CLOSER TO HEAVEN 

AP - The Pet Shop Boys have branched out from dance hits like "West End Girls" and penned a West End musical.

The pop duo attracted a star-studded audience for Thursday night's opening of "Closer to Heaven," a riotous tale of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll in London clubland.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe wrote the music and lyrics for the production, being
performed at the West End's Art Theatre. Elton John, Ian McKellen and Simon Callow were among the British stars who attended the opening.

"I thought it was absolutely brilliant," John said afterward. "It was one of the most
incredible nights I have had at the theatre for a long time."

Tennant said the first performance was a nervous event after labouring over the
musical for five years. He said he took on the project to attract a new audience to
theatre.

"People have been coming up to me tonight and saying that they have never before
been to the theatre and how much they enjoyed it," he said. "So that is wonderful."

LONDON (Reuters) - Pop veterans the Pet Shop Boys have brought sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to London's theatreland with a musical set in a gay club that should certainly attract devoted gay fans.

Stars attending the glittering first night at the minuscule 320-seat Arts Theatre gave "Closer to Heaven" the thumbs up. Critics were much more divided.

The Pet Shop Boys, understated kings of cool who have sold 30 million albums around the world, joined forces with playwright Jonathan Harvey to write the musical which was backed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, writer of blockbuster hits like "Cats" who feels the time has come to attract a younger generation into the theatre.

Lloyd Webber, seeing "Closer to Heaven" for the first time, told Reuters: "It's better than a lot of musicals I have seen. I think young audiences are looking around for other things."

The Pet Shop Boys -- vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboard wizard Chris Lowe -- were determined not to succumb to "Back Catalogue syndrome" and write a musical full of their greatest hits.

They felt that London's West End was already awash with rock nostalgia with shows like "Buddy" based on the life of Buddy Holly and the Abba-inspired hit "Mamma Mia".

The Pet Shop Boys have certainly taken the musical in a new direction with gay lovers intertwined in a passionate love scene and a nightclub hostess snorting cocaine before bursting into song.

Actress Frances Barber plays the Velvet Underground reincarnation for whom drugs are everything. Paul Keating, critically acclaimed in the Who musical "Tommy", stars as Straight Dave, the Irish barman who beds both boy and girl.

As the curtain descended to a standing ovation, Daily Telegraph critic Charles Spencer said bluntly: "It was a bit of a mess, I thought." Sheridan Morley of the International Herald Tribune was kinder: "I thought it was impressive. This musical was very much of the moment."

Rock stars of the 1970s and 1980s are certainly becoming attracted to the idea of writing musicals.

Boy George is currently writing "Taboo" and watched "Closer to Heaven" with fascination.
"I am a Pet Shop Boys fan anyway. I have worked with them so it is hard for me to be objective," he said. "I thought it was fabulous. I enjoyed it."

Comedian Dawn French offered unbridled enthusiasm for the show: "I am loving it -- mainly because of all the boys' bottoms."

Fellow comedian Lenny Henry agreed: "It's very in your face. It reminds me of the 'Rocky Horror Show'. It is certainly contemporary. I had a laugh." 
 

