Bye Bye Woman In White

I would like to talk about in my post today is that of THE WOMAN IN WHITE which sadly closes at the Palace Theatre on Saturday the 25th of February after almost 2 years. This closure which narrowly surpasses the Broadway closure of the show (granted the Broadway show had only been open 3 months!) has been much discussed in forums such as Whatsonstage often under the sentiment of “What went wrong?”. I feel this is a little hard. I would be more than happy for a show I wrote to last almost two years on the West End and I really don’t feel that either of the closures was due to the quality of the writing. What irritates me so much these days is that theatre fans without the slightest bit of knowledge about the industry work on the simple maxim that Long Run=Artistically Good=Lots of profit.

This simply isn’t true.

For a start, this equation does not in any way take into account that theatre’s with larger capacities are much more expensive to rent for a producer and are able to allow more people to see the show in a set space of time. Secondly, this equation does not allow consideration of the running or staffing costs. Big shows with large casts, large bands/orchestras and set pieces which require a great deal of maintenance tend to cost a lot more to run each week than a show with 5 people and no band. These people also confuse popular with good (the opposite to some music and theatre snobs who brand popular as bad) thinking that just because a show isn’t popular it isn’t any good artistically speaking. Critics of the WOMAN IN WHITE tend to miss the point that it catered for a much more restrictive audience than other (Andrew Lloyd Webber) shows have appealed to. Does this mean it is bad? No, it just means it has a narrower target audience rather than mass appeal. Given that mass appeal has mainly resulted in the long running shows such as BLOOD BROTHERS, FAME and MAMMA MIA, I think I can safely say that it does not necessarily follow that high artistic worth runs alongside longevity of run. Granted people will go back to a good show and will tell their friends/family as is obviously the case with works like THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and LES MISERABLES.

So why did WOMAN IN WHITE fail?

Well let me dispute the terminology first. I don’t see an almost two year run a failure. In fact I don’t see a single year run a failure. If we’re measuring success by longevity of the run then we have to look at the yard stick. It’s very easy to constantly compare new works of musical theatre to the blockbusters of the 1980s but these are exceptions rather than the rule. Prior to these hits, shows were lucky to last a couple of years and most theatres had rotating programmes of shows. Limited seasons are still employed by many producers and producing houses, yet we would hardly call these shows failures. If finance is your game you might be tempted to measure the success of a show by its return. Again, big budget shows have a higher outlay than smaller ones and so it takes more money for them to recoup their original investment. WICKED on Broadway took approximately 2 years of playing to the packed Gershwin Theatre (which is New York’s largest I believe) to recoup its original investment. The larger the theatre, the higher the rent, the more resources (human and otherwise), the more expensive the show is to run. This impacts the opportunity for investors to see a return on their money and for the producers to see any profit. I remember reading the statistic that for every 10 shows mounted on the West End, 7 loose money, 2 break even and 1 makes a profit. Again, if we’re saying that a failure is below average… and the average is for the show to loose money then you can’t call WOMAN IN WHITE a failure on those terms either. I don’t have any statistics for the show, but I don’t think it lost much. If you want to talk about capacity then you have to remember that the Palace Theatre is very large and more people will have seen the show in a shorter space of time. If you want to look at the critics reaction then you could hardly say WOMAN IN WHITE went wrong given that reviews were positive across the board and even those which were overtly negative had large amounts of praise for either the performances (Maria Friedman in particular) or William Dudley’s fantastic projected set.

My personal feeling is that WOMAN IN WHITE failed in terms of attracting a wider market, but at the same time displeased it’s target market. The show’s score lurches both deliciously and sometimes a little uncomfortably from opera to musical theatre. As a whole it is neither operatic enough to be an opera or classic 80s musical theatre enough to be loved by musical theatre fans. Musical theatre fans tended to write the whole show off as constant recitative (believing that using the terminology however inappropriately would make their argument seem more credible), rather than having clearly defined show-stopping songs arias. It becomes evident when you look at the genre of novel-based melodramatic musical theatre, that WOMAN IN WHITE added nothing to the genre for joe public. Sure WOMAN IN WHITE is like PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, but if joe public wants to go and see that kind of thing, they’ll go and see PHANTOM for the 100th time because PHANTOM has the reputation. Even the revolutionary projected set was criticized as either being motion-sickness inducing or like being in a playstation game. For those of us who loved the set, the thrill is lost after a couple of viewings and tends to only really add anything to the show in the first and last 10 minutes.
Either way, it was so good to see that in the final week of the show that the Palace Theatre was quite full with seats even being taken in the balcony.

