Betty Blue Eyes- The Musical -Novello Theatre Spring 2011 — Page 2

Sarah sounds great in the one number released but the other one..........

Her voice sounds really strong. I hope she has a few good numbers.
I saw her doing Audrey in 'Little Shop' back in the early 90s and she was absolutely brilliant.

Oh that's a good pig. I do like a good pig.

Behind the scenes of 'Betty Blue Eyes'
Cameron Mackintosh and Richard Eyre have found a new musical star: a mechanical pig.
But will she bring home the bacon?

In a draughty old church hall in south-west London, all the appurtenances of a full-scale theatrical rehearsal are in place.
In the main room, a piano is banging away, and chorus lines sing and stomp. In the outer office, amid the piles of coats and coffee cups, two appended posters catch the eye.
One is a large reproduction of the Second World War exhortation to the British public to “Keep Calm and Carry On”, while the other shows a flying pig hovering between the towers of Battersea Power Station; the star of a photo shoot for the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals album, the porcine blimp slipped its moorings and drifted serenely across London, before coming to rest in a field in Kent.
Both images have a significant bearing on the production being put through its paces in the adjacent hall. 'Betty Blue Eyes' is a full-scale musical based on the 1984 Alan Bennett/Malcolm Mowbray-scripted film 'A Private Function', that starred Michael Palin and Maggie Smith as Gilbert and Joyce, a timid chiropodist and his social-climbing wife, struggling to gain a foothold in a post-war, class-riven, austerity-straitened Yorkshire town during the prolonged winter of 1947. Meanwhile, the venal councillors are covertly fattening a pig for slaughter to celebrate the nuptials of Princess Elizabeth.
The £2.5million production is armed with solid marquee names – Reece Shearsmith, from 'The League of Gentlemen', and Sarah Lancashire are the leads, the director is Sir Richard Eyre, and the producer is Sir Cameron Mackintosh, overseeing his first original musical for a decade.

While no one is daring to hope that it’ll cast as giant a shadow as its Floydian forbear, there’s a quiet confidence that, in a West End stuffed with jukebox musicals or pre-branded productions like 'The Wizard Of Oz', an original piece still has a chance to show some serious box office chops.

In the rehearsal room, it’s clear that the Little England milieu of the movie has been faithfully retained; some Bennett-isms survive verbatim (Joyce to Gilbert: “It’s not just pork, Gilbert; it’s power”), while Lancashire and Shearsmith lead the company through numbers like Fair Shares For All (“Ever since Hitler/Portions are littler”). It’s all the more shocking, therefore, when Eyre goes over to confer with the musical’s book writers, sitting quietly in a corner, and two American accents ring out.
It turns out that not only are Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman from Cincinnati and Baltimore respectively; this is also the first musical they’ve created. The score is by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, the Olivier-winning duo behind Honk and Mary Poppins.
Cameron Mackintosh says he’s “flabbergasted” that Cowen and Lipman have burrowed so thoroughly into the DNA of the time and place, but it turns out that they’re committed anglophiles, to put it mildly. As Cowen drily remarks: “We grew up on Masterpiece Theatre; 'Upstairs, Downstairs'; 'The Duchess of Duke Street'; 'Brideshead Revisited'.”
“We’ve always adored Alan Bennett,” Lipman says. “And then we were working late one night, and I went to get a cup of tea and flipped on the TV, and there was Betty from 'A Private Function' on some cable channel. And a light bulb went off in my brain.”

Despite the odd transatlantic misnomer – “Ginger Snaps” hurriedly changed to “Ginger Nuts”, for instance – it’s apparent that Cowen and Lipman are finely attuned to all those British things exemplified in 'A Private Function' that Americans aren’t supposed to get – humour, irony, class.
Bennett quickly gave the production his blessing. “They’ve kept the Bennettian feel,” says Richard Eyre, in a break from rehearsals. “It’s droll, but quite acerbic and with an implicit political edge. It’s a way of looking at the world with sympathy for the underdogs, the little men crushed by power and status and hierarchy.”