BYLINE: Michael Billington 

When playwright Jonathan Harvey teams up with the Pet Shop Boys on a
musical, one expects a modest breakthrough. But all this campy farrago
really proves is that the boy-meets-boy musical can be every bit as
self-regarding and sentimental as its straight counterpart. Harvey has not
over-exerted himself in the matter of plot. His hero, Straight Dave, gets a
job as a leather-knickered dancer in a gay club, has a fling with the boss's
daughter Shell and through her lands a contract with a gross record
producer. But our Dave's heart is really engaged elsewhere with a soulful
Cockney drug pusher called Lee. Sadly their love is short lived. But, even
after Lee's early death, Dave gets to fulfil his dream of becoming a hit
songwriter. I am all for musical heroes finding true love: what I cannot
stomach is the nauseous pretence that, simply because Lee has had an
affection-starved childhood, that makes him a combination of Lycidas and
Mother Theresa over whose death we are meant to shed copious tears.
Theatrically, we hardly knew the guy. The show's self-regard also emerges in
its narcissistic portrait of gay clubland which is presented as a source of hectic vitality, glittering wit and, eventually, druggy destruction. Like his hero, Harvey clearly likes to
have it both ways. But the story is just a peg on which to hang 18 Pet Shop
Boy numbers. Some of them, such as the opening My Night, have a disco beat
that gets under the skin. Occasionally, as in Nine out of Ten where Dave and
Shell engage in post-coital banter in a vertical bed, they have an oddball
charm. But a theatrical score requires more tonal variety than the Pet Shop
Boys are yet masters of and their lyrics are often disappointingly clumsy.
They are welcome in a musical theatre desperately in need of new blood: one
just hopes next time they get a storyline that stretches their talents. What
sinks the show is the crudity of Harvey's book which brings out the worst in
everyone. As a faded, druggy, fag-hag icon, Frances Barber goes so far over
the top as to be unrecognisable; and it's a measure of the show's crassness
that the comparison of her love life to Vietnam - 'after a lot of protest it
was all over in the 70s" - is regarded as a pearl of wit. And, while Paul
Keating is simply nebulous as Dave, Paul Broughton as a loutish record boss
and David Langham as his whinnying sidekick give performances of cartoonish
grotesquerie. Gemma Bodinetz's produc tion is also full of sound and fury
signifying little. Indeed when David Burt as the gay club owner cried, 'You
know where the exit is" I felt like taking the hint. Booking until September
15. Box office: 020-7836 3334. 

Musicals are rubbish aren't they? A bunch of galumphing, hyperactive RADA rejects crash into each other on stage while opening their mouths REALLY WIDE in an attempt to communicate the horrendously stunted emotional range of lyrics which purport to deal with subtleties of love and life but can't because everything has to fucking rhyme. Then there's some talking, usually in the form of a wildly over-enunciated argument, and mucho arms-akimbo action. Then the music creeps in again and the talking turns into singing! SEAMLESSLY! 

The Pet Shop Boys, though. They did 'Jealousy' and 'Left To My Own Devices' and 'Dreaming Of The Queen' and scores of songs perfectly primed for a transfer to the West End, where 'Mamma Mia' and 'Buddy' and even that dodgy Dusty Springfield musical have proved that it doesn't all have to be about Lloyd Webber and drippy ballads. Swooping, sweeping opera house stompers with intelligent lyrics detailing the nuances of romance and rejection, catchy enough for the kids, highbrow enough for the arty crowd - surely they could take the musical in a whole new direction, right? 

So why is 'Closer To Heaven' such a fucking farrago? Well, essentially it comes down to two things. The first problem is that the production itself is sorely lacking: the Arts Theatre is tiny, meaning grand gestures are out of the question, and the Pet Shop Boys' music, which so often teeters on the edge of brilliant high-camp histrionics, needs more than tawdry costumes and dance routines choreographed by someone who watched the first five minutes of 'The Rocky Horror Show' then went blind. 

Some of the songs are great - opening number 'My Night' has a definite show-tune propulsion, while 'Positive Role Model' is a full-on 'Very'-esque screamer, and 'Vampire', like the title track's refrain, is undeniably affecting. But the arrangements lack the lustre and drama of Pet Shop Boys originals. The Neil'n'Chris demo of 'For All Of Us' is a sweet, string-drenched epic; here, sung by leading queen Paul Keating, it's merely accompanied by piano and synth, and it drags. 

The second reason why the show fails is pretty easy to work out. It's written by Jonathan fucking Harvey, a man who thinks he's a 21st century Joe Orton, but is in actual fact a man who'd have been kicked off the 'Carry On' movies for being "a bit obvious". The plot of 'Closer To Heaven' was obviously knocked out in between brainstorming sessions for the two gags he'll stretch across the next series of 'Gimme Gimme Gimme'. It exists in a bizarre bad-'70s-sitcom vacuum of limp-wristed gay men, working-class bits of rough, past-it druggy slags and grasping wannabes. Not a sympathetic character in sight (save, ironically, for the man we should despise, Paul Broughton's energetic Tom Watkins-alike Bob Saunders), no breathless set pieces (we won't go into the Caligula scene), no fall-off-seat-laughing gags ("My love life was like Vietnam: a lot of protest and then it all ended in the '70s". What?) and he leaves narrative strands dangling at the end like winnits from bum hair. 

