Le monde des musicals

“A Swell Party” started life in London in 1991 at the Vaudeville Theatre with Angela Richards, David Kerman, Anne Wood and Martin Smith. Nickolas Grace, the only man alive who actually looks like Cole Porter, played the composer-lyricist. Here it is now Simon Green, who is tall and looks nothing like Cole, who plays the Porter part, narrating the life and times of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest and most prolific songwriters who stands beside Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart as the best that the Great American Songbook had to offer in the glorious heyday of popular song and music-theatre, the period from the mid-1920s to the early 1950s.

This compilation show includes the more well-known Porter songs; all classic are numbers, sometimes given a switch so that we have Daniel Evans singing ‘Love for sale’, usually the song of a worn-out hooker plying her trade, and ‘Can-Can’, the title song from the show, is here sung by Graham Bickley, who also dictates a cool version of ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, a song written by Porter to win a wager from Monty Woolley who bet he couldn’t write a song with that title. Mary Carewe does truly great versions of ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’, ‘Down in the Depths’ and ’Always True to You in My Fashion’, with plenty of oomph. Maria Friedman, consummate artist that she is, sings brilliant versions of ‘Blow, Gabriel, Blow’ and ‘I Happen to Like New York’. Simon Green as Cole excels in such numbers as ‘I’m Throwing a Ball Tonight’ and ‘You’ve Got That Thing’ while also playing the perfect host, as no doubt Porter himself was.

The list is pretty much endless and the show packs in nearly forty great songs. The two pianist-arrangers, Jason Carr and David Firman, provide splendid support. The arrangements are just terrific and their ‘Entr’acte’ after the interval is a joy in itself as they play a medley of ‘You’re the Top’, ‘Another Op’nin’, Another Show’, and ‘Anything Goes’ in which the two instruments seem to be in musical conversation with each other. It takes a while for the singers’ voices to get used to the Cadogan Hall’s acoustic. It’s a big open space with little to absorb the sound and it is not necessary to sing at full blast.

1 A Swell Party peut-être considéré comme un juke-box musical autour de la musique de Cole Porter

Aucun dossier informatif complémentaire concernant A Swell Party

Aucun dossier informatif complémentaire concernant A Swell Party