Simon Fanshawe Blog

He’s a Home Counties boy who flays the middle-classes from his base in Yorkshire, a shy man whose inner turmoil comes out in his plays, a comic writer of world renown - yet the critics are divided about his reputation. Simon Fanshawe on a very modern Molière

Alan Ayckbourn was explaining how his plays become hits to a man who runs amusement arcade slot machines in Scarborough . First, they’re tried out in the resort’s theatre, next they transfer to the West End, “then, if I’m lucky, they go to America or Holland or wherever. And each place they go, I get paid.”

Acclaimed for transforming the face of the American musical, he has also been condemned for pessimistic lyrics and unhummable tunes. Simon Fanshawe on a champion of commercial theatre, back in London to revive one of his shows that was panned 20 years ago

There is something intimidating about Stephen Sondheim. It’s not him. It’s his reputation. “Possibly the greatest lyricist ever,” says Cameron Mackintosh, who made his first real money in the theatre from the 1976 revue, Side By Side By Sondheim, and who produced the London revival of Follies in 1987. “For me there is no other,” enthuses the actress Julia McKenzie, his most brilliant interpreter in Britain. “But when I meet him, often my syntax breaks down.” Frank Rich, known as “The Butcher of Broadway” during his 14-year tenure as the New York Times theatre critic, and by no means a consistent admirer of Sondheim, wrote “he has changed the texture of the musical as radically as Oscar Hammerstein, and may yet leave our theatre profoundly altered”. What goes before Sondheim is an extraordinary string of shows, in particular those from the 70s - Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd.

Claims for the effects of the arts in school have reached dolphin-like proportions in recent years. In the same way that the fashion for swimming with dolphins led to cures for everything from dyslexia to depression, the so-called Mozart effect of the arts - in which children listen to classical music and their reading ability almost instantly improves - has led to an assumption that teaching the arts in schools improves academic results. There is no research to suggest this is the case.

The TV adaptation of Angels in America shows how far gay men have come in the 20 years since Aids emerged, says Simon Fansh

The terror comes rushing back. Watching a preview of the television film of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America this week, the fear swept over me. I had forgotten that when Aids first appeared, I felt we were cursed. I have always remembered the iceberg ads, the Dies Irae, the story that Norman Fowler had to ask his civil servants what a blow job was. But I had put from my mind the cold sweat of dread that broke when Aids first became our gay reality.

For Austen, meals were a framework for society. For Dickens, they were a sign of love. Simon Fanshawe chews over food in a few classic books - and offers some literary recipes

For Austen, meals were a framework for society. For Dickens, they were a sign of love. Simon Fanshawe chews over food in a few classic books - and offers some literary recipes

Dawn French has confidence to spare - but a solo West End show still scares her, she tells Simon Fanshawe

“Hey, pretty boy, you want fuckee-fuckee?” The window has just rolled down on a passing Jag and a cherub with a long bob cut and a huge smile is leaning out. “Or do you want a lift to Basingstoke?” I’m walking to the tube after the interview and Dawn French is off to deliver a birthday present to her best friend, the actress Geraldine McNulty. It’s a mystery how she can drive a grown-up car. Her legs are just too short. She is small in height and large in girth, yet manages something that is supposed to be culturally impossible: being funny and fat and sexy all at once. And she is almost unfeasibly upbeat.
“Well, I’m not always, obviously, but mostly. I’d rather have a happy life with lots of laughter in it. We’ve all been dealt some terrible cards, but generally I’ve had a very happy life. You don’t get to 45 without some self-doubts and some demons. But they’re just demons.”

Abigail’s Party was more than a celebration of naffness, says Simon Fanshawe. It was a warning about Thatcherism

Three years ago I interviewed the original cast of Abigail’s Party on the stage of the National Theatre for one of their Platform performances. It was like a revivalist meeting. It had the expectant hysteria of a pop concert.

No one would have accused Rob Lowe of being a fine dramatic actor in his Brat Pack days, but he did have an aura. Then came the hotel room, the girls, the scandal. Now, playing a White House aide in The West Wing, he’s revealed a flair for smart dialogue and sophisticated comedy, and a whole new career opens up. Simon Fanshawe asks him where he’s found the willpower to hang in there regardless.

He sticks his head around the door of his trailer and says, “Hi guy, come on in.” He’s tremendously chipper, trim, tanned. Right down to the perfect stubble and the piercing blue eyes, he looks exactly like a poster of himself, all nicely airbrushed. Then I notice that his hair has got highlights. He laughs. “They’re not mine. They’re my character’s. If I didn’t have them, on screen it would look like I was wearing a black woolly hat.” Although this emphasis on looks may seem terribly superficial, with Rob Lowe you have to start with the face. He’s always been pretty, and that has had a lot to do with the way his career has gone, until now.

When you’ve come second to ‘Freddie Mercury’ in TV’s Stars In Their Eyes final, your showbiz days should be over. But for Stephen ‘Frank Sinatra’ Triffitt, they were just beginning. Simon Fanshawe tells his story

This is a real showbiz story, full of coincidences and lucky breaks. It weaves its narrative around Bob Geldof, OK! magazine, a producer who was once accused of bribing a judge, and even some sex. One day it will make you believe in stars. It’s about a photocopier salesman who became Sinatra. It all started one night when he staggered in, late and tipsy, from a karaoke bar in Tenerife and said to his wife that he sounded exactly like Ol’ Blue Eyes. Sensibly, she told him to “fuck off” and went back to sleep. Three weeks later, she heard him herself. And then, since she is the ambitious one, she decided to make it happen. You may have seen him. He came second last year to “Freddie Mercury” in ITV1’s Stars In Their Eyes. His name is Stephen Triffitt. “But tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be the Chairman of the Board, the Leader of the Pack. The Voice.”

His plays may be full of sparring vitriol and dysfunctional lives, but Edward Albee is rather sweet, thinks Simon Fanshawe

Edward Albee reminds me of an airline experiment that happened some years ago. The hostesses served passengers with raspberry-flavoured ice-cream. But it was coloured banana yellow. And no one could make out exactly what it tasted of. Albee’s most famous work is still Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Premiered in New York in 1962, it won the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes and in 1966 was filmed by Mike Nichols. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton played George and Martha, a pair of veteran marrieds armed to the teeth with intellectual savagery, emotionally stripping each other in front of a younger couple. The razor slashes of wit and extended alcoholic bouts of recrimination painted a husband and wife seemingly bent on mutual destruction. A-ha, the dull people thought, life imitating art. Albee the bitter chronicler of arid marriage.