Maria Friedman won the audience’s hearts in Sondheim: Inside Out at the Queen Elisabeth Hall, London
Sondheim: Inside Out at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
When this Sondheim: Inside Out concert goes out on BBC Radio 3 on 20 December, it’s a fair bet it will do so minus Maria Friedman’s expletive at missing a word in that extremely complicated and impossibly fast anthem to wedding day panic, ‘Getting Married Today’ from Company.
One of Sondheim’s greatest interpreters ruefully had to hand over a tenner to BBC Concert Orchestra conductor Keith Lockhart who had bet her that she couldn’t get it right on the night. It was a mighty close call but, in racing terminology, Friedman fell at the last hurdle.
It’s a pity the radio audience will have that airbrushed out along with Laura Michelle Kelly introducing the little-known ‘More’ from the 1990 movie Dick Tracy one act and around an hour too soon!
A pity because these two minor lapses added greatly to the entertainment value of a truly splendid and otherwise flawless Sunday afternoon on London’s South Bank.
When you get artists of the calibre of Friedman and the electrifying perfection of Kim Criswell on the same stage, you are pretty well guaranteed something out of the ordinary, and that’s exactly what we got.
It was a cast list to die for, with Kelly, the polished Michael Xavier and newcomer Turlough Convery also in terrific voice, and the Maida Vale Singers, a 16-strong group compiled from seasoned West End session performers, a mind-blowingly good back-up.
To win the Stephen Sondheim Society’s Student Performer of the Year competition and appear in such illustrious company at the Queen Elizabeth Hall so soon after graduating from the Guildford School of Acting must have been beyond Convery’s wildest dreams. He showed a fine comic touch in a number from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.
But it was Friedman with haunting, heartfelt versions of ‘Losing My Mind’ and ‘Send in the Clowns’, the two Sondheim masterpieces requiring the least introducing but the most careful handling, and Criswell with an unforgettable ‘Not a Day Goes By’ and ‘Broadway Baby’ who won the audience’s hearts, although Xavier’s beautifully phrased ‘Not While I’m Around’ gave them a good run for their money.
And what a treat Stuart Matthew Price gave us when he stepped out of the Maida Vale Singers to solo ‘Beautiful Girls’ from Follies. We will surely hear a lot more from him. Indeed both Price and Convery have been cast in the forthcoming production of a new British musical The A-Z of Mrs P at the Southwark Playhouse in February 2014.
The very animated American-born Lockhart was a star turn himself, visibly willing his BBC Concert troops – and there were enough of them, 67 if I’ve done the maths – to greater and greater deeds.
It could be a very long time before we hear a cross-section of Sondheim’s work, some famous, others less well-known, being performed better than this, and it was no surprise after the pulsating climax of ‘Sunday’ from Sunday in the Park With George that the audience rose en masse.
As Criswell said: “He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, he makes you think.” Sure does.
Jeremy Chapman
Readers may also be interested in:
Maria Friedman Masterclass – St James Theatre
The A-Z of Mrs P – new British musical opens in February 2014
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