A Titanic night of amateur theatre

I have to express an interest first.   To neutral reviewers of my blog - and you are all most welcome! - I am about to review a show performed by a company I have had the pleasure of MDing and performing with in the past, and featuring some performers I know very well indeed.   But I just wanted to share some thoughts on an excellent production, and also some musings on amateur theatre in general  

West Bromwich Operatic Society is an excellent amateur musical theatre company, and, ever the shrewd programmers, are this week staging Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's multi Tony winning show "Titanic" to coincide with the centenary of the tragedy.

"Titanic" presents many challenges to any company, amateur or professional, not least if the requirement for a huge cast with at least 10 major roles, and huge chorus numbers.   I had the privileged of conducting Ragtime the musical with WBOS nearly 10 years ago, so I know they are capable of tackling a show on this scale.

I am not going to single performers out from this excellent production - that would take 3 or 4 blog entries.  The main thing I was struck by this evening was the commitment of the performers on stage.  To tell a story of this emotional depth requires exceptional commitment from the performers and this group of performers delivered this commitment in spades. The cast ranged from bellboys aged 10 and up to senior company members well into their professional retirement. Every member put their heart and soul into this production, and it showed throughout the performances.

Several company members were required to play 2 or 3 different parts, and these were always differentiated with great clarity, not just with costume.

The chorus singing, such an integral part of this score, was excellent.  So much so I was confused by the MD (Jonathan Hill) wearing headphones into assuming some choral work had been clicked to support the live singing.  I was told after the show this was not the case - all vocals were live.  The sound was thrilling  (although the altos sometimes sounded a little thin - sorry - vocal nerd blogging here!) and really gave a sense of the excitement of the greatest ship ever build setting sale.

There were some delightful moments of characterization and direction  (Mike Capri and Steve Bracey), none more so than in "Doing the latest Rag" when the professional dance couple, having performed their own routine, proceed to teach the 1st and 2nd class passengers to Charleston and Cakewalk.   This was staged with great subtlety - the company didn't suddenly know how to do the dance but could be seen to be learning it, being a beat or 2 behind for some sections.  Add to this Mr Guggenheim not getting the steps and getting clearly frustrated and you have a lovingly staged scene with great elements of realism. This purveyed the story telling right up to the curtain call.

Quite uniquely the curtain call did not place any hierarchy on the performers or their characters.  All significant performers got their bow, but  the groupings were based purely on stage positions and not character significance. And the final group to receive their applause only had one principal performer in it.   Such a small but significant step to signify that, in a tragedy such as this, as Captain Smith himself says, it's every man for himself.

Also, possibly strangely, I would like to  give a big thumbs up to the programme - probably the best programme for any show - amateur or professional - I've seen in a long time.   Given that the show was being presented to coincide with the anniversary, the programme focussed on the real characters rather than the performers.  Where the performers bios would normally be we got the character name, performer name, and then a short bio of the real character.   No bios of the performers or production team was included - just names for credits.   Such a significant selfless gesture, given the anniversary, has to be applauded and celebrated.  Besides which much of the information was just plain fascinating!

Now it's time for the boring vocal nerd to offer a couple of criticisms.   Please bear in mind that nothing I am about to say actually spoilt my enjoyment of the performance, and given the same options in casting I would probably have made the same decisions as the current production team did.

However I thought I'd talk for a moment about vocal styles.  A couple of the male principals were, for me, vocally miscast.  These are performers I have seen in other more contemporary shows and know to be outstanding musical theatre performers, and indeed to a non vocal nerd, their performances this evening would have been in the good-to-excellent category.    My quibble is  simply that the voices, technically, were far to contemporary for the roles they were playing. Titanic does not use contemporary music to tell a period story, as Spring Awakening does.  Rather it uses traditional musical techniques from the period the show is set, and therefore the vocals should reflect that. I would love to work with the performers concerned to see if, if directed accordingly, they could adapt their natural contemporary vocal styles to a much more traditional technique more appropriate to the music.   My instinct is that they could, as they are undoubtedly terrific performers.   

Another principal performer, who possesses a wonderful lyric baritone voice, with a beautiful even tone from low A to high G, does not engage the body in his speaking voice, and therefore the speech, while always projected and full of character, lacks the same depth of tone of the singing voice.

Also why did the stoker have coal dust on his face, but pristine clean white trousers and shirt?!!

I shall expound upon the perils of casting in amateur theatre in a future blog entry.

It just remains for me to say  thank you to all at WBOS for another memorable night at the theatre, and a fitting and respectful tribute to those 1500 souls lost to the Atlantic 100 years ago.

Standard of singing teaching in professional colleges

Is the standard of singing teaching in our professional drama and dance colleges where it should be?

