West Side Story – winding up the gammons

There’s a film for me, somewhere a film for me ... Well, perhaps I have just found the one. Let’s be clear: I’m talking about Stephen Spielberg’s reworking of West Side Story. And that I was so dazzled by it is perhaps also why I am particularly aware of how much certain right-wing political types have decided they don’t like it – even if they haven’t actually seen it.

It has already upset Deborah Ross, who writes in Tory fan mag, The Spectator, that: “The original brought together Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics, RIP), Jerome Robbins (choreography), Ernest Lehman (screenplay) and Robert Wise (director), while this has Spielberg and a new screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner. (Look! Another Jewish conspiracy!)”

 

What? WHAT? REALLY? Okay, we’ll come back to this. Because like me, now you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

 

After opening with asking why anyone would want to “remake” it, she grudgingly acknowledges that this film is “more authentic” than its 1961 predecessor. That’s in part the casting she’s referring to, where the Latino characters are actually played by Latino actors – and not with darkened skin to better match the much darker faces of the white cast members playing Puerto Ricans and heavily made up.

 

Perhaps it’s also that Kushner’s new book makes much clearer the racism at the core of the story, the grinding poverty and the way that these communities are being pushed out to make way for gleaming new developments for the well-to-do.

 

The presence of Rita Moreno in the new film – she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Anita in the first film (and could be up for the same gong in the spring) – as repurposed character, Valentina, is damned patronisingly as “neat”.

 

Valentina

But, as she concludes her opening paragraph, Ms Ross feels that, “in being more so it is also peculiarly less so. Plus there is an elephant in the room. Two, actually”.

 

This is when she goes on to point readers to the ethnicity of the creative team/s, with the implication that that is one of the aforementioned elephants.

 

I’m not linking to the review – if you want to verify this, you can find it yourself, though I have the screengrabs.

 

“Apologies for always going back to the original ...” she notes further on in the review. But she didn’t, given that “the original” was the Broadway show and not the Robert Wise film.

 

Which was a missed opportunity, really, because it would have given her the chance to point out that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book for the original stage show, was Jewish too. And it’s a wonder too that she didn’t bother to note that he – and the majority of those mentioned above – were gay or bisexual.

 

One can argue that the fact of being Jewish – and gay or bisexual – actually is relevant in that it can provide the artists in question with an understanding of being an ‘outsider’ – of being ‘othered’ and even reviled; an comprehension that is clear on a number of levels in this show/film.

 

And nor was West Side Story the first musical that had social themes to it. Showboat, which premiered in 1927, highlighted racism too. It was created by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, from Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel. All the creative talents mentioned in this paragraph were also Jewish.

 

Hammerstein went on to work with Richard Rogers (Jewish), creating, among other works, South Pacific (1949), which also had themes about racism. As did The King and I (1944), by the same duo.

 

This is a mere skate over the subjects. But it is worth noting that, in Aspects of Wagner (1968), Bryan Magee notes of the composer’s antisemitism, that he had recognised a “Jewish renaissance” that happened a while after the ghettos had opened. And the creative arts were one area where ‘outsiders’ were freer to get on.

 

One could perhaps similarly say we’re seeing an LGBT+ renaissance now, for comparable reasons and particularly in the creative industries. Or think of how some sports have given black people opportunities where other vocations might still be more closed (and then there’s the inherent racism in seeing black athletes as being uniformally suitable for strength and power events)

 

In Spielberg and Kushner’s West Side Story, the ‘ghetto’ is the slums; the Puerto Ricans are working their way up and out of it, while the white (mostly Polish) gang members are those left behind when the more ambitious members of their parents’ generation moved up and out.

America, with Maria and Bernardo 

 

But back to (apologies) Ms Ross. “I suppose you could say that, whatever else, Spielberg has redefined West Side Story for a new generation, but the older generation? We’re allowed to be a bit grumpy about it,” she intones. 

 

In the interest of clarity, she is apparently 49. I, on the other hand, turned 59 the day I saw the film at the weekend, so I think that I can fairly say that she’s spouting sphericals when she invokes the “older generation”.