The film was packed with British character actors, with the likes of Pete Postlethwaite, Richard Griffiths, Alison Steadman and Denholm Elliott popping up in small roles, so it’s not surprising that the musical cast, equally peppered with I-definitely-know-them-from-somewhere faces – David Bamber, Adrian Scarborough – look on the piece as a play-with-songs rather than anything more overtly razzle-dazzling.
“I think this is all the better for having good actors in it,” says Shearsmith, whose open, boyish demeanour sharply contrasts with the grotesques he’s incarnated on television.
“In musicals, it’s the acting that usually lets you down, but what Cameron has said from the start about this is that we don’t want the characters to suddenly turn into someone else when they burst into song.” He adjusts his flat cap. “If we do this thing right, you’ll really care about these people by the end of it.”
Lancashire – who, rehearsals reveal, possesses a startling, full-throated, Little Voice-style set of pipes – concurs. “I was such a fan of the film that I went out and bought the screenplay 20 years ago,” she says, perched on a kitchen chair. “I think Joyce embodies the middle-class aspirations of that period, the drive and ambition. She’s brittle and rather capricious. It’s delicious for me, because I’ve never played anyone this brittle before.”

For all the actors’ talents, eagle-eyed theatregoers will spot that it’s not their faces that adorn the poster; the eponymous ivory, long-lashed leading lady is the big draw.
Cowen and Lipman originally conceived the musical with a living, snorting sow in mind. But then they found out that pigs, who are creatures of habit to an OCD degree, tend to shriek like, well, stuck pigs when those habits are disturbed and, like Mariah Carey, they don’t do stairs.
Perhaps they also read Michael Palin’s diaries, in which he recounts wrestling on location with Betty in the back seat of a car while she voids her bowels, as an onlooking and deeply unimpressed farmer remarks, apropos Alan Bennett: “I’d have written it without a pig in – no Ibsen, is he?”

Luckily, Mackintosh and Eyre have the Melbourne-based animatronics studio Creature Technology Company (CTC); they created the stars of 'Walking With Dinosaurs', and are currently crafting the ape for a Broadway production of 'King Kong'.
The Betty that CTC have fashioned wasn’t present the day I attended rehearsals, and was sneakily hidden when our photographer came calling. All of which might lead more suspicious minds to wonder if the thing actually works. Not at all, says Cameron Mackintosh: “She steals every scene. Someone said she’s like a real pig, but with fairy dust sprinkled all over her. Part of you knows she’s not real, yet she’s so lifelike. She’s the most expensive leading lady I’ve ever had and she's worth every penny.”
If Betty Blue Eyes doesn’t wallow in the West End mud, it won’t be for want of being propitious. Not only is theatreland currently awash in animals – war horses, lion kings, Totos – but Austerity Britain is back, there’s another royal wedding in the offing, and people are more than mindful of the Fair and Unfair Shares For All.
But the nagging question remains: will the newly-re-straitened circumstances work against the musical as much as for it? Will people be keen to shell out £50 (top Austerity Britain preview price) or £62.50 (top post-opening price) to see a newly minted show?
“Actually,” says Eyre, “the general state of British theatre is astonishingly healthy. I don’t think this is fanciful, wishful thinking, but people seem to be getting increasingly exasperated with inert media, whether that’s internet or film.
There’s a hunger for authentic experience. People want a sense of belonging and you get that with a successful live event, which I’m of course hoping this musical will turn out to be.”
Mackintosh is equally buoyant, pointing out that, in its 25th anniversary year, the West End production of 'Les Miserables' is currently enjoying advance sales at twice the volume it’s ever previously recorded.
In some respects, he says, Betty Blue Eyes will be an acid test for whether an original musical can pitch up in the West End and hold its own.
“There’s still a hunger for original material out there,” he argues. “It reminds me of when we were opening 'Cats' almost 30 years ago. Everyone was looking at us like the van to Rampton was late. But I feel the same about 'Betty Blue Eyes'. It’s usually the ones that, on paper, look like the opposite of sure-fire winners that go on and on.” As the cast breaks into another number (“The hoity-toity will be deeply shaken/When they see that we are bringing home the bacon”), Mackintosh concludes, with lip-smacking relish: “Betty’s got my juices going. Whether I make a penny back or not, she’s been a porker worth backing.”

