New musicals are hard. Very hard. And Fury and Elysium that has just opened at The Other Palace bills itself as a musical, so it is by that yardstick that I shall judge it.
Does it work as a musical? No. Did I have a bad time? Well…no. I actually rather enjoyed what was on offer, but that I did was down almost entirely to the half-dozen women of the cast who are probably the best ensemble currently playing outside the West End. More of which later.
However, to the material itself. There are so many good ‘bits’ of the show that it seems almost churlish to write anything remotely negative, but the ‘bits’ sadly don’t add up to a whole.
A musical starts with the book. Stephanie Martin has a real ear for snappy, often heart-wrenchingly truthful dialogue, but there’s just no superstructure in place to shape the evening into a satisfying emotional experience.
The show covers the lives of six interesting and unusual Jewish women in interwar Germany. To say that there was plenty going on is something of an understatement, and yet what we are presented with, rather than a coherent narrative, are six vignettes which have little to do with each other and whose order could actually be rearranged and you wouldn’t notice the difference. That’s a big mistake. As soon as we – as an audience – have started to invest our emotional capital in the first subject she’s whisked away never to be seen again, and we’re on to the next, and so on. Rather than invest in the material, we are left only to enjoy the performances.
Martin’s a good writer, and should focus on telling one story well, rather than six superficially. So what, characters didn’t meet in real life? You’re a writer. Write a story where they do. Find a protagonist, give them an antagonist (there isn’t one in this show which is a glaring omission), give them a problem, then show us how they overcome it – or don’t.
Next the music and lyrics. I actually rather like Calisto Kazuko Georget’s music which is varied and at times just the right side of avant garde. But the lyrics are by turns joyfully appropriate, and infuriatingly bad. Don’t just use a word that approximates to the vowel sound. Make the whole word rhyme. And (my pet hate…) I finally stopped counting the number of singular words rhymed with plurals. Don’t do it. It’s sloppy, and trips up the ear.
I’d suggest both Stephanie Martin and Calisto Kazuko Georget would benefit greatly from signing up to the musical theatre workshop Book, Music, and Lyrics (www.bookmusicandlyrics.com) to knock their undoubted talent into shape.
Right, rant over, so the cast…
These are six women – well, five women and the non-binary Ashley Goh as Claire Waldorf, a Drag King – who really have been drilled to perfection, and we hardly notice that Charlotte Clitherow is covering at the last minute for an ill colleague, playing dancer Anita Berber.
Maya Kristal Tenenbaum as writer Gabrielle Terget opens the show admirably, and Michal Horowicz as political activist Rosa Luxemburg lends gravitas.
However, in an evening of wonderful performances I must single out for praise Danielle Steers as brothel keeper Kitty Schmit, who is lucky to have probably the best song in the piece, the first half closer Salon Kitty, and Rosie Yadid whose incredibly physical performance could best be described as ‘fearless’, and is all the more wonderful for it.
I doubt we’ll see Fury and Elysium again in this form. I hope we don’t. There’s a good show in there somewhere. An interesting show. Dare I say even a show which could act as a mirror to our times. But it’s going to take a lot to draw it out. Here’s where the work begins, ladies. Over to you.