Turlough Convery, winner of the Stephen Sondheim Performer of the Year Competition
Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year Competition 2013 and the Stiles and Drewe Best New Song Prize.
Reviewed at the Garrick Theatre, London.
When it was suggested to Stephen Sondheim that a song competition be formed in his name, he agreed only if it included new songs by young composers. For the seventh year running in this competition 12 students from UK music academies sang a song by Sondheim and one other, each by member composers of Mercury Musical Developments, an organisation devoted to encouraging the craft of writing book, music and lyrics for musical theatre.
The judges (director Michael Grandage, actress Imelda Staunton, musical director Mike Haslam, composer Matthew Scott, senior vice-president/Europe of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Bert Fink) chaired by writer and broadcaster Edward Seckerson, chose the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year, and the Best New Song Award was decided by the composer/lyricist team of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe and London Road composer Adam Cork.
After the ensemble opened with Waste from Road Show, Beth Peach-Robinson sang ‘Don’t Laugh’ from Hot Spot, Maud Millar offered a version of ‘Losing My Mind’ from Follies and Dylan Mason gave us ‘Franklin Shepard Inc’ from Merrily We Roll Along – three very good Sondheim-composed openers that set the standards high indeed.
The second trio began with Turlough Convery’s rendition of Ariadne from The Frogs, and the performer immediately proved himself a main contender of the afternoon. The same thing happened last year with winning singer Kris Olsen. Some performers have a natural command that is immediately apparent. This certainly happened for Convery. He was followed by a nicely acid interpretation by Nina Logue of ‘Could I Leave You?’ from Follies and Michael Watson-Gray’s delightful way with ‘Free’ from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.
It was good to hear a rarity such as ‘What More Do I Need?’ from Saturday Night by Laura Darton. George Mercer’s ‘Giants in the Sky’ from Into the Woods was suitably spooky and Alistair Toovey gave great emotional resonance to ‘Not While I’m Around’ from Sweeney Todd. For the final three Sondheim songs, Brooke Markham and Phoebe Pryce sang ‘Moments in the Woods’ and ‘The Last Midnight’, both to full effect and both from Into the Woods. Finally, Kara-Ami McCreanor really got into the part of Fosca in ‘I Read’ from Passion.
It was not a surprise to discover that some of the new songs had a kind of Sondheim influence about them. It’s no bad thing to be influenced by the best. Theo Jamieson’s ‘There’s No Such Thing As Magic’, about the pain of a disintegrating family, enjoyed a good outing from Beth Peach-Robinson. Darren Clark’s ‘The Only Prince Around’ was a fairytale song that could have come straight from Into the Woods and Turlough Convery sealed his fate in another totally winning performance.
‘Excalibur93’ by Dan and Reece Looney also had a touch of the Sondheims in a nicely amusing take by Dylan Mason. Pippa Cleary and Jake Brunger’s ‘Boy Across the Bay’, about a young girl’s unfortunate romantic fixation, was a delight in the hands of Nina Logue, while Lee Freeman and Mark Anderson’s ‘Proud’, dealing with a gay boy trying to gain his parents’ respect, had a touching performance by George Mercer.
Most of the songs were from musical shows but with some cabaret-style numbers also included. ‘Love Will Find Its Way’ by Barry Anderson and Mark Petty was such a number with its theme of encouraging women to use their innate powers over men. Maud Millar gave the song a thrilling enough interpretation to give her a special Highly Commended mention by the judges for this and her version of ‘Losing My Mind’.
The runner-up song was Tamar Broadbent’s ‘17 Drafts’ in which a girl struggles with revealing that she fancies the boy who is her best friend: Brooke Markham did the honours. First prize of £1,000 (donated by George Stiles, Anthony Drewe and Laurence Myers) went to Tim Sutton’s ‘That Once-in-a-Lifetime Feeling’, a standalone cabaret song that Laura Darton sent straight to the top of the bill.
In the performance competition, the second award of £500* was given to Kara-Ami McCreanor, while first prize of £1,000 (donated by Overtures, The Bunnett-Muir Musical Theatre Archive Trust) and the title Stephen Sondheim Performer of the Year went to Turlough Convery. Actress Julia McKenzie and Rexton Bunnett (from Overtures) presented these awards.
Host Jenna Russell entertained the audience with a few anecdotes and what she called her “back catalogue”, including Stiles and Drewe’s ‘Carrying a Torch’ from The Shakespeare Revue, ‘Like It Was’ from Merrily We Roll Along (in which she is currently appearing at the Harold Pinter Theatre), ‘I Remember’ from Sondheim’s Evening Primrose and ‘Remember Us’ from Stiles and Drewe’s Soho Cinders, with the aid of actor Michael Xavier.
Last year’s winners, Kris Olsen and Emma Salvo sang ‘Country House’ from the 1987 London production of Follies.
Throughout the programme Mark Etherington was a sterling accompanist, Chris Hocking directed and Neil Marcus and Sam Joseph produced the show.
It seems clear that these up and coming singers and songwriters are in such good musical health, ensuring that new musical theatre is alive and well and living in the UK. We will certainly be hearing more from the winning singers Turlough Convery and Kara-Ami McCreanor and it’s only a matter of time before productions of shows by the contributing composers and lyricists hit our music theatre stages.
Michael Darvell
* The second prize of £500 in the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year Competition 2013 was donated jointly by a Society member in memory of Rodney West (Bristol Old Vic 1967-89) and the Newsome family
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