Updated On: 3/19/11 at 01:46 AM

Right, a very (very) brief post-show breakdown that includes spoilers:

The cast are solid, and I don't have any real complaints. Even if I did, I didn't buy a programme and don't know who any of them were.

The score is actually quite lovely. It wasn't always the type of song I expected in place (I'd have wanted something brassier and bolder for the 'nobody' song, pretty though it was). Stiles and Drewe really have turned in a fantastic CD worth of music, but as a show, it fell flat in my eyes - at least a quarter of the songs dragged, and I was ready for the show to be over at least 15 minutes before it was. Some smart trims and shaves would bring the runtime down and keep the pace snappier, whereas now it's so darn languid that it goes past cozy and into dozey.

The book...is thin. I can see this being a charming 90 minute film, but there just isn't enough story here for a 150 min. show (including interval, mind) and it takes forever for the conflict to be established. There's an early song about how awesome of a foot guy Gilbert is, but it doesn't serve the story other than setting up a deus ex at the end.

Then there's the WTF. The meat inspector gets a song which is enjoyable and well performed, but also includes lyrics about how using paint to tag meat as unfit for consumption is akin to making art and features an extended dance sequence complete with black light green paint, pig carcass, and bobbies with highly anachronistic light up green truncheons.

As for the title star, Cameron clearly got taken to the cleaners, as all the pig does is open and close its eyes and mouth and move its head around. The body's joint with the mechanics was visible from the balcony, as was the sound of the gears in the dialogue scenes.

All that said, it was enjoyable enough that I felt I got my £10 out of my ticket. The score will be fondly remembered long after the rest of the show is cast aside, but it is overlong and would have worked just as well (if not better) as a straight play if adapted at all.

Any further questions, just ask.

Thanks exedore. his is in keeping with what I've been hearing.

Well done for braving the leg-purgatory which is the gods at the Novello! :)

CAMERON MACKINTOSH: MAKING A SONG AND DANCE ABOUT BETTY...

The tale of a pig in post-war austerity Britain has prompted the unexpected return to West End musicals of one of its all-time greats. Susie Mesure meets Cameron Mackintosh

Some people shake with anticipation; Sir Cameron Mackintosh sways. The theatre is quiet, momentarily, but the tunes in his head never stop. This afternoon's toe-tapper, which we're about to hear, is a particularly jaunty number, as I am to learn to my cost when trying to get to sleep later that night. We're standing in the dress circle of London's Novello, waiting for his director, the indomitable Sir Richard Eyre, to finish a group hug with the cast of Betty Blue Eyes before they break into the song that's already ringing in his ears.

If the musical lacks the jingle-jogging power of the likes of Les Misérables or Phantom, then it's probably only a matter of time. The work is the latest to join Sir Cameron's stable, and it would take a brave man to bet against it becoming another hit. Just consider its pedigree: the show is based on Alan Bennett's 1984 film A Private Function, and is the brainchild of a talented quartet of writers, which intriguingly include two Americans; intriguingly, because it's hard to imagine a more home-grown affair than this homage to post-war Britain.

For starters, the story's backdrop is a royal wedding: Prince Philip's to Princess Elizabeth. Sir Cameron, who issued the Betty Blue Eyes press release barely hours before news broke of Prince William's own impending nuptials, is aware he could hardly have timed it better. He stops swaying, briefly, to lean over and whisper: "I've heard from inside," cue theatrical pause from this most theatrical of men, "that even the Queen didn't know."

Then there's the Austerity Britain milieu. It's 1947 and rationing is in full swing. But the venal councillors don't let that stop them from secretly fattening a pig for slaughter in expectation of the big day's celebrations.

And then, suddenly, the cast disperses and we're left staring at a giant reproduction of the Second World War maxim that the population should "Keep Calm and Carry On" before the two leads, Sarah Lancashire and Reece Shearsmith, start belting out "Another Little Victory for Little England". Or perhaps I should say three leads: a few bars in and a squealing pig, the blue-eyed Betty of the title, joins in, helping me to surmise that the victory in question is the couple's heist of said pig.

