Looking For Lansbury was performed by Fiona-Jane Weston at St James Studio Theatre, London. Picture: Dan Tsantalis
Looking For Lansbury was performed by Fiona-Jane Weston at the St James Studio, London. The show is also touring.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
On Friday 16 October Angela Lansbury turned 90 – a landmark that was celebrated in style by Fiona-Jane Weston and her audience.
Weston, in the latest of her one-woman shows, wanted to find the private side of this legendary star. Enough is known about her stage, film and TV career, but little is known about her as a person.
To help solve the mystery Weston has a suitcase onstage which she periodically delves into to produce clues. Each leads to o a moment in Lansbury’s life and often to a relevant song.
Weston’s narrative style is easy and relaxed, talking to the audience and taking them into her confidence with a twinkle in her eye. Many of her words are drawn from exclusives interviews, memoirs and, at times, from Lansbury’s own words.
Lansbury’s conscience had been influenced by her socialist father and her grandfather George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party and anti-war activist – a man she was in awe of, considering him “a giant in my youth”.
Having started studying at the Webber Douglas Academy, war intervened and she was evacuated to the USA, eventually working in theatre and films. Always being cast in supporting roles as older mother figures, she yearned for younger, glamorous and starring roles.
Her first marriage lasted a mere nine months – her ‘artistic’ husband walked on her, but it was with her marriage to actor Peter Shaw that she found happiness that lasted until his death in 2003. They lived in their dream house overlooking the Pacific until it burnt down during bushfires. Around this time their two children became heavily involved in drugs and their daughter also came under the influence of Charles Manson. All this prompted Lansbury to pack up and leave the USA for a new home in Ireland.
Many of the shows that provided her with success were often ones that she initially turned own, including the TV series Murder She Wrote.
Interspersed with this narrative are some 20 songs (under the musical direction of William Godfree) that showcase her career. Here Weston sheds her own personality and slips skilfully into that of Lansbury where she reproduces the voice with all its cadences and mannerisms. Gypsy and Sweeney Todd provide some of the more dramatic numbers, although she brings ferocity to ‘I Don’t Want to Know’ from Jerry Herman’s Dear World. In the gentler numbers Weston excels with a haunting version of ‘Not While I’m Around’.
It would appear that filming Bedknobs and Broomsticks was not a happy experience – a fact reflected in Weston’s wicked parody of the song ‘The Beautiful Briny’.
This is a well researched and impressive show directed by Patrick Lambe and choreographed by Louisa McAlpine. However, I felt that Act I was about 15 minutes too long and would benefit from some trimming. Act II really took off, culminating in the audience singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Dame Angela Lansbury as a huge cake was wheeled in.
Barrie Jerram
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