Top Hat: Cheek to cheek (which seems strangely risky in these times of social distancing)

 

 Although this isn’t another Strictly post, it is connected to ballroom dancing, in a way, and possibly comes in time for the movie themed Strictly this Saturday (apologies to anyone who isn’t a fan of the show – I need my Strictly more than ever this year!).

  This next programme takes us back to October 2014, and a production of Top Hat at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. The actor, Tom Chambers (winner of ‘Strictly’ series 6 as it happens…), has appeared in the stage musical of  Top Hat, but it wasn’t him in this Edinburgh show. This particular production, with Alan Burkitt and Charlotte Gooch as our leads, or our Fred and Ginger* as it were, toured the UK in 2014 and 2015 and I went to see it when we were staying in Edinburgh for a week during the ‘tatty holidays’ (2 week October school holiday in Scotland). We came down from Montrose and my paternal Grandma Isobel came up from Leeds to join us (though she is really the Scottish one – born and bred in Glasgow, though she’s a longtime Yorkshire resident). My two grandmothers didn’t have very much in common at all, but ‘Strictly’ and ballroom dancing might have been their only common interest and it was actually just Grandma Isobel and I who went to see Top Hat in Edinburgh during that particular trip. Grandma, who was in her late seventies at the time and is now very nearly 83, definitely got to feel youthful when watching Top Hat, as the majority of people in the audience were probably over eighty and maybe even over ninety, in some cases (it was a matinée…). We’ve seen some other shows with this Grandma, including a great production of It’s a wonderful life done in the style of a radio play in Blackpool (October 2015) and the stage musical Strictly Ballroom (Christmas 2016) in Leeds. I was only fourteen when we saw Top Hat and still quite naïve, so the 1930s musical with its polite and formal style (woo hoo – cheek to cheek!) was about right for me then. These days I find myself watching all kinds of outrageous content for my university film module (Ewan McGregor rolling around naked in custard in Young Adam last year, risqué dance scenes in a Fosse’s All that Jazz and drugs and threesomes in Cammell and Roeg’s Performance). Obviously with social distancing and online learning this is what counts as excitement in autumn 2020 (well, that and Strictly’s current season…).

But back to Top Hat - it was originally a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire musical film, from 1935, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. It was then adapted into a stage musical in 2011 and it features big, stylish dance numbers and several well-known classic songs, including ‘Cheek to Cheek’, ‘Let’s face the music and dance’, ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ and ‘Isn’t this a lovely day (to be caught in the rain?)’, which was quite possibly the influence for the brilliant La La Land musical number, ‘A lovely night’, as the 2017 film pays homage to multiple classic movie musicals.

 Whenever, anyone mentions Fred and Ginger, which happens frequently, as they get referenced in almost everything, from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to Glee and Strictly, I always think of the famous quote that I really like, saying that Ginger did everything that Fred did, but ‘backwards and in heels’ (attributed to different people over the years but currently cartoonist Robert/Bob Thaves is considered the source of this line). As a 21^st century feminist, I can appreciate that while some of the content in the old Fred and Ginger movies is unsurprisingly dated, in terms of attitudes towards marriage and relationships, I also like that the Ginger Rogers characters give as good as they get and are just as quick-witted, sharp and smart as the guys in suits (if not more so).

 

*Ginger was short for Virginia but her natural hair colour was also ‘auburn’ apparently. As a ‘classic’ redhead myself, I've been called Ginger now and again (sometimes in a friendly way, sometimes not, but neither connected to my dancing...).