You're Nothing Without Me

This looks like it is going to be my last blog for quite a while....

The week before all UK theatres closed their doors due to the Coronavirus outbreak, I went down to London to see a couple of things:

1. City of Angels (which will be what this post will be about)
2. Hop-footing it from the Garrick and seeing Divalution in cabaret at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho
   … and... 
3. & Juliet - I will not be doing a review of this though, as despite being in the FRONT ROW, it was a concert version as half of the cast were sick/injured/on annual leave; so the fairest thing to do would be to wait until this panic is over and I find the time to see it again (what a shame) in its entirety. 

Yeah - packed couple of days and glad I fitted it in when I could....

And I said, this will be about the West End transfer of City of Angels; this particular production first tread the boards at the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 (I think) and ended up winning an Olivier, but took THIS long for the show to transfer as Josie Rourke and co's diaries were THAT busy. The original however dates back to 1989 in New York, and has music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by David Zippel, who went on to collaborate with Disney writing lyrics for the songs of Hercules and Mulan...!

So out of everything in the West End, from Prince of Egypt to Dear Evan Hansen, why did you choose this I hear you ask?
Well, they did £20 tickets for the Gallery (fine with me), and quite frankly, the cast is INSANE: not just Hadley Fraser, Rosalie Craig (Company) and Olivier winner Rebecca Trehearn returning, but also Theo James, Rob Houchen (The Light in the Piazza), Nicola Roberts (of Girls Aloud and The Masked Singer) AND Vanessa Williams joining the cast...! WOAH!

Set in 1940s Hollywood, City of Angels is an homage to film noir following 2 plotlines intertwining and running parallel with each other.
The first follows Stine (Fraser), a famous writer trying to adapt his well-loved book (called City of Angels) into a screenplay while having pressure off the director to change various bits of the plot.
The second is of the book/screenplay itself, as you follow Detective Stone trying to solve a mysterious missing person case.

The show seamlessly flows from one to the other, with the lighting and costumes cleverly distinguishing one from the other: the Hollywood stuff in colour, and the film script in black and white, with the number You're Nothing About Me, using the lighting design to its full advantage.

As you can see, the cast was incredible, but my favourite performance out of them was in fact Theo James as Stone; the suave antihero, you rooted for him to crack the case from the get go, making the film bit possibly the more exciting plotline of the two.
But despite that, this entire cast was on point; from finally seeing Hadley Fraser on stage, to the sultry voices of Rosalie Craig and Rebecca Trehearn, which suit this genre of music like a hand in a glove (a lot of smooth jazz, with many a piano and saxophone riffs).
I must also mention any scenes involving Stine editing his script were very entertaining, earning plenty of laughs from the audience.

If if another production of City of Angels crosses your path once this madness is over, I would think about giving it a try; if you are looking for something a bit chilled, and/or are a fan of jazz music, then you would enjoy this.

Let's just pray we survive.....