 

Reading further (I did it so that you don’t have to) it seems that actually, her “elephants” are the two leads, Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony, who she doesn’t think are really up to it. Now, it’s absolutely fine to think that, and to write it in a review – but she should have linked it to the “elephants” comment to make clear that’s what she meant.

 

Further, according to the Cambridge Dictionary: “If you say there is an elephant in the room, you mean that there is an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about.”

 

Given that a number of critics have already queried the performances by the central pair – here is ‘lefty’ critic Mark Kermode casting doubt on the quality of Elgort’s performance in discussion with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 5, so pretty mainstream as just a single example, and uploaded here the day before Ms Ross’s review went live online – it’s difficult to conclude that she’s somehow the only one who wants to mention it.

 

Let’s be generous and assume that this is all just sloppy writing and the Speccie doesn’t employ any actual sub editors to tidy up the dross. I can only see four other explanations, otherwise. Perhaps the real ‘elephant in the room’ is that:

 

• it’s intended as a dig at some sort of cohort of people who shout about ‘Jewish conspiracies’ while still loving musicals, perhaps without knowing that many of the creatives behind them are (whisper it) Jewish;

 

• it’s intended as a dig at ‘lefty-liberal types, who like this sort of thing, with its lefty-liberal ethos, even though they probably all hate Israel – and therefore, all Jewish people – except when liking works by lefty-liberal Jews’. Which intended meaning would be antisemitic itself anyway;

• it really is a “Jewish conspiracy”, because it wouldn’t have been made otherwise;

 

• it’s a straightforward, antisemitic dog whistle.

 

Now, I’m possibly overthinking this, but I’ve never seen anything like it in a review before. It shouldn’t be ignored.

 

A last little point of pedantry: “You will thrill as the overture strikes up,” she trills. Except you won’t. Because there is no overture. There is a prologue. Facts, eh?

Anybodys, from 1961 (left) and 2021 (right)

But it’s not just in the UK. On the other side of The Pond, one US Twitter user, @LethalityJane, shared two tweets from users (IDs blanked out), with some facts to skewer them.

 

The first tweet responded to had claimed: “I will never understand Steven Spielberg’s obsession with wanting to remake West Side Story – a legit American classic – into some woke bullshit. As if the original could ever be improved on. I hope it’s a massive failure.”

 

Another tweet from someone else said: “As I recall West side [sic] Story never had a trans character. One more bow to the woke class not going to see it” [sic].

 

In the interests of showing that gammons are not the brightest, it’s a joy to report that, as Lethality Jane points out, the first film had a character called Anybodys (and think about that name), played by Susan Oakes, a ‘tomboy’ who wanted to run with the Jets.

 

Discussing this with The Other Half, he observed that the whole ‘tomboy’ thing is a trope where such incorrect behaviour will be corrected once the girl meets a real man and is ...

 

Well, indeed – straight romance as a form of conversion therapy.

 

There’s even a 1965 UK musical that works on this precise premise – Charlie Girl – which I saw with my parents and sister in a 1986 revival, when my father got very enthusiastic over Cyd Charisse’s legs.

 

The new film doesn’t say the word ‘trans’, but it doesn’t need to because more people today are more aware of what a ‘tomboy’ could really mean, which has come with a concomitant development and broadening of language usage – even for gammons.

 

A further note of interest is that Anybodys is based on Balthasar in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet(that play being part of the inspiration for West Side Story), who is a servant of and informant for Romeo. Now there was a writer who liked to play with gender ...

Maria and Tony

In terms of the new film being ‘woke’ in general, that could reference the trans character, or be a reference to the Latino cast or even to the racism. In which case, the person being angered has merely illustrated that they don’t know anything about the original show (or the earlier film) or, as I have touched on above, the history of the American musical theatre.

 

As to the film itself – it’s outstanding. Not just because Kushner’s new book does add the grit and clarity to the themes that would have been harder to make so clear in the original Broadway (and Hollywood) versions. The music and lyrics of Bernstein and Sondheim shine through powerfully and the choreography from Justin Peck, which nods toward Robbins’s work, is excellent.

 

Of the cast, I initially had doubts about Elgort’s Tony, but once he hit the first real big note on Maria, my eyes pricked and I had goosebumps everywhere. Zegler makes an angelically pretty Maria, but a feisty one too. And there’s a sense here of the character having much more agency than previously.

