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unoriginalcastrecordings.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/the-woman-in-white-original-cast-recording/YEAR: 2004
CAST: Michael Crawford, Maria Friedman, Jill Paice, Angela Christian, Martin Crewes, Oliver Darley, Edward Petherbridge, et al.
INTRO
Let me begin by saying that listening to The Woman in White is a damn sight more preferable than watching the blasted thing. A lot has been said in criticism of the projection effects used in the original West End production. Indeed, yours truly felt decidedly nauseous watching the show – although not from the projections. The motion sickness issue didn’t hit me personally, but I was struck by how crap the effects looked. Done almost entirely with haze and out-of-focus moving projections, The Woman in White was the perfect example of ‘overkill of a good idea’ in modern theatre. The technology wasn’t good enough, the images blurry and unconvincing – and that’s basically all there was to look at.
I also found the plot tiresome; not being familiar with the novel or any of its adaptations, the whole thing just felt a bit tame. I recall much yawning from the audience and a very flat performance, which didn’t help things much. For the record I saw a later cast, featuring Anthony Andrews (again) and Ruthie Henshall (again) who I thought did as well as anyone could expect. Andrews’ singing was awful, but his campy panto turn was fine for the part. Ruthie’s “All for Laura” (or is it “All For Lara”?) was one of the only positives I took from the show, however she looked at least 20 years her sister’s elder. Maybe this is meant to be the case?
RELEASE
The CD release is a very complete and well produced two disc affair, in an cardboard outer sleeve which also contains a full libretto booklet, which is a lovely touch. adding to the whole sub-opera mentality of the piece.
PLOT SUMMARY
Newly arrived down-and-out alcoholic, (yet dashingly handsome and clean cut), 30-something artist Walter Hartright (Martin Crewes) is waiting at a misty train station. After being accosted and potentially propositioned by a delightfully eccentric middle-aged Southern Rail employee (Hartright later generously labels him a “strange and unearthly man”), our protagonist sets off. He is on his way to begin his new job, teaching wealthy 20-something and 40-something year old sisters how to paint, for some reason. They live in a large country house called Limmeridge, somewhere in the generic north of England. Both sisters instantly fall in love with Hartright, with him only fancying the younger sister, Laura (Jill Paice). At no point does he suggest a ménage à trois, in case you were wondering.
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It’s a polite no from Marian, but Laura (left) is thinking about it.
Marian (Maria Friedman), the older and allegedly uglier sister (what a dog, right?!) isn’t best pleased and does her best to sabotage the relationship. Poor Walter, just trying to get to work without being approached by weirdos, is once again cornered in the mist. This time, a young lass wearing alabaster attire (or a ‘Woman in White’, if you will), emerges and tells Walter that she has a ‘secret’, much like that annoying friend at school who would say ‘I know something, but I can’t tell you!’ just to get you to pay attention to them. Get used to hearing about her ‘secret’, because believe me, you’ll be hearing a lot about it. The Lady Donning Chiffon identifies herself as Anne Catherick (Angela Christian).
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Anne’s Secret, in happier times. Interestingly, she uses the word ‘secret(s)’ NINE times in under THREE minutes after appearing.
We learn that Laura is already betrothed, as a favour to her dead dad, to the ridiculously named Sir. Percival Glyde (Oliver Darley). Accompanied by his crony, Count Fosco (Michael Crawford), they arrive at Limmeridge and hijinx ensue. Glyde, resembling a Nazi youth member crossed with Prince Andrew, turns out to not be a very nice bloke. Oh, and Fosco has a (real live!) mouse with him, which does tricks like running across his shoulders on command. He likes mice, it turns out. And he’s a doctor. And wears a fat suit. I don’t know if this is a thing from the book or what, but my suspicions are that the mouse is present just so lyricist David Zippel could rhyme ‘mouse-guest’ with ‘house-guest’. But more on Mr. Zippel’s work later.
Things now start to get rather convoluted and ridiculous, but there is an embarrassing seduction, a high speed train collision, the least convincing staircase in theatre history, and much, much more!
THE SONGS/LYRICS/BOOK
The Girl Adorning Ivory is by no means poor musically. Inconsistent, average, pretty – all of these words cropped up in my notes. The Prologue has a murky sub-Britten feel which sets the scene as almost archetypically Victorian. All the nonsense about ghosts, premonitions and such all fits perfectly into this vibe. The similarly sinister ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, at Glyde and Laura’s ‘dark wedding’ sung by a child soloist is rather hamfisted, however, and basically not at all fun to listen to. It makes sense in the show, in fairness. The standout songs are fairly well known now in the Lloyd Webber canon. ‘Evermore Without You’ is your big male solo protagonist belting number, ala ‘Til I Hear You Sing’, ‘The Music of the Night’, ‘Close Every Door’ and so forth. It’s nice enough and well sung by Martin Crewes. ‘I Believe My Heart’ is another nice song, this time a duet between lovebirds Walter and Laura. It actually received a horrible commercial release, featuring Duncan from Blue, which somehow reached number 2 in the UK charts. ‘All for Laura’ was the highlight when I saw the show, but Friedman wails and hacks her way through on the CD. Despite these solo songs, there are no ‘production numbers’ whatsoever (no, I’m not counting ‘Lammastide’, it’s just not long or good enough). All the scenes with Fosco drag on and on, his ‘comedy foreigner’ schtick isn’t funny or sinister – or engaging really on any level.
