The fine line between Previews and Reviews: Baz “Previews” Betty Blue Eyes

Baz Bamigboye’s preview of Betty Blue Eyes raises questions over when is a preview actually an early review?

As you may know from previous columns, we are in awe of Baz Bamigboye, the Daily Mail’s veteran showbiz reporter.

The Stage may have popped husband and wife double-act Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire of Ambassador Theatre Group at the top of their power 100 list for 2011, but really the honour should go to Baz, whose Friday column sets the agenda for theatre and film news for the week.

But it’s interesting that his piece this week about Betty Blue Eyes, Cameron Mackintosh’s big new musical project which is in previews at the Novello Theatre, is dangerously close to a review:

• “Sarah Lancashire was a revelation to me as the snooty wife of Reece Shearsmith’s chiropodist. And Ann Emery, as ‘Mother Dear’, almost steals the production from everyone, including the pig.”
• “Adrian Scarborough is terrific as Wormwold, the Nazi-esque food inspector.”
• “Betty Blue Eyes could be the King’s Speech of London theatre. Because, frankly, it’s adorable.”

Baz sidesteps the strict protocol that exists between producers and critics that reviews should not be published until the official opening night of the production because he’s at the sparkly showbiz end of arts journalism rather than the hardened, haven’t-seen-daylight-since-1973 career critic. But should this be so?

The hoo-hah over New York critics breaking ranks with producers to review Spider-Man on Broadway in previews, and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s fury with bloggers for previewing Love Never Dies before it’s First Night, has brought the subject into focus more than ever.

We love you Baz, and we love your scoops (which feed most theatre website’s gossip pages, including this one) but is a scoop sometimes a puff piece masquerading as a review?

 

Paul Raven

Baz and Love: The saga continues

I feel bad for Baz Bamigboye, the Daily Mail’s showbiz guru.

He loved Loved Never Dies and feels as disappointed and betrayed as a scorned lover (see 30 July: Baz falls out of love with Love).

We’ve been following the highs and lows (mostly lows) and this week’s Daily Mail is yet further tales of LND woe.

It somewhat reminds us of Private Eye’s Glenda Slag column: Love Never Dies, it’s the greatest musical we have ever heard, it deserves to win every award known to showbiz, its love will never die (geddit?!). Love Never Dies, what a pile of poo, the love is dead as a door-nail (geddit?!!).

He wants to love it, and wants to love Andrew Lloyd Webber, but would ruin his significant street cred if he loved the show. A rock and a hard place for poor Baz.

Our favourite line in his gut-wrenching piece relates to the forthcoming changes to the show (see 22 October: Love Never Dies but it does take rests) by theatre impresario Bill Kenwright; “No disrespect to Bill Kenwright, but no A-list director of international repute would touch Love Never Dies after O’Brien’s departure.”

So there!

Baz says that his real beef is with the fact that no good can come out of an artist (Andrew Lloyd Webber) turning themselves into a corporation (Really Useful Group) and that’s what’s done it in for the show. However, said corporation has done pretty well so far, as has that other big beast Cameron Mackintosh Limited, which is as slick a money-making company as you could find. The problems lie deeper but are not beyond rescue. We await the changes to the production with some interest.

Baz falls out of love with Love

The UK’s leading entertainment correspondent, Baz Bamigboye from the Daily Mail newspaper, has finally broken ranks and ranted his frustration at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies.

After years of enthusiasm for the project in his weekly Daily Mail column, Baz has had enough, writing that, “it’s as if the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which boasts his most beautiful score, has become an abandoned child”.

In a rare ALW bashing, he also berates the composer for not sorting out the show before the opening, “[he] should have sat down with his team and changed the show, including trimming his score”.

Even the marketing people get a good going over, with Dewynters’ advertising campaign for the show cited as “a shambles”.

This seems a bit unfair: if it was a hit show then the advertising campaign would be neither here nor there. But marketing and PR have become a theme of this show’s progress in the West End.

If a big show is not entirely working after opening night, the dream of any producer is to be able to “fix it”. But that’s not usually an option for producers spending bags of money a night on an expensive show, especially given that the creative team will have all disbanded and moved on to other projects. And so the show keeps on going as long as there’s an audience, and then it’s done.

For Andrew Lloyd Webber – and Cameron Mackintosh when he produced Martin Guerre back in 1996 – money is no object and so the fixing begins. Martin Guerre was completely reworked after it opened, even going dark and reopening – which is what Andrew Lloyd Webber has muted as an option for his show.

The mistake here has been to make any public reference to problems with Love Never Dies. Sure continue to tinker a bit behind-the-scenes, but the show is what it is. As soon as that opening night is done, we only want to hear positive things from the producers and the creative team. No bitching, no moaning, no angst from Andrew Lloyd Webber about how he’s not happy.

The lessons here are all going to be about how to manage theatre PR in a brave new world, from bloggers blogging before the show even opens to a composer/producer who’s bigger than the show itself.

Gemma Arterton gets the full Baz treatment

Goodness knows what happens when veteran showbiz reporter Baz Bamigboye hates you, because when he loves you there’s no holding him back.

This was most recently demonstrated by the full Baz Blast given to Love Never Dies, with a seemingly endless parade of upbeat stories in Friday’s Daily Mail about the show and Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

Some of our favourites include: “BAZ BAMIGBOYE on how the new Phantom Of The Opera still has the old magic” (26 March 2009); “It’s the best score Lloyd Webber has produced, and that once he hands it over to director Jack O’Brien it can be moulded into the best musical London has seen in years” (3 July 2009); “Phantom Of The Opera sequel Love Never Dies is like a theatrical version of Avatar, in that it’s a long-awaited work from a giant of the genre” (8 January 2010); “The score is brilliant. Sad fool that I am, I’m humming it as I write this blog just outside the Adelphi” (22 February 2010); and “there’s a line in Love Never Dies about the music entering your soul. I think that happened to me tonight” (16 May 2010). And there was much more where this came from, although Baz has been strangely silent since the show’s critical mauling.

This week’s turn was Gemma Arterton, who gets a glowing write up from Baz over news that she will star in Ibsen’s The Master Builder at the Almeida Theatre this winter. On the same page she also enjoys some cast lobbying from Baz on how Gemma should really get the lead role in a new Broadway production of Funny Girl over musical missy of the moment Lea Michele (Glee).

It will be interesting to see if the Power of Baz carries as much weight on Broadway as it does in London, where he remains one of the most influential showbiz newshounds in the country. As theatre PRs clamber over themselves to break news on his Friday page, we hope that he continues to wield his power wisely and for the forces of good.