Before animal lovers get carried away, the Betty on the stage is the work not of nature but an Australian-based animatronics company, Creature Technology. Not that that lessens her appeal: "She's a very precious girl!" Sir Cameron insists, during our chat earlier in one of the theatre's antechambers, a bizarrely faux country house-decorated room, complete with chintzy armchairs. "You completely believe she's real, and you actually get upset when she's squealing because someone is trying to cut her throat. We treat her as a real person. In fact, one of the characters leaves his wife for her."

Despite Betty's starring role in the publicity posters, the show is about more than just her. "The pig is the pivot for it, in the way that Cosette is the pivot for Les Misérables, but Les Misérables isn't the story of Cosette, is it?" Sir Cameron says. As for the story, the producer thinks the American duo behind it, Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, who wrote the script for the US version of the TV comedy Queer As Folk, struck gold almost accidentally. "Being Americans, they had no idea how much of the subject matter that Bennett had put into the piece was so prescient for now: between riot and famine, and fair shares and government corruption, you name it, it's all in it." He chuckles. "There are a lot of subversive elements in this show."



For Sir Cameron, sitting opposite me and giving a reluctant press interview just days before it started previewing last night, it is a case of déjà vu all over again. The theatre magnate holds the world record when it comes to producing new musicals, one of a number of global bests, including producing the three longest-running musicals of all time: Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables. At 64, he has been in the business for 45 years, amassing a fortune of some £600m en route, so I am curious about what prompted him to put his reputation on the line once more, especially his claim, more than a decade ago, that he was bowing out from the West End's front line.

In short, he couldn't help himself. Especially not when two old friends, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, were the pair that Cowen and Lipman turned to for the lyrics and music.

"I read it, which I really wasn't doing to produce it; I was just going to tell them what I thought of it. And I went, 'My God! This is original.' And it took me about 20 seconds to make my mind up: would I be happy not to have done this show? No, I wouldn't, because it's so rare that you get this level of material." Two years and £2.5m later (a pittance compared with the jaw-dropping £40m-plus being spent on Spider-Man), Betty Blue Eyes is ready to go. "We're not going to open with a big advance, but," deep chuckle, "you know, none of my shows that are really original ever have! This has got the same kind of advance – very small – that I had with Les Mis and Cats. But they took off once word of mouth started."

And if it flops, at least Sir Cameron knows he'll be in good company. "Stephen Sondheim reminded me on Sunday [at last week's Olivier Awards] that just up the road, when Sweeney Todd opened, it didn't work; the press didn't like it." More laughter. "The public didn't come and it closed after a few months. Yet two or three years later, it started to have small productions, and it's been an acclaimed masterpiece ever since."

If all this laughter makes Sir Cameron sound like a genial sort of chap, well, he is, provided you don't cross him. Or make him cross, which is pretty much the same thing. With me, his flashpoint comes when I quiz him about the frankly extortionate cost of a night out in the West End. Top seats for some shows cost £85; an investment many theatre fans just can't afford – at least, not on a regular basis. Which is a shame given that Sir Cameron, along with his one-time musical partner Andrew Lloyd Webber, rightly claimed to have "completely reinvented, on a global scale, the appetite for musical theatre" back in the 1980s. He adds: "What we never, ever dreamt might happen, and has happened, is that going to the theatre is actually a cool thing to do now. The younger generation are not only happy to go and see shows; they want to be in them."

He insists it's "absolutely bollocks to think that you can't go to the West End for between 20 and 30 quid," adding: "That's the average price." Minutes later, he has me chasing after him on an impromptu tour of the Novello, one of seven theatres he owns in London, as he attempts to prove that the view even from the gods is as good as that from the stalls. My verdict? It is, but you can't stop the stage from getting smaller, and refurbished or not, just three cubicles in the Ladies' loos – the door to which he flings open with a flourish – still means a long and cramped queue come interval time.

He gets riled twice more: once when I attempt to peer through the mist that swirls over the goings on at his 14,000-acre estate in the Scottish Highlands, and again at the IoS photographer's attempts to snap him on the Novello's stage, with the Union Jack as a backdrop. ("I'm not doing it; I'm not interested in this sort of publicity," he huffs before relenting to pose in the theatre's foyer.)

