Sounds of Social Distancing | Christopher Luscombe

Playlist | September 22, 2020

This month we are starting the playlists again. Many of you have told me how much they enjoyed listening to them during the rigours of lockdown.

There are subtle differences this time: they will be once a month, on the basis that you all now have busier lives than before; and we are planning to continue them until next April, when, fingers crossed, we will be starting to put the 2021 Festival together.

And the other change is that from now on they will be guest curated. Each curator will have worked at some stage for The Grange Festival, and each will bring her or his personal taste and experience to the party.

I am delighted that last year’s director of Falstaff, Christopher Luscombe, has agreed to open the batting. As you will see, he is a man of the theatre across an astonishing range, and each of his tracks is there for a special reason based on his experience as an actor or director.

So over to Chris……

You will not be disappointed; I can promise you.

Michael Chance

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first musical was not in fact Joseph, as most people would imagine, but The Likes of Us, based on the life of the Victorian philanthropist Dr Barnardo. It dates from 1965, when Andrew was seventeen, and his lyricist, Tim Rice, was nineteen. They’ve always been rather cagey about this bit of juvenilia (as they see it) getting a professional airing, but in fact it’s packed with an astonishing array of catchy melodies and witty lyrics. I had the luck to direct the first ever production in 2005 at Andrew’s theatre in the grounds of his estate in Berkshire. The following week we recorded it for Radio 2, and we also released a CD. The show was written for the sort of large pit orchestra that graced all the great Broadway and West End shows of that era. So sit back and enjoy the splendid overture. At the end of it you’ll hear Stephen Fry, who played the Narrator, welcoming the audience for the first ever performance of this delightful musical, forty years after it was composed.

When I directed Love’s Labour’s Lost for the RSC in 2014, I asked Nigel Hess to compose the score. Shakespeare normally provides his own lyrics, but in one scene he simply writes ‘Moth sings’, which begs the question ‘sings what exactly?’ The context demanded a romantic ballad, and we wanted it to feel like a popular song of the time. The production was set just before the Great War so that gave Nigel ample scope for one of his gorgeous tunes. We based the lyric on two sonnets by Shakespeare’s friend and sometime neighbour, the poet Michael Drayton; the singer is Peter McGovern.

Nigel Hess, the composer of Track 2, was also the conductor when I directed the private entertainment for the Prince of Wales’s 70^th birthday party at Buckingham Palace a couple of years ago. The distinguished audience (the entire Royal Family and all the crowned heads of Europe, if you please) allowed me to aim high with my casting, and I found myself asking Renée Fleming if she’d like to sing some Puccini for HRH. She said she would, and it brought down the house (or should I say the palace?). Sadly we didn’t film the performance, but here’s a reminder of that night from a recording with the LPO.

Richard O’Brien wrote Rocky Horror back in 1973, and famously played Riff Raff, both in the original production, and in the celebrated film two years later. For the latter, he also dubbed the opening number, ‘Science Fiction’. I’ve directed the show in London and in most corners of the world for the last fifteen years, and Richard often joins us on the road, sometimes playing the Narrator, and very occasionally singing this beguiling opener, with its memorable list of cult B movie titles.

I know this anthem, written for the coronation of George II in 1727, is preposterously well known, but it’ll always remind me of Alan Bennett’s The Madness of George III, which I did in the West End a few years ago, starring David Haig as the afflicted king. Bennett brings the First Act to a powerful conclusion by combining the sublime introduction to Handel’s masterpiece with the appalling image of George being strapped into his ‘restraining chair’ by his malevolent doctors. It was unforgettable, and David Haig – and Handel – sent shivers down our spines every night.

For several years I directed Elaine Paige in her concert tours, and was lucky enough to travel the globe with her. We changed the running order frequently, to include different highlights from her career, and one of my favourites items was a sequence of songs from the Pam Gems play Piaf. Elaine’s transformation into the ‘little sparrow’ was always a heart-stopping moment, and pure theatre. Here’s one of my favourite Piaf numbers, with the familiar English lyrics.

I started my career as an actor, and played Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest in rep with the wonderful character actress Josephine Tewson as Lady Bracknell. Jo has an encyclopaedic knowledge of classical music (her father played double bass in the BBC Symphony Orchestra) and we used to compare notes in the wings. One night I confessed that I knew very little Shostakovich, and, just before she sailed onto the stage, she whispered ‘try the second piano concerto’. So I bought the cassette (yes, it’s that long ago) and have been hooked ever since. Here’s the meltingly beautiful slow movement.

Eric Idle wrote this winner for his hit show Spamalot. He’d been chatting one day with composer John Du Prez about the sort of song that turns up early on in every musical and ‘goes like this’. He claims that the lyric arrived in his head almost fully formed. It was the sort of brilliant subversion of the medium that Eric has made the hallmark of all his work throughout his illustrious career in comedy. I directed the show for five years, both in London and on tour, and here’s the recording that we made, live from the Playhouse Theatre on the Embankment.

Falstaff’s love letter must be one of the most incompetent valentines of all time, whereas this haunting ballad from the 1937 musical Babes in Arms never fails, especially when sung by Frank Sinatra. It’s incredible to think that Richard Rodgers in effect had two glittering careers, one with Lorenz Hart and another, even more productive, with Oscar Hammerstein. He must surely rank as the greatest composer of Broadway’s golden era. I fell in love with this particular song when I appeared in a Valentine’s Day revue for Radio 4, Heart and Soul, and this song was sung, faultlessly, by fellow cast member Steven Pacey.

At the beginning of this playlist I included the composer Nigel Hess, who is the great nephew of Dame Myra Hess, famous for her wartime concerts at the National Gallery. We put together a celebration of those concerts ten years ago at the Gallery, with Dame Patricia Routledge telling the story and the Australian virtuoso Piers Lane playing piano music especially associated with Dame Myra. This Brahms waltz was a particular favourite, and it’s music like this that was such a consolation during the War and, dare one say it, has provided a similar balm during the pandemic of 2020.

This is really by way of a quick preview, as I’ll be directing The Yeomen of the Guard at the Grange in 2022. It’s probably the most serious work by G&S, and its clear that by now (1888) Sullivan was yearning to write grand opera – you can feel him increasingly tugging his whimsical writing partner in that direction. This extract is the magnificent contrapuntal opening to the Second Act, when the women of the Tower, led by Dame Carruthers, lament the escape of one of the prisoners.

Another nostalgic track for me, as it takes me back to the staged concert of Candide that we did at the Grange in 2018 to mark the Bernstein centenary. The rousing closing chorus, ‘Make our garden grow’, with its famous a cappella climax, is sung here by the National Theatre company from John Caird’s brilliant 1999 production. The sentiment of focusing on a simpler, more frugal way of life arguably takes on a new resonance in 2020.

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