Created by one of the world’s most celebrated lyricists, From the Heart is Don Black‘s personal tribute to the New York cabaret scene that inspired his remarkable career. Featuring brand new songs alongside many of his best-loved classics, this year’s production stars Olivier Award winner Clive Rowe, internationally acclaimed Caroline O’Connor and Olivier Award nominee Michael Xavier.
Review by Stephen Gilchrist.
‘From the Heart’ is a long overdue tribute to the 88-year-old Jewish and prolific lyricist Don Black who started life in a council flat in Hackney and rose to dizzying heights in a 60 year plus career as an Oscar, Olivier and Tony Award winning song writer. At my great age I can recall his earliest songs first time around, lyrics he wrote for Matt Monroe “The Man with the Golden Voice” and the “British Sinatra,” and his 1960s movie songs. I also recollect fondly his first foray into musical theatre with ‘Billy’, the Michael Crwaford vehicle at Drury Lane.
This show started life as a more modest cabaret as a Sunday evening entertainment at the Fortune Theare, last year. It now has a run in a superbly packaged production, beautifully set (by Sophia Pardon) lit (by Ben Cracknell) and elegantly directed by Nick Winston.
This is not a ‘And then I wrote’ show although similar in structure to ‘Sondheim by Sondheim’ with amusing inter song reflections on his life and career by Black himself. For most of its 80 minutes and before a finale medley of some Black’s best-known movie and show songs, it consisted of unfamiliar cabaret songs written by the wordsmith with a variety of different composers including George Fenton (who sadly died very recently), David Arnold, Gary Barlow and others to pay homage to New York’s cabaret scene which Black holds close to his heart.
It was a first-class evening and in the unfamiliar work, revealed a writer’s work which was sharp, focused, laugh out loud funny and at times heartbreaking. Freed from the constraints of writing title, mood and thematic lyrics for movies, nor bound by the book of a musical theatre production, these new songs, all musically terrific from his many collaborators, peeled away the superficial onion of Black’s work.
The show features a high-powered West End cast, including Caroline O’Connor (whose brilliant Dolly Levi I was privileged to see in Paris a couple of years ago), the ever-wonderful Clive Rowe, and the fine Olivier nominee Michael D. Xavier, along with two excellent performers, Shona McGarty and Frances Mayli McCann.
Between then they gave us eighteen numbers plus the finale, each representing an aspect of Black’s versatility. Humour was high on the agenda. A song, ‘Doctors,’ performed with his customary charm by Clive Rowe, was about a man seeking a doctor who would not remind him that he needed to diet, not smoke nor drink, and ‘Fizzy or Still’ sung with Xavier, about two alcoholics reduced to having to make a binary decision about whether to order ‘Fizzy or Still’ water.
‘Straight Men’ was a hilarious trio by the girls frustrating over their inability to find macho, raw, straight men in a world populated by rather more delicate gays, and ‘Me Too’, in which an overeager guy tries to ingratiate himself with a prospective date by claiming he loves everything that she loves.
There were numerous tender moments, ‘How Do You Fall Out of Love’ by Xavier, and a heart-rending number written about his late wife, Shirley who died eight years ago and ‘Life Goes On’ one of seven numbers in the show composed by Geoff Stephens.
“I’d go to bed earlier than I do / If I knew I’d dream of you.”
Special guest Michael Ball delighted the audience with an appearance singing ‘Love Changes Everything’ from ‘Aspects of Love’ (music by Lloyd Webber)
The finale was a rip-roaring audience pleaser with movie songs, unbelievably, from the sixties- the Bond songs written with John Barry, ‘To Sir with Love’, ‘The Italian Job’ and O’Connor’s terrific ‘”As If We Never Said Goodbye” from Sunset Boulevard.
As I’ve said this show was beautifully packaged, a plain set with two musicians, MD Joesph Church on keys and Oliver Copeland on bass, upstage on a platform, fronted by rows of lights, tables and chairs, cabaret like, around the stage at which sat the performers who were not in the current number, with open faced movie set lights stage left and right and numerous spots from above.
A word too, for Richard Brooker, the sound designer. In a West End where often it is sometimes impossible to hear song words above the band, from voices which are overamplified, it was a pleasure to hear every single delectable word of Black’s lyrics.
This show is a sensational and revelatory homage to a great lyricist, whose words over more than 60 years have provided the soundtrack of the lives of many of us who have followed his career from early days. The audience left walking on air.
Cast
Frances Mayli McCann
Shona McGarty
Caroline O’Connor
Clive Rowe
Michael D. Xavier
Creatives
Don Black — Author and lyricist
Nick Winston — Director
Joe Church — Musical Director
Nick Barstow — Arrangements and Musical Supervision
Sophia Pardon — Set and Costume Designer
Ben Cracknell — Lighting Designer
Richard Brooker — Sound Designer
