Recent posts in the I'd Do Anything category

As you may have read in our main news section, I’d Do Anything winner Jodie Prenger is to make her West End debut next week. But not in Oliver!, which does not start previews until December. Instead, she is to join the ensemble cast of Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre for a three or four-week run.

Unlike Connie Fisher and Lee Mead, who were both thrown into breakneck-speed rehearsals before their respective West End shows opened within weeks of their BBC talent show wins, Jodie has had several months in between conquering the public vote and her opening night. In the meantime, she’s also gone on a summer school course at RADA, while also occasionally performing — this coming Bank Holiday weekend, she’ll be at Bryn Terfel’s Faenol Festival with John Barrowman and fellow talent show alum Daniel Boys, currently going great guns in Avenue Q.

It seems to me that both the RADA course and this move are absolutely the right move for Jodie, as they would be for any actor in her situation. If she’d had the few weeks’ rehearsal time that Connie and Lee were given, I’ve no doubt she would have been able to rise to the challenge more than effectively. But given the six-month gap between winning and first night, it’s good to see her use the time to ensure that her first performance in a leading role on the West End stage is as good as it possibly can be.

And so we reach the final week. Cue lots of tears in VT packages from Samantha, Jessie and Jodie. Anybody would think the Josephs were in the house. Oh, lots of them were — I spotted Ben, Chris Crosby and Lewis in the audience but there were doubtless more.

The opening number was, of course, I’d Do Anything, reuniting all twelve Olivers and all twelve Nancies. Oh Fran, oh Sarah, how we’ve missed you. Oh Amy, oh Cleo, how we’d like to have seen more of you — you went too soon. Oh Tara — you didn’t…

As we limber up to decide on Saturday whether to support Jodie, Jessie or Samantha, I caught up with the very busy Zoe Tyler, who has been diligently reviewing I’d Do Anything for The Stage’s weekly print edition throughout this series.

I also met up with John Byrne, our resident agony uncle, to discuss the options available to young performers who may have felt inspired to turn their hand to the performing arts. And, for those young boys who already have sufficient skills, we have news of the castings for Dodger and the rest of Fagin’s gang (who also play the workhouse boys at the start of the show).

Listen using the player above, go to our podcasts channel for this and other podcasts from The Stage, or subscribe in iTunes for an enhanced podcast with chapter markers, additional pictures and built-in weblinks.

Well, with just two more weeks of shiny floors and nail biting tension to go, it was notable that this week’s opening number of Food Glorious Food had all twelve Olivers completely overshadowing the supposed main stars of the show, the four prospective Nancies. Which is completely fine, as it’s exactly what the number is — an all-boys chorus designed to open the show. As such, it’s pretty indestructible and did exactly what it was supposed to.

Of course, the panel was joined for tonight (and next week’s final) with Oliver! producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, as The Stage revealed before the start of the series. To be honest, although a couple of his comments rankled, his presence on the panel showed just how the other members have struggled in all coming from a performer-only background.

Tomorrow sees the I’d Do Anything semi-final, which means that in just eight days’ time we’ll know which actress the public has cast in the role of Nancy in Cameron Mackintosh’s forthcoming production of Oliver!.

TV Today has, of course, been reviewing each week of the show online, while Zoe Tyler, vocal coach and judge on predecessor shows How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Any Dream Will Do has been doing the same for The Stage’s weekly print edition.

Next week, we’ll be recording a podcast discussion looking forward to the final and looking back over the previous eleven weeks of auditions, callbacks, sing-offs and saves by the Lord. If you’ve got any questions or comments about the series that you’d like Zoe and me to discuss, then please either leave them on our podcast blog or email them to podcasts@thestage.co.uk. Please don’t leave them as a comment to this entry.

All comments need to be received by 10am Tuesday morning, and the podcast will be online from Thursday.

So, it’s the pre-penultimate weekend of I’d Do Anything, with just five Nancies remaining, and one more Oliver place available. At this point last year, there was a definite front runner for the role of Joseph, albeit with less experienced performers nipping at his heels. This time round, though, the competition is much harder to call. Each of the remaining girls has her own strengths, and each could take Nancy in a direction that would work, given the right direction and sufficient work.

This week’s opening number, Consider Yourself, was an ebullient performance that really showcased the appeal of Oliver! — a combination of cute kids, and professional singers, to lift the heart. And with the promise of performances from five of last year’s finalists (including two regular West End performers in the shape of Avenue Q’s Daniel Boys and Hairspray’s Ben James-Ellis — don’t they have shows to go to?) it was shaping up to be a good show all round. And this week, the Nancies themselves selected the songs they would sing for their solo performances, although I suspect that the musical director would have had a big influence in guiding them. Still, the choices involved would prove to be quite revealing.

View the BBC’s YouTube videos in our handy player (launches in separate window). Although this week they seem to have truncated the solo performances. Naughty, naughty BBC.

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).