Tag Archives: James Corden

Review – The Constitutent, The Old Vic, London, 29th June 2024

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Joe Penhall’s new play couldn’t have arrived at a more appropriate moment. With a general election at our fingertips and much warranted concern for the safety of our elected members of parliament, this three-hander lays bare the dangers that our MPs face from the public – and indeed, from their constituents. But this clever, witty and succinct play does a lot more than that.

We first meet Alec installing security devices to Monica’s constituency office. A camera, a panic button, alarms – both personal and fixed; these are the tools of his everyday trade, but they could mean the difference between life or death for Monica. Alec had served in Afghanistan where he was a security specialist; what he doesn’t know about danger isn’t worth knowing. He also went to primary school with Monica, and their mothers were friends back in the day.

Monica is a diligent MP who clearly tries to help wherever she can. But there are always limits; one mustn’t get personally involved in a case and when Alec reveals that his messy divorce has reached the stage of a family court because Alec’s anger makes him prone to threaten violence against his ex-wife’s new partner (and wannabe father to his kids), Monica sees the red flag and tries to back off. Alec places a lot of faith in Monica to help him, but she can’t deliver. It doesn’t help that he’s been blogging the whole nightmare situation and has legions of keyboard warriors on his side. And one night, Monica’s office is broken into, the furniture vandalised, and Monica is injured – apparently from falling down the stairs. But who was the vandal intruder? Was that really how Monica got injured? Why didn’t the security measures prevent it? And will her Police security liaison officer do his best to protect her, or take revenge against the offender?

Both Monica and Alec are victims here. She faces physical threat simply by trying to do her job as an MP, and he struggles within an adversarial legal system that ignores his PTSD and prevents him from seeing his children. Joe Penhall beautifully captures both their plights in his powerful, suspenseful and surprisingly funny play that keeps you engaged through all the plot twists and guessing right to the end.

Matthew Warchus has effectively created a traverse stage at the Old Vic with a bank of seats behind the stage mirroring those that are fixed in front of it; whether this has any particular theatrical benefit other than reducing the acting space and increasing the number of potential ticket sales, I’m not sure. It does mean, however, that we can dispense with scenery (great), relying on just a couple of desks and an exercise bike to convey the various locations of the plot. There’s a fascinating choice of musical accompaniments to distract us during the scene changes, including the highly appropriate last two verses of Billy Bragg’s Between the Wars before the final scene.

There’s a powerhouse of acting at the centre of the production too, with Anna Maxwell Martin totally convincing as MP Monica, juggling her family and parliamentary duties, full of practical ideas for improving lives, and largely discounting any personal risk to her own safety because – well, it just doesn’t happen, does it? She is matched by James Corden as Alec, whose comic timing is immaculate with some of the wonderful throwaway lines that Mr Penhall has given him, but who also shocks you with how potentially violent and angry his character can be. Mr Corden’s performance, particularly in the final scene, is incredibly powerful on an emotional level; and Mrs Chrisparkle and I were both surprised to discover a little bit of unexpected moisture in our eyes in those final minutes. The third member of the cast is Zachary Hart as Police Officer Mellor; ostensibly a practical support to Monica but with a gradually revealed agenda of his own that makes you realise he’s not everything he’s cracked up to be.

The play involves some stage combat which, at the performance we saw, was unconvincing and a disappointment. There were also a couple of instances of fluffed and forgotten lines, which I wasn’t expecting from this cast of this calibre, but everyone can have an off day! Nevertheless, it’s an excellent production of a very pertinent piece of writing which you continue to talk about long after curtain down. At just one hour 25 minutes without an interval, it’s all killer and no filler, as the poet once said. It continues at the Old Vic until 10th August.

4-starsFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Into The Woods, Errol Flynn Filmhouse, Northampton, 29th January 2015

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Is it me, or are they making films of stage musicals much better these days? Over the years, some of my favourite stage musicals have been made into absolute stinkers – a prime example being A Chorus Line, where they actually changed the story because they thought What I Did For Love worked better as a simple love song between two people rather than being about love for one’s career as a dancer. You did a lot of fantastic things, Sir Richard Attenborough, but I’m afraid that wasn’t one of them. But I found the film version of Les Miserables endlessly more watchable than the stage version, not that being sat in the front row of the dress circle of the Palace theatre with no leg room and with gout is that conducive to theatrical magic. Now into the mix comes Into The Woods, Sondheim’s fairytale fantasy made into an engaging and brilliantly performed film by a first rate cast.

I should state that I’ve never seen a live stage production of Into The Woods, although I have seen a DVD of the original Broadway production. I quite enjoyed it; Mrs Chrisparkle found it a bit “relentless” – her favourite word to describe something she doesn’t like because it just doesn’t let up and sometimes less is more. The show hit Broadway in 1988 and the West End in 1990, at a time when we didn’t go to the theatre much – how weird that feels today. The concept of the show is wonderfully inventive and original and appeals to anyone who, as a child, ever read or was told a fairytale; i.e. everyone. Unlike with A Chorus Line, I’m not an Into The Woods Purist; but if you are, you might be disappointed with some of the story tweaking, the dropping of several songs, making it slightly less violent and more family-friendly, which of course has nothing to do with its being made by Disney.