I have no doubt that there is a lot of good teaching going on, and witnessed this first hand during the time I spent teaching at GSA a few years ago. 

However, I have reason to doubt the teaching in 2 top London colleges, if personal reports are to be believed.

I shall not name the students or the colleges in question, but these are true case studies reported to me in the last month.

Student 1 has been a student of mine on and off for about 5 years.  She also had access to excellent West End standard training at Thomas Telford School.   She obtained a place on a dance oriented West End training course and is now completing her 2nd year.   One of her audition pieces for the college was Mr Snow (Carousel), and the student is a natural soprano.

When I saw her a month ago her confidence was completely shot to pieces, and she had lost all the natural spark and bright quality she always had in her voice.   It transpires that in the 2 years she has been there she has not been encouraged to sing any repertoire in her natural range.   The college does group singing lessons, and this student's teacher seems to have a very rigid idea about technique.  If you do not do things their way you are not singing correctly, apparently.  Also the repertoire has been almost exclusively ultra contemporary.  The upshot has been that the student has been asked to sing entirely repertoire she is unfamiliar with, often in a voice range she feels does not suit her voice best, and has never been able to demonstrate her natural ability.   She is very happy to learn new and modern rep, but wants to be able to balance that with traditional styles and techniques.

We had an hour and a half together a month ago, and got the vocal folds reconnecting, got the focus back onto the physical support networks, and got her smiling again and enjoying singing - that simple prerequisite for good singing - enjoyment.


Student 2 is a new student I met for the first time this week.  She has just returned from her first major contract on a big show in Germany and is looking to push herself forward into more singing roles over here.   In warm up she easily reached a high A, which really surprised her.  It transpires that in her training, again at a top London college, she was quickly labelled as a dancer who could sing and lumped into the chorus / dancers and never given the opportunity to push herself vocals.

Consequently a voice that has a very natural top range has gone completely unnoticed.  It is an excellent voice up to D/E, with a great natural and very safe belt.  But there is a whole register of very natural notes that previous teachers have never uncovered / developed.

Surely these circumstances should not be allowed to go unchallenged.   I advised student 1 to speak to her director of study and request a change of tutor.  This should be her prerogative.  In my time at GSA I had one student request to leave me as he didn't feel he was benefiting from my teaching; at the same time I was given another 3rd year student who had an exceptional technique and wanted more rep coaching that her current teacher, a non-pianist, could not offer.

But it does worry me that students are paying huge fees to attend these prestigious colleges, and then they discover the teaching is not what they expected.

What can be done?  Please feel free to leave any thoughts.

Off topic! Great night at the theatre!

One of the reasons I called this The Very Vocal Blog was that, on occasion I could go off topic and discuss something not totally to do with vocal work.  Just generally shoot my mouth off and be "vocal" (get it!) on any topic that came to mind.

So here's the first off topic discussion - Did Shakespeare really write his plays?     Answers in an essay of not more than 5000 words, delivered to the Descendants of Kit Marlow....   


No, not really. I'm not going to open that can of worms here, although our very amusing and irreverent guide on the boat trip down the Avon this morning did discuss it in some detail. 

I just wanted to say what a great time I had taking Mrs Show Widow to Twelfth Night at the RSC last night.   I actually don't care who wrote it, I love the play.   Nearly 20 years ago I played Malvolio in a very basic but enjoyable school production - I've never forgotten the review in the Essex Country Standard - "he strutted about, preening himself like a stroppy peacock", which I always felt was a decent review for playing Malvolio.

But nothing quite prepared us for the performance of Jonathan Slinger last night.   The whole production was excellent; the comic performances of Nicholas Day (Sir Toby) and Bruce McKinnon (Sir Andrew) were a sheer delight.  But Slinger's performance was a revelation.  He is an RSC regular from the last few seasons, but this was the first time I'd seen him.   His Malvolio was instantly dislikeable in it's pomposity, but ultimately sympathetic at the end.   The reading of the Letter Scene was comic gold dust, and yet his appearance in his yellow stockings was even more extraordinary, helped in no small way by his costume, but you'll get no spoilers on that here.  If you want to find out more you'll have to go and see it.   Suffice to say the humiliation was complete and yet you couldn't help feeling sorry for character (and actor!).  The audience in the excellent new auditorium was in stitches by this time and remained so for a long time.


There's nothing quite like a good Shakespeare play, directed and performed with complete confidence by a first class ensemble.  The only sadness I have is that there is very little chance of getting back to see the same ensemble in either The Tempest or The Comedy of Errors this season.  

http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/twelfth-night/

Excellent article on managing technique in performance.

 

No new blog entry from me today. I thought I'd share this excellent article I've found from Dr Liz Garnett

I would thoroughly recommend this for anyone interested in managing their technique in performance.


You can find Dr Garnett's article HERE