Recent posts in the I'd Do Anything category

If I’d Do Anything were Sesame Street, this week’s show would have been brought to you by the numbers 6 and 1/2.

Six Nancies remain, half of the original finalists; Six Olivers have already been put through to the semi-finals, leaving six boys’ fate in the competition undecided; half of the remaining Nancies have previously been saved by Andrew after the sing-off (a fate which, remember, neither Connie Fisher nor Lee Mead experienced). Half of the remaining crop of actresses are Irish, too — although only one of those attracts comments about her accent when acting or singing…

Update: Our usual collection of the BBC’s YouTube clips is online now. Still no sing-off video available, but this week the clips also include the judges’ comments.

Opening the show with another rendition of It’s a Fine Life, we then went into a VT of the girls talking about which of their competitors isn’t right for the role. This seems to be a fairly standard tactic in these shows, trying to up the stakes by pitting actor directly against actor, but until now it’s one that I’d Do Anything has kept in abeyance far more than Maria? or Any Dream Will Do ever did. Hopefully, the girls are all savvy enough to realise how artificial this section is. However, without going into the interpersonal disputes the producers seemed to want us to believe, it’s better to take a step back and look at the reasons each actress gave for their choice. The actresses who fit the more traditional casting of Nancy (professional actresses Ashley and Rachel, and singer Jodie) all selected one of the younger girls. I’d suggest that’s more to do with their view of the role rather than their view of their fellow competitors.

But on to the solo performances, and this week the girls were asked to sing songs that brought out different aspects of Nancy’s character.

Apologies again for the delay in this week’s review — the bank holiday and dodgy internet connections conspired against me this week.

As with previous weeks, the BBC’s YouTube videos are now available in a handy compilation player, which will automatically play all the main performances from Saturday and Sunday’s shows in their correct order.

This week, all the girls were coached for their performances by Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. And for all his mugging and ham-fisted attempts at humour on the judging panel, here it showed him excelling at his day job — getting the best out of the seven remaining Nancies. As a result, we ended up with seven strong (although not flawless) performances, and a cracking show to boot.

If you or anyone in your family has felt inspired by this series of I’d Do Anything (or Any Dream Will Do, Grease is the Word or How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?), then you need to buy this week’s print issue of The Stage where we take a long, hard look at the world of training for musical theatre.

With the BBC currently in its third year of searching for a West End star, Matthew Hemley looks at the conflicts the BBC’s “fast track” approach throws up.

Mary Hammond, head of musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, has seen her fair share of ex-pupils trying their luck on such shows and acknowledges that it is one way someone can achieve their goal of taking a leading role in the West End. However, she refuses to allow her students to take part in shows when they are in the middle of their course, saying their attention should be focused on their studies.

Even when they have graduated, she would rather see her former pupils working their way up the ladder on a touring show or a repertory theatre company, where novices can perfect their craft away from the glare of the public eye. Being in the public eye week after week on something like I’d Do Anything, has the power to break a career as much as it has the power to make one.

[…] With this in mind, Hammond now makes it an element of her course to talk to students about the shows and the advantages and disadvantages of taking part. “As part of my training, I talk through the whole thing and how you deal with it,” she says. “I will bring in past contestants to talk to them - people who enjoyed their experiences and people who were destroyed by it and whose careers have not been helped by it. I want to make sure they know the score.”

The full text of Matthew’s article is now online, and is just one of the features in our musical theatre training supplement. For a rundown of what else you can find in the issue, check out our In The Paper blog.

Apologies for the lateness of the review this week. To make up for it, we’ll start off with this week’s video compilation, which will launch in a separate window.

The theme this week was taking pop songs with strong lyrics and trying to act out the lyric. Which sounds faintly familiar, as it’s pretty much what the contestants do every week. Some managed it, others didn’t. I have to say the song choices weren’t particularly good for some of the Nancies this week, but the overall standard was better than last week’s particularly weak show. And Andrew was back in the studio after his Vegas sojourn, so there was no satellite delay to speak of — although, as we saw at the end of the results show, there’s a gulf the size of the Atlantic between the public’s taste and Andrew’s, it seems…

Update: This week’s performance videos are now available (the player will launch in a separate window).