 

Riff

Ariana DeBose as Anita, David Alvarez as Bernardo (leader of the Sharks) and Mike Faist as Riff (leader of the Jets), give really top-notch performances, while Ezra Menas combines grit and vulnerability as Anybodys.

 

But if you don’t well up when Rita Moreno sings Somewhere, there’s probably little hope for you.

 

The camerawork is stunning – the haunting opening simply incredible. The whole is a thing of brooding danger and energy; at once both dark and a blaze of light. It’s been said by some to be Spielberg’s best work in two decades – personally, I think it’s one of the finest things he’s ever achieved throughout his entire career.

 

And if it upsets a few gammons? Well, that’s the chocolate glaze on top of the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake.

A Man of Good Hope that ultimately conveys hope

A Man of Good Hope, which has just finished a run at the Royal Opera House’s new Linbury Theatre is an extraordinary work: at once exhilarating and uplifting, yet also a deeply serious piece about violence, war, colonialism, racism and xenophobia.

Adapted by the Isango Ensemble from a 2015 book of the same name by Jonny Sternberg, it tells the true story of Asad Abdullahi.

In 1991, when civil war came to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, two-thirds of the city's population fled. Among them was eight-year-old Asad, after his mother was murdered by a militia, and with his father somewhere in hiding. He was swept alone into the great wartime migration that scattered the Somali people throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the world.

Over the years, that migration takes Asad to South Africa, through refugee camps and into townships where xenophobia, hatred, resentment and violence reared their heads.

Somehow never losing his own humanity, Asad refused to give in: even when the odds seemed overwhelming, he continued to believe that, one day, he would be granted permission to go to settle in the global dreamland of the US of A.

Some reviews of A Man of Good Hope have suggested that it is a bit dodgy, since it’s an adaptation of a book by A White Man. Which rather misses the point that the Isango themselves are, y’know, black and African.

Indeed, if you want to compete in a competition for patronising white person of the year, you’d struggle to do it better than telling such a group that they’re ‘wrong’. Or that the premise of the US being a haven for refugees is ‘white saviour syndrome’. 

In the latter situation, the production makes absolutely sure you know, from very early on in the piece, that the belief in an America of no violence, no guns, wealth for all etc is a myth. When Asad and others continue to believe it, therefore, it is poignant because we know what a myth that is.

With a mini orchestra of eight marimbas, and a few upturned plastic bins, Isango has taken the story and turned it into an opera/musical: it’s not just national boundaries that are crossed here, but musical ones too, with styles from European classical to a wide variety of African styles.

It’s a serious, thought-provoking piece, yet somehow doesn’t leave one feeling depressed.

Siphosethus Hintsho (pictured above, bottom right) as the child Asad, rather steals the show – this is an exceptionally talented youngster – but Isango is an ensemble and there are no weak spots anywhere on stage. They all act, they all dance, they all sing, they all play instruments. And they all do it very, very well.

It’s difficult not to feel a Brechtian influence, but this is not westernised Africa: this is an African story – and a global one. And yes, given history, it is a predominantly South African way, with western influences. But ultimately, with an unmistakably authentic African voice.

Follies is simply a bittersweet masterpiece

In the last 30 years, London’s West End has seen all too many musical follies and, in a previous life as a regular theatre reviewer, I’ve had the misfortune to see a few – Children of Eden and the execrable Robin, Prince of Sherwood spring all-too-rapidly to mind.

But 29 years ago, as a birthday present, I took my mother to the Shaftsbury Theatre to see the star-studded first London production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.

Diana Rigg, Julia McKenzie, Daniel Massey, Eartha Kitt, Lynda Baron, Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson – I said it was a glittering array of talent.

This introduction to Sondheim catapulted him into my pantheon of household gods, where he has remained ever since.

In the years since, A Little Night Music introduced The Other Half to his work – and to the idea that the musical theatre might not be totally naff after all.