But hey! It's supposed to be all about broad emotional strokes and over-the-top performances and bums and tits and knob gags right? That's what makes Britain great! Crap. That's the same attitude that claims Babs Windsor's boobs and Dick Emery and "I'm free!" are somehow valuable parts of our cultural tradition. But that's bollocks. It's all just embarrassing. 

Here's a lyric for you Neil: "I love you/you've produced a show that's possibly even worse than 'Rent'". 

Christian Ward
 

One of the insoluble mysteries of musical theatre over the past three
decades has been its almost total failure to create a great show using pop
and rock music.

Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies it all looked so promising,
with musicals such as Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and the Who's "rock
opera", Tommy.

Since then, though, we've had a glut of cheap, cheerful and sometimes
downright cheesy pop compilation shows, offering little more than tribute
bands in concert. The failure of both producers and writers to tap into the
vastly lucrative pop market with anything approaching style or wit is
baffling.

So I arrived at Closer To Heaven with high hopes. The songs are by the Pet
Shop Boys, an unusually intelligent pop group, and one whose songs have
always been highly theatrical - sometimes touchingly so, at others
unashamedly camp. With a book by the acclaimed dramatist Jonathon Harvey,
this ought to have been something special.

In fact the show turns out to be a terrible mess - tacky and tasteless when
it isn't being quite nauseatingly sentimental.

The best thing about it is the music, ranging from pumping, high-energy
disco to enjoyably maudlin ballads, though there is nothing here that is a
patch on the Pet Shop Boys' early albums, either lyrically or musically.
They have hit a barren patch of late, and it is just our luck that they
have chosen this moment of flagging inspiration to make their theatrical
debut.

The real disaster though is Harvey's book. He is usually a dramatist I
admire, with a gift for both comedy and pathos. Here, however, he has dug
deep and desperately into a rag bag of gay and showbiz clichés, offering an
unforgivably trite and hackneyed story of sex and drugs and rock and roll.

Our hero is a fit-looking lad from Ireland who arrives at a gay club
determined to prove he's something special as a dancer. He's called
Straight Dave, because he thinks he's heterosexual, and he quickly falls in
love with the daughter of the club's coked up owner.

Unfortunately he's caught on a security camera enjoying a hearty snog - and
more- with a male drug dealer. And it's here that the show - until now a
compendium of filthy jokes and S&M dance routines - turns all lachrymose on
us.

His girlfriend is understandably upset, but not nearly as upset as Straight
Dave is when his new boyfriend succumbs to an overdose of his own product.

The mix of crude gay caricature - look out in particular for a grotesquely
fat and predatory pop manager who offers the most terrifying sight on the
London stage when he strips to his underpants - with a manipulative attempt
to tug at the audience's heartstrings proves hideously misconceived.

And Gemma Bodinetz's scrappy production, in which every emotion seem
mawkish and every joke is overplayed, seems cruelly designed to emphasise
the weakness of the script.

The cast do their best. Frances Barber sails preposterously over the top as
a camp and druggy Seventies icon; Paul Broughton puts one in mind of a gay
Bernard Manning (now there's a thought) as the pop group manager; and David
Burt finds a few moments of real feeling as the club owner.

Paul Keating and Stacey Roca are pretty but bland as the love interest, and
though the show was wildly applauded on the first night by a disparate
group of camp followers that included Sir Elton John (his wig, as always,
was the best joke of the evening) and Boy George, I fear that this show is
closer to closure than it is to heaven.

Not a bit of it. In fact, if anything, Closer To Heaven puts notions of progressive gay art back in the ghetto of 30 years ago. If the intention was to limit the production's appeal to the W1 brigade, then in that at least it's succeeded. This butch muddle is hardly likely to engage an audience outside of Soho, let alone beyond London's less forgiving perimeters. 

