The Stage

An Evening with Jason Robert Brown

Published Thursday 30 September 2004 at 17:05 by Mark Shenton

For an American composer who has only had one musical produced professionally in London so far - his Songs for a New World cycle that was seen at the Bridewell three years ago - Jason Robert Brown already has a formidable following over here from people in the know, who packed out the opening night of a four-performance, late-night run at the New Players.

Despite a technical glitch that plunges the place into darkness within seconds of the show beginning, this writer shines a new light on to transforming his own experiences into song when the lights come back on again. No wonder he sings so eloquently - and speaks so directly - to performers as well as audiences hungry for songs of real melody and aching resonance and relevance.

This material is wrenched from the heart and sings directly to it, too. And each song has its own dramatic arc and life that makes it perfect for cabaret performance here, outside the context of the shows they were written for.

Brown is also, remarkably and unusually for a musical theatre writer, a supremely charismatic interpreter of his own material. For this dazzling 90-minute retrospective of his career to date, a magnificent round of British leading ladies join him. Among them, Golda Rosheuvel beautifully reprises I’m Not Afraid of Anything, which she first sang in Songs for a New World. Clare Burt brings drama and gusto to Stars and the Moon and Frances Ruffelle is wonderfully funny as an auditionee in Climbing Uphill.