Hooray for Hollywood

One of the key factors in lifting some of the gloom from the last 20 months or so has been the ability to re-visit old films, musical or otherwise. As we begin our annual few days of remembrance, we can perhaps appreciate how much the same was true in the war years.  As well as providing us with the opportunity to enjoy a theatre performance again, it was an appropriate time for this company to remind us of songs from what we might call Hollywood’s golden years, some of which provided welcome relief in similarly dark times.

Before the curtain rose, we heard the sound of MGM’s lion and saw Fox’s searchlights and what followed was a very professional tribute to the work of these and other studios.  A cast of six guided us through the evening, never leaving the stage and taking turns to introduce and perform the songs.  This was a slick, fast-moving collection of mainly well-known favourites, although I have to confess that one of them was new to me.  Judy Garland’s song “In between” from “Love finds Andy Hardy” dating from her pre-Oz days of 1938 (and so before my time!) was well performed by Rachel Higgs, a secondary school teacher by day. Her familiarity with expressions of teenage angst such as “too old for toys and too young for boys” was clear.   A medley of Judy Garland songs was also included in the first half of the evening, in which Henrietta Linnemann gave a fine rendition of “The man that got away”. There was a collection of songs from the Astaire/Rogers films and another medley of those with which their original performers will always be associated. 

Helen Spencer had started the show with a sound performance of “With a song in my heart”, a Rodgers and Hart song which must hold something of a record for its number of appearances in a film. Cat Foster reminded us of Doris Day’s “Secret Love”, whilst John Haigh recalled one of the highlights of “High Society” with “You’re sensational”.  Richard Bayton brought us “Hey there” from “The Pajama Game” and all six of them made several other fine contributions. They were superbly accompanied at the piano by the man who had put the whole thing together, Paul Laidlaw, who even had his own spot with familiar themes from non-musical films such as “Gone with the wind”.

Some of the most memorable moments, however, came in the group items, including an amusing version of “Triplets” from “The Band Wagon”.  I enjoyed the further collection of songs from non-musical films, this time sung with excellent harmonies in a relaxed style by the group. “Moon River” and “As time goes by” were but two.  Best of all was the finale, a wonderful and skilfully arranged collection of a large number of songs in a short time, sometimes with only a few bars of each. Personally I would have struggled to remember the order in which the songs came let alone their words.     

The cast showed some good moves and subtle changes in their groupings which sometimes included a sort of musical chairs, for example to represent the eponymous vehicle in “The trolley song”. Some excellent lighting changes designed by Simon Spencer greatly enhanced the enjoyment of the whole performance. The show started and ended with the song from which it takes its title, also interpolating the song which gave MGM a title for its own series of nostalgia, “That’s entertainment”.  This show certainly was.     

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