From three gay icons, all of whom have made quality work accessible and relevant to the mainstream, this ranks as a major disappointment. Harvey's thin plot involves Cockney gal Shell meeting up with her gay old Dad again after a long absence. "You're a classy bird," he tells her, with that wincing Cockney grit we're supposed to find so lovable. Before long (the fourth number actually) Shell's declaring undying love for one of Dad's male dancers, Straight Dave, who in turn takes a predictable fancy to drug dealer Mile End Lee. Throw in a couple of shameless music biz types, with every godawful camp cliché in gross attendance, and that's your lot. 

Or rather it would be, without the glorious Frances Barber as Billie Tricks. Billie (think Anais Nin meets Marianne Faithfull) is the club's decadent darling, who choreographs the odd dance routine in between scoffing jiffy bags full of drugs. She alone is the glue which binds this peculiar jumble, with Harvey reserving some of his finest lines for her: "Mind the eyebrows darling, they cost a fortune. Do you think I was born with a look of constant surprise"? 

It's not all negative vibes, however. Es Devlin’s set design makes remarkable use of the limited space, as the suspended bed scene displays. There's a real find, too, in debutant Stacey Roca as Shell. Demonstrating stage stamina already, she should find the inevitable move to small screen works a breeze. 

As for the PSB contribution, how much more compelling it might have been if they'd taken their own bleakly wistful Behaviour masterpiece as inspiration. As it is, the dull thud of club beats and some torpid lyrics ("shot in the fatal cause of rock 'n' roll") sound like pale imitations of their own profound talents. Even Vampires, the one experimental stab, is rasped painfully out against a backdrop of writhing male lovers. You yearn for a Marc Almond or Scott Walker to grab the ears at this point with some truly Brechtian blues. Most eyes, you felt, were trained on the boys between the sheets. 

With heavy irony, the whole project comes across like a straight notion of what gay nights out might necessarily entail. Think strutting dance routines, sex in the toilets, a shot in the hand and one in the arm. Sure it happens, and it does in the hetero world too, but nor is all straight art set permanently in sleazy nightclubs. 

What have we done to deserve this? 

Gareth Thompson 

Bring in Jonathon Harvey (Beautiful Thing, TV's Gimme Gimme Gimme) to write the book, Billy Elliot & Merrily We Roll Along's Peter Darling to choreograph, and Gemma Bodinetz, from the trendy Hampstead Theatre, to direct and it looked like there was something very interesting on its way. 

It is certainly interesting, but Closer to Heaven misses by a mile. 

It has a few redeeming features which I will come to - but these are far overshadowed by its weaknesses.Ê 

The score is an uneven mix consisting of thumping club tunes and drum & base beats bizarrely juxtapositioned with the occasional conventional musical theatre love ballad which sit uneasily amongst. With the possible exception of 'This Is My Night', there are no tunes to enjoy - in fact there are no tunes.Ê 

The dance routines that have been set to the synthesized score (entirely performed by two live musicans) are little more than mediocre displays of second rate podium dancing. The crutch-grabbing, breast-groping, pelvis-gyrating, gender-bending, semi-naked routines are obviously designed to shock as they are thrust in the faces of the first rows and along the aisles - but they look sloppy and it is not long before the shock value wears thin and the relentless body pumping becomes tedious to watch. 

The story is your average boy meets girl (but also meets guy) and might not be the most inspiring but Jonathon Harvey's genius does shine through in the dialogue which is often very funny including some great one-lines - often astute comments about the music inddduustry - (presumably also coming from Neil Tennant & Chris Lowe as well as Harvey) and gags more often than not spoken by Billie Tricks played by Frances Barber. Frances gives a good comic turn, and has the mixture of guts and gall to pull off the role of 'our guide for the evening'. Unfortunately, she is out of her depth in her musical solo 'Friendly Fire'. This is the lone moment the character was called upon to sing and was a shame, as it was this painful number that lingers in the memory for the longest. As the song is not integral (nor remotely helpful) to the plot, I suggest it should be cut to save embarrassment for both this talented actress and us the audience. 

