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Post by showoff on Apr 13, 2018 8:08:01 GMT
The only thing that did not ring true for me, as an Australian who lived through the 1940s and 1950s in Sydney, was the inclusion of several non-white performers in the ensemble. Now before you call for me to be deported, I do know and understand about colour-blind casting and diversity and all that sort of stuff in the theatre today. I am just saying that in Sydney or Melbourne in the 1940s and 1950s you would not have seen any black or coloured people competing in ballroom dancing competitions. From 1901 to the mid 1960s Australia vigorously pursued what was known as the White Australia Policy, so much so that in the mid 1950s Ella Fitzgerald was refused entry into Australia to sing in a pop concert because she was black. The native black Australian aborigines did not participate in any way in social or cultural activities so to see those non-white ballroom dancers on stage tonight just looked wrong, especially when all the rest of the details establishing the Australian setting were well observed. As true as all of this is, if we only have white casting in pieces set before modern day, well then we'd be enforcing the 'White Australia Policy' too. It would almost be giving credence to the way things were then. It's a musical, it asks you to suspend belief. I mean, it's not 'real' that Will Young would be strolling amongst them, or touching them when dancing, or sitting atop a drinks machine. In Hamilton, none of the founding fathers had a drop of melanin, but look at how they are cast, and the show is better for it. I don't feel it looked wrong at all. It's an obtuse film/musical. It's not very grounded in the very depths of reality. The characters are caricatures. If we can accept that, then having BAME people cast isn't a big deal, and I cannot comprehend it looking 'wrong'.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 8:40:43 GMT
As true as all of this is, if we only have white casting in pieces set before modern day, well then we'd be enforcing the 'White Australia Policy' too. It would almost be giving credence to the way things were then. It's a musical, it asks you to suspend belief. I mean, it's not 'real' that Will Young would be strolling amongst them, or touching them when dancing, or sitting atop a drinks machine. In Hamilton, none of the founding fathers had a drop of melanin, but look at how they are cast, and the show is better for it. I don't feel it looked wrong at all. It's an obtuse film/musical. It's not very grounded in the very depths of reality. The characters are caricatures. If we can accept that, then having BAME people cast isn't a big deal, and I cannot comprehend it looking 'wrong'. Yes, showoff, what you say is right. But in my own defence, I meant it seemed wrong "to me" because it was absolutely not a diverse, multi-ethnic society in Australia in those days and I lived there in exactly those very days. Yes, of course there are theatrical conventions to be observed, especially in a musical, and regarding 'Hamilton' there will not be any members of the audience today who were around in New York in 1776 to have a personal response to how that show is cast. But if the stage version of 'Strictly Ballroom' is meant to be a theatrical representation of the original movie, which it clearly is, then to me personally, that was one element that was not accurately copied even though so many others were.
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Post by showoff on Apr 13, 2018 9:15:11 GMT
As true as all of this is, if we only have white casting in pieces set before modern day, well then we'd be enforcing the 'White Australia Policy' too. It would almost be giving credence to the way things were then. It's a musical, it asks you to suspend belief. I mean, it's not 'real' that Will Young would be strolling amongst them, or touching them when dancing, or sitting atop a drinks machine. In Hamilton, none of the founding fathers had a drop of melanin, but look at how they are cast, and the show is better for it. I don't feel it looked wrong at all. It's an obtuse film/musical. It's not very grounded in the very depths of reality. The characters are caricatures. If we can accept that, then having BAME people cast isn't a big deal, and I cannot comprehend it looking 'wrong'. Yes, showoff, what you say is right. But in my own defence, I meant it seemed wrong "to me" because it was absolutely not a diverse, multi-ethnic society in Australia in those days and I lived there in exactly those very days. Yes, of course there are theatrical conventions to be observed, especially in a musical, and regarding 'Hamilton' there will not be any members of the audience today who were around in New York in 1776 to have a personal response to how that show is cast. But if the stage version of 'Strictly Ballroom' is meant to be a theatrical representation of the original movie, which it clearly is, then to me personally, that was one element that was not accurately copied even though so many others were. But the trouble is, there are so many old films, old theatre pieces that are made by white people for white people. If you believe it has to be observed to the exact same standards, there would be no point in BAME people even bothering to get involved in the theatre. If you cast it in such a way, you may as well be back in those times entirely because people of different races won't be given any opportunity to be on that stage at all. And you don't have to have been alive in the period to know all of the presidents were white in the past. So most people in the audience know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were white. Does it matter at all? I mean for me, Will Young spoilt the depiction of the film completely. Why does it matter? That's what I can't really get my head around. Why does it really matter if the cast is all white because it was in the film? I mean if it was addressed in the film, if the political status was even mentioned then it may be relevant. As it was only a piece of entertainment, it really has no need to present itself as completely white. Being in theatres lately, it's proving how white it still is. The audience isn't even majority white, it's nearly 100%. By not representing anyone other then white people, it'll continue to stay that way. In complete honesty, what should seem wrong was the way things were, not what's being shown on the stage. But I don't know if that's just me.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 9:59:52 GMT
And you don't have to have been alive in the period to know all of the presidents were white in the past. So most people in the audience know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were white. Knowing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were white is not quite the same thing as having actually seen them in person and voted for them! But your point about the addition of Will Young spoiling the film is a good one, and your arguments for the inclusion of BAME people in theatre today are persuasive. But I do wonder sometimes why those same people in general are not more interested in attending theatre as you rightly say. Even at Stratford East, where for the past fifty years the management of the Theatre Royal has been trying to establish a diverse and multi-ethnic local audience, this has not happened and it is the aim of the current chairperson and the new artistic director to shut down these activities and try to attract audiences from the West End to a kind of new cultural centre in East London which will presumably ignore the local BAME population unless they want to see Shaw and Shakespeare and the Greek classics as well as work by contemporary writers – and no musicals. Oops, sorry but I am straying from the main point here which is the casting of 'Strictly Ballroom' and my personal reaction to it.
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Post by showoff on Apr 13, 2018 12:04:35 GMT
And you don't have to have been alive in the period to know all of the presidents were white in the past. So most people in the audience know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were white. Knowing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were white is not quite the same thing as having actually seen them in person and voted for them! But your point about the addition of Will Young spoiling the film is a good one, and your arguments for the inclusion of BAME people in theatre today are persuasive. But I do wonder sometimes why those same people in general are not more interested in attending theatre as you rightly say. Even at Stratford East, where for the past fifty years the management of the Theatre Royal has been trying to establish a diverse and multi-ethnic local audience, this has not happened and it is the aim of the current chairperson and the new artistic director to shut down these activities and try to attract audiences from the West End to a kind of new cultural centre in East London which will presumably ignore the local BAME population unless they want to see Shaw and Shakespeare and the Greek classics as well as work by contemporary writers – and no musicals. Oops, sorry but I am straying from the main point here which is the casting of 'Strictly Ballroom' and my personal reaction to it. Yes I agree, although we've seen the old pictures of them for years, the very old fashioned, very white and dusty looking portraits of these white men. So it's very much in our minds worldwide. I would say it's easier to not be bothered by an ensemble member being black compared to a historical figure, and considering this isn't political, it's very light and fluffy, it shouldn't really factor in to casting. I think the issue is that as a whole, for generation upon generation, the theatre has been very white. There's no way around it, so BAME people have just felt it's not for them. It's very hard to get around and not easily fixed. One theatre trying their best still isn't enough to change the consciousness of an entire race who have always felt excluded from this activity. How do you target the audience? I mean it's all very well intending to, but where is it advertised? What are you doing to give access to BAME children and their parents? Looking at the audience of Hamilton, it's was almost entirely white. A musical which should be accessible to everyone is still only really reaching the majority of white people. Watching The Olivier's, still a lot of shows are very white. 42nd street has the biggest cast in London, but they were very white. The relaunch of Chicago, a town which actually was diverse at that time, is very white. A big part of it is representation on the stage. Another part is the fact it's been a very white place for so long. You may feel very uncomfortable going somewhere where nobody else is going to look like you and you have felt excluded from for decades.
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:20:52 GMT
For me, I thought Drew McOnie's work as director and choreographer is outstanding in the way he has captured the feeling of life in Australia in the 1950s in the world of ballroom dancing, much as he gave us New York in the 1940s in 'On the Town' last year so brilliantly. I'm confused. Is this lastest version of Strictly Ballroom now set in the 1950s? It's been a while but, from what I remember, the film isn't, nor was the Leeds version.
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:35:05 GMT
Firstly, it seems that some of the members who did not enjoy the show are not relating it to the original successful and much loved Baz Luhrmann film on which it is based. OK, I guess that punters going to see a West End show will not necessarily be familiar with the movie on which it is based, but in that case why is 'Brief Encounter' currently playing successfully in the West End, and why are other shows based on movies like 'An American in Paris' considered to be so good? I didn't enjoy the show and I've seen the movie several times (and it's great). The issue for me was that it has no real right to call itself a musical. It's half "Strictly Ballroom - The Play" and half a Will Young covers concert. That's not a musical. I enjoyed the aspects that bore some resemblance to the film, but the show isn't what it's selling itself to be. It's like me calling myself a chef when I can knock up a half decent risotto, but I'm an accountant!
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:38:38 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting.
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:50:51 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting. Haha! Thank you I just hide my accountant tendencies well!
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:55:07 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting. Haha! Thank you I just hide my accountant tendencies well!Bet you've got a very comprehensive ticket price spreadsheet though?
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:59:24 GMT
Haha! Thank you I just hide my accountant tendencies well!Bet you've got a very comprehensive ticket price spreadsheet though? Ah, guilty. And an Access database!! 🤓
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 13:20:15 GMT
For me, I thought Drew McOnie's work as director and choreographer is outstanding in the way he has captured the feeling of life in Australia in the 1950s in the world of ballroom dancing, much as he gave us New York in the 1940s in 'On the Town' last year so brilliantly. TallPaul said: I'm confused. Is this lastest version of Strictly Ballroom now set in the 1950s? It's been a while but, from what I remember, the film isn't, nor was the Leeds version. Well, TallPaul, that's me scuppered totally. I have always assumed from the general atmosphere and the characters that the film of 'Strictly Ballroom' was set in the 1950s. The local Ballroom and Dance Studio where I lived in Sydney closed in about 1960 and I had assumed that the popularity of competitive ballroom dancing waned around that time. Looking now at Wikipedia it seems more likely that Baz Luhrmann probably set his original play in the early 1980s when it was written. If this is so then I have been talking rubbish. However, Wiki also says that Baz Lurhmann partly based Strictly Ballroom on the life of dancer and choreographer Keith Bain, whose time as a ballroom champion was in the early 1960s, so this might also be the setting of 'Strictly Ballroom' when the White Australia Policy was still effectively keeping the population white. But as showoff said earlier, does it really matter about two members of the ensemble in a comedy musical -- oops, I should say comedy play with a lot of incidental music!
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 13:28:00 GMT
Oops again!
"Quote" obviously has views on this matter as well since it has totally sabotaged my latest post!
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 13:29:33 GMT
^ Over to our Board friends, then Tony, for their thoughts on the era.
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Post by showoff on Apr 13, 2018 13:36:00 GMT
I always thought it was set in the 80's.
It just felt like that era.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 14:21:26 GMT
Good god i cant stand will young anyway and now i'm going to see a will young concert set in the 50's with an 80s soundtrack.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 14:26:08 GMT
Good god i cant stand will young anyway and now i'm going to see a will young concert set in the 50's with an 80s soundtrack. Well if you can't stand Will Young you could.. and this is controversial.. not go? Miss Young does wear some rather lovely outfits though I'm reliably informed.
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Post by Elle on Apr 13, 2018 14:26:55 GMT
It's not set in the 50's. Both the movie and the show are set in the 1980's and the outfits, hairstyles, make-up and overall styling make that very clear. The movie and the show are very similar. I can't say how many different ethnicities were in either because I don't pay attention to that and just enjoyed watching both. The story actually depicts how Australia became more multi-cultural in the 80's. This article explains it well and spoiler alert: australia-explained.com.au/films/strictly-ballroom
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Post by Steve on Apr 13, 2018 15:28:16 GMT
One third Will Young covers concert, one third Drew McOnie dance show, one third lamebrained comedy, barely qualifying as a musical, I thought this a bit of a disjointed mess until Zizi Strallen glued those disparate parts together with a hugely appealing breakout, funny, dynamic, heartfelt central turn. Some spoilers follow. . . I've seen Zizi Strallen a ton of times, but she's never had a role as important as this one. The show's genre-bending might infuriate lovers of musicals, because the characters don't sing their emotions, they DANCE them. It might infuriate dance lovers, because there's just not enough dance: "Dancing with Myself" and Bizet's Habanera are two inspired Drew McOnie trademarked exceptions, but mostly characters stand around doing slightly offensive comedy of the "Aren't Aussies a bit simple" variety (this can be partially excused cos Baz Luhrman is making fun of himself, because the source material was the same, and because everybody in comedies are a bit simple). But this comedy falls flat hard, and often, I found, except vis a vis: Zizi Strallen: Not only is she a knockout dancer and a winning presence, as anyone who saw her play the warm, vulnerable, younger version of Janie Dee's ice-cold Phyllis, in the National's Follies, will attest, but she is full on funny, here, as well. Her Patsy-Ferran-reminiscent expressive over-eager saucer eyes bulge geekily with each desperately gawky romantic mistep her character Fran makes toward Jonny Labey's dreamy dance king, Scott Hastings. Yet, Strallen never goes so far as to caricature Fran such that we don't care about her. In fact, while I cared a little bit about Jonny Labey's Scott, and a little bit about Stephen Matthews' much put-upon Doug Hastings, it was ONLY Zizi Strallen's Fran I cared ALOT about. And it really made the show for me, seeing this gawky, geeky, funny girl clumsily set about attaining her ambitions. And to see the clumsiness of that Just-Fran character turn into graceful magic on the dance floor in a dream dance pairing with Jonny Labey was just magic! Apart from Strallen, the next most important ingredient to me enjoying this fluffy frothy confounding confection was Will Young. He is too self-effacing to make a great narrator of the story, I felt (I mean his bows lasted a millisecond, so much did the actor despise the spotlight), but as a mariachi-style accompaniment to the characters, serenading their cares from the sidelines, his voice is sweet, high-pitched, soft and beautiful, and he brings romance and tenderness to the proceedings, where otherwise there might be flat flailing comedy. To Strallen's and Young's invaluable contributions, add some lovely McOnie choreography (though not enough), some pretty primary colours (the costumes are always everywhere), and a blend of eighties (Time after Time, Dancing with Mysel, Let's Dance) and sixties (Perhaps Perhaps, Hound Dog, Tequila) jukebox, and you have a quirky quaint funny winner. Strallen is the key. 4 stars.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 15:47:22 GMT
It's not set in the 50's. Both the movie and the show are set in the 1980's and the outfits, hairstyles, make-up and overall styling make that very clear. The movie and the show are very similar. I can't say how many different ethnicities were in either because I don't pay attention to that and just enjoyed watching both. The story actually depicts how Australia became more multi-cultural in the 80's. This article explains it well and spoiler alert: australia-explained.com.au/films/strictly-ballroomThanks, elle. That seems to set out the background very fully, although I don't entirely agree with some of what is said about the waves of immigrants that did indeed change Australia's cultural and ethnic mix, but I don't want to get drawn into that discussion here. But I obviously have to accept that the show is set in the 1980s when Lurhmann first wrote his play although I am still influenced by the fact that he was partly inspired by the life of Keith Bain, whose ballroom championship days were in the early 1960s. I just didn't correctly get the references to the fashions and hair styles of the 1980s and thought they were from the earlier time.
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Post by Phantom of London on Apr 13, 2018 22:19:02 GMT
So of Baz Luhrmann films, we get Strictly Ballroom, But it looks like Broadway going to get Moulin Rouge, so who got the rough deal? Of course Moulin Rouge would be out of this universe.
I am still recovering from the Australians sending us, that god damm awful camp hit with a bus, at least that had a stellar performance from Tony Sheldon, where this is just plain awful, cheap, tacky and forced. Do we need to see another show, where the husband is hen pecked by his wife, but manages to get assertive for the end? This had more end of the pier about it than West End.
Someone needs to step up to the plate and grab hold of Strictly Ballroom and stick it in the corner.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 14, 2018 11:56:01 GMT
where this is just plain awful, cheap, tacky and forced. Phantom of London has obviously never seen suburban Australians of the 1980s in their natural domestic habitat! This show is actually reality TV at its most truthful!
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Post by musicalmarge on Apr 16, 2018 23:06:19 GMT
Saw this tonight, what a load of RUBBISH!!! The staging was a total MESS! Not good and the worst set I’ve ever seen on the West End! 5/10
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Post by ensembleswings on Apr 16, 2018 23:15:58 GMT
Went and saw this tonight, I don’t really know what to say about it. It wasn’t awful but there’s definitely far better shows out there. Just not my thing at all, and that kind of hurts to say as I usually really enjoy watching ballroom dance
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2018 23:19:55 GMT
Saw this tonight, what a load of RUBBISH!!! The staging was a total MESS! Not good and the worst set I’ve ever seen on the West End! 5/10 Rubbish Mess And you still award 5/10 The board is too funny
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 16, 2018 23:33:23 GMT
Yeah I’m with Parsley in that musicalmarge - if it’s as bad as you’re saying, why give it 5/10? That’s still 2.5-3 stars... Be interested to know some of your thoughts in more detail. I can’t stand Will Young, so I won’t be going to this unfortunately - a shame as a friend worked on it in Leeds and said it’s great and I love me a Strallen!
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Post by shady23 on Apr 17, 2018 7:19:40 GMT
Baz Luhrmann is one of the guests on the BBC Radio Two breakfast show this Friday to discuss this show.
Isn't one of the points of reworking a show to create a part for a "star" that they will go on to do promo like this for you?
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Post by musicalmarge on Apr 17, 2018 7:32:50 GMT
Yeah I’m with Parsley in that musicalmarge - if it’s as bad as you’re saying, why give it 5/10? That’s still 2.5-3 stars... Be interested to know some of your thoughts in more detail. I can’t stand Will Young, so I won’t be going to this unfortunately - a shame as a friend worked on it in Leeds and said it’s great and I love me a Strallen! Maybe because there are still talented performers on stage, that some of the songs used are popular hits, because the costumes were good and the choreography effective? There’s even the odd line that made me laugh. That’s the reason why I gave it 5 out of 10. The musical is pretty hopeless and didn’t work for me (act 2 is a total mess and rushed) - but there are also some very talented people on the stage. It’s not good but I’ve seen worse - that’s why I scored it that. Just as a critic might give a show 2 stars. Rather simple.
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Post by shady23 on Apr 17, 2018 7:36:22 GMT
They should put "it's not good but I've seen worse" on the posters ☺
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Post by richey on Apr 18, 2018 9:11:45 GMT
Well no-one can deny Will isn't taking his role seriously!
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