Imagine This - Reviews

Variety - Negative with praise for the set, lighting and hard working cast

Criticizing "Holocaust," playwright Dennis Potter dismissed the argument that the 1978 miniseries was moving. If you couldn't make the murder of 6 million Jews moving, he retorted, you shouldn't be working in television. "Imagine This," the heartfelt new musical set during the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto, is no different. The inevitable final scenes of Timothy Sheader's skilled, uncynical production have both restraint and power, but not enough to overcome the preceding obstacles thrown up by its writers' handling of the highly sensitive -- and hard-to-sell -- subject.

Book writer Glenn Berenbeim has saddled the proceedings with a difficult double structure: It's a tuner-within-a-tuner.

Set amid the Jewish ghetto's barely tolerated theater troupe, the story takes place largely on the night in 1942 before they're shipped out to what they believe is a sunny labor camp. The group's director Daniel (a quietly touching Peter Polycarpou) persuades them that, as a gesture of hope, they should stage a musical about Masada, the besieged hill fortress where, in year 70, a Jewish community of 960 refugees held 10,000 Roman soldiers at bay before committing collective suicide.

Plot parallels abound, and not just in the links between Romans and Germans wielding fatal power over the oppressed.

Quick-witted Daniel has saved and hidden non-Jewish political firebrand Adam (Simon Gleeson) among his actors. Daniel's previously dutiful daughter Rebecca (Leila Benn Harris) and Adam fall in love, a development made plain when Rebecca, now acting as defiant Jewish girl Tamar, sings "When He Looked in My Eyes" about the handsome Roman general played, yes, by Adam.

So far, so "West Side Story." But that show's meshing of book, music and lyrics is so tight that when the hero and heroine fall for each other in a mere six lines of dialogue, auds believe them because the dramatic setup is so vivid and the writing so distinctive. Not so here.

For all the good intentions, tension barely surfaces all night. The problem is not just that almost everyone knows the ultimate ending but that the schematic and predictable writing barely elicits a single surprise.

With two plots to populate, an entirely committed cast struggles to lift their roles beyond stock types of the cowardly clown, the actress who'll sell herself to keep a fur coat, the suffering wife. None but Daniel, however, is afforded stage time sufficient to allow auds to connect with and care for them.

Writing problems extend to the score. Even though one character sings ironically of "a penchant for schmaltz," David Goldsmith's lyrics are largely free of it. But, like the music by Israeli composer Shuki Levy, they lack the spark of individuality.

Levy is most at home supplying power ballads of love and defiance. But for all their carefully repeated chord patterns, or rather because of them, they feel generic. His use of wistful regret is not exactly a distant cousin to "Sunrise, Sunset" from the superior "Fiddler on the Roof," while his minor key uplift moments echo "Close Every Door" from "Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

That the songs sometimes hit home is largely due to Chris Walker's strong orchestrations for a 14-piece band and, particularly, the richness of the multipart vocal arrangements; this is definitely a show at its best when ditching individual hackneyed characters to focus on the entire community.

Tim Mitchell's immensely versatile and evocative lighting works wonders with Eugene Lee's unchanging but arresting set of a dilapidated train shed. Helmer Sheader also encourages Liam Steel's boldly stylized choreography to escape the literal confines of the script. Yet the earnest attempt at scale is the show's undoing.

There is a fundamental mismatch between the need for the bombast of a hit musical and the opening number that introduces us to a sweetly struggling theater troupe with almost no resources. The resulting Masada musical they stage has such wildly overblown production values and sentiments that the evening tips over into being "Les Misbegotten."

Sadly, we've been here before, and better. Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 movie "To Be or Not to Be," another actors-defy-the-Nazis-drama, scored highly by daring to be genuinely funny. More pertinently, Joshua Sobol's 1984 play "Ghetto" used documentary evidence and songs from the Vilna ghetto to tell an almost identical but more powerful tale.

