Last night I went to see Hal Willner’s Forest Of No Return, a performance of Disney music staged at the Royal Festival Hall as part of Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown festival. It was based on Willner’s 1988 compilation album Stay Awake and promised a similar experience to his 2006 Leonard Cohen tribute shows, or 1999′s Harry Smith Project concert.
The venue is very recently re-opened and it was good to see it looking a little more stripped down and minimal, less of a shopping-and-coffee experience. However, the performance started 50 minutes late and it was never clear whether this was due to RFH teething troubles or just something more specific to this ambitious show.
When we took to our seats, we were thanked by an excitable guy – American? Kiwi? His mic was so distorted it was almost impossible to tell – who enthused that our patience had fed into the creative process. It’s a lovely thought, though undermined as he proceeded to tell us all about the difficulties of staging Meltdown.
My uncharitable thought was that I really didn’t care. Meltdown’s not exactly new and previous years have been similarly ambitious, but it was a characteristic beginning to an evening that proceeded in fits and starts, demonstrating many flashes of inspired genius amongst an overall level of frustrating inconsistency.
Much has been said about how the pre-refit RFH’s sound quality was terrible and how the new acoustic remodelling has improved it. Maybe, but up on the balcony I have to say that the sound varied for most of the night between barely acceptable and atrocious. The instruments all merged into one big soupy mess and vocals were frequently indecipherable.
David Thomas provided some of the stronger performances. His solo renditions of I’m Late, When I See An Elephant Fly and Pink Elephants On Parade were compellingly excellent. His duet with Nick Cave on Heigh Ho was my show highlight, taking the downtrodden grimness of the Tom Waits Stay Awake version and pushing it down through the seven circles of hell.
Beth Orton’s Baby Mine, Stay Awake and Second Star To The Right were dependably robust and tender. She seems to operate outside the semi-mainstream limelight these days and I’m considering proposing her for whatever application process is necessary to get someone acknowledged as a genuine National Treasure.
Gavin Friday’s sinuous Siamese Cat Song managed to be both comic and menacing, with helium-hoarse vocals and prowling of the stage. His Castle In Spain was played slightly straighter, though with a hint of the cheeky Daddy Cool persona he used in his 2006 Dublin show Tomorrow Belongs To Me. Sadly his Cruella De Ville was cut from the show at the last minute.
Grace Jones gave a superb performance of Trust In Me, wearing a dress that looked like a cross between an haute-couture parody and an exceptionally poisonous snake. In a similar vein, Roisin Murphy performed a rather mannered, Broadway-friendly He’s A Tramp in a similarly flouncy, be-hatted number. Both were pure spectacle.
Of the faces (and voices) that I already knew, the surprise of the night for me was Pete Doherty singing Chim Chim Cheree. His mournful, understated version of the song was flawlessly delivered. It was a shame that he then failed to perform his second number with The Smoke Fairies, though their solo rendition of Blue Shadows On The Trail was lovely as it was.
Amongst the names that were new to me, Richard Strange delivered a high-octane Headless Horseman (complete with a Hamlet/Hirst-like jewelled skull in his hand). Much more to my taste was Leafcutter John‘s riveting, folktronica delivery (accompanied by David Coulter) of A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes. I’m already checking out his own material.
That was the stuff that I enjoyed. Amongst the other stuff was much jazzy instrumental noodling by respected musicians whose work I’m just going to have to admit to being too musically lowbrow to appreciate. I’m afraid I yawned a lot during those pieces. Call it a personal failing, but I’m always more captivated when there’s a voice.
Skye Edwards, Ed Harcourt, Baaba Maal and Fenella Fielding all delivered perfectly pleasant numbers, but I didn’t find them particularly involving. I did, however, find my respect for Ed Harcourt increasing considerably when someone plonked a whole-head rabbit mask over his eyes just before he churned out an amazing piano solo for the next minute or two.
Then there were the celebrity karaoke performances. I don’t want to sound like an old misery-guts – it was Disney, after all – but Jarvis Cocker doing I Wanna Be Like You was probably the best of the (banana) bunch, though with none of the wit or nonchalance of his performance of the Leonard Cohen songs last autumn.
Nick Cave doing Hi Diddle Dee Dee was a bit like your pissed uncle embarrassing you at a wedding. Don’t try to persuade me it was self-parody; it was just crap. Equally, Shane McGowan slurring his way through Zip-a-dee Doo Dah was a wasted opportunity; I wish he’d had something with a bit of pathos to get his infamous set of molars into.
The ultimate nadir for me was the foursome of Jarvis Cocker, Pete Doherty, Nick Cave and Shane McGowan performing Home Sweet Home via the medium of bark. It was funny for about ten seconds, after which the joke wore very thin. I’m all for fun and subversion and playfulness, but this just reeked of sloppy self-indulgence and I hated it.
So, overall I had very mixed feelings about the whole night. My impression from listening to the audience members around me and reading people’s blog posts earlier today is that I’m probably in the minority and that generally people thought it was fantastic. I have wondered whether it’s fair of me to compare it to other Willner productions.
I always try to be positive but in this instance I’m confident in my opinion that many of those involved can do better. It’s clear from a couple of websites that at least two of the performers were only invited to join the show three days beforehand, suggesting that at least some of my concerns might boil down to a lack of preparation.
Nevertheless, I hope I don’t sound too churlish. It’s great that venues like the RFH can support artists like Jarvis by allowing them to commission sell-out work that keeps people like Hal Willner in business. Also, I’m always happy to be in the audience of any event that flexes Mr Willner’s enviable address book, even if the end result contains the occasional howler…
Update (20 Jun): scans of the set list handout, plus a few reviews, pictures and videos that have caught my eye over the past couple of days since I wrote this post:
- Set list handout – front
- Set list handout – rear
- What’s In A Name? – similar views to mine
- Intermezzo – includes excellent selection of pictures
- Struggling Author – wonderful after-show party anecdote
- YouTube – Pete Doherty singing Chim Chim Cheree (partial)
- YouTube – Cocker/McGowan/Doherty/Cave howling
- Guardian – Forest Of No Return
Update 2 (21 Jun): more stuff coming in…