Theatre Review: Laughter in the Rain, Churchill Theatre Bromley

Neil Sedaka at the piano with actor Wayne Smith and cast on the opening night of Laughter in the Rain, a new musical about Sedaka’s life. Photo: Churchill Theatre

Monday night in Bromley and a sea of grey heads in the stalls greeted us. They were here to see a new musical about the life and times of Neil Sedaka, who started his rock-n-roll career in the 1950s and is still going today.

Much to my shame I thought he was dead, provoking peals of laughter from the theatrical crowd I was with in the interval bar. “No! He’s alive!” chastised one, a West End actress and Greenwich glitterati.

And still going strong by all accounts: he turned up in Bromley for the opening night of Laughter in the Rain last week and was so taken with it he changed his flights so he could see it again. ‘Forty of my songs, three hours, audience on its feet, all about me…’ You can understand why he called Heathrow.

Sedaka started life sharing a two-room flat in New York with his family and three aunts. As a child his mother encouraged him to play the piano with a career as a concert pianist in mind. But rock-n-roll happened and the teenage Sedaka rebelled and started writing songs with geeky neighbour Howard Greenfield. Together they formed a musical partnership that sold 40 million records between 1959 and 1963.

Stardom faded abruptly in the face of the ‘British Invasion’ by the Beatles in the 1960s, which left him skint. But a 1970s comeback helped by Elton John put him back on top. Now he’s a legend, with a new album out this year.

It’s an interesting tale spanning six decades – rags to riches to rags and back to riches – and it’s told simply and well. It could do with delving deeper into the darker years to give it a bit more emotional narrative, but it skips along at a pace from hit to hit.

And that’s what the audience is there for: the songs. A full house would guarantee dancing in the aisles. A three-quarter house on a cold Monday night and we only danced at the end. A weekend crowd would be a lot of fun.

Wayne Smith plays the lead. His voice is beautiful. He sings flawlessly in almost every song – some feat. But two scenes nearly steal the show. Kieran Brown as Tony Christie singing Amarillo could easily bring the house down if cheesed up. And Kieran Brown (again) as Elton John could, if camped up, run away with the night. Both scenes are kept in a lowish key, probably for that reason.

The set is effective. A cinemascope style screen shows film footage and photographs from the time to lend authenticity and occasional poignancy. The clarity of staging lets the music shine through.

All up it’s a lot of fun, and a rollicking good show. A bit of tweaking on its way round the theatres of England as it tours this summer (Elton John needs new glasses, for starters) and the West End must surely beckon.

Until Saturday 13 March, Churchill Theatre, Bromley

A Brazilian that doesn’t hurt

When people ask for a Brazilian, they subconsciously wince at the thought of it. The one I had didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it tasted very nice. I bought it from Raphael, who owns the stall Gaucho: Son of the Pampas, which sells Brazilian cuisine in Greenwich Market. Aside from those really awesome chocolate and cinnamon Churos (They’re traditionally Caramel), they sell steak and chicken marinated in Chimichurri. Chimichurri is a South American sauce made of parsley, Olive oil, garlic and herbs. Of course, there are regional variations. You could easily imagine that a Guyanese version (or near the French Border), for instance, is made with herb instead of ordinary herbs for a more transcendental culinary experience.

They sell pretty well, but what proportion chicken and steak do they sell? Raphael said that “We sell fifty fifty.” Appropriately, although the beef is rib-eye stake from Argentina, the chicken comes from brazil, the sauce is made locally. The girl who served me said that “we make it (Chimichurri) here a little differently to what they do in South America.” So this is a London variation.

What did I think of the London version, you ask? It’s not hot, but it’s a more European flavour of Garlic and Olive oil, with a hint of lemon. It’s not what I expected, but then it’s more subtle and complex than just having heat like in Mexican or some Indian food. The herbs contribute to this by providing a contrast to both the meat and the garlic, with the lemon adding the right amount of acidity to the proceedings. I really enjoyed it, but it didn’t bring me to the point of culinary hallucination (wrong herb perhaps?). I didn’t see Jah, but I could imagine this as a marinade for anything that requires complex flavours like prawns, other seafood and even cornflakes after twenty pints and a hangover.

If this is a Brazilian without wax, then this is also one without tears of pain but plenty of culinary delight.

Try it yourself…

1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup minced fresh parsley
1 clove garlic
2 minced shallots
1 teaspoon minced basil, thyme or oregano, or mixture
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and let set for at least 2 hours before serving.

Should Maze Hill station be renamed?

The East Greenwich Cultural Corridor Committee are considering ideas for promoting East Greenwich. Here, Liz Wrigley puts forward the suggestion that Maze Hill station be renamed “East Greenwich station”

The station is very close to the East Greenwich area, and is the most convenient station for both the park and for the University, as well as servicing the shops on Trafalgar Road and other East Greenwich venues. As a mainline station is has a fast, regular service to London Bridge, where you can join the underground easily, get to Charing Cross (by changing platform) and to the south to connect to say Gatwick also by changing platform.

