"Champagne Charlie"
Over Christmas we spent
some time in Vamos with friends, friends who I am sure a lot of you
will know: Glyn, Chris, and Douglas. That evening back at home we
watched a newly released and fascinating DVD – Chris’s
performance as the great Victorian Music Hall artiste George
Leybourne, who was otherwise known as Champagne Charlie.
I don’t know if you
know, but Chris has had a long career in musical theatre and
performed lead roles in London’s West End theatres for such theatre
giants as Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber; since moving to
Crete he occasionally gets called back to the UK by the BBC, most
recently for a television documentary on the history of music hall.
His show Champagne
Charlie, written and directed by Glyn (Jones) is great fun but
also has a more serious side to it, telling as it does the story of
Leybourne’s meteoric rise to world-wide fame in the 1860’s from
the slums of Gateshead.
The DVD is of the
performance Chris (Christopher Beeching) was asked to give last
September at London’s (and Europe’s) oldest Music Hall and a
theatre in which Leybourne himself performed in the 1860’s and
70’s: Wilton’s Music Hall. It was the third time that Chris had
performed there and he told me that on that particular night all the
ghosts came out of the woodwork. There is certainly an amazing
atmosphere evident!
The two hour show was
also beamed live around the world by ArtStreamingTV. Chris said that
in giving a live-streamed performance you, as a performer, know it is
being watched not only by a full house but also ‘there and then’
by people world-wide, which gives it an added danger! He said that
you don’t want things to go wrong but, as in any live theatrical
performance at any moment anything could. And it did when there was a
problem with one of the 15 fast costume changes he makes in the show
(one takes a mere 8 seconds!!) He said that it was so hot onstage
that the costumes were sticking to him as Douglas was trying to
change them. But I must say for me, the tiny glitch only seemed to
add to the fun of the occasion.
The atmosphere at
Wilton’s during the last poignant scenes of the show as Leybourne’s
health takes a toll and the critics turn against him is telling, with
the audience, and that included me watching the DVD, becoming
riveted.
The standing ovation the
show receives at the end is well earned by all involved and that
includes not only Chris, but the three musicians, Paul Knight (a
former concert pianist), the trumpeter, the trombonist, and Douglas
on the technical side.
A short trailer for the
DVD has just been posted on YouTube - ‘Champagne Charlie - stage
show’ will find it. Chris tells me that if anyone here in Crete
wants a copy of the DVD he can organise it direct with the UK company
involved in the release – saving postage for us!
You can contact Chris on christopher@christopherbeeching.com
You can also find it here
To watch the trailer go to this link:
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