Though Andrew Lloyd Webber and Boublil and Schonberg may be commanding bigger worldwide audiences for their shows, I don’t know of a musical theatre composer around today with a bigger personal cult following than Jason Robert Brown – partly, perhaps, fuelled by his exclusivity. Cultists like to think that they’re privy to a well-kept secret, and with runs of his three so-far produced shows at only the Bridewell (Songs for a New World), Menier Chocolate Factory (The Last Five Years) and Donmar Warehouse (Parade), Jason Robert Brown is still pretty much a secret to most of the world.
But you wouldn’t have guessed it from the tumultuous reception that greeted Jason last night when he hosted a night of his songs, from those shows as well as his new shows 13 (premiered in LA earlier this year) and the yet-to-be-produced Honeymoon in Vegas, at the South Bank’s Purcell Room, where the performance sold out – by Jason’s own sardonic reckoning – in “about seven minutes”. But then that’s also the point of cults: keep the gigs small, and the demand seems even higher. [Continue by clicking below]
Jason Robert Brown is, however, both a magnificent ambassador for his own work and a great exponent of it: since he writes such intimate, searing and personal songs, they resonate even louder coming from him. He may seem like the quintessential college musical theatre nerd, but in fact sat at the piano and pounding out his powerful, haunting melodies, he is such a charismatic, commanding and demanding performer that he draws you into his world. Composers aren’t usually their own best advocates, but Jason Robert Brown — like David Yazbeck, the late, great Cy Coleman and Brown’s own former cabaret partner Andrew Lippa — can own a stage.
He also attracts top-flight talent to join him. Last night’s gig saw him joined by Joanna Riding (making her first live stage appearance since giving birth to her daughter, who is eight months old tomorrow and was apparently sleeping backstage), Jenna Russell, and Lara Pulver (who opened last Monday as the female lead in Brown’s Parade at the Donmar, but last night reprised many of the songs from the UK premiere of The Last Five Years that she starred in at the Menier).
As with Sondheim, Brown’s songs are the kind of intimate character and mood studies that performers love to sing; no wonder that, like Sondheim, they’re becoming audition and cabaret standards (as well as drama school graduation showcase standards). Even if the shows themselves are not well known beyond a limited cognoscenti, they’re starting to enter the currency of the modern American songbook.
The concert capped a week for Jason when, as he said, “the critics actually liked what I wrote”; but don’t believe everything you read in them. Not, I hasten to add, the votes of approval which are well-earned, but some of the facts: according to The Observer’s Susannah Clapp yesterday, it has transferred to the Donmar “after a highly successful Broadway debut”, while on the other hand Christopher Hart in the Sunday Times noted that “musicals about paedophile killers don’t come along every day, it’s true, and on Broadway the show ran for only 84 nights. So, if this is your kind of thing, you’d better hurry.” In fact, both were wrong: according to the ever-invaluable Internet Broadway database (www.ibdb.com — and while we’re here, isn’t it time SOLT promoted the establishment of a similar online archival resource for the West End?), the show actually ran for 85 performances (and 39 previews), which of course, isn’t 85 nights, since there are 8 performances a week.
And finally, while I’m putting the record straight, I ran into Hannah Waddingham last night, who told me that she was misquoted when, in the wake of Monty Python’s Spamalot to win any Olivier Awards, she allegedly expressed anger at its apparent snub. I have duly deleted the offending (mis)quote from this blog.
God yes, I wish someone would start a simple database for the UK theatre scene and who has been in what previously. Wikipedia only goes so far, unfortunately. The Stage news articles would be linking to it constantly if one existed.
There's been repeated talk about establishing a UK theatre database, in the first instance of productions' run dates. They always seem to balk at collecting the data. We keep pointing out to them that it's all in one place already, in the volumes of Theatre Record, which has full details for London productions from 1981 and the rest of Britain from 1991 (at least, those that were reviewed). The same goes for cast & crew details, but the magazine itself doesn't have the resources to devote to inputting them. Nevertheless, we'd be more than happy to get involved if anyone actually wanted to get it off the ground.