sister tells her the marriage will be good. Their uncle is looking forward to a peaceful house and all seems well…

Except that Hartright meets, the woman in white again (Anne Catterick) who tells him that Glyde has kept her prisoner and that she has a secret which will bring him down. We also meet Count Fosco (supposed to be the evil count fosco, but actually a loveable rogue in this show played well by a pointlessly made up Michael Crawford)

Glyde decides to bring the wedding forward to Christmas and in one of the best pieces in the show, a discordant and spooky arrangement of the Holly and The Ivy forms the score for the winter wedding. Marian goes with her sister to live at Glyde’s crumbling manse, and Hartright leaves in a strop as no-one will listen to him.

Soon after this event we discover that Glyde is a sadist, and a bankrupt who is after his wife’s estate. Fosco is in on the plan for a 50% share. Marian decides she is going to do something about it. Firstly she finds Ann (the woman in white) and agrees to bring Laura to see her. Unfortunately this goes wrong and she is followed by Glyde who captures Ann and sends her back to the asylum.

Later than night Marian sneaks outside in the rain to listen to their plans, although she has to climb along a precarious projection to get there. However, in a rather enjoyable scene the thunder keeps obscuring key information and she is eventually heard as she slips off the projection (easily done).

Back in her room she is visited by the flirtatious Fosco who drugs her. The next morning she learns that her sister has committed suicide. The funeral takes place (cue the Macarena again) and Marian sets off for London determined to find Hartwright again.

After a mild mugging, she finds Hartwright and they hatch a plan to find the address of Ann’s asylum from Fosco. Marian tarts herself up, nips round and seduces Fosco, persuades him to shave his beard off, and reads the committal document which has Ann’s asylum address in it.

They nip up to Cumberland and rescue Ann – who turns out to be Laura. It’s never explained why Glyde kills Ann rather than Laura and puts Laura in the asylum. But apparently he is able to take Laura to Cumbria, get Ann, take her back to London, kill her, get her certified and arrange for burial within about 10 hours.

Anyway, Laura is rescued and they take her back to the estate, show Uncle who has just signed everything over to Glyde and then chase after Glyde. Glyde sees the “ghost” of Ann Catterick who persuades him to tell the “secret” and then reveals herself to be Laura. He attempts to knock her block off, but Hartright steps in, and Glyde flees up the tunnel prompting his swift demise by the evening train.

The moral is that the weirdo at the start was a bit carried away and his “there’ll beee bodeees on the layne” should have been “some twit runs up the tunnel and gets squashed”.

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The Music
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This is basically a Lloyd-Weber Saturday afternoon special. He has gone back to his original formula – write a (hopefully) hit ballad, then a few more tunes and build the whole lot into a show. The show has 5 main tunes:- “I hope you like it here”, “Can I believe my heart”, “Holly and the Ivy”, the Macarena and Fosco’s mock Viennese operetta.

The other music is just pastiche flourishes and repetitions. The “I hope you like it here” tune comes back interminably. The lyrics were clearly written by Zippel on a really wet Monday afternoon – either that or he thought that Lloyd-Webber’s music was so uninspiring he just didn’t bother.

In one particular example that springs to mind we have a tune (the repeat of the “I hope you like it here” tune) which goes along the lines of “his name is Percival Glyde… and you will be his bride… he’s waiting there inside…” and about 3000 more rhymes for Glyde. This song occurs just before the interval and I couldn’t help but make up a further few dozen for fun. In several places you can see the audience mouthing the lyrics before they are sung, so banal are the rhymes

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The Set
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As explained above, this is basically a design concept around the idea that if you put people in front of a cinema screen showing a playstation rendition of Hogwarts, you could save a hell of a lot of money. Some of the outside scenery is quite well done, but the waterfall is terrible, and some of the transitions very poor. Some of it is quite dizzying, and the instances where the cast try to interact with the scenery work very badly. Climbing along a projection just looks stupid.

Maybe if some money had been spent on taking real photography it would have looked better. At the end of the day ALW needed something that looked good but didn’t cost the earth. He got cheap and it looks cheap.

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The Cast & Crew
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The best bit of the show. Maria Friedman is excellent, and her two co-stars, Angela Christian and Jill Paice also put in sterling performances (particularly Angela who is just required to screech a lot in a wavery voice). Michael Crawford is excellent although not in the slightest bit evil. He also has to wear a fat suit and a huge amount of makeup which all seems a bit pointless really. A fat actor would have made life much simpler.

But of course Lloyd-Weber is in this to make some money this time. He knows that with Crawford as a lead, he will get Americans in by the bus-load. Certainly last night felt like the entire audience was American (including one particularly weird lady who had a habit of screaming like a car alarm during the bows).

Oliver Darley was an entertaining Glyde albeit a bit wet, and Martin Crewes was excellent as Walter Hartright – particularly as he had some spectacularly ill thought out vocal lines to sing.

The little girl playing “corn dolly girl” was superb – especially as the only real point to her character is to sing hauntingly at the wedding – and to sing a tune which is actually quite difficult to sing.

The orchestra is quite large and some of the orchestration really does get you going, but this is soon deflated by the repetitive banal tunes, ill-written book and trite lyrics.

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The Tickets
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As usual, Lloyd Weber is charging high prices and not selling tickets at TKTS. Most decent seats are £50. You can get cheaper if you bring a telescope. The “Grand Circle” and “The Balcony” at the Palace are extremely high. The boxes are available for £37.50 if you don’t mind being deafened.

Visit www.seetickets.com who seem to have jabbed ticketmaster in the wotsits and taken all the theatre trade. They don’t charge a booking fee (or not much of one) for starters!!

Cheapest tickets are balcony at £20. Grand Circle are £37.50, while Dress Circle and Stalls are nearly all £50 unless you go restricted view or right at the back.

Don’t bother with any of the cheap seats if you want to try and enjoy the show. It’s not pacey or interesting enough that that you’ll forgive the lack of legroom and the aerial view provided by the cheap seats.

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The Theatre
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The show is on at the Palace Theatre, a stones throw away from Leicester Square Tube. It’s very nice to see a new show at this rather gorgeous theatre.

The drawback is that the seats are very Victorian with small sizes, little legroom and vertiginous stairs! The theatre does get quite hot too.

Drinks are not cheap although the wine measure is very generous.

The usual range of merchandise from t-shirts to mugs to sheet music is available. Programmes will set you back £5 which seems to me to be taking the wotsit a bit. No glossy programme is available yet.

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Summary
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The Woman in white is flawed in many ways, and although the cast is strong, they cannot make up for a poorly written show. The lyrics are trite at best, and the adaption of the novel is very poor. Little of the characterisation of Fosco and Glyde comes out in this musical, and the love triangle at the end fails miserably - the message appears to be that Hartright falls in love in the end with the ugly Marian who loves him but sacrifices this love for her sister Laura who needs Hartright more than she does. Hartright thus cops off with Laura and sacrifices his love – although he doesn’t seem too bothered about getting the pretty one.

Musically the show is repetitive and although you will leave humming the tunes, this is because in true ALW fasion, they have been beaten into your brain for almost 3 hours. 3 LONG hours. Yes – this show runs from 7.30 to 10.30 with a short interval after an hour and 40 minutes. Your arse will be numb.

I recommend a visit at half price if ALW ever lets this happen. Don’t hold your breath though, he doesn’t like half price tickets – he can get coach parties instead…

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Links
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http://www.womaninwhitethemusical.com - more information / tunes etc
http://www.seetickets.com - buy tickets
http://www.londontheatre.co.uk - best website for London theatre information
http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk - official London theatre guide including half-price ticket booth information.