After last week’s successful musical theatre-themed show, unfortunately this week the naff pop songs returned with a vengeance. As usual one or two songs had the potential for acting interpretation, but they were in the minority. With the theme this week being songs by divas who had rocked the Las Vegas circuit, pretty much the only MT song this week was the show opener, a roustabout version of Consider Yourself from all the Olivers and the remaining Nancies.

Kicking off the solo proceedings, Jodie sang Nine to Five. After last week’s showstopping rendition of Send in the Clowns, this risked a return to the cabaret style Jodie is more used to. A very word-heavy song, she managed to get the portray the emotion of the song without ever sacrifing either diction or pitch. If only all the other Nancies could say the same.

Samantha was next up, singing the Christina Aguilera song Hurt which I must profess to not knowing too well. There were plenty of vocal embellishments required, though, which seemed to cause Sam some difficulty in keeping in key. After working on portraying the emotion behind the song, she seemed to lose control in her voice. The judges in the studio liked it much better than previous weeks. Barry noted that the emotion worked both in close-up and as something that could be packed up in the back of a theatre. Which, I think, is one of the first times he’s actually given a perspicacious comment. Will wonders never cease?

Apologies for the lateness, but here are the week 5 videos on YouTube as uploaded by the BBC, arranged into their correct chronological order.

Unfortunately, there’s no official video of the sing-off available on YouTube this week. However, it is available on the BBC website. And of course, the BBC iPlayer carries full versions of Saturday’s show and Sunday’s results programme for another couple of days.

In this week’s print edition of The Stage, Zoe Tyler continues her exclusive column reviewing I’d Do Anything.

In this week’s column, she looks at the two actresses in the sing-off, Keisha and Tara, and concludes that on the sing-off alone, Tara should have stayed.

Of the Welsh actress who left the show this weekend, she also says:

She’s not Nancy, but would make a fabulous Sandy in Grease. David Ian, are you listening? Give the girl a job. She’d be great.

Read more about what’s in this week’s paper from our In The Paper blog.

I must admit, my flu-ridden heart leapt when I heard that this week, all the Nancies would be singing songs from musical theatre that proved they had leading lady potential — although I do wish that didn’t have to be a one week only deal. Shouldn’t musical theatre be the core of this show?

Anyway, even with the extra proviso of the songs being from musicals or films, the result was a much improved selection of songs for the most part, producing the strongest week yet in the quest to find a new West End leading lady.

The BBC has generously set up a playlist on YouTube for all its I’d Do Anything performance videos. Unfortunately, the order seems to be a little unusual, and it doesn’t differentiate between weeks too well.

So, we’ve done the hard work of reorganising it so that you can view all the performances, including the Olivers’ renditions of Electricity and Pie Jesu, and the sing-off and result from Sunday’s results show.

I’d Do Anything: week 4 videos will launch in a popup-window, with a list of videos on the right-hand side — but if you just let it run, it will play all videos in order.

Sadly, there is no video content available of either of this weekend’s acting tasks — the boys at Billy Elliot, or the Nancies playing against Steven Hartley’s Bill Sikes. For those (and higher quality versions of the musical performances), you can go to the BBC’s iPlayer site: Week 4 live show / Week 4 results show for the rest of this week (UK users only).

This week’s show started out with some Oom Pah Pah, and managed to keep up the pace throughout. Unlike last week, I don’t think there were any particularly duff performances — although one or two prospective Nancies didn’t deliver as well as the majority did.

The theme this week was supposedly for all the girls to sing songs that brought out an unknown side to their character. Which isn’t exactly hard: on only the second live show, pretty much every side of their characters is unknown at this stage…

Update: View the musical performances (see this post for more details).

In this week’s print edition of The Stage, columnist Zoe Tyler casts her eye over the first live show.