I’ve had the fortune to catch a rare production of Frogs in a south London public baths and seen Imelda Staunton in the West End production of Into the Woods. There was the utterly magnificent National Theatre production of Sweeney Todd as a Cottesloe chamber opera, with McKenzie once more and Alun Armstrong, and Staunton in the recent Gypsy.

But as the clock ticked down to my visit to the National Theatre’s revival of Follies, it is hard to describe the excitement that was mixed with slight trepidation at the fear that it might prove a disappointment.

Pared back to the original one-act version and with the overly optimistic 1987 ending ditched, it is better than ever.

James Goldman’s book has often been criticised as lacking much of a story. He continued revising it until his death and it’s noted that, of the relatively limited number of productions that there have been, no two are the same. For that 1987 London production, for instance, Sondheim wrote two replacement songs on the basis of the casting – Diana Rigg not being a dancer was the reason behind one of these.

Certainly there’s little story, but within the context of this work, that actually helps.

The hook on which Follies hangs is a party that is being thrown in a decrepit old Broadway theatre that’s about to be demolished. In the interwar years, it had played host to the Weismann Follies (based on the Ziegfeld Follies) and the guests on this final night are mainly former showgirls.

The two central former chorines, Sally and Phyllis, had been good friends, but with WWII they had drifted apart, marrying Buddy and Ben respectively – friends who had courted them when they were on stage.

But neither couple is happy, with Sally having spent years nursing a flame for Ben that threatens to consume her.

At the theatre once more, as the ghosts of their young selves mill around them, the tensions come to a head.

So, that’s the ‘plot’. In which case, how does the show as a whole  overcome such a slender storyline to be such a masterpiece?

Simply because, in removing any distraction of a more complex plot, it becomes a meditation on age, regret, missed opportunities, lost dreams, middle-aged cynicism and more.

And this is also why we’re drawn to the characters and why Follies demands such a top-notch cast.

Here, Dominic Cooke has given each present-day character a ghost – not just the central two couples – and it gives greater emphasis to this sense of being haunted by our pasts.

But of course the other thing that makes this such a masterpiece is the music. There are essentially two scores: the first features the numbers Sondheim wrote for the women to sing, reprising their glory days.

They are fabulous pastiches of various composers’ styles – pastiche, but never, ever parody – and Sondheim’s genius shines through in both music and lyrics. There are several showstoppers here.

Stella’s Who’s That Woman, with most of the other women, is one. Hattie’s Broadway Baby another and, of course, Carlotta’s I’m Still Here, given further poignancy in this production as the character starts singing it to various other party guests, almost as amusing anecdote, before they leave her and she is left to finish it alone, more brittle than ever.

But for me, the goosebumps really come as the elderly Heidi sings her Leharesque old hit, One More Kiss. Her voice quakes, but is then joined to the crystal clear coloratura of her younger self. It’s enough to make the eyes prick even thinking about it.

The second score is the book songs – classic Sondheim numbers such as Losing My Mind.

As the show moves to it’s finale, the differences between these two scores blur a little.

Follies, quite simply, leaves most other musical theatre mired in Earthbound mud as it soars above.

Cooke’s direction is superb, as is Vicki Mortimer’s design.

The cast is flawless. Staunton as Sally does, as always these days, hit the heights. But this is no solo piece. Janie Dee is a wonderfully acerbic Phyllis, Philip Quast is excellent as a man realising that his life is utterly lacking in any depth and Peter Forbes is every bit his equal as the confused and sad Buddy.

Alex Young, Zizi Strallen, Adam Rhys-Charles and Fred Haig all deserve praise as their respective ghosts.

It seems almost churlish not simply to reel off the rest of the cast. But particular standouts from the rest of what is, in so many ways, an ensemble, include Di Botcher as Hattie, Tracie Bennett as Carlotta and Dawn Hope as Stella.

And absolutely not forgetting operatic soprano Josephine Barstow – who has worked with the likes of Herbert von Karajan – as Heidi, with Alison Langer as her younger self.

The orchestra, under Nigel Lilley, is also excellent.

And if you want one final indicator of just how good this is – I’ve managed to get tickets to see it once again.

If you can’t make it to the theatre – it’s on until 3 January – then there is a live cinema screening next week, on 16 November; find your nearest venue here. I simply cannot recommend this enough.

Gypsy really is the ticket to die for

Imelda Staunton with cute dog (Nessie/Scampie)

It’s not often that you can, with at least a modicum of justification – claim that some theatrical production or other is a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event (the ephemeral nature of every single live performance apart).

But it’s not that great an exaggeration if we’re in the UK and talking about Gypsy, the 1959 show penned by Jule Styne (music) and Stephen Sondheim (libretto), with a book by Arthur Laurents.

Remarkably, it took 14 years for it to see the light of day on the London stage in the first place (with Angela Lansbury), and has now taken a staggering 22 years to earn a revival.

Possibly it’s suffered from being so closely associated with Ethel Merman – she of ‘plants her feet, leans back and hits the back row of the auditorium’. How can you compete with such an icon? Who do you cast in that amazing role?

Of course, that’s all bound up with the legend – including how Merman didn’t get the role she created on stage when it was filmed in 1962, with the plum part of Rose going to Rosalind Russell.

I’d suggest that most British musical lovers who didn’t see that 1973 London production are mostly familiar with the show from either the recording of the original Broadway production or the film. In my case, it’s the former.

Yet setting all this aside, what makes Gypsy’s absence even more of a mystery is the place that it occupies in the musical theatre canon, being widely considered to be one of the greatest musicals ever written – if not the greatest.

So now that this Chichester transfer has landed in the West End we have an opportunity to assess the vehicle itself, together with a production that has itself garnered massive praise last autumn.

Both have a question to answer: is the hyperbole fair?

For anyone who doesn’t know, the plot – based on a true story – sees Rose, the apotheosis of pushy showbiz mothers, trying to drive her two daughters to vaudeville success.

But vaudeville is dying, the act is nauseatingly bad and, when the ‘talented’ one of her daughters – ‘Baby June – quits, everything looks over for Rose’s dream.

She cannot give up, though, and pushes on, replicating the same act, but with her other daughter, Louise, now taking centre stage.

And when she forces Louise to fill in for a missing performer at a down-at-heel burlesque theatre, you know that it’ll end in tears.

But the tears are not Louise’s, who is ultimately liberated by the experience, learning that she’s a sexy, grown woman, instead of the clunky, talentless child that she had been lulled into believing herself to be.

With daughter freeing herself from her mother’s smothering grasp and embracing stardom for herself, it is Rose that is left to realise that she has lost everything.

Rose is a magnificent creation in the tradition of the classic tragic hero. Deeply flawed, she’s been described as a musical theatre answer to Lear, but there are also valid comparisons with Brecht’s Mother Courage: since both see their children as commodities, and both lose them as a result.

Is Rose really utterly selfish, trying to live her own thwarted dreams vicariously through her children or is she a genuinely loving mother, or somewhere in between?

And there you have an illustration of the complexity of Rose. Thus the audience cannot see her simply, but has to engage with that character and with the story on a different level to that of many musicals.

Peter Davison and Imelda Staunton

Not that the creative team neglected the smaller roles. Herbie, who becomes both an agent for the troupe and also Rose’s lover (on a promise to become husband number four), has depth about him too.

And then, of course, there is Louise, who becomes the eponymous Gypsy of the title, and who has to develop from gauche tomboy to sophisticated stripteaser.

Indeed, what do you expect when that team included a Sondheim? No other writer – as composer, as librettist and as both – has ever, so consistently, created works of musical theatre that address real human emotions and flaws to the degree that he has.

There are some stonkingly great songs here: Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Let Me Entertain You and Together among them. Styne came up with a perfect Broadway score – a blessing, perhaps, of Merman saying she’d refuse the role if someone as unknown as Sondheim was allowed to write the music.

Given that Sondheim had already been asked to do precisely that – and had accepted – this could have been disastrous. Fortunately, his mentor, the great Oscar Hammerstein II, convinced him to work with Styne as lyricist.

And it paid off, because the lyrics are superb.

But now to look at this production specifically.

Jonathan Kent’s direction is top-notch, while Anthony Ward’s work on set and costumes is also excellent.

On the performances, first, a mention for Anita Louise Combe, Louise Gold and Julie Legrand as the three strippers who explain to Louise that You Gotta Get A Gimmick. It’s a brilliant, funny routine – retaining, indeed, the original Jermone Robbins choreography.