The show’s changes (some of which I like and some of which I hate) have become a lot more slick since their introduction at the first major cast change and the new cast (most of whom make their West End debut) have settled much more comfortably into their roles. Ruthie Henshall has been replaced by Yvette Robinson (originally an understudy and ensemble member) who provides a great flexibility to Marian’s various emotions and has a great edge to her voice. It was nice to see that the climax of ALL FOR LAURA wasn’t lost in terms of belting power. The highlight for me was Alexandra Silber’s interpretation of Laura. I’m a great fan of the original cast but Alexandra’s voice is amazing. The richness and purity is really a cut above and the dramatic range she is capable of is quite outstanding. Given her inexperience in Musical Theatre, I think she is a real gem and think she would make a perfect Mina in DRACULA. I can’t wait to see her do more. Damian Humbley playing Walter Hartwright is really the weakest link of the cast on this one. For some reason Damian shouts all his lines. It’s melodrama not a hearing impairment demonstration.

The cast however seem to work very well together. I always find the asylum scene particularly moving when the sisters are reunited. Yvette Robinson and Alexandra Silber played off each other wonderfully in the performance I saw last night and the underscoring for this section is truly lovely. Monica McCarron, the flautist for the show, has great emotional depth to her playing as well as superb breath and phrasing control. She is really an inspiration to me.
So I am very sad to say goodbye to WOMAN IN WHITE, but I believe it truly was a great show both artistically and as far as production values were concerned which was hampered by not appealing to a wider audience. I look forward very much to the National Tour and the re-conceived production returning to the West End when the time is right.

Samples, Samples, Samples.

The other major news is that I have finished the mammoth task of configuring my score writing software (Sibelius) to use Gigastudio which I’m using for sample hosting. This allows me to use instrument samples by the industry leader, the Vienna Symphonic Library. This means that now I can listen to very realistic performances of my compositions and orchestrations instead of having to rely on a synthesizer or even worse, a computer soundcard. The Vienna Symphonic Library is particularly good in that they have recorded samples of instruments playing not only different articulations (staccato, legato, pizzicato etc) but also at different dynamic levels which capture the differences in timbre as players play at different levels. The configuration involves cross-fading samples at different dynamic levels in order to allow for smooth transitions between dynamic levels within a phrase and telling Sibelius which samples to use for what. This is particularly tricky when trying to organize the patches used for the keyboards in Dracula which use many, many different instruments and constantly switch between them.

So why not check out my initial attempts with LET ME TRY (Act II, Mina solo), PRISONER (Act I, Jonathan solo) and MUST YOU GO (Act I, Mina solo)? LINKS COMING SOON!! My sample library is somewhat limited at the moment, but I don’t think these are bad for initial attempts! Remember kids that these are just of the orchestrations and so the sung melody may not always be apparent. These may well be used in the cast recording of the show I am frantically trying to put together in time to submit to the Global Search competition which closes at the end of March.

Journeys

For those of you who regularly read my blog, you will probably be wondering why I have not posted for quite some time. You’d be very nosey if that’s the case, but I guess such an interest in my life should be rewarded.
I’ve titled this post Journeys because, well, it is particularly relevant to some recent experiences and feelings.
Unfortunately, one of my friends from school was tragically killed in Africa while teaching children there. Phillip was involved in a hit and run incident as he stepped off a bus in Kifaru, Tanzania. This meant that I had to return to the town that I spent 10 years of my childhood in, Barnard Castle. The service was very beautiful with very moving tributes from Phillip’s brother, James, from Natasha, a friend at university and finally a great poem by my English teacher, Mrs Flint who had been both Phillip’s form tutor and our A-level English Literature tutor. Cassie Flint’s poem focused on the ends of Phillip’s journeys; his journey on the bus, the end of his life, the journey of his body back to England and finally the journey back to his home town. Hopefully Cassie will give me permission to post the poem here because it is really beautiful but the last line was something to the effect of “For home is where love starts and home is where you belong”.

This moved me very much, not only because it was well written and poignant given Phillip’s circumstances but because I too was making a difficult journey. In one sense it was a physical journey traveling all the way from Reading where I live to Barnard Castle (some 216 miles away) and an emotional journey because I was returning to people and places I had not seen for 3 years. Obviously over those 3 years I have become a very, very different person and I was apprehensive that my old school friends would accept the new me and understand why I had stayed away for so long. To cut a long story short, both journeys were successful but I guess it was only the circumstances that had given me the courage to face them. In this way, I very much think that Phillip - who was always the one to keep in touch with everyone – played a very important role in my personal journey.