The Secret Life of Bees - Almeida 2023

And (possibly) a new cast recording!

Hope it happens - saw this in New York in 2019 and thought it was a lovely piece of theatre

No surprises that Sonia Friedman is attached to this one. Very high hopes.

Are we going to get a cast announcement before the sale?

What are the chances LaChanze will be in this production?

I'm still haunted by how boring Whisper House was, this is supposed to be a lot better right?

Yeah... that was time I will never get back. 

Danielle Fiamanya is doing super well! Some casting news:

www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/cast-for-the-secret-life-of-bees-musical_57955.html

I did not have plans to see this show, but with this cast I'll just have to buy me a ticket.

Honestly they are NOT RV at all are they?! Blows my mind.

IF12old you which was the best seat I’d have to kill you as it’s a secret……

Great thank you. I am Row G RV for Streetcar so hopefully will have better luck with that one than the Tammy Faye seat.

Seems to be a chunk more seats on sale, nights showing as sold out yesterday have fair availability now.

I was really excited for this based on my remembrance of its off-Broadway awards season hype and really loved it tonight. It’s hard to say exactly why I liked it but from the start the music was really great and beautifully sung by the whole cast.

This is one of those shows that’s tied less to a strong central narrative and more to the characters, and whether or not it’s one that does that well is a question I’m still asking myself. At the beginning I was questioning the focus of the show and was curious where it’d go but towards the end of the first act I thought I knew what it was doing and that it had weaved a lot more nuance in than I had initially thought. It wasn’t until the final song that I realized that if the show was ending i would be pretty dissatisfied with it. It felt like certain parts had been abandoned and left unresolved. I understand in a way what they were doing, but it felt very unsatisfying. It may just be me though. I went back and started looking at the broadwayworld thread for this and one comment on how it didn’t know whether it wanted Lily to be the lead or if it wanted to be an ensemble piece felt like it connected with my thoughts.

I’ll be back Tuesday and am very curious to see how I react the second time, but up until the ending I loved it so much and would’ve said it’s one of the best things I’ve seen this year.

Really struggling to put my thoughts together on this.

In most ways I thought it was brilliantly staged, the songs were strong, though a lot not overly memorable, and the cast were all fantastic.

But there was just a bit of a disconnect for me, especially in the second half. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
It seemed to me that at times it was trying to merge the dialogue and songs together with no breaks for applause, and at others there were long pauses where the audience didn’t know whether to applaud or not.
I also felt like often the score didn’t fit the scene. There would be an emotional or serious scene and then the track would start with quite an upbeat intro and it just seemed a bit off at places, but that might be fixed in previews.
I would agree above about it seems to be showcasing the characters more than the actual story, which i didn’t think was the most riveting for a musical but just my opinion.

The last 2 musicals I saw at The Almeida (Spring Awakening and Tammy Faye) I returned 4 or 5 times each but I can’t imagine myself going back to this, however I’m very glad I did see it, and my biggest takeaway was the fantastic cast, and there were some standouts songs and performances.