The Long Suffering Husband works for Ford and the company had several free preview tickets, which they asked their employees to enter a ballot to win. He won. We sat with other Ford Employees in the dress circle in the Adelphi theatre marvelling at our luck. Several people had checked the real price of their tickets and been amazed that they were mid-price tickets, rather than the cheapest. I'm not a huge fan of the Adelphi theatre. I think that unless you are in the front of the stalls the angle is odd and I think some of the sound gets lost. I saw Chicago there and hated it. I didn't hate Made in Dagenham, so it must have lots going for it.
This musical played with my emotions.
The first thing it did was make me laugh. It is intentionally funny. They have made caricatures of the characters. Harold Wilson is turned into a bumbling fool, who can't take his coat off or find his way out of a room and every single one of his dances had me crossing my legs with laughter. The American boss of Ford is turned into a gun-toting bully, who sings like Springsteen and arrives on an army helicopter/truck and Germans were seen doing Nazi salutes. It was all quite Panto.
By the interval, though I was feeling quite upset. I wasn't the only one. I overheard a woman at the bar in the interval saying to her husband, "I'm just so emotional at the moment.....I don't know......it's difficult....I just feel like crying." She wasn't being over-emotional. This is difficult subject content for women. To know that the Equal Pay act was only put into place in 1975 and that some of the issues raised are still issues today (such as work that women do being undervalued) is hard to deal with. The misogynistic jokes that were allowed because they showed how women were seen at the time were still uncomfortable. I found hearing Harold Wilson say, "Women? Why are women working? The war is over!" distressing and just a little bit unfair. The Wilson government spent more on Education than on defence, which had the effect of allowing more women to go to University, they brought in maternity pay and had more women in the cabinet than the current government's last cabinet. One of the characters made the whole female audience gasp when she said, "the reason that women don't have equality is that they put their children first."
This musical also caused me some confusion for me. There are huge letters that appear on the stage from time to time. I was hoping that all would become clear at the end and the letters would spell out something profound but that never happened. They also missed a huge trick. The LSH pointed out that when the tea lady wheeled a giant C across the stage it would have been so much funnier if it had been a T. We liked the tea lady character a lot and think that Kath Duggan may be someone to watch.
The music in this show is really good. The band are just amazing. The LSH said that the flute had been really good when we were travelling home and although I'd misheard him and he was talking about our lunch I completely agreed with him. Gemma Arterton can sing. She's no Idina Menzel or Ruthie Henshaw but her voice was really appropriate to the character and there were some stunning vocal performances. Adrian Der Gregorian (Eddy) had a lovely sweet tone in his middle register and Sophie Louise Dann (Barbara Castle) was just amazing. I was particularly impressed with Emma Lindars (Pauline) and in such a huge cast to notice just one supporting actress for her singing must mean that she is really something special. I have one small criticism that some of the female cast sang slightly sharp and some of the male cast were a little weak, leaving some of the chords sounding like slightly scrunchy open fifths. I say that it's a small criticism because in some ways it enhanced the performance. At moments when the plot line was uncomfortable an uncomfortable chord just added atmosphere.
It was an interesting experience to watch this musical surrounded by Ford employees. In general I would say that they were not too impressed with the characterisation of the company they work for. Ford America as a gun-toting bully didn't fit with their experience of working for this company. I was sat next to a female engineer who thought that far from being discriminated against was given many more opportunities than friends she graduated with who worked for other companies. There was also a palpable bristle when the storyline suggested that Ford bullied the government by saying they would move operations to Belgium. At the end the LSH explained that this was because Ford has recently decided to close it's Belgium plant and they all knew loads of people who were losing their jobs there. They were all very amused with the set design, which seemed to imply that making a car was rather like putting together an airfix model.
I ended up feeling guilty. Guilty that I wasn't standing up for equality more, guilty that I didn't stand up during the Stand Up song and guilty that I had some criticisms of it, when I want it to do really well and I want everyone to think about the subject matter.
What you should do, though, is go and see it yourself and make up your own mind.
The music in this show is really good. The band are just amazing. The LSH said that the flute had been really good when we were travelling home and although I'd misheard him and he was talking about our lunch I completely agreed with him. Gemma Arterton can sing. She's no Idina Menzel or Ruthie Henshaw but her voice was really appropriate to the character and there were some stunning vocal performances. Adrian Der Gregorian (Eddy) had a lovely sweet tone in his middle register and Sophie Louise Dann (Barbara Castle) was just amazing. I was particularly impressed with Emma Lindars (Pauline) and in such a huge cast to notice just one supporting actress for her singing must mean that she is really something special. I have one small criticism that some of the female cast sang slightly sharp and some of the male cast were a little weak, leaving some of the chords sounding like slightly scrunchy open fifths. I say that it's a small criticism because in some ways it enhanced the performance. At moments when the plot line was uncomfortable an uncomfortable chord just added atmosphere.
It was an interesting experience to watch this musical surrounded by Ford employees. In general I would say that they were not too impressed with the characterisation of the company they work for. Ford America as a gun-toting bully didn't fit with their experience of working for this company. I was sat next to a female engineer who thought that far from being discriminated against was given many more opportunities than friends she graduated with who worked for other companies. There was also a palpable bristle when the storyline suggested that Ford bullied the government by saying they would move operations to Belgium. At the end the LSH explained that this was because Ford has recently decided to close it's Belgium plant and they all knew loads of people who were losing their jobs there. They were all very amused with the set design, which seemed to imply that making a car was rather like putting together an airfix model.
I ended up feeling guilty. Guilty that I wasn't standing up for equality more, guilty that I didn't stand up during the Stand Up song and guilty that I had some criticisms of it, when I want it to do really well and I want everyone to think about the subject matter.
What you should do, though, is go and see it yourself and make up your own mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment