A fine night at the musicals

A fine night at the musicals

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
A fine night at the musicals

Packed to the rafters, with the capacity 2,000 tickets sold, the concluding event of this season's Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation's "Great Artists Concert Series" at the Thai Cultural Centre featured the very cream of West End London performers _ the highly regarded conductor/arranger Michael England and star singers Robyn North and Graham Bickley.

Entitled "A Night At The Musicals", the generous programme was as lengthy as one of the fabled modern mega-musicals featured, yet following a truly magnificent show the highly enthused audience had no hesitation whatsoever in requesting an encore with an ovation of rapturous applause.

The compilation medley Aspects Of Lloyd Webber wrapped things up suitably with the ensemble's whistle-stop tour of many of his instantly recognisable tunes. With an ambient lighting-show and clear sound amplification, this hugely enjoyable evening brought to a fitting climax a very successful run of performances presented by the BSO Foundation.

Proceedings began with Cats Symphonic Suite played by the orchestra alone, quickly followed by the first dramatic entrance of the two singers for that great musical's quirky, infectious Magical Mr Mistoffelees, Robyn North wearing the first of four stunning dresses in which she appeared from stage right during the performance. The easy rapport of the vocalists together and their assured stage presence was immediately apparent, with another four harmoniously sung and tastefully choreographed duets punctuating the programme _ Sun And Moon, and The Last Night Of The World (Miss Saigon), Too Much In Love To Care (Sunset Boulevard), and All I Ask Of You (Phantom of the Opera).

Bickley had a further seven solo numbers which demonstrated an impressively wide-ranging vocal versatility, from the exquisitely hushed, expressive high tessitura notes in the contemplative reverie The Prayer (Les Mise{aac}rables), to the rumbustious drive of And The Money Kept Rolling In (Evita) and urgent angst of Sunset Boulevard, in which he portrayed the troubled young writer Joe Gillis with a compelling authority. In these two frantic numbers, Lloyd Webber makes copious use of fast moving odd time signatures, and the latter in particular is well known for the difficulty of ensemble between singer and orchestra.

Pleasingly, this rendering was very tight and had clearly been well prepared in rehearsal by England. Likewise with the preceding Sunset Boulevard Suite with which the BSO alone opened the second half, augmented as they were for the entire concert by drum-kit, electric bass/guitar/keyboards, and saxophones. Probably the most technically challenging number, this tour de force came off most convincingly, with tricky 5/8 patterns remaining metronomically taut, almost ala Stravinsky, even though the romantic contour of the passionate melody itself here always seems to want to give way naturally to rubato _ but that it must not do! Often vulnerable to insecure rhythm live, it was nice to hear a controlled playing on this occasion.

A standard hallmark of any successful stage musical is at least one stand out hit song which etches itself so indelibly on the collective consciousness of the theatre-going public that during performance they are roused to a feverish level of excitement, resulting in an outburst of appreciative energy so visceral it can actually pause the narrative of the show in its tracks for a minute or two.

Hence the cliche "showstopper", of course.

Being a "best-of" style setlist, this celebration had no less than 19 such tunes, almost all of them met by roars of approval within the TCC, and five of those were solos for North's own gloriously seductive soprano voice. At first tender and silky, then operatically powerful in the Puccini-esque Love Never Dies, yearning in I Dreamed A Dream (Les Miserables), and reflective in Another Suitcase In Another Hall (Evita), her talent for switching characterisation between many contrasting roles was well displayed.

The genre of the musical is essentially fantasy based, indeed very often phantasmagorical in the extreme, and therefore it was no surprise at all when the highest grossing single entertainment phenomenon of all time, The Phantom Of The Opera ($5.6 billion at the box office and counting, in 146 cities!), was called upon _ yes, once more! _ as the culminating highlight of the night.

Michael England's simple yet informative comparing throughout had been delivered in a well-spoken, gentle toned English manner, but after he had related the singularly jaw-dropping statistics of the most successful musical of all time, his voice almost disappeared to an incredulous, witty whisper: "That's a lot of money."

Indeed it is, and the entire house surely appreciated the conductor's sharp, well honed guile which had directed such a slick and professional show.

With North herself having performed the role of Chritine Daae{aac} over 1,000 times (yes, that's correct) in the original London production, England having previously also been music director there, and Bickley portraying the Phantom here after 25 sure years of treading West End boards, it doesn't get much more authentic than this. Phantastic!

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