![]() Adam Lenson’s production - featuring an effortless performance by Cynthia Erivo, due on Broadway later this year as the star of “The Color Purple” - isn’t the musical’s UK premiere (which happened at a tiny fringe venue in 2001), but it is easily the highest profile outing here in London, and it’s good enough to make you realize that the Brits have missed a trick. Twenty years after Jason Robert Brown burst onto the American musical theater landscape at age 25, London gets a first-class revival of his breakout show, “Songs for a New World,” with a dream cast. And Dean-John Wilson, the least well-known of the quartet, marks his own territory and holds his own in their company with an athletic and authentic presence, with a stand-out performance of King of the World. Damian Humbley, possessed of one of the very best male voices in British musical theatre, lends I’d Give It All for You a ringing clarity and clout. Erivo brings an effortless naturalism and lyricism to I’m Not Afraid of Anything and it’s true: she’s both utterly fearless and peerless. In Stars and the Moon, which has become a cabaret standard, Russell charts a woman’s heartbreaking realisation that achieving what she thought she wanted wasn’t what she needed. Jenna Russell and Cynthia Erivo are two of our very finest exponents of acting through song, illuminating the material from within. But each is trapped in his or her own memory. Set in what looks like a downtown Manhattan loft apartment, with high wide windows opening out on a view of the Statue of Liberty and what could be shards of the fallen towers of the World Trade Centre, the cast of four cut isolated figures who occasionally come together in wonderful harmonies. Adam Lenson’s riveting new production is both sensationally sung and thrillingly acted. Each number is its own nuanced, richly dramatised mini-musical, telling its own complete story. In some ways, though, his work has never been better than here, which is really like 16 shows for the price of one. He has since had four original book musicals reach Broadway. Songs for a New World is the gorgeously melodic and poignantly told 1995 Off-Broadway song cycle revue that first introduced Jason Robert Brown, then just 25, to the world. The quartet are all mesmerising, but Russell is particularly riveting in Stars and Moon as a woman who realises that she has squandered the ultimate prize, and Cynthia Erivo is guaranteed to send shivers down your spine every time she opens her mouth. But the simplicity of the staging combined with standout performances ensure this grabs the attention and touches the heart. In the wrong hands it could be mawkish, maybe even self-absorbed. The show is like a series of accumulated bruises. This is a show that knows that every new beginning also marks an ending, that the person we will be tomorrow is not the person we are today. Brown, who went on to write the brilliant Parade, was just 25 when he wrote it, yet it has a delicate, mature Chekhovian regret in both its scoring and subtle emotional layering. There are lost jobs and broken marriages, new life starting, old lives left behind. Through a series of seemingly unconnected songs, Brown introduces us to individuals at moments in their lives when “the sky starts to change and the wind starts to blow”. ![]() Each number gives us a new character, and yet there are so many echoes and reverberations that it sometimes seems as if this bare, New York loft apartment overlooking the Statue of Liberty, a place both of arrivals and departures – is full of jostling ghosts. There is no book, and yet in Adam Lenson’s staging, it hangs together beautifully musically and thematically, and while there’s no progressing narrative, there is a complete micro-story in every single dramatic song. It’s more of a song cycle than a traditional musical. Jason Robert Brown’s melodic 1995 show is an oddity, but a consistently interesting and thrilling one in this exquisitely cast revival featuring the impressive talents of Cynthia Erivo, Damian Humbley, Dean John-Wilson and Jenna Russell. Bringing Brown’s sensational score to life. This very special 20th Anniversary production features electrifying vocals from a multi-award-winning cast and a stunning five piece band. ![]() It’s about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.” Jason Robert Brown Jason Robert Brown’s unforgettable songs weave characters, locations and time periods together in one extraordinary evening… ![]() Songs for a New World takes us on a vibrant, thrilling and moving journey through the life-changing moments that define us. ![]() James’ Theatre for 3 weeks only! Celebrating 20 years since its first performance Off-Broadway with an all-new London production. Triple-Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World comes to the St. ![]()
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