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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 15:09:41 GMT
We'll have none of that talk tonyloco. If nothing else, it gives you something to hang around for! Thanks for that encouraging message, TallPaul, but as Shakespeare notes, it's not much fun sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste and sans just about everything else!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 14:55:06 GMT
It would be madness, wouldn't it, to close a family-friendly musical like 42nd Street in December, just as the entire building industry closes down for a fortnight? If it has to close, surely much more sensible to close in January 2019. Oh no! I have already got tickets for the two previously announced last nights. If the actual last night gets put any further away my attendance will probably have to be a posthumous one – but at least I will get in free!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 14:30:58 GMT
I used to stack all mine on a bookshelf according to their size but there are so many now they’re in a box in the loft. I hated the big square ones, the size of an LP. Impossible to stack. But the worst are some of the ‘quirky’ ones... I have one from the Young Vic, Terese Raquin, which I seem to remember folded out from the middle and it contained a rubber glove! Very bulky. I rarely buy programmes now. When Ken Hill was putting on his shows at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, after Joan Littlewood left, he was partial to 'quirky' programmes. For 'Is your Doctor Really Necessary' there was a white cardboard box with a red cross on it and a couple of plastic things like thermometers inside; for 'Curse of the Werewolf' there was a cardboard face mask of a very hairy werewolf with elastic bands to fasten it over one's ears, for 'Land of the Dinosaurs' there were several large white cardboard bones held together with ribbon, and so on. I gratefully donated the ones I had kept to Murray Melvin when he set up an archive at the theatre some years ago, along with my collection of production pics, flyers, posters, etc., none of which had survived at the theatre.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 14:14:37 GMT
Look out, here comes a tonyloco anecdote on follow-spotting.
When I was regular pianist at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, for their monthly Sunday Night Variety Shows in the early 1980s, we got all sorts of different acts to top the bill. On one occasion, the whole of the second half was given over to a sort of cabaret spot by Pat Kirkwood, who was then in her 60s and semi-retired but considering making a come-back and the show at Stratford was to be a sort of try-out. She brought along her own musicians and as producer she had the legendary Robert Nesbitt, who was particularly noted for his skill at lighting. (Famous anecdote: a member of the ensemble in a Royal Variety Show at the Palladium is asked to stand a bit further upstage. "Oh no" says the boy, "I can't move. I've been lit by Robert Nesbitt!")
The whole ambiance at the Theatre Royal in those days (and probably still is) was very much an informal affair with enthusiastic locals working on the shows doing front of house, being stage hands and such. During the band call on the afternoon before the show, the rather frustrated Mr Nesbitt was trying to arrange a stage setting for Ms Kirkwood's act and at one point he called out into the auditorium: "Where is the follow spot operator?" to which a voice replied: "She's just nipped out to Tesco's in the precinct to do her shopping. She'll be back soon." Well, that's how they do theatre in the East End, and as far as I know, Pat Kirkwood was never heard of again.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 13:45:03 GMT
Wembley copes pretty easily with events at both Arena and Stadium already (and the busy cinema complex), and was fine with the Conference Centre operating as well - far more seats than this new place will add. Even better now that they have re-designed the station and surrounding areas, I'd say. I'll second that. Even on 'event days' when the stadium is in use for a sporting event or a pop concert there is very little local disruption apart from a bit of minor diverting of a couple of bus routes. I would expect that a theatre holding say 1,000 or 1,500 people would hardly be noticed in the grand scheme of things!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 13:12:05 GMT
BTW, bimse, where does the British Library stand in your investigation of archives? Have you approached them at all? I know it has the reputation for being a particularly large black hole into which things disappear, but on the other hand it is the nation's principal archive for all things printed. If you wished, I could make a discreet and unofficial enquiry of a pal of mine who looks after the sound archive to get his view on the BL's official stand on material relating to theatre in the widest sense. There is always the question of what they have already got but they might be pleased to get some of what you are disposing of.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 2:04:17 GMT
I thoroughly enjoyed the opening night of the ENB short season at the Coliseum with Song of the Earth preceding La Sylphide.
Song of the Earth was given a very strong musical performance with tenor Samuel Sakker and contralto Rhonda Browne doing sterling work riding Mahler's large orchestra successfully. Ms Browne was particular fine with a performance that found much light and shade in the taxing music. Tamara Rojo gave an accomplished and moving performance as The Woman and was ably supported by Josef Caley as The Man and Ferrando Carratala Coloma as The Messenger of Death. Senri Kou was delightful in the third song, being upside down most stylishly for much of the time.