The sincerity of the tragic climax and its, for some, tear-jerking, hopeful coda may attract audiences eager to honor Jewish history. But even those able to overlook its longueurs and weaknesses are being asked to watch a feel-bad show just as a recession starts to bite.

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One Star from What's On Stage. Will word of mouth overrule the critics?

I think I'll go back to bed!
ooouch

"As I understand it the majority of audience members have been industry people in on comps "

I got in on comps in exchange for doing a survey after, which I gladly filled out. The thing that impressed me is that the creatives knew where people may be having issues (the placement and tone of humour, distinction in characters between the play within a play and "reality" etc.) and it seemed like everybody was on top of things. I am annoyed that the camp fellow is still in - I put down that the character was problematic.

I still liked it overall, and my companion for the evening (who's even more jaded than I am) thought it was excellent.

And let's have some pity for Bernard Lloyd who must have the worst luck in landing musicals...

MDF - Charles is a little more tasteful

'It was that fine director Peter Hall who invented the shocking phrase "bumming a ride on the Holocaust" to describe shows and films like this, the glibbest and most suspect way of endowing second-rate art with an air of moral significance.'

and concludes with

'and for all the strengths of its execution, Imagine This must finally be judged a manipulative and morally dubious show. In the present harsh economic climate, however, it is unlikely to trouble the West End for long.'


Which in the interests of brevity I concluded as Holo-Porn. However if Dewynters would like to attribute it to Sister George, I'll be more than happy to pad it out into a full quote......

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Black Christmas!

I saw it in Plymouth last year and, though it had promise, it was pretty much a train wreck of a book. It seems from these reviews that the creative team have not attempted the major rewrite that the Plymouth staging cried out for.

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The set is getting great reviews which is nothing less than I expected from the designer. Sounds like he's gone for the huge warehouse effect again as for Drury Lanes original 'Sweeney Todd'.
I'm going for the sets if nothing else.
Bob, i remember your comments after you saw it last year and its sounds like they didnt' listen to you!!!

If people are wondering what to put into the New London and we're fantasising freely, I wonder if Tanz der Vampire would fit the auditorium space.

And yes, I know that MDF hates the building and wants it knocked down. I'm starting to really love the main auditorium, though the rest of front of house could do with a rebuild...

LOL My god! I cant believe you just wrote that just as I open the thread to write this....

Part of the struggle to see a show at the New London such as 'Gone With The Wind' and 'Imagine This' is the building itself. Each time I know I have to go there (I also walk past it most days) is the very though of entering that building itself. You walk thru the door past a box office that looks like an NCP car park pay box. Then you go up a ridiculous escalator as if shopping in John Lewis or some shopping mall to find yourself in a very spacious foyer that reminds you of Stanstead airport.
Once inside the revolutionary auditorium your faced with decor straight from the Odeon Leicester Sq circa 1985 (i remember it well!). To cap all that you don't get to see a decent show sitting there, you get 'Gone The Wind or an over rated, over long RSPCA cat show!

The Winter Garden should still be there!

i was really hoping this was gonna be a *** show, to keep it going for a bit, im just waiting for the discounts now, cause i really do want to go see this.

"The impression I have is that they did a major rewrite, as a poster on the Whingers board talks about taking 40 minutes to get to the first song, a dog, and other things which were gone by London previews. Perhaps what they needed was a second out of town to fine tune before coming into the West End."

Okay, so it seems they have tried to rework things - but from the comments in the reviews, they did not tackle the essential flaw of the Plymouth production. It was just unbelievably corny - until the last five minutes it was totally devoid of any genuine power or emotion, which is pretty hard to fail to achieve considering the subject matter. It also seems that the "prancing Romans" in the Masada section are still there!

I guess I need to go see it again to see whether there are any serious improvements - but I'm loathe to spend £50 to possibly suffer more of the embarrassing schmaltz I saw last time.

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