FULL Anything Goes (Cole Porter) London 2022 Sutton Foster, Robert Lindsay, Felicity Kendal

Comment (1)

1. ANYTHING GOES – Barbican Centre, Ldn – 2022 = Big show, no fun at all. Professionaly impeccable with everything remade – the real Cole Porter musical has definitely disappeared. A new book misses fire with respect to the original libretto that was created by famous names of the American theatre. And this new orchestral bombing has no competition with the sound that Robert Russell Bennett & friends gave to the original 1934 mise en scène. The public now has unlimited cheers and applause because probably they do not know where good taste belongs. The leading lady has an ugly voice in speaking and singing and that beautiful number ‘I get a kick …’ is
   almost difficult to be tolerated, not to say when she does the duetto ‘Friendship’ with a player that undoubtedly does not know how to be hilarious (I have also be patient of suffering with his ‘Bluebird’ song – In a performance of ANYTHING GOES from students of an American University there’s this ‘Bluebird’ song offered with full sense of humour – indimenticabile) ….
   So this is really not – NOT – the Porter’s musical of 1934 where the sound was a miracle of notes as it can be imagined in the cd conducted by the great Master John McGlinn with a cast of great interpreters.
   This, for me, is to be totally forgotten.

   Reply