However at present visitors by rail get off, understandably, at Greenwich station (which is nearly half way to Deptford! It is a station that was the Greenwich stop on the original London to Greenwich route, way back in 1838 when this little Kent village first joined with the capital, before the tunnel under the museum and park was made and the route extended east, and has no other significance to its location or name).

No one would guess that Maze Hill is actually much closer to the Greenwich historical town centre attractions.  National Rail travel to here from central London is now on the oyster card system so you do not even need a separate ticket.

We are looking at a long term strategy to bring East Greenwich onto the mental map of the rest of London and the world, as at present it is overlooked, being just beyond the east edge of the World Heritage area, a place where at present maps may as well say ‘there be dragons here’.

In summary, the station is:

• close to the park, with a park entrance very near
• close to the Maritime Museum
• close to the river Thames,
• close to the town centre markets

Liz Wrigley
Planning  / Urban Design Consultant
East Greenwich Cultural Corridor Committee

What do you think? Would it be beneficial to East Greenwich if Maze Hill station was renamed? Have your say in the comments below.

East Greenwich: The home of communication

How an east Greenwich factory enabled world wide electronic interaction – and how it became the central part of a local network of communication based industries.

In 1999 the ‘Dome’ was nearing completion, with a strong emphasis on electronic technology while ignoring traditional industry. Greenwich was talked up as ‘The home of Time’, and Alcatel, with a factory near the Dome, published a booklet “Greenwich, Centre for Global telecommunications from 1850”. This was never picked up, not even by the local press, and the enormous contribution of local scientists, engineers and workers to the technology on show in the Dome, went unnoticed.

Alcatel were, and are (as Alcatel-Lucent), based on the west bank of the Greenwich Peninsula on a site often known as Enderby Wharf. In 1837 the Enderby Brothers were asked to help in the development of pioneering telegraph cable technology. By the 1850s underwater cables were making possible an increasing pace of international communication and the Greenwich works, by then in other hands, was becoming the main manufacturing base for them.

The heroic story of how a cable was laid across the Atlantic has been told many times. The eventual success was with cable made in Greenwich and laid by Brunel’s vast ship, Great Eastern. I always feel that the really great moment was when, having successfully laid the fourth cable, Great Eastern left Heart’s Content to sail off into the Atlantic and find the parted ends of the third, attempt. No one knew where she was, and there were stories she was lost. On 2nd September 1866 the needles on the instruments at Valentia flickered – the broken cable has been found and mended in mid-Atlantic and, not only did everyone know now where Great Eastern was, but that the world had changed too.

The Greenwich Peninsula factory was to change owners several times, but for most of its history was known as Telcon. However, other local cable making factories were started – Hoopers on the Isle of Dogs, Henley at North Woolwich and Northfleet, Johnson and Phillips in Charlton, Siemens in Woolwich, STC at North Woolwich, BICC at Erith, and so on. Up to the 1920s the Greenwich factory produced the vast majority of underwater cables world wide. – Older local people will still remember the cable ships at Enderby Wharf. The expense of advancing technology brought mergers, and in 1970 STC became the sole British firm in the business, taking over the Greenwich site. Alcatel (itself the result of similar mergers in France) took over in 1994.

These early cables relayed a very limited amount of information using Morse code. By 1924 Telcon, developed a cable system which could transmit 1,500 words per minute. Work continued, and continues, on improving cable. In the 1930s scientists at Telcon were developing polythene – with a trade name of Telcothene – for use in cables. At the same time ‘repeaters’ were developed for amplifying the signals as they travelled through the cable –repeaters are still made at Greenwich today. The last repeaters for use with coaxial cable were made in Greenwich for a system that was laid between the Canary Islands and Spain in 1977.

Recently we have heard about the Nobel Prize awarded to Kao for his work, mainly undertaken in Harlow, on optical fibre technology. Much of the work to build optical fibres into submarine cables took place in Greenwich and the first cables and repeaters using this system were developed in early 1980s; though cable manufacture at Greenwich then ceased – going to STC’s Southampton factory (and later Calais, under Alcatel). The first transatlantic optical system was laid in 1988 with 10,000 telephone channels. Since then development has escalated. Ten years ago Alacatel’s booklet of 1999 boasted that Greenwich based scientists were producing cable which could send 10 million copies of the Daily Telegraph every second, far superior to what could be sent via satellite. Goodness knows what it can do now! We all talk about how global telecommunications are used every day by all us – this is where it began!

Production and development of much telecommunications technology came from South East London – although obviously as companies expanded factories and research centres were built elsewhere. Of the other companies involved the biggest was Siemens based in Woolwich, their site being roughly between the Thames Barrier and the Woolwich Road. They became part of AEI, then GEC, eventually closing in 1968. Looking at photographs of their production lines it comes as a shock to realize that all those telephones we knew and used before the introduction of the mobile were developed and made in Woolwich. Siemens made telecommunications cables but they also made and developed a vast range of enabling devices – oh – and yes they also developed and made telephone exchanges.

When Siemens closed a group of their apprentices and technologists continued to meet. They are now all OAPs and as the Siemens Engineering Society have published an archive document – and an attempt leave some information about what was achieved in Woolwich, which is now lodged at the Greenwich Heritage Centre.

