NOEL AT NOEL. To 25 January.
London.
NOEL AT NOEL
by John Michael Swinbank.
New End Theatre 27 New End NW3 1JD To 25 January 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 033 2733.
www.newendtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 December.
Coward at Christmas that’s not as masterly as might be hoped.
Maybe New End’s Noel Coward cabaret will have improved. Having come all the way from Perth, Western Australia, John Michael Swinbank (with an ever-efficient Tim Cunniffe on piano) seemed to be performed on Boxing Day despite a cold. Perhaps by now the leaps and swoops in Coward’s melodic lines are landing more securely pitched, the extended notes no longer cut-off in their prime.
English-born, Australian-raised cabaret performer Swinbank was enthused by the present of a Noel Coward Songbook as a child and has been performing his work for a quarter-century. It doesn’t show, though maybe not in the sense the singer might like to think.
Swinbank is apparently “Australia’s foremost Coward exponent”. No doubt, though it begs the question how large the category is. It may, again, be combat with a virus, but even personal reminiscences came over choppily, as if his own past was hard to recall. The hesitations meant Swinbank looked little at ease even in moments when John Senczuk’s not always apparent direction had him seated in a comfortable armchair.
More long-term, the show is incurably in love with both its source, and itself. There’s no reason a Coward cabaret should be analytical, but to comment on Coward’s going to live in Jamaica after the war simply in terms of the climate is facile. Coward didn’t like British taxes, or the post-war political consensus.
Swinbank’s admittedly on the strongest part of Coward’s artistic terrain, rightly linking him as a composer-lyricist with Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim. He sings ‘Send in the Clowns’ and a couple of Coward’s Porter parodies – including Coward’s famous version of ‘Let’s Do It’, which he skilfully updates. Leaving sexuality aside (as he carefully does), for once the praise in underpowered: all three have a fluency with vocabulary, rhythm and rhyme, and melody that puts most others to shame.
Such reticence contrasts the performer’s repeatedly informing us how good he is, though this might just be our misaligned senses of irony. And, after the interval particularly, there are some performances well worth hearing – ‘Alice’ and ‘Matelot’ for two – so all is not lost.
Performer: John Michael Swinbank.
Piano: Tim Cunniffe.
Director: John Senczuk.
Lighting: Geoffrey Glencrsoss, Hywel Williams.
Musical Director: Tim Cunniffe, Richard John.
Choreography: Carolyn Sinnett.
2009-01-02 01:34:17