Despite two arson attacks – the first, nearly 11 years ago, burned down his Scottish house, the second, earlier this month, turned a boat on his estate into a charred shell – Sir Cameron says it's "complete bollocks" to suggest that there's a problem. "What's been interesting is that the local council and the village are absolutely furious that there is a vandal out there doing things."

He is adamant that a protracted legal fight with one of the local crofters who wanted to buy some land that the producer had earmarked to develop has not soured relations locally. "It's ancient woodland. I've been restoring the ancient croft houses and we use them as holiday homes for people who want to go up there. It's been hugely successful to regenerate this area which would have otherwise died," he asserts.

Although he is a regular visitor to Scotland, I'm left with the sense that his heart lies in his 600-acre Somerset farm, which he shares with his partner, the Australian-born theatre photographer Michael Le Poer Trench. Certainly when I ask if casting his first movie, of Les Misérables, which is due to start shortly, will fulfil a dream, he retorts: "Dream? No. My dream is to be on my boat. Or on an island. Or in my house in the country. That's my dream." He insists he's never had any ambitions, beyond that of a wide-eyed eight-year-old captivated by a performance of Salad Days to go into the industry, "to thoroughly enjoy what I do."

Given that millions upon millions of people worldwide also thoroughly enjoy what he does, he is safe in adding: "Audiences aren't going to get rid of me. One thing I can say, with absolute certainty, is that my shows will still be performed when I'm dead, buried and forgotten. They're going to absolutely outlive me, which is a wonderful thing to think about." He will get an inkling next month if Betty Blue Eyes might be one of them.

Curriculum vitae

1948 Cameron Anthony Mackintosh born in Enfield, north London, the eldest of three brothers. His father was a timber merchant and jazz trumpeter. His half-French, half-Maltese mother was a secretary.

1957 Sees the musical Salad Days and decides to be a musical producer.

1969 Stages first musical, Anything Goes. It flops.

1981 First teams up with Andrew Lloyd Webber to create Cats, which opens at the New London Theatre.

1985 Les Misérables opens at the Barbican Theatre in the West End, with The Phantom of the Opera opening the following year at Her Majesty's Theatre.

1990 Inaugurated the Cameron Mackintosh Chair of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.

1991 Wins an Olivier Award for his creative contribution to West End theatre and donations to productions.

1996 Is knighted for services to British theatre in the New Year's Honours list.

1999 Becomes the first producer to have four productions reach their tenth anniversary after Miss Saigon achieves the feat.

2006 Is honoured for his "outstanding contribution to tourism" in the UK.

2010 Celebrates the 25th anniversary of Les Misérables by staging a special performance at London's O2 arena and a new version of the show at the Barbican Centre.

2011 His first new musical in more than a decade, Betty Blue Eyes, opens. Plans celebration of Phantom's 25th anniversary in October.

(From The Independent on Sunday: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/cameron-mackintosh-making-a-song-and-dance-about-betty-2247060.html)

Would say it needs to lose 10-15 minutes as it drags but the score and cast are great, pig is lame, book meh. See it for £20 or less.

So Musical Theatre's Thoughts on the First Preview xx

I found myself utterly charmed and didn't find it dragging one bit.

Every song and the reprises used serve to advance plot and character. Its a truly well crafted musical.

Its a thrill to see such a great cast perform a funny and tuneful score and with excellent book scenes.

This is one show I will be back to see. Stephen Mears has some great work on show.

I admit I lost some interest in this when I saw it had a libretto by Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman of all people. Knowing their work on the US/Canadian Queer as Folk remake, as well as their dire 90s "drama" Sisters, and the flop follow up to QAF, Leap Years, I'm kinda utterly shocked to see their names tied to this, especially since I've heard repeatedly how "very British" this musical is, and I always think of them with cheap, poorly written American TV.

Still--I'll be anxious to hear the score.

"the lyrics are basic and the songs forgettable."

Yep, sounds like Stiles & Drewe!

Imma pretend you didn't say that, Marius! :P