4,631 posts
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Post by Phantom of London on Jul 24, 2018 21:19:19 GMT
From Thursday the Watermill Theatre, Newbury are doing their summer musical Sweet Charity until 15th September.
If anyone finds this too irresistible and thinking of booking tickets, which I will, their are no trains to Newbury until 05th August.
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351 posts
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Post by sam22 on Jul 24, 2018 21:42:59 GMT
I'm going this Saturday. I'm not that bothered about the show particularly but love the theatre!
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1,316 posts
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Post by tmesis on Aug 10, 2018 10:22:30 GMT
Well it's always an absolute joy to visit the idyllic Watermill - definitely my favourite theatre in Britain.
I enjoyed yesterday's matinee, although I have few reservations.
The positives -
It's an excellent production with extremely imaginative use of the tiny space. The many scene transformations were done with great aplomb; from Central Park, to hotel suite, to Fandango Club, to lift, all done brilliantly, and more imaginatively, than at the Menier.
Cy Coleman's great score was really well performed; it was an actor/musician realisation, which often dismays me, but The Watermill are well practised at this, and both vocally and instrumentally, this was really tight.
Oscar was extremely well played by Alex Cardall, an actor straight out of drama school.
All the Fandango girls were superb.
The negatives -
Gemma Sutton sang the part of Charity well but she didn't have the right combination of vulnerability and determination to really convince in the part.
Because of the actor/musician nature of the performance the choreography was too limited.
That contrapuntal masterpiece 'The Rhythm of Life' was 'updated' to disasterous effect by adding extraneous funk rhythm and bass guitar notes that, unbelievably, didn't even fit the harmonies! This should be the highlight of the first part of Act Two but it was execrable.
They tinkered a bit with the ending (which is hard to pull off anyway) and made it more downbeat than normal.
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1,010 posts
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Post by David J on Aug 18, 2018 16:44:17 GMT
Im sorry but despite the efforts of the cast and production itself I dislike this musical
In this metoo day and age I can certainly imagine some people want to put this on. But story wise this is just flounders around until it finally finds a plot in the second act that lacks tension. And that bleeding ending comes out of nowhere as the tone takes a complete 180 degree turn. Even the two coach loads of oaps couldn’t believe what was going on
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