Paul Keating, still often linked with his starring role in Tommy (but more recently impressed in La Cava) is utterly convincing as Straight Dave and adopts a lighter pop sound to his voice which is appropriate. Were it not for his truthful performance, I'm sure there would have been more escaped laughs in the clumsy funeral scene where the ensemble suddenly produce black garments and say in unison 'Amen', subtlety indicating that someone had died.Ê 

Mile End Lee was played by newcomer Tom Walker who also had some good one liners and delivered them well. He was also very believable.Ê 

Stalwart David Burt played nightclub owner Vic Christian. David was lumbered with some of the worst material but managed to pull through without too much egg on his face. You could physically see his unease with the jolt into the first rendition of the title song with the dreadful lyrics that are set to his meeting with his long lost daughter, but is impressive in his number 'Vampires' which was the only moment I begun to feel anything for anyone. 

Stacey Roca plays Dave's love interest Shell, but isn't so convincing. Her voice isn't particularly strong and her characterization is thin.Ê 

And completing the principle cast were Paul Broughton as Bob Saunders and sidekick David Langham as Flynn. Paul Broughton was blessed with lines like, "I'm going for a crap" and an entrance which involved him revealing and exploiting a hairy overhang belly to the tune of 'Call Me Old Fashioned'. This grotesque display was neither funny nor necessary. However, once the dialogue begun and the horror of his opening number was over, Paul Broughton exhibited a gift for comedy and was perfectly cast as a greasy slimy record boss. David Langham's performance is over-pitched and misguided. Pure camp without thought does not equals laughs. 

Besides some good performances, the other redeeming feature is the set design. There are some really interesting ideas - including a bed scene played upright with a giant bed as a backdrop and two actors seemingly suspended in mid air in front.ÊThere is also a moment where film of another scene is back projected onto the entire wall of Vic's office which is very dynamic and suitable for the style of the piece. 

Ultimately, I felt the show could have been so much more if the intention was to make an interesting story about a lifestyle that so far hasn't been touched by musical theatre. However, shock value and surprise factor were obviously higher up on the priorities list and what the audience is left with is sensationalist rubbish.ÊÊ 

by Mark Barlow
 

Bigger than the Beatles? 
 

There is cynicism at work in theatreland; more, even, than usual. Producers, eyeing the box-office receipts of Mamma Mia!, are dreaming up ways to get the tourist hordes queueing the length of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the back-catalogue musical strikes them as the surest way to do it. First off the blocks is All You Need Is Love! (Queen's), a spectacularly inept "magical journey through the songs of Lennon and McCartney". It is so bad that a Fab Four fanatic like me was reduced to thinking, my God, perhaps the Beatles weren't any good after all. 

A keen, but overstretched, company of six men and six women desecrate, eviscerate and well-nigh obliterate 54 of the most perfect songs ever written, all the while engaging in a barely coherent choreography against a desperately ugly set. At least the Abba musical wove a narrative thread, however thin, between the hits. All You Need Is Love! seems incapable even of that, and instead presents what is little more than lumpen karaoke. 

The greatest test comes when your favourite song is taken out and bayoneted. It was all I could do not to rush the stage when Peter Eldridge, whose Ronan Keating-like delivery carries off the prize for crimes against pronunciation, set about We Can Work It Out. 

Help!, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, For No One: each goes into the mincer and emerges in shreds. This is quite, without a doubt, the worst evening I've ever spent in the West End - shoddy, amateur, shrill and utterly devoid of charm or style. No doubt the tills will ring. But what an absolute stinker. 

Catharsis arrives in the shape of Pet Shop Boys' first foray into musicals. Closer to Heaven (Arts) delves into three separate, but often interchangeable cultures: club, gay and pop - all areas that the duo are acquainted with, and which, in a patchy though stimulating evening, they make fun of or expose as shallow and self-deluding. 

Set almost exclusively in a gay nightclub, the show, with a witty, caustic book by the playwright Jonathan Harvey, follows the lives of four main characters as they either self-destruct or step back from the abyss just in time. 

The ironically named Straight Dave (Paul Keating), newly escaped from the repressive mores of Northern Ireland, arrives for an audition, determined to establish himself as both a bona fide het and a pop star. 

