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Cy Coleman: City of Angels: Students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama/John Beswick. Guildhall School Theatre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, 8.7.2008 (BBr)

Cy Coleman: City of Angels (1989)


Cy Coleman enjoyed an enviable Broadway career of over 40 years, and his successes include Sweet Charity, Barnum and I Love my Wife, to name but a few. City of Angels played on Broadway for a respectable 878 performances in 1989, winning six Tony Awards, for Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical, Best Actor in a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Musical and Best Scenic Design as well as being nominated for another five. It subsequently ran for nine months in London in 1993.

The plot is not of the simplest, but it’s smart, sassy and funny, and it was written by Larry Gelbart, who created the television series M*A*S*H. It’s the late 1940s, Stine, a writer, is in Hollywood to create a screenplay from his novel, City of Angels. As we watch his problems with director/producer/megalomaniac Buddy Fidler, his novel is acted out as he writes his screenplay and the same actors take the parts of the characters in the real life scenes. The film follows a Shamus named Stone, in a Raymond Chandler style story, as he seeks the daughter of a millionaire who is a supposed runaway. All the usual suspects are present - there’s the femme fatale, the heavies who, naturally, beat up our hero, the framing of the detective, and his relationship with various women from his secretary to his wife, Bobbi, a nightclub singer who ends up as a prostitute. This is a sort of Musical Noir.

The music is in a 1940s style, the band, which really cooked, was basically a 40s dance band - complete with close harmony vocal quartet, based on such groups as The Modernaires, who appeared with Glenn Miller and his Orchestra – and the songs were not quite as 40s as the accompaniments, having strange turns of line, going in odd ways and seldom doing what one would expect of them. Perhaps these songs don’t have the memorability of Hey Look Me Over (from Wildact (1960)) or If They Could See Me Now, I'm a Brass Band and Hey, Big Spender (all from Sweet Charity (1965)) but this is because they are so integrated into the fabric of the show that it would be difficult to extract them.

Rhys Rusbatch, as the detective Stone, looking like Lemmy Caution but sounding like Philip Marlowe, was the driving force behind the show. He was, by turns, suitably cynical and naïve, taking his beatings like a man, indulging in some backchat with the cops and finally solving the case. Robin Steegman (in the double role as both Fidler’s and Stone’s secretaries) put her not inconsiderable mezzo to very good use and played both comedy and tragedy very well. Aled Pedrick, as the writer Stine, seemd to underplay his part but really came into his own in the duet with his fictional alter ego, Stone, You’re nothing without me. Natalie Irene (in the duel role of Bobbi (Stone’s ex wife) and Stine’s wife) has a small, but beautiful voice and her stage presence – especially as Bobbi – was striking. Finally, I must mention Alice Boynes, Neo Joshua, Billy Boothroyd and Matthew Featherstone, who, as the close harmony group, The Angel City 4 made a valuable contribution.

The production was especially clever, using each side of the stage as different venues, such as the writer’s office, the directors’office and various bedrooms, while the middle of the stage was reserved almost exclusively for the action of the film.

It was suggested to me that the music was mere pastiche and the characters unbelieveable for whom one felt no sympathy. I cannot agree with this. The music was far too sympathetic to the style of the period to be anything but hommage and, if, like me, you’re a sucker for Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and the myriad writers of dectective fiction of the hard boiled variety, then you were with Stone all the way as he fought his way out of the many situations he found himself in. There was more than sufficient comedy and drama and if there was one fault with the production it was that everyone looked so young!

It’s a fine show, perhaps not as memorable as Coleman’s Sweet Charity and Little Me, but it deserves to be seen and this production, though not paced quite fast enough, was most enjoyable.

Bob Briggs


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