In a mythical fairyland, four of our favourite childhood heroes all unite to make a new story. Jack (of Beanstalk fame) has to sell his favourite cow to raise money so that he and his mother don’t starve; Little Red Riding Hood has to visit her grandmother to bring her food (if she doesn’t scoff it all herself by the time she gets there); Cinderella has beastly step-sisters who mistreat her and try to prevent her from meeting the Prince at the Royal Ball (that’s a Festival in Sondheim-speak); and Rapunzel is trapped in a tower but will let down her golden hair for anyone who fancies a clamber-up. Meanwhile, the Baker and his wife despair that they can’t have children, and discover it’s because their neighbourhood witch put a spell on their property in revenge for the Baker’s father’s vegetable- and pulse-based kleptomania. But she will lift the spell if the Baker and his wife can provide her with a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, a slipper as pure as gold and hair as yellow as corn. I’m sure you’ve worked out where this is going. So they all go into the woods; and eventually they furnish the witch with what she needs, the spell is lifted, the Baker and his wife have a child and they all live happily ever after.

Except that they don’t because in Sondheim’s world nobody lives happily ever after. The giant’s wife wreaks havoc (where there’s a beanstalk, there’s a giant, keep up), Rapunzel runs off, Cinderella and the Prince need marriage counselling and the Baker’s wife falls off a cliff. And lots of other people die too. Of course, all this could have been avoided if the Baker and his wife had been mature enough to accept their situation, maybe try a little IVF, or simply change their mind-set from childless to child-free and go out more. There again, there’s no end to what some people will do in order to have kids, as this story proves.

The film looks and sounds ravishing all the way through. Disney threw $50m at it, and it shows. There are some very nice special effects when the witch regularly appears and disappears, nothing too cosmic, just some elegantly done whirlwinds. Sometimes, as Robert Frost would have it, the woods are lovely, dark and deep; sometimes they’re utterly terrifying, the kind of place a lascivious wolf would lurk in order to chat up little girls. Musically it’s a treat for your ears from start to finish. The arrangements are sumptuous and the singing is clear, beautiful, funny, and quirky – all the right ingredients for this show. Into The Woods boasts some stonking good songs, including the main theme, an assorted fugue-like piece of fun which sticks in your head for ages afterwards (I woke up at 4.00am this morning with it running through my brain) and which you can use as a commentary on your daily chores (“into the shop to buy some food”, “into the kitchen to make some tea”, etc, etc, ad nauseam).

The performances are pretty much uniformly superb throughout. James Corden continues to prove why he’s one of our best young actors with a funny, thoroughly believable and surprisingly moving performance as the Baker; and he also provides the narration. Desperate to meet the witch’s demands, he masterminds a cack-handed assault on the roving characters of the woods together with his wife, gaining items from them but losing them on the way too. It’s a bit like an extended, musical round of Jeux Sans Frontières, catching hold of the cape and the hair with one hand but dropping the cow with the other. Emily Blunt gives a wonderfully understated performance as the Baker’s wife with great comic timing and a terrific voice. The two of them become the perfect foil to the mad excesses of Meryl Streep’s witch, dominating proceedings with her sheer energy and attack – although Sondheim gives her some damn good lines to sing too.

The two child performers are absolutely sensational. 13 year old Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood like an old pro, completely stealing that first scene in the Bakers’ shop, as she discovers and devours cookies with the efficiency of a heat-seeking missile. When she’s interacting with the other main characters she’s equally as assured as the most experienced of actors. Similarly, 15 year old Daniel Huttlestone, who both warmed and broke your heart as Gavroche in Les Miserables, takes to Jack as a duck to water with his fine singing voice and confident cheeky personality. Anna Kendrick does a good job as the stereotypical Cinderella, putting up with the cruelty of her step-sisters and falling in love with the Prince, but with the added dimension of the role’s darker dénouement too.

One of the best scenes in the film was the song Agony, performed by Chris Pine as Cinderella’s Prince and Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince, each trying to out-prince each other as their duet gets progressively wetter, the further into a rocky waterfall they blunder. Both suitors are really well cast, Mr Pine having the terrific line about only being trained to be charming, not sincere; and Mr Magnussen doing a marvellously painful descent on Rapunzel’s hair. I confess, when Rapunzel’s tear dropped onto his eye and he could see again, my brain let out a huge soppy “awwwwww” – I just hope my mouth didn’t hear and follow suit. Mackenzie Mauzy is an excellent Rapunzel, changing from malleable daughter to being unable to forgive her mother – and under the circumstances why would you? – and Johnny Depp is a splendidly eerie and foppish wolf, planning main course and pudding before getting his own just desserts. Cinderella’s horrendous household is very amusingly portrayed by Tammy Blanchard and Lucy Punch as her villainous step-sisters and Christina Baranski as her brutally bossy stepmother (no Baron Hardup here).