The two ambitions quickly run into problems. The club's manager, Vic (David Burt), is a tormented, drug-addicted homosexual who snaps Dave up as a dancer, but only because he wants a piece of Dave himself. As, indeed, does Vic's daughter, Shell (Stacey Roca). As, too, does the sinister, rapacious rock manager Saunders (a hilarious, over-the-top Paul Broughton), keen to sign Dave up, but not for reasons Dave would appreciate. 

In fact, everyone seems to want the Belfast boy, including the club's resident fag hag and fading torch singer, Billie Tricks (a vampish, perhaps overused Frances Barber), and the local drug dealer, Mile End Lee (Tom Walker), who succeeds where the others fail. 

It is very much a first musical. The crucial alchemy of heart and humour has plenty of the latter, but arguably not quite enough of the former. And too often the plot is propelled by dance routines that replicate the sweat-soaked delirium of a packed club, but also overshadow the spoken-word scenes that follow. 

Visible joins and patience-testing longueurs aside, a musical that was potentially of only narrow appeal in fact has enough wit and commun- ality to cross over. Harvey includes some stiletto-sharp digs at the Posh'n'Becks celebrity conveyor belt. Oh, and the songs aren't bad either - many are, in fact, pretty sensational, striking that very Pet Shop Boys balance between camp catchiness and cold, utterly unsentimental desolation. Stomping disco, clattering synths, Sondheimesque wordplay, complex vocal harmony, moments of almost chamber-like intimacy and intricacy: all confirm the impression of a duo more than equipped for the task of writing for the stage. Which, from two such masters of the three-minute mini drama, should come as no surprise. 

Who would have thought it? That, faced with a choice between Lennon/McCartney and Tennant/Lowe, the latter would win hands down? 
 

PH - Well, that's always been the things with the Pet Shop Boys. I mean,
where does the irony start to bite? And I love the Pet Shop Boys, I love
their electro pop - I'm showing my age now, of course - and I really
approved of their not raiding the back catalogue. I think what they wanted
here was a sort on Sondhiem-y, ironic, clever, witty musical with a
bittersweet end, but instead what they got was a book by Jonathan Harvey.
Truly terrible, inept, slack book. can't put a plot together, can't write
convincing dialogue - "You must continue to be brave" - is this man a German
language student? Can't create human beings. Terrible. Terrible.

TS - OK, we'll come back to the music later. Did you have a better time, Ann
Robbins?

AR - I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the music because I too love the Pet Shop Boys,
and I never object to watching people with absolutely great muscles dance
around the stage. In fact, I enjoyed the dancing and thought it got much
better in the second half. I shut my brain off quite happily because if you
think about this for half a second, it falls to pieces. I liked all the
pastiche, I liked Francis Barber doing this kind of low rent Nico with an
accent that changed every five seconds, she had great clothes. It's this
thing that you go and look at. It's kind of an over-decorated Christmas
tree, it's just sort of glittery and shiny and nice and completely
inconsequential.

TS - I thought one thing that did work was that it's a musical that not set
in a nightclub, the whole theatre, because it's a small, intimate little
theatre, The Arts Theatre, you do feel as though you're in a nightclub.
PH - It's nearer Cabaret, actually, than a musical in that way. I just hope
it hangs on until Christmas because it'll be fantastic for the office
Christmas parties. I hope they do it all day, in matinees, everything. But I
did think what the main problem seemed was the plot petered out halfway
through. I thought the first half was much more impressive than when they
tried to get serious and emotional and schmaltzy. In thought in fact that
no-one could act well enough to beat witness. I mean, the leading man,
Straight Dave, looked like a woodland animal caught in the headlights as
soon as he actually stood there on his own, and it fell apart completely at
that point.

TS - And there surely isn't a closet big enough to hold him, is there? I
thought that was one of the startling things, that this man should ever have
been in doubt about his sexuality.

AR - We all knew.

PH - And the whole campy nonsense about the lurid boss and his sidekick. the
sidekick reminded me of that sort of eye-bogglingly sycophantic serpent in
The Jungle Book. You got carried away with all that side of it, you thought,
yeah, at least we know where that's going if not where they're coming from.
But on the other hand, as soon as they tried to get all maudlin about this
drug dealer who is supposed to have died heroically, almost like a soldier
in a first world war trench, you just thought, no, well actually he was a
schmuck.

