A Magical Sunday Night at the London Palladium

I have been lucky enough to see a lot of great musical productions at the London Palladium – my first memory is Cliff and The Shadows in pantomime! Sunday Night at the London Palladium is reputed to have established ITV and it is wonderful that the Really Useful Group is making the theatre available again for performers on a Sunday Night.

On entering this large West End theatre we were greeted by a black stage set, a black piano to the left with a music stand and stool next to it for the guitarist and to the right four seats and music stands for the string quartet Raven on the black surround proscenium arch stage. Tim Moore on piano, Andy Moore on guitar and Raven all take their places, they are all dressed in black. There are a number of spots and light coming from three lit freestanding candelabra.

Once seated they strike up the opening chords to Un Giorno Per Noi and Jonathan Ansell appears on stage to sing the opening verse Hayley Westenra joins him on stage wearing a short red strapless dress with fabulous high silver sparkly open toed shoes to continue the song. There is a lot of banter between them during the show but at the beginning they explain where the idea for this show comes from – singing respectively for England and the All Blacks at Rugby test matches and then various duets sung at the Classical Brits, the Don Black Birthday celebration and the Festival of Remembrance. This time they have chosen to sing a number of love songs during to mark this time of year around Valentines Day.

The show alternated between duets and solos and solo pieces from Raven, 23 tracks in all. Highlights for me from the first half were the duets of All I Ask of You (best version I have heard of this Phantom classic). One of my favourites from Jonathan Arranjuez with wonderful classical guitar accompaniment and I loved Hayley’s versions of Both Sides Now and Songbird but the killer track of this half is Jonathan’ solo of If You’re Not The One with just piano and guitar accompaniment. They finish the set with the Mario Lanza classic Be My Love which is just wonderful.

The sound is marvellous in the Palladium but the star of the night for me was the lighting, all sorts of clever yet simple effects to change the atmosphere, my favourite being shards of light appearing to close like a curtain at the end of a song.

The second half opens with a virtuoso performance from Raven and Hayley comes on in a change of costume to sing a number of solos including I Know You By Heart, accompanied by just Andy on guitar, which she followed with Never Saw Blue and finishes her set with the amazing traditional Maori love song Pokarekare Ana which receives rapturous applause, Jonathan joins her to sing How Many Stars from Bombay Dreams.

At this point a little banter occurs around Hayley not wishing to leave the stage and Jonathan turns round to the audience and says ‘I apologise for this’ and bends over and lifts her up and takes her off stage with a Fireman’s Lift! He then comes back onstage not at all out of breath and introduces the theme from Cinema Paradiso, Se and gives us the translation before he sings it; this is followed by Canta Della Terra the applause just goes on and on and on, then he sits on the front of the stage and sings the surprise To Where You Are from G4’s first album – not a dry eye in the house.

Hayley comes back wearing her long black and gold gown and they end with Amigos Para Siempre a song written by Don Black and Andrew Lloyd Webber for Carreras and Brightman to close the Barcelona Olympics but this version is truly superlative and the audience rose to their feet at the end. As an encore they sang the perfect song, Time To Say Goodbye.

Both Jonathan and Hayley have exceptional voices, both fabulous live; this evening was the best I have seen Jonathan perform But when these two sing together a little magic is created, they bring out the best in each other, are obviously very comfortable in each others company and in the historic yet majestic London Palladium the whole experience is truly magical.

Added: February 16th 2009
Reviewer: Dilog (guest reviewer)
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