Lara Pulver is excellent as Louise: utterly convincing both as the clunky child and the sophisticated stripper.

Peter Davison is a fine Herbie, giving some grounded warmth to proceedings. No, he’s no great singer – but neither were Jack Klugman or Karl Malden in the original stage production and film.

And then we come to Imelda Staunton as Rose.

Polish the awards right now.

This is a stupendous, electrifying performance.

The Other Half said that he’d never seen a theatrical denouement as powerful since seeing Glenda Jackson do Mother Courage at the Mermaid – and that’s a long time ago and a massive compliment.

Lara Pulver and Imelda Staunton

She ranges from the wheedling to the fun-loving to the victimised to the angry and the self-deluded with consummate ease. The breakdown scene at the end is utterly gut-wrenching.

This reading of Rose is a phenomenally subtle, detailed and powerful one.

Vocally, Staunton can do everything from the gentle right up to the belters. She’s hardly new to Sondheim – having played the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods, (1990-’91) as well as Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd just three years ago. Indeed, it was after seeing that performance that Sondheim himself told her that she had to play Rose.

She takes the show and makes it absolutely her own – just as Gypsy demands.

Rarely will you see a standing ovation even before the piece has entirely finished, but as the final note of Rose’s Turn  dies away, it is impossible not to rise.

This is musical theatre with knobs on. And then with gilt on the knobs.  And then with gilt on the gilt. The run has now been extended until November – if you haven’t got the clue yet, let me put it simply: get a ticket if you possibly can.

And in the remote case that I haven’t made myself clear: Gypsy is one of the very best things to arrive in the West End for years, so go and see it!

Camp heaven with Pink Martini and The Von Trapps

Pink Martini

There are times in life when something happens that, however quirky and however surreal, it is perfectly suited to the situation.

Last week, finding myself singing along with four members of the von Trapp family to the Lonely Goatherd, was just such an occasion.

It was Thursday, toward the end of what could only be described – at its most polite – as a bit of a bitch of a week, and The Other Half and I found ourselves traipsing out west for the evening.

It had been six months ago that I’d booked tickets to see Pink Martini at the Eventim (Hammersmith) Apollo.

A 10-12 piece combo that founder and classically-trained pianist Thomas Lauderdale has called a “little orchestra”, it has also been variously described as being “somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brazilian marching street band and Japanese film noir”, performing something that’s “part language lesson, part Hollywood musical”.

Or put another way, this is an act that defies easy and lazy labels.

The Other Half was introduced to Pink Martini some years ago, by colleagues playing the 1997 album Sympathique in a bar. He bought a copy – and then introduced me to two tracks in particular: Brazil and Que Sera Sera.

They are glorious versions – the latter, a haunting track, redolent of a ghostly fairground – and for someone who still loves all that old-fashioned Hollywood glamour, it was a perfect sound, although it should be pointed out that the Pinks organised and performed in a concert for the Occupy movement a couple of years ago, so for all that rather privileged backgrounds of some members, they’re hardly ‘Establishment’.

We have, in the years since, got most of their albums, but had never quite managed to catch them on stage – and indeed, had heard from someone who had seen them live, that they were a little ‘too perfect’ and a little flat live.

But six months ago, when tickets for a tour became available, I snapped up a pair – and then promptly forgot about it.

By Wednesday, when The Other Half reminded me, I was almost relieved not to be able to find the tickets anywhere: the last thing I felt like was trekking out to Hammersmith.

The following morning, however, Eventim proved calmly efficient at replacing the tickets and left them at the box office to collect, so there was no backing out.

Thursday turned out to be a nine-hour working day and my eyes were bugging as we caught the Tube west.

The Von Trapps

A hot dog from a van, followed by a (vastly overpriced) glass of Zinfandel rosé in the Art Deco bar served as preparation.

The crowd was still sparse when the house lights dipped and the quartet of The Von Trapps came out on stage.

Sofia, Melanie, Amanda and August are four of six siblings, grandchildren of Werner von Trapp, the fourth son of Captain von Trapp and step-son of Maria.

