Maria Friedman Masterclass – St James Theatre

Maria Friedman gave a masterclass for music students at St James Theatre, London as part of the London Festival of Cabaret

The Maria Friedman Masterclass: The Art of Performance took place at St James Theatre, London.

As part of the first London Festival of Cabaret, actress-singer-director Maria Friedman gave a masterclass for music students at the St James Theatre in London. Michael Darvell made some notes…

I had been banging on for many years in several publications about the dearth of cabaret outlets in London, until about a year ago, when the capital city acquired three new venues to add to what was then really London’s only place for cabaret performers, The Pheasantry in the King’s Road, Chelsea.

The Pheasantry had taken over when the celebrated and now much missed Pizza On the Park closed after some 30 years to make way for yet another boutique hotel. Then, in one fell swoop, we had the Matcham Room at the Hippodrome on Charing Cross Road, The Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zédel by Piccadilly Circus, and the Studio at the St James Theatre in Victoria. Nightlife in London had suddenly taken a turn for the best. Just lately The Oak Room at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden has also joined the cabaret gang. The greatest success has been The Crazy Coqs, which is hosting some of the London Festival of Cabaret events, along with the Soho Theatre, the St James Theatre, The Pheasantry, The Oak Room and the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus.

Although an actress on stage and television, Friedman is no stranger to cabaret, having performed her one-woman shows at The Pheasantry, the Menier Chocolate Factory, the Trafalgar Studios and Cadogan Hall, as well as appearing at the Café Carlyle in New York. In her masterclass at the St James she was introduced by Mark Shenton, theatre critic and self-confessed cabaret nut who apparently would rather be in a cabaret room than anywhere else on earth. Friedman’s Menier Chocolate Factory production of Merrily We Roll Along had just been streamed to cinemas around the world on 23 October, two days before her masterclass, and she was still riding high on that experience. It was the first time she had directed, although she had appeared in the Sondheim show in Leicester as long ago as 1992. She described the culmination of directing the piece on the Fringe, seeing it transfer to the West End and subsequently to a worldwide cinema audience as “completely bonkers”.

When Shenton posited that cabaret is a totally different discipline to any other form of theatre work, Friedman actually disagreed, by explaining that cabaret is still telling stories as you do in a play, in which you feel all the emotions, the laughter, the tears, the only difference being that in cabaret it is just one person out there, more exposed perhaps, but having to perform 20 or more stories in song instead of just one in a play. For the masterclass she had music students from the Musical Theatre Academy in Holloway, north London and the Royal Academy of Music in Marylebone Road. All three young performers had very good voices, but what they needed was a lesson in interpretation, which is where Friedman came in.

First up was Laura Jane Cook who graduated from the MTA in September this year, and who will be starring in the Pyramid Pantomimes’ touring production of Aladdin this Christmas. Her song was Irving Berlin’s ‘You’d Be Surprised’, a number dating back to 1919. It has the simplest of tunes and quite ordinary lyrics, but in the hands of a skilled vocalist the song really flies. It concerns a very shy guy called Johnny and a girl called Mary, and nobody knows why she likes him. But, as she explains: “He’s not so good in a crowd/But when you get him alone/You’d be surprised…” It’s the tone of voice, the knowingness of the girl singing, and the humorous innuendo that sell the song. Cook sang it first quite vigorously in a knowing but cute way. Friedman’s advice was to be more subtle, as if she were imparting something rather secret, confiding in her audience. Each line was sung and then discussed until eventually the ideal way to sing the song was reached. It was all good advice and the resulting version was quite different and much improved.

Next came Megan Jenkins who has just started her second year at the MTA. She sang ‘Lost in Translation’, a song from Lift, the new musical about love, life and loss in a London lift, by Craig Adams, which played at London’s Soho Theatre earlier this year. Again it is a girl who is imparting something confidential to the assembled crowd about another girl who has decamped to Paris. After Jenkins’ initial performance, Friedman pointed out what she called an “arc of sameness” in which the delivery of the song has no highs or lows, and she suggested the singer should rub the corners off in order to lift it to a higher level. In reciting the lyrics you have to tell the truth, she said, rather than offering just introspection in isolation. There must be a connection with the audience and you should never sing a song as if you already know the answer that’s coming at the end. Emphasising the right words helps in conveying the actual sense and the meaning of the song.

For Kristin Lidstrom from the Royal Academy of Music, the song was Noel Coward’s ‘Mad About the Boy’. Now Coward’s lyrics are the devil to sing and get right. They are even difficult to just read aloud for they are so bound up with Coward’s own music. If you sing them straight they just sound repetitive and rather meaningless. Friedman set Lidstrom the task of thinking of three reasons why she herself might be mad about the boy, to put herself in the position of being the one in the song who cannot fathom him out, but who also cannot help herself because she is, against all her better judgements, still besotted with him. Good advice came from Friedman who suggested Lidstrom might mix it up by saying the lines but without paying too much attention to the music – let the melody follow the voice.

It turned out to be a fascinating afternoon in which the three singers and the audience all learned a lot and received a rare insight into the art of interpreting a song in a cabaret situation. Obviously Friedman is an excellent and thorough teacher, which is why she made such a good job of directing Merrily We Roll Along. It will be interesting to see how these three singers develop and also what Friedman decides to direct next. I don’t mind so long as she doesn’t give up her other day job as a perceptive interpreter of the popular song in cabaret.

www.londonfestivalofcabaret.com