And where else can we find out about Greenwich’s great contributions to the electronics revolution. Well – not locally! The best place is the museum at Porthcurno on the very tip of Cornwall. I would recommend a visit to Valentia, in South West Ireland, for the romance of the transatlantic cable. I am told there is a museum at Heart’s Content, in Nova Scotia. Most of all I feel that local people should know about all this, be proud of it and tell the world. It is after all the skills of all those in the local workforce who developed and made these devices which made this revolution we talk about actually happen.

Mary Mills would like to thank Richard Buchanan for advice and additional information in researching this article.

The Cost of Love: Greenwich.co.uk meets Carl Medland

It’s not uncommon to see film crews in Greenwich but usually they are here mainly to capture the historic buildings of the Old Royal Naval College and create a perfect period setting. Seeing Greenwich on the big screen as it really is today is something rather less common, but soon to change thanks to a new movie by local film-maker, Carl Medland.

‘The Cost of Love‘ is Medland’s first feature length movie having previously worked on corporate films and a number of award winning shorts. It’s been a very personal project for the Greenwich-based filmmaker – he wrote, directed and part financed the project himself. He is now working on the final edit and looking forward to seeing his film at the Greenwich Picturehouse in the Spring.

Primarily, but by no means exclusively, aimed a gay audience, the film was shot in just sixteen days last August. Greenwich is at the very heart of the film, both with its scenery and its cast. Look carefully and you will see many recognisable places and faces, including Michael Joyce who frequently appeared in local pubs as the drag act, Estee Applauder, and who tragically died in a car crash just months after filming ended, and the ubiquitous Robert Gray.

I met Carl last week at the Picturehouse, naturally, to find out a bit more about him and his new film, and began by asking him about his background.

I moved from Devon to London for university and obtained a 2/1 degree, and after that I set up a theatre company. The thing I most liked doing was the writing of plays and the directing of them. My childhood passion was making films, I used to hire cameras and make short films with family and friends. I set up a film company , and half of my business is making corporate films. Last year was quite a quiet year so I had the time to commit to the project. I’ve done about twenty short films over the past five years, I really needed to make the leap and make my first feature. It’s good to learn your craft on the short films and I’ve won some awards like best music video last year, and best performance in a short film.  Everyone kept saying to me “have you done your first feature film?”, so I thought why not get all of Greenwich behind me and make a Greenwich film.

Greenwich.co.uk: What’s the film actually about?

The film speaks quite loudly to a gay audience, although there’s as many straight characters as there are gay. Dale [the central character], played so brilliantly by Christopher Kelham, is like a whirlwind with everyone he comes into contact with, and everyone in the film is affected by love, either good or bad, and they have this real cost to giving themselves to love. It all takes place in Greenwich over four days, and you flashback into the characters’ past as the story unfolds. There’s shades of light and dark, high drama and high comedy.

I wanted to capture the truth of what’s happening today, especially in the gay community. In the last year we’ve had gay beatings, a gay killing, there’s been a lot of homophobic attacks and I didn’t want the film to shy away from those themes. A lot of gay films in the UK come from America, there’s not many British films. I wanted to make a British film, directed at a British audience with British people in real locations.

Greenwich.co.uk: You part financed the film yourself , which is a brave thing to do. Do you think it can be successful?

I think it will. It’s such a professional look to the film. We’ve got really good cameras, really good lighting. Everyone was at the top of their game. The actors were amazing. It’s the best script I’ve written, and I think it all came together.

Greenwich.co.uk: There’s been some quite well known gay British films – I’m thinking ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, ‘Beautiful Thing’ and ‘Get Real’ – and they have quite a cult following. Do you have the same expectation for this, that it might attract that kind of following?

Yeah, completely, yeah. I really think this would be good for the UK. I think we need another film like ‘Beautiful Thing’ or ‘Get Real’. And actually, ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’, funny you should say that because the whole premise of this film is a white attractive, young guy in love with an Asian guy [played by Valmike Rampersad], so it has that ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ feel, and there’s a bit of a reference to that and ‘Beautiful Thing’ in the film.

Greenwich.co.uk: A lot of filmmakers choose Greenwich for its period settings. Do you think it works well as a contemporary backdrop for filmmaking?

Yeah, I do. We used the gay bars in Greenwich – we shot scenes in the George and Dragon, and the Rose and Crown, and we used the Metro [sexual health] centre in Norman Road. We also had the Greenwich Drag Race, which we filmed as an actual live event. As we were filming it, there was a scene just before the drag race where Michael [Joyce]’s character gave the character Dale, a handheld camera and says “can you film me?”. So it gives the scene a documentary feel, a bit like ‘Cloverfield‘.

What we’re trying to do with this film is capture the truth. A lot of it based people on people I know; qualities they have. I think some of my friends will know exactly who they are when they watch the film.

The Cost of Love will be shown here at the Greenwich Picturehouse in March with dates and times to be confirmed. Carl believes that the film will then get onto the festival circuit, and he is currently in talks with distributors in the hope of securing a wider release.

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