TS - That was a huge problem, wasn't it? If you've got a romantic triangle,
all of the angles have to be equally desirable. But here one corner was
actually just slimy and despicable.

AR - Wee, you didn't understand you were supposed to like him, he seemed
just like this moron, you know?
PH - The thing about the drug dealer was that he was utterly unreal, he was
just plot function. First he was there for the Irish boy to discover his
sexuality, then he was there to die conveniently, and you could just see
Jonathan Harvey going down the list of characters saying, "Somebody's got to
die." And the only option was Mile End Lee. And I was so unimpressed by this
trying to shock me. I mean, this was like a quiet Tuesday night around our
place.
TS - And did anyone else sort of get the feeling of why is it ending now? I
mean, that last song was just positively weird, it was where's the subtext
to all this?

PH - I felt that well, where he sits down and says, "I'm crying for us all,"
well Don't Cry for Me Argentina.
AR - No resemblance to anything that had been going on. It was sort of stuck
in there out of absolutely nowhere. Which most of the thing was.

TS - I think I ought to say the audience roared with laughter on the night I
went. They may not have appreciated the way the book is plotted, but they
certainly liked some of Jonathan Harvey's line, they found them funny. You
didn't, did you?

PH - Well the night I went, it was full of people who'd backed it and I
think it's actually quite difficult to base anything on that. I think they
had a good time. I had a good time and I liked the songs.

TS - They're not going to have a different night I think, in a way, because
this is a club musical in more than the sense that it's set in a club. It's
very clubby in the sense that the jokes are in-jokes, it's a coterie comedy.
It presupposes a sort of...

PH - Well, I got the jokes. the club is basically Love Muscle down The
Fridge, and the record bloke is pretty close to Tom Watkins, I must say. I
mean, he's not somebody to sue for libel, but it is very, very close. But
even so, I wasn't that gripped by it.

TS - I thought the first number was the only one that really worked
successfully. It's an opening number called My Night, which is shared
between three of the principal characters, and as in a good musical song it
expresses slightly different things for all of them. And that was the one
moment where the musical was really in tune with what the plot was going to
be, and it was telling you things. What about the rest of the songs though?

PH - I thought they wanted to produce kind of songs for a musical. There's
one song for the Francis Barber character called Friendly Fire which is
basically an attempt at "I'm still here." It doesn't quite work because it's
not what the Pet Shop Boys do best. If they'd really stuck to their vein,
I'm sure they would have produced something much, much stronger.

TS - I thought Shameless was quite good with the Andy Warhol allusion to the
fifteen minutes of fame, and of course you had Posh and Backs very loosely -
ha-ha - characterised. And I thought if they'd carried on in that vein they
could have been much more for the general public, but as it's a bit of a
cultish thing, I'm not sure.

AR - No, this is an irony-free zone. The whole thing. There was just no...
It was so wide-eyed all over itself. I don't know.
TS - Well curiously it jumped from a sort of knowing, bitchy cynicism to a
kind of wide-eyed innocence.

AR - I thought that was a mannered, bitchy cynicism. I didn't believe it for
a second.

PH - Cynicism and sentimentality.

………………………

The West End deserves Closer to Heaven. It sets winsome gladiators pelvic-thrusting in chains and silver breastplates. It sends toned bodies in bondage gear and glittery gold knickers scampering up the aisles. It opens with Frances Barber as a ridiculously overblown rock star snorting a line of cocaine. It closes, almost, on the funeral of a dealer, and follows the progress of a male innocent moving from obscurity to celebrity - and from girls to boys. 
In collaborating on the show, the Pet Shop Boys (music and lyrics) and Jonathan Harvey (script) aimed to provide an antidote to the sentiment and elephantiasis that have sapped the modern musical. It's true that Closer to Heaven is small, loud, thrumming and gay. But it's in the way it mixes talent and tosh that it really inverts convention. It delivers its tat with fervour, and its giftedness lightly: the music is better, the rhymes sharper than most of what cruises round the West End. It's essence of camp.