'Rags' at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park

'Rags' is a little performed musical with lyrics by Steven Schwartz ('Wicked' anyone?) so we headed up to Finsbury Park last week to see it. The Park Theatre is quite bijou and it was a surprise to see how large the cast is for this production. We were in the circle for the first time and you get a surprisingly good view from up there.

It's the tale of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe into New York in the 1900s, fresh off the boat and needing $20 to be allowed entry into the USA. We meet a young mother who has skills at lace-making and sewing, with her young son, who somehow get allowed entry and end up living and working in a family home making dresses for the rich German Jew who sells them at a profit. The young mother gradually influences the dress designs, takes on a private clientele and, at the end, opens her own shop. In the meantime we see the tensions between the different ethnic groups starting out their new lives in New York, the Italian community, the Irish community, all being looked down on by the 'established' American community wanting to end unrestricted immigration. There's a lot of current political messages in this play from the 1980s.

The book was rather relentless in it's emphasis on the Jewishness of the main characters, with every opportunity being taken to put the word 'Jew' in there somewhere. It was also a bit New York Jewish stereotypical with every character in there plus the young Jewish songwriter who wants to make music rather than work in a sewing sweatshop. Yes, we *know*.

That is all in the book and the songs but something at the end that really irritated me was down to the direction. At the end all the characters come on stage including the young girl who dies in a sweatshop fire but she mounts some risers and poses like the figure of Delacroix's 'Liberty' in the famous painting. Melodramatic nonsense or what? It struck me as rather cynically just looking for a nice image for people to leave with.

The show was OK but I can easily understand why it's rarely performed. The major problem for me was that at the end as we were leaving the theatre, I couldn't remember a single song. I remembered the dramatic scenes but the songs were gone. For a musical that's pretty damning. I have no problem with any of the cats, no-one was obviously poor but I think the material possibly wasn't worth giving your all for. I liked Carolyn Maitland as Rebecca, the young mother and dress-maker, who had a lovely voice and presence, and I loved the comic duet between Rachel Izen and Dave Willetts about maybe getting married or maybe not, or maybe ...? That pair knew what they doing.

If you're  fan of musicals then go and see it, it's really not that bad and it's unlikely to be staged again for quite a while. If you're a fan of 'Wicked' then no, don't go. I'm pleased I saw it.

'Gently Down The Stream' at the Park Theatre

The Park Theatre recently put on a production of  'Gently Down The Stream' a new play by Martin Sherman. I don't know much about his work other than he wrote 'Bent' about the persecution of gay men by the nazis in Germany. That was a particularly powerful play so it was worth seeing what else he's written and that's how I ended up at the bijou Park Theatre a few weeks.

'Gently Down The Stream' is about an older gay man from New Orleans who's worked in the music business around the world all his life, ending up as a pianist in London. A man 30-odd years his junior meets him one night and goes back home with him and that's where we join the play.

The fun and joy of the morning after and learning about your partner shifts into the safety and tensions of living together as the relationship develops and the characters share details of their pasts and hopes for the future. And then the bombshell of the younger man finding another man, who is even younger, and he moves out, later to marry and adopt a child. The older man continues as a friend and mentor and, as he experiments with sex apps and gay holidays the younger pair settle in to domesticity.

It's an odd play in a way, looking at life and 'gay life' from two different angles, an older and a younger man. The older man grew up in a time of homophobia when it wasn't even legal to be gay while the young man enjoys the freedoms that his predecessors won for him. He looks back on the 1950s and '60s as a golden age of glamour and secret liaisons whereas the older man remembers of time of victimisation, of hurt and of losing friends to mindless cruelty. And then we see the 'present' day when gay men and women can marry, adopt children and live safer lives (although not totally safe or equal) as the younger men who've grown up in a safer world settle down and it's the older man still experimenting and expanding his world. It's quite strange in a way but a very thoughtful play. I'm pleased we went to see it 

'Twilight Song' at Park Theatre

Last week we went to see 'Twilight Song', the last play by Kevin Elyot before he died, at Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. Kevin Elyot wrote 'My Night With Reg' which was revived by the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 before transferring to the West End. Like 'Reg', 'Twilight Song' is full of gay (and possibly bisexual) characters with the exception of the lone woman in the cast (well, as far as the text suggests anyway). It's a small ensemble piece and lasts about 75 minutes and that's the right length for this piece. Warning: SPOILERS.  

It's a tale of a small middle class family of no consequence fifty years apart, set in both 2017 and in 1967. The year 1967 is prominently signalled by references to the Beatles world-wide performance of 'All You Need Is Love' (I wonder how much using that song costs the production?). The play opens in 2017 with an estate agent, Skinner, looking over the old Victorian villa that Barry is interested in selling. He lives there with his mother who is out for the day. After some banter and some truths Barry asks Skinner how he earns the extra money they're talking about and he says he fucks women and men. It is rather out of the blue but does make sense of the almost-flirting earlier. Barry hands over the money and the scene changes to 50 years earlier with newly married Basil (Barry's dad) and Isabella (his mother) having recently moved into the house and taking their Uncle Charles and family friend Harry out to dinner to thank them for their help in buying the house. The two older men are secretly lovers and have been for years.

Through various twists and turns we learn that Harry commits suicide because he is being blackmailed and we also learn that the worker renovating the garden is not only Harry's blackmailer but the father of Barry's younger brother who went missing when he was a baby. Earlier in the play we learn that the gardener wanted a baby and Skinner tells us that his dad came into some money at short notice and emigrated to Australia after his mother died. Coincidence? Or is he family?

The casting probably helps with that question since Adam Garcia plays both Skinner and the gardener and Paul Higgins plays Basil and Barry (i.e. father and son). Bryony Hannah played Isabella in both 1967 and in 2017 - she did good limp with a walker to stress her age but I think the simple addition of a grey wig might've helped. The old blokes were Hugh Ross and Philip Bretherton.

It's a bit of a strange play in many ways and, although it doesn't have the immediacy of 'My Night With Reg', it's stuck in my head.