They’re back. In August the capital fills with bored, dim-witted, half-naked semi-vagrants who have nothing to do here but get in the way of Londoners who do have things to do here. Tourism is an invitation to robbery. If you aren’t going to a place to work, you’re going there to get worked over. The rites of mob travel invert all the natural obligations of xenophilia. Natives become swindlers and their victims happily connive in the evacuation of their own purses.
No one objects because it’s understood that a tourist isn’t a visitor in the proper sense. He’s in London but not engaged with it. He’s half here and half at home. He meanders about, surrounded by a gaggle of friends, or in a little family unit, jabbering away in his native tongue, consuming the trusted cuisine of his own nation, and gawping at sights he’s seen a million times in films and photographs. His bubble of familiarity seals him from the city as he floats alongside it. He affects nothing here and nothing here affects him. He might as well spend a week at Heathrow.
I shouldered my way through a throng of these ill-dressed easyJet victims and reached the doors of the Trafalgar Studios where a brand new musical, Betwixt!, has opened in the 90-seater basement space. The venue, like the tourists, is in the West End but not quite of it. At first sight Betwixt! looks like a decent stab at a hit but it turns out to be an extremely risky affair.
Ian McFarlane has written the book, the lyrics and the music. And he’s the director. Seasoned musical producers never concentrate so much responsibility in one pair of hands, so McFarlane needs to be better than the experts to succeed. His show feels like a homage to the The Wizard of Oz. Innocent characters are dropped into a dreamland and given a spurious mission which they’re prevented from carrying out by a gang of Ruritanian ogres.
The plot is pretty muddled, I have to say, and McFarlane keeps distracting us with gags and sketch ideas. His big idea is to mock the conventions of musicals. Wacky dances appear from nowhere. A character halts a number to explain how the music will work. A larky speech about Ally McBeal pops up. Individually fun, these japes are lethal to the show’s atmosphere. Great musicals work by effecting a complete act of transportation into a parallel world. This one keeps referring back to the amused and cynical perspective of the writer. So while McFarlane doesn’t believe in his fantasy he expects us to believe in it for him. His grasp of romantic sexuality is deeply weird. He creates two female archetypes here, an ageing seductress (sexily played by Ellen Greene who, alas, can’t sing that well) and a decapitated Tyrolean shepherdess, whose severed head rests on a box. Neither figure is appealing to men or flattering to women. A romantic role needs to fulfil both functions.
It sounds harsh to make these comments about a fringe show but the reality is harsh. There are at least ten thousand writers out there all striving to create a hit musical. To stand a chance, they need to score high in five areas: story, character, tunes, choreography and décor. McFarlane’s songs are promising and the dances work well. Elsewhere he needs help. He should get it. Doing it all on his own means doing most of it badly.
Underneath the Leicester Square Theatre there’s a tiny improvised space and a distinct whiff of stale sewage. Something wrong with the plumbing. And no wonder. The venue’s plumber, Laurence Lynch, has been busy writing a play. Set in the welfare ghettos of north London, Burnt Oak introduces us to a teenage bombshell Susan and her decorator boyfriend Nobby. Susan’s pregnancy prompts the young lovebirds to move in together despite the objections of her villainous old dad, George.
This rudimentary set-up forms the backdrop for an extraordinarily skilful slice of documentary realism. The dialogue is brilliantly observed and the performances have the muted, unhurried temper of real life. There’s a particularly powerful showing from Jason Wing as an ageing gangster coming to terms with the waning of his powers. At times, I felt I wasn’t watching a play at all but eavesdropping on events unfolding live. I wasn’t the only one enthralled. The room has no rake and everyone seated in the rear two rows stood up to get a clearer view of the action. The play is also full of the savage and accidental humour of real life. It may not be perfect (the first-act curtain could be stronger and the ending is poorly motivated), but this is an extremely impressive debut from the plumber-in-residence. So what if the theatre stinks a bit? The script is rose-scented.
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