As one of the girls told us, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s version of their story, Werner is renamed and becomes the boy who introduces himself to Maria as “I’m Kurt and I’m incorrigible” (oh, I remember the scene exactly).

This all won bursts of applause from some in the audience.

Anyway, in opening the concert, the half-hour set by this young group was charming and thoroughly enjoyable. It included a lovely cover of Dream A Little Dream and a new song that they had penned themselves, Storm – but nothing from ‘that’ show.

It was, though, very easy to see how they fit into the eclectic oeuvre of Pink Martini.

I was a little concerned, however, at the minimal level of atmosphere in the auditorium – which is a very large one. Would that report of a flat gig prove to be the same again?

After a half-hour interlude, on came Pink Martini themselves.

I had no need to fret. The hall was now far fuller, and it lifted as the band, with Lauderdale at the piano and China Forbes on lead vocals – looking like Callas in a flowing, black number – took the evening by the scruff of the neck, zipped up the rhythm and had the place rocking within minutes.

Witty spoken interludes included Forbes relating how, after making the mistake of assuming that some words they used for one of their earliest songs were out of copyright, they were sued in France – after which the French “asked us for our autographs”.

They’re playing the Follies Bergères in the next few weeks.

Lauderdale explained how he composed two different songs from the same classical root – a Schubert piece. The results were And Then You’re Gone and But Now I’m Back, the first of which features a woman angrily dismissing her lover after he’s left unexpectedly, while the latter sees him asking to be let back, and coming up with excuses as to his disappearance.

After Forbes sang the first, the second was performed by special guest Ari Shapiro – an American international reporter for National Public Radio who is now based in London, having previously been the station’s White House correspondent, and who sings (and sings very well) with the Pinks as a sideline.

The first of these songs segues easily from the Schubert to Latin beats, while the second moves into a swing style. Both are excellent.

The band seriously upset house management by inviting members of the audience to come up on stage and dance around them: it’s a big stage and there were, after all, steps on either side leading to and from the stalls.

Good-humoured chaos ensued, as a cross-generational crowd piled up the steps and others danced in the aisles, with senior house staff (“sorry to see it’s a police state”, noted Lauderdale sniffily, afterwards) desperately trying to stop the fun.

In a technological first (for this blog, anyway) I’ve managed to upload some video footage to give you an idea.

And when I say “cross-generational”, I mean it: Lauderdale had the house lights raised so as to find a 94-year-old woman who attends every London gig they play, while there were clearly children dancing on stage.

Other songs included a version of Abba’s Fernando – sung in Swedish, with Latin rhythms, and including the von Trapps as backing – which was just wonderful.

Their complex use of percussion reminds me of a drum band we encountered at a street festival in Barcelona some years ago – and which I loved then.

And a special little mention here for Timothy Nishimoto, who is not only one of three percussionists, but also adds vocals on some songs, and has some amazing dance moves.

It’s impossible to sit still to this sort of music: the woman next to me was managing – although I don’t know how, because I simply couldn’t.

And late on, the encores – almost an extra mini set – included the Lonely Goatherd with the von Trapps.

Now, if you think my previous comment of it as surreal is over done, think about it.

These were four young members of a family that has a genuinely remarkable backstory anyway, which was turned into a stage show and film that became such a smash global hit – it’s called ‘Rebel Nun’ in Argentina, by the way – that it’s been a substantial boost for the Austrian tourist industry.

Here they were, singing a song that was written for the fictionalised versions of their own grandfather and step great-grandmother.

And if you don’t think that that could ever be out-camped, it can and was – with Forbes and Shapiro teaming up to ‘do’ Barbra and Judy doing Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy.

Not forgetting, of course, that to finish things off came the Pinks’ biggest hit, Brazil, which had people congaing in the aisles.

Perfection!

It might have been a torrid week, but I cannot imagine a better antidote. Days later, the buzz remains.

Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the very best concerts/gigs that I have ever been to.

And if you haven’t heard Pink Martini before – then do yourself a favour.

They have an excellent website and YouTube channel, which includes footage of the likes of their version of Fernando, while there are seven studio albums and they tour frequently.

pinkmartini.com

Pink Martini on YouTube