Heart and music: Don Black's From The Heart at the Garrick Theatre London

Production photo

By his own admission, it took about 30 years to bring this song collection to the stage, but Don Black’s From the Heart has been worth the wait. With a vibe designed to evoke a New York cabaret venue, albeit on a slightly grander scale, the piece showcases Black’s ingenuity in creating deceptively simple lyrics, along with his love of music and comedy. It’s running for a limited time at the Garrick Theatre. 

The premise is simple: to capture the feel of New York’s cabaret venues. A series of songs, mostly new ones written for the show, run through a variety of moods. With each song running a little more than three minutes, the show moves briskly. Each offers a chance to appreciate Black’s economical lyrics, flashes of deadpan comedy, and occasional inspired choices, such as rhyming sex with the (artist) Lautrec. 

A classy ensemble also brings these songs (and the stories they tell) to life. Clive Rowe delivers the first laughs with a song about doctors. The song is simple enough, but Rowe delivers it with perfect comic timing that has the audience laughing. Caroline O’Connor, Shona McGarty and Frances Mayli McCann sing about the lack of straight men (which seemed a fair enough comment at the Garrick opening night this week). There’s also a special guest spot, and for opening night Michael Ball sang Love Changes Everything, the song from Aspects of Love that put him on the map. 

Production photo

A voiceover of Black introduces the songs. He recounts that, at one point, he asked Jonny Mercer how he dealt with lyricists rarely getting credit for songs, only composers. Mercer told him you can’t do anything about it; it’s like being ugly. Here the composers include Gary Barlow, Geoff Stephens and David Arnold. 

Don Black’s five-decade career, from the Oscar-winning song Born Free to the lyrics of several James Bond songs, and collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber on Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard, is showcased in the finale. Given the strength and popularity of these songs, it’s a pity they appear only as part of a medley rather than getting a little more time. After all, the show is only ninety minutes, and by then the audience seems ready to stay a little longer in Black’s world. 

Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, with musical direction by Joseph Church, From the Heart continues at the Garrick Theatre through 18 October. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Production photo


Photo credit: Eamonn B Shanahan



Popular posts from this blog

Bare emotions: Gods and Monsters @swkplay

Image
Gods and Monsters , now playing at the Southwark Playhouse is a showcase of incredible performances from its terrific cast and an engaging story. Oh and there is a bit of full frontal nudity too. Based on the novel Father of Frankenstein (which was also the source material for the film of the same name ), the story is a blend of fact and fiction. Age, memory, fame, youth and loss collide in the story of the last few months in the life of English director James Whale. Whale director and creator of the first two Frankenstein films, had a moderately successful career in Hollywood which enabled him to live comfortably in Los Angeles. He was also openly gay. But following a series of strokes in his sixties, he lost his ability to prevent painful memories from his past flooding back. And without giving too much away, his most successful creation, the monster in Frankenstein, seems to become something far more personal.
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...