The meat of interest for me lies in the lyrics, which are some of the worst I have come across in a Lloyd Webber musical. David Zippel is hampered by attempted rhyming. Problems come immediately; ‘I Hope You’ll Like it Here’, an annoyingly cheery expository number after the Prologue, leaves Zippel trying to rhyme ‘indisputable’, ‘suitable’ and ‘commutable’. A hard enough task, but also making what the character is saying make sense is one step too far. The lines are;
‘We’re thrilled that’s indisputable
I hope your rooms are suitable
Your sentence is commutable’
Now, the first one seems okay, if a little laboured – but he’s now locked into three-to-five syllable words which end in ‘able’. The second line – rooms? Why would a struggling art teacher, previously in a ‘Holborn drinking den’ be given more than one room? Finally, what sentence? And why would it be commutable? To give this context, I think Marian here is referring to their lacking of artistic talent. Therefore him staying in the big house, which the sisters find boring, teaching two talentless people how to paint is something of a prison sentence. If that (very stretched) analogy is the case, then why would it be ‘commutable’? In the context of the analogy, it makes no sense whatsoever.
The problem is, it feels like someone has gone through a thesaurus finding words that end in ‘-able’ and then fitted the remaining words around them. If I were to have a go myself;
‘If everything is satisfactory
You won’t find us detractory
But to Uncle we’re defractory’
In ‘Perspective’;
‘Nothing’s duller than my watercolouring’
…
‘All my sketching soon will have you wretching’
…
Walter: ‘You’ll develop your own style’
Marian: ‘He has such a winning smile’
…
Laura: ‘I must disregard his charms’
Laura and Marian: ‘And his manly rugged arms’
…
And on it goes. I’m not going to list every dubious/terrible lyric in the show, because it honestly doesn’t stop. But with completely new lyrics and an improved book, this show would be vastly improved.
The story is pretty tame by modern standards – and by all accounts even tamer in the original book. The musical certainly isn’t any kind of social commentary, as the book is considered to be by those clever people who know about Victorian literature. It’s a very basic love story, with a comedy villain (Fosco) and a purely evil one (Glyde). The fact that Glyde is upper class is as relevant Fosco being Italian – i.e. not at all. I don’t know if I’d call that dumbing the show down, I just know that the story alone wasn’t interesting or engaging enough to carry two and a half hours. Which, don’t forget, featured little to no set.
THE PERFORMANCES
I find the performances generally decent across the board. Maria Friedman is a little throaty at times when required to really belt. Jill Paice has the much sweeter voice of the pair, fitting the respective characters nicely. Angela Christian, an American, tries and fails with a very tough regional accent that most Brits couldn’t get close to mimicking. She does seem to spend a lot of her time screaming. This is because her one real melody – her characters leitmotif – ends in a high, dramatic fashion. So, essentially, Christian pops up, goes on and on about having a secret in a dodgy accent, screams, then runs away through the haze. Martin Crewes is a decent male lead as Hartright – handsome, strong voice. A bit vanilla perhaps – what’s he up to nowadays? Edward Petherbridge does his poncy old man routine and it works nicely – he’s a very good actor and his performance makes me chuckle in this. Oliver Darley is my pick of the voices as Glyde; he sings his solo moments beautifully. He has a very pure voice, almost angelic, and very un-musical theatre! His scene upon being confronted about Anne Catherick, before ‘A Gift for Living Well’, is my personal highlight of the whole CD. He goes from butter-wouldn’t-melt to scheming bastard in a line or intonation or two; ‘I am grateful for your help’. Curiously, the show marked Darley’s first and only musical theatre credit. He is a solo singer-songwriter recording artist, currently with a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe 2017. There is no mention of this show credit on either his official website, or his Wikipedia.
Michael Crawford was the ‘name’ of course, with two proper solos (‘A Gift for Living Well’ and ‘You Can Get Away With Anything’) and lots of stage time in the second act especially. He’s fine, just Crawford being Crawford. After struggling with infections and issues relating to his fat suit, he left the show early and Michael Ball was parachuted in. Not literally, of course.
AND FINALLY, THE ACCENTS
Right, what the hell is going on? The Woman in White features some bewildering headscratchers in this department. The signalman is a sort of Irish/Scottish mess, true, but luckily it isn’t a large part. Crawford’s OTT ‘Italian’ accent is exactly what you’d expect and fine, because the part is meant to be stupid. The biggest offender is, you guessed it, Anne Catherick’s bizarre Yorkshotexanwelshese attempt. It is not directly referenced in the show where the musical takes place – just somewhere ‘oop north’. Despite this, most people wander around with upper class RP accents (Mr. Fairlie, Marian, Laura, Glyde, the child at the wedding, the butler, Walter…). It appears that the house is in Cumberland (now Cumbria). Cumberland was in the very north west of England, bordering Scotland. Angela Christian most certainly doesn’t sound Cumbrian.
SUMMARY
All in all, despite the many, many things which are easy to mock about this show, it’s still one of the better Lloyd Webber efforts of recent years. But being better than ‘Stephen Ward’ and ‘School of Rock’ isn’t exactly a milestone worth advertising.
Thanks for reading!