There’s also a lot of fun to be had spotting famous people in minor roles, like Annette Crosbie as Little Red Riding Hood’s granny, Frances de la Tour as the Giant’s wife, and Simon Russell Beale as the Baker’s father. But the biggest blast from the past – for me at least – was when Jack’s mother first appeared and I whispered to Mrs C “could that possibly be Tracey Ullman?” who I hadn’t seen since she was in Three of a Kind (whatever happened to David Copperfield) and since she drove away with Paul McCartney in the “They Don’t Know” video. And yes indeed it is Tracey Ullman and she gives a wonderfully warm and funny performance, with no care at all for the moralities of corporal punishment.

Just like when we saw The Theory of Everything last week, my only criticism of the film is that it just goes on a bit too long. Mentally, I did something of a “switch-off” when the witch became beautiful and the bakers got their child. Maybe I’m just a happy ever after kind of person who didn’t need to see all these people’s worlds subsequently fall apart. In the stage production that’s just the end of Act One. Knowing me, I probably needed an interval. When it became clear there was still some distance to go the film just started to tire me. But it’s a bold man who tells Sondheim he’s got it wrong, and I wouldn’t dream of it. All in all it’s a really enjoyable film with great performances and a feast of splendour for the eyes and especially the ears. Making this film guarantees that the show will continue to delight audiences for generations to come.

Review – One Man Two Guvnors, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, 22nd October 2011

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We booked this on 26th May because the word coming out of the National Theatre was that this was a smasheroony. Five months on and you don’t need me to tell you this is a fantastically funny show with some extraordinary feats of physical comedy. It already boasts a great reputation, and its West End transfer is assured of success. It’s not perfect – but so refreshingly laugh inducing that it doesn’t matter.

Written by Richard Bean (whose The Big Fellah I thought was the best new play of last year), it’s an adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 Commedia dell’Arte based “Servant of Two Masters”. It’s now set in Brighton in 1963, amongst a criminal underworld of petty thieves and villains getting bumped off. The plot is highly silly but highly entertaining, totally incredible and so enjoyable that you’re completely happy to suspend all reasonable disbelief. It’s a script full of character, chock full with hilarious happenings and good jokes, and I reckon it deserves to earn Mr Bean enough to retire on (although let’s hope he doesn’t).

James Corden’s central performance is astonishingly athletic for a big chap. He plays Francis Hensall, who blunders his way into working for two guvnors who must remain a secret from each other; but of course he confuses their jobs and this leads him up all sorts of farcical garden paths. With terrific comic timing, and a super rapport with the audience whom he both takes into his confidence but also hoodwinks too, he’s simply a joy to watch. At times he appears to come out of character and address the audience directly as himself, in a manner I haven’t seen since the good old days of Eric Sykes and Jimmy Edwards in Big Bad Mouse (if you go back that far). This is very nicely subversive of standard theatrical practice, and feels very refreshing.

The final scene before the interval will probably go down in history as one of the most hilarious ever seen on stage. Suffice it to say, not everything is at seems, but it culminates in one of the most astonishing coups de theatre you’re ever likely to witness. Of the three apparent interactions with members of the audience, throughout the whole play, I’m pretty sure only one is 100% genuine, If You Get My Drift. But it’s all carried off with amazing aplomb, that you only admire James Corden’s performance the more for it.

He has excellent support from a gifted company of comic actors. Oliver Chris is excellent as one of his guvnors, Stanley, an ineffectual toff using posh expletives but who can be a thug when he wants. I also loved the performance of Daniel Rigby as Alan, the wannabe actor fiancé of Claire Lams’ Pauline, the thick daughter of local gangland boss Charlie.His pompous posing makes such an effective contrast with the cockney vagabonds around him, and her innocent stupidity is another great comic element. And then you have the scene stealing performance of Tom Edden as Alfie, the ancient waiter, whose hands seem to have become detached from his arms and whose entire physical presence is a ridiculous delight. If you thought Julie Walters’ “two soups” waitress was past it, you’ve seen nothing yet!

To be honest, the whole cast puts heart and soul into it and there isn’t a weak link. On the matinee performance we saw, Fred Ridgeway, as Charlie, seemed to corpse in almost every scene, so that when other actors came on stage to join in they tended to be thrown of course by his apparent inability to stay calm! Naturally, this only added to the general hilarity.

My only gripe – and it’s minor – is that the music that runs through the show slightly puts the brakes on the activity. The performance starts with the (very enjoyable) skiffle group doing four songs, concert style. Whilst I appreciate it can take a while for everyone to settle down (and it takes an inordinate amount of time at the Alex in Birmingham to get from street to seat) I did feel it was too much. When the fourth song started I asked Mrs Chrisparkle if she thought the show was ever going to get going. The group also sings while the staging is getting changed between scenes. Sometimes, cast members join the group for eccentric solos, which is very funny, but I still felt it made the whole thing a little less fluid than it could be. Very minor gripe though.

This is definitely, as they used to say, going to run and run. A top notch comedy performed by a dream team. I don’t envy the producers’ problem of recasting once this lot have had enough.