Although La Sylphide was very entertaining, I felt that Jurgita Dronina was just a bit light-weight dramatically in the title role. The Sylphide is after all a cheeky little minx who steals James away from his bride on their wedding day and entices him to follow her out into the woods. But the two main men, Isaac Hernandez as James and Daniel Kraus as Gurn were both terrific and showed splendid elan and elevation in their strong Bournonville choreography. I prefer Madge to be danced by a man, but Jane Haworth gave a strong interpretation of the role.
The company was on cracking form in both ballets and the Scottich campery in La Sylphide was carried off with great gusto.
I am beginning to think the Coliseum is jinxed. As with the opening night of the ENO Aida recently, the stalls were full but there were swathes of empty seats at the back of the Upper Circle and no doubt the balcony was equally poorly attended, and I understand the ENB has a loyal following – it certainly gets great reviews. Does London just not want a second big house for opera and ballet alongside the Royal Opera House, even at much more affordable prices?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 1:36:23 GMT
tonyloco I would say Rigoletto is my favourite amongst Verdi's opera - not the greatest, that would be Otello, Aida or Don Carlo. It's pure pleasure from beginning to end with one cracking aria/ensemble after another. There are really no dull moments at all. I adore La Traviata but my mind wanders a bit at the start of act 2 in a less than committed performance. Rigoletto has amazing dramatic drive from start to finish and it's his first truly great opera where he really finds his feet as a dramatist. I'm inclined to agree. My secret pleasure is really 'Il trovatore' but that's mainly for the white hot score whereas 'Rigoletto' is actually much more convincing dramatically. As far as I can recall, it is also probably the only Verdi opera that has such a juicy cameo role as Sparafucile, although other roles elsewhere like the Grand Inquisitor in 'Don Carlo' can also make their mark with a powerful performance.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 10, 2018 1:23:47 GMT
Is this the new Mornington Crescent thread? And tonyloco's written us some Aussie rules? This has been a rather unusual thread so far so I might as well continue in the same rather surreal vein! 1. There's no point in me making up any rules when people just ignore them most of the time, Aussie or otherwise. 2. The Christmas Morning Crescent game was never finished so if I say "Happy New Year to everybody in Mornington Crescent" here on this thread have I won? 3. Talking of not knowing what a follow spot is, I wonder whether some people are equally mystified as to what a tube of greasepaint is for?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 9, 2018 1:09:19 GMT
Thanks tmesis and Mr Snow for your interesting reports on Rigoletto. I'm glad you both enjoyed the current revival and I have now taken some vicarious pleasure from reading your comments. As I have probably said before, for me Verdi is right at the top of my list of favourite opera composers and it is good to know that there are singers around who can do justice to a masterpiece like Rigoletto.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 9, 2018 1:00:37 GMT
Interesting that you have brought up this subject tonyloco as I am presently trying to find a home or homes for the bulk of a theatre collection (posters, programmes, flyers, from plays, musical theatre, variety, pantomime, circus) which I inherited from my late brother. The collection is mainly 1960s to 2002, I saved everything (despite family members wanting to throw out these thousands of lovely items) but (for several reasons) I have only recently got round to sorting through it all . I have been warned against donating to certain national collections , which have a lot of this kind of thing which never sees the light of day again , until the items are eventually auctioned off. The Australian guy’s attitude is appalling , but this seems to be the attitude of a few archives. I’m struggling to find any interest . Any help with where I can donate items from the collection will be gratefully accepted. I have successfully ebayed duplicates and taken holidays with the proceeds. My brother would have liked that . Maybe I’ve answered my own question . Actually, I think you have indeed answered your own question. For now, just keep anything that specially appeals to you then flog the rest on ebay and enjoy the proceeds. You are probably right about the main national archives (Mander and Mitchenson at Bristol University and the Theatre Museum at the V&A for example) but I wonder whether the British Music Hall Society might be interested in receiving that part of the collection that comes into their orbit. Check out the Archives section on their website where you will find the email address of the archivist David Reed, unless you have already contacted them.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 8, 2018 15:04:58 GMT
Programmes, huh, who needs em? I had to get rid of our roomful when we moved, keeping just a few specials. Don’t buy them now. ( except for ones with good essays..Em, that's you and Angels) But isn’t it lovely to see a young 'un' clutching a programme on the tube on the way home? That reminder of magic stored and inspiring for years. Going off on a Tonyloco tandem...my programme collection started seriously in London in March 1960 and also included some Australian programmes from 1947 onwards that I collected myself and some earlier ones given to me by a friend of my parents. Some years ago on a visit to Sydney I went to the Opera House where at that time there was a general theatrical archive being started and asked whether I might leave my collