18:50 EST, 29 November 2012
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18:50 EST, 29 November 2012
On my own: Samantha Barks as Eponine in Les Miserables
Samantha Barks is so lovely, so natural as Eponine in the movie version of Les Miserables that you might be forgiven for thinking she’s made a lot of films.
But Tom Hooper’s extraordinary production is her first picture. Samantha has been on TV (in the casting show I’d Do Anything), but that’s a very different thing to playing a major role in a multimillion- pound film that will surely be one of the Oscar front-runners.
‘I can’t comprehend that I’m in the film of Les Miserables,’ Samantha told me on the set at Pinewood.
‘It’s one of those dreams I thought would be unattainable for someone like me, who came from nowhere.’
When she sings On My Own, though, i t doe sn’ t come from nowhere — it comes from heaven.
Cameron Mackintosh, who’s producing the film with Working Title studio chiefs Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, along with Debra Hayward, said Samantha had a calmness that allowed her to concentrate on what’s at hand.
‘She doesn’t get in a flap — and she sings like a dream,’ he said during filming. Colm Wilkinson, who was the original Jean Valjean in the West End (now played marvellously by Hugh Jackman), has a small part in the film as the Bishop of Digne, who tells Valjean he’s ‘bought his soul for god’. It’s touching — and highly appropriate — that Wilkinson should appear in the movie, and also that the musical’s creators , Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Herbert Kretzmer, should have written the film script, along with William Nicholson.
The film also stars Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen. Daniel Huttlestone is very good as the scamp Gavroche and Isabelle Allen is super as young Cosette.
Gear up for Girl Power
Spice Girls Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell won’t see the full Girl Power version of musical Viva Forever until the first night.
They will all converge (hopefully at the same time) on the Piccadilly Theatre on December 11.
‘It’s a work in progress until then,’ said Jennifer Saunders, who has written the spirited book for the musical, which features songs made famous by the group.
Spicing up rehearsals (left to right) Lucy Phelps, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, Siobhan Athwal and Hannah John-Kamen as Viva
There are 23 numbers in Viva Forever, including Let Love Lead The Way, Mama, Right Back At Ya, Say You’ll Be There, The Lady is A Vamp, Who Do You Think You Are? and Wannabe.
Ms Saunders has woven them into a story about female friendship. Producer Judy Craymer said it’s more a play with music.
The show concerns itself with a mother-daughter relationship (Hannah John-Kamen and Sally Ann Triplett), but it also deals with what Craymer describes as ‘the moral that fame isn’t all it’s cut out to be’.
It’s a boisterous, fun production and I would urge anyone who has ever been on one of those casting shows — or aspires to be on one — to rush to see Viva Forever.
Originals: The musical is based on the music by the Spice Girls who performed during the Olympic Games Closing Ceremony
Underneath all the showbiz hoopla, it has important things to convey about how life is lived.
The other thing that struck me is how the songs have been given new life by musical supervisor and arranger Martin Koch — and how hot Lynne Page’s choreography is.
Ms Craymer said Emma, Geri and Mel C were at the sitzprobe (which is when the cast and the orchestra meet for the first time) ten days before Tuesday’s first preview.
‘It’s impossible to get them together at the same time, in the same room, before the first night,’ Craymer said. ‘One’s in Los Angeles, another is in Australia.’
The West End will go bonkers when the Spice mammas are back in town.
I will always love this
Soaring star: Heather Headley as Rachel Marron in The Bodyguard at the Adelphi Theatre
The Bodyguard is the runaway, gold-plated musical hit of the season.
I’m trying hard to remember the last time I saw a musical star soar as high as Heather Headley (right) does playing Rachel Marron, the superstar singer who’s being stalked by a psychopath.
As well as Heather, audiences are also really liking leading man Lloyd Owen (who plays her bodyguard) and Debbie Kurup, as Rachel’s sister Nicki.
I caught the show again on Monday and it looked fantastic, though director Thea Sharrock had a handful of things to nip and tuck to make it tighter before allowing critics to see it tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday.
I Will Always Love You and Run To You are just two of the numbers that I can’t now get out of my head.
I’m beyond grateful that the show’s not a mere carbon copy of the movie. It stands on its own, and the word of mouth is good enough to ensure it has a long run at the Adelphi Theatre.
Fiona Shaw, our most fearless actor, and dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon will perform Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, to be directed by Phyllida Lloyd and choreographed by Kim Brandstrup.
The production, seen at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival in August, is being produced by the Young Vic, but will be staged at the Old Vic Tunnels for a short season from January 4.
Watch out for…
Barking in Essex: Lee Evans
Sheila Hancock and Lee Evans who will star in a new play called Barking In Essex, by Clive Exton. Producers Michael Edwards and Carole Winter have secured Wyndham’s Theatre from September 16 next year, for a limited season.
Ms Hancock, last seen as Wallis Simpson’s formidable lawyer in The Last Of The Duchess at Hampstead Theatre, will play Emmie Packer, fierce matriarch of a Barking crime family. Evans will play Darnley, her gormless son.
Emmie is awaiting the release from prison of her other son, who’s hoping to get his hands on more than £3 million of untraceable notes, stashed away before he was sentenced. But is the money still there?
Author Exton and director Harry Burton are betting we’ll want to know the answer. Burton did a workshop with Evans and I’m told he was hilarious. The producers stress the play (more of a black comedy, really) is packed with four-letter words, so they’ve deemed it unsuitable for those under 16.
Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Daniel Cerqueira, Noma Dumezweni (who won an Olivier for A Raisin In The Sun at the Young Vic and played Captain Magambo in Dr Who) and Louis Mahoney, who will lead director Rufus Norris’s exploration of the Yoruba diaspora in Feast.
The actors, and musicians Sola Akingbola and Michael Henry, will use text from five playwrights — Yunior Garcia Aguilera, Rotimi Babatunde, Marcos Barbosa, Tanya Barfield and Gbolahan Obisesan.
More from Baz Bamigboye…
Norris, whose production of Cabaret at the Savoy features a fabulous performance by Will Young as the master of ceremonies, told me how he has long been fascinated by the vast numbers of descendants of Yoruba slaves stolen away from Nigeria and now scattered around the globe, in particular in Cuba, Brazil and the U.S.
‘The Yoruba culture dominates way beyond its source,’ Norris told me as he was preparing for extensive workshops with his cast and choreographer George Cespedes of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.
Feast, a Young Vic and Royal Court co-production, can be seen at the Young Vic from January 25. The story will unfold through three sisters on their way to supper who are split up across time and space.
Frances Ruffelle, who will take the title role in Piaf, Pam Gems’ play about singer Edith Piaf. The piece, which includes some of her most famous songs, will run at the Curve, Leicester, with Paul Kerryson directing, from February 22.
Ms Ruffelle was the original Eponine in Les Miserables 26 years ago and plays what Cameron Mackintosh described as ‘a lovely whore’ in Tom Hooper’s epic screen version of the musical, released on January 11.
She features in the Lovely Ladies sequence with Anne Hathaway. Les Miz, the stage show, continues at the Queen’s Theatre, London.
Nathaniel Parker who will portray Gordon Brown in Peter Morgan’s play The Audience.
It stars Helen Mirren as the Queen and imagines what happens behind the scenes during her weekly audience.
Other PMs will be portrayed by Rufus Wright as david Cameron, and Michael Elwyn as Anthony Eden.
I told you a while back that Haydn Gwynne will play Margaret Thatcher, Robert Hardy as Winston Churchill and Paul Ritter as John Major. Stephen Daldry will direct The Audience which will start performances at the Gielgud Theatre from February 15.