This week Michael Jackson should, of course, have been beginning his 50-date residency at the 02 - and the sold-out run was destined to be the biggest event of the year. Instead, the memorial service yesterday for his passing has turned out to be the biggest showbiz event of the century so far, maybe ever.
As Stacy Brown, one of Jackson’s biographers, was quoted saying yesterday, “This is Princess Diana’s funeral times 20. He was Elvis and The Beatles rolled into one.” As TMZ, the celebrity website that first broke the news of his death, said in a posting yesterday, “Michael Jackson will create even more pandemonium in death than he did in life.”
Even Barack Obama was reported in today’s Guardian to have briefly interrupted a visit to Russia to pay his respects before the service. “I don’t think there’s any doubt he was one of the greatest entertainers of our generation, perhaps any generation,” he is reported telling CNN. “I think, like Elvis, like Sinatra, like the Beatles, he became a core part of our culture.” And, according to the New York Post, he told CBS, “There are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people’s imaginations. And in death, they become even larger. Now, I have to admit that it’s also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable.”
As the New York Times reported today, “By the time Paris broke into sobs at the end of the service as she expressed how much she loved her father — ‘I just wanted to say, ever since I was born Daddy has been the best father you can ever imagine’ — newscasters cast aside any pretense of covering a news event and joined in the orgy of mourning.”
The report also reveals that “some network anchors seemed a bit mortified by their own unstinting and reverential coverage. Brian Williams of NBC, who sat on a special platform outside the Staples Center, told his colleague Lester Holt that the public had a way of deciding for itself what matters, ‘despite, at some times, the news media’s better wishes.’ He added ruefully, “And this is an event because it is.”
So, as the same piece began, “Of course the networks interrupted their regular programming to cover it. Of course the 24-hour cable news stations never left it, and of course, most everybody around the world stopped what they were doing — on television, on the Internet and on the street — to look and listen.”
And here I am, even in a theatre blog, referring to it. Actually, I didn’t stop to look and listen at all - I was, of course, at the theatre last night - but you can’t avoid the coverage today. It’s splashed across pages two and three of The Guardian, with yet more coverage in G2. But there have also been some expected, and some unexpected, theatrical links.
On the one hand, one can’t help but feel that the producers of Thriller - Live, currently in the West End and on tour (this week at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre), have been handed a publicity windfall, and are duly capitalising on it. Yesterday they issued a release, promising a tribute of their own before each performance last night, and the lights were dimmed again, as they were on the day he died, for both productions.
On the other hand, the Lyric Theatre has, unbidden, become an informal shrine for fans, along with one outside the HMV store at Piccadilly Circus. One fan, a 25 year old retail manager called Michael Lewis, told The Guardian’s G2 today, “I have been coming to [this shrine] most days since I heard the news. It’s the only place I can find peace. I met him twice - at his press conference when he announced the O2 concerts, and then I waited for seven hours outside his hotel. He came down to meet us. He had an amazing smile, a fantastic aura. His death turned my world upside down and I still cry every day.”
In fact anyone who ever met Jacko, however briefly, seems to be recalling the occasion; and on the weekend, the Sunday Times had a contribution from a more unexpected source: none other than Trevor Nunn recalled being summonsed to meet him back in 1987, in a piece that ran in the Sunday Times. Hilariously, Nunn initially suspected the hands of the late Ken Campbell, and thought it was a hoax. But it turns out to be true. And truth turns out to be stranger, as ever with Jackson, than fiction: Nunn writes that Jackson’s “manager mentioned that Michael was ‘aware’ of my staging of a crazy experimental musical enterprise called Starlight Express and wanted to ‘share ideas’”.
They duly met in Sydney, where Nunn was rehearsing the Oz production of Les Miserables at the time and Jackson was doing concerts. Jackson expresses his desire to do “something more spectacular” in his shows, “such as flying”. Nunn recalls replying, “”Oh, I know just how to do that, no problem. I had people flying over the audience when I did Peter Pan.”
The best bit is what follows: “Something seismic had happened. He reacted as if an electric current had just passed through him. He sat up to the edge of his chair, clutching the arms with splayed hands, one of which was gloved. ‘You did Peter Pan?’ he whispered. ‘Yeah, in London,’ I said. He leapt up. ‘You directed Peter Pan?’ The high-pitched voice went higher as he walked up and down in front of me, repeating: “Oh my God. Peter Pan! I don’t believe it’. I described our production, in which all the children’s parts had been played by adult actors. He bounded across the room, his eyes full of tears, he knelt down in front of me, his hands on my knees, and he said: ‘Could I play Peter, is it too late? Will you let me play Peter? All I ever want to do is to play Peter Pan’”.
If Jackson had made it to London this week, I suspect he’d have headed straight to Kensington Gardens for the current production playing there (which has just announced an extension to September 13, prior to a US tour). How intriguing it might have been to see him actually playing the title role onstage; as it is, he played the character’s steadfast refusal to grow up in real life instead.
As Nunn concludes, “I wasn’t the least surprised to hear that Michael Jackson had made a huge children’s playground at a ranch that he had called Neverland, the name of the home of his beloved Peter Pan. When the accusations of sexual molestation of children appeared, I believed then, as I believe now, that they were untrue. Call me naive, but I am convinced he was being Peter Pan. Peter presides over a group of Lost Boys, children who look to his leadership but who he needs as much as they need him. The Lost Boys live in the same big room as Peter and they all sleep in the same big bed. Inviting boys to Neverland, staying in the same room, all sleeping in the same huge bed … these are the activities that were at the centre of the abuse allegations. But Peter is almost androgynous, he is sexless, he is adored by Wendy but has no concept of the love she wants from him… What I witnessed of his obsession with Peter Pan was different, unfakeable and real. It was not really about a part he wanted to play. It was about the person he wanted to be.”
Who would've thought that the day would come when one would admire Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli for their moral rectitude. Enough already about the talented but tainted Mr Jackson.
But what of Forbidden Broadway??