Zoe, a former panel member of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Any Dream Will Do, shares her thoughts on new judge Barry Humphries, as well as casting her eye over the twelve girls who started the live journey into Nancy’s petticoats on Saturday.

The standard was very high and I feel, unlike Maria? where Connie stood out like a sore thumb from day one as the winner, this series is different, with a real array of talent. How refreshing.

However, she does not agree with the final decision to send Amy Booth-Steel home:

I thought Tara was the weakest… she tends to put on an affected sound which makes it sound a little karaoke. I think she should have gone out and not Amy.

You can read the full column in this week’s edition of The Stage, available in most high street WHSmiths and other leading newsagents for £1.30.

• Read the TV Today review of the first live show.

So here we go, the first live show. And while some of the prospective Nancies are familiar to us through the pre-recorded shows one and two, many were under-served by those programmes’ editing, so it would be unfair to have a favourite at this stage. Besides, I had one at this point last year, and that proved fatal. Won’t be making that mistake again.

Similarly, while there has been criticism of the way Francesca was put through despite being too ill to stay on in Nancy School (compounded by her recent professional engagement in Rent with judge Denise Van Outen), she deserves to be treated the same as her eleven fellow auditionees.

Clean slates all round, then, as we open with a rambunctious group rendition of I’d Do Anything. All twelve Nancies and a dozen cherubic Olivers fill out the Studio One stage. Over the next ten weeks, twenty of them will fall by the wayside, with only four making it to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Update: UK users can now view the show performances again. Video after the jump.

In this week’s print edition of The Stage, vocal coach and former judge Zoe Tyler’s exclusive column continues with a critique of the second programme in the BBC series I’d Do Anything.

In the show, we saw actress Francesca Jackson, who had previously appeared in Rent alongside judge Denise Van Outen, being sent home from Nancy School to recuperate from illness. She was later put through to the next stage, a concert performance at which the judges selected which twelve girls would be selected for the lives show which start on Saturday.

In the end, Francesca won through to the live shows — but that was the wrong decision, says Zoe:

…after 14 years in the West End spent going through the audition process, she knows the score and it was not on to put her through. Lots of actresses — including me — have dreaded many final recalls because of having the flu and knowing full well you can’t go to the audition and say: “I have a bad throat, but you really should put me through.”

In my experience, you just get that one chance and if you blow it, you blow it — that’s showbiz.

For the rest of Zoe’s exclusive column, buy this week’s Andrew Lloyd Webber-themed issue of The Stage, priced £1.30.

As promised, here are the twelve finalists for the main Oliver! role being cast via television. As we’ve previously noted in our week 1 and week 2 reviews, several of the girls who have got through are professional actresses — not a bad thing, in my view.

As with last year’s Any Dream Will Do finalists, we’re going to take a quick look over each of the candidates to see just how much experience they have already chalked up.

In compiling this list, I’ve found out that six of the twelve actresses already have entries in Spotlight. At this point last year, only three Josephs had. Is that because more established professionals were going up for the casting? Or because casting director David Grindrod had a bigger role in selecting the prospective Nancies this year? I suspect the truth is that it’s a bit of both — but it should ensure that the West End gets a capable Nancy, while the TV public gets a very entertaining ten weeks of Saturday night entertainment.

After last week’s auditions and callbacks, this week saw the intensive weekend of workshops dubbed Nancy School, with the surviving actresses going on to perform in a one-off concert.

Because of the dual format this year, we also had to put up with being shown the twelve prospective Olivers acting surprised when being told that they had got through to the studio rounds. Not that the presence of a TV crew would have tipped them off, of course…

But back to the main business of finding a suitable woman to play Nancy. And just as with Maria School and Joseph School before it, I did find that this episode felt rushed. By the end of just one hour’s TV, the intake of 42 had been reduced to the final twelve who will be in the live TV studio next week. There was a lot to get through, and I did feel that some of the prospective Nancies were ill-served by the breakneck pace.

Yes, that’s right. Come on, let’s get this pun out of the way so I never have to use it again. I did feel like asking the BBC schedulers, “Please sir, can I have some more?”