It’s Showtime!
I have an idea for a musical. It is called The Last Five Decades. The musical opens at the end of the story.
Writer, Ivan Hershey, optimistically sings, “Technically Speaking, You Are Not Really A Shiksa, Goddess”, while actress, Leylah Wasp, laments, “Still Kvetching”.
The story goes back in time more than forty years, until a finale, in which we see Leylah’s dad, Jim, in his youth, mournfully singing “Stereotype” at a meeting for budding college journalists. Jim imagines that he looks like Terry Hall from The Specials, but actually, as he is sporting a Spurs scarf and Doc Martens, Jim inadvertently projects the look of a right wing yob. Unaware that five decades of friendship are about to be launched, young Ivan tries to disconcert Jim by cheerfully belting out “Children Of The Wind” from Rags, evoking the intrepid spirit of refugee diaspora people everywhere.
But what do I know of musicals? Apart from the occasional foray into writing silly lyrics for spoof musicals, which doesn’t count…
…I have only (now) seen three live professional performances of musicals…
…and Lydia White has been in two of them. I went to Manchester to see Rags in 2019:
In many ways, going to the Garrick Theatre to see The Last Five Years felt a bit like going to a familiar but occasionally-visited city like Manchester. Although London is of course my home City and under normal circumstances Janie & I see stuff regularly, this was our first trip “up west” for more than 18 months. It was the first time I’d been on the Tube for more than 18 months.
Lockdown of course changed all our lives in a great many ways. One of those ways, for me, was that I started to take singing lessons from Lydia. My early music teacher, Ian Pittaway, says that her work with me has been utterly transformational and he means that in a good way. He even forgave her for blowing out my singing lesson last week, in order to fit in an additional rehearsal for The Last Five Years. Ian says I don’t need a note, Lydia.
Was Lydia good in this show? Of course she was. Superb. She has tremendous stage presence to add to her technical abilities acting and singing.
Her opposite number for the afternoon, Lenny Turner, a debutante in this production, was excellent too.
In truth, Janie and I are really not musicals people, so the show itself is not to our taste. But we can appreciate a solidly professional and excellent production when we see one, which this most certainly was.
Janie and I found ourselves sitting quite close to “Lydia’s contingent”, with John, Mandy & Bella a couple of rows behind us; Mandy’s sister Mary & her husband Alan immediately behind us. Their daughters next to us…
…I probably hadn’t seen Mary & Alan since John & Mandy’s wedding more than 30 years ago. Nevertheless, Mary apparently spotted me immediately on arrival in the auditorium and told Alan that she had spotted me. So now I know; lying low for 30 years and wearing an FFP2 mask is insufficient disguise if I want to hide from Mandy’s kin.
After the show, we all gathered outside the theatre beside the stage door. As well as the above crowd, Angela (from those good old days) was there, as were a great many other people we were meeting for the first time; one of Mandy’s friends from Saffron Walden, Lydia’s boyfriend Jack, his family, plus many of Lydia’s friends and colleagues.
Janie had a long-standing engagement with her Samaritans cohort that evening, so had pre-warned us that she wouldn’t be able to stay for drinks; she left us about half an hour after the show, at which point we were still waiting for Lydia to emerge through the stage door. I wonder whether we looked like a bunch of groupies? Who cares.
Soon enough, Lydia did emerge to enjoy a further rapturous greeting and we soon set off for Koha in St Martins Court.
The fortunes smiled on us. The weather was mild and dry. Koha seemed able to provide us with as much seating outside as we needed to imbibe and chat at length. A couple of hours simply flew by, before we all went our separate ways.
But the main purpose of the day had been to support Lydia’s performance in the Last Five Years. It really was a delight to see her performing so well and so thrilled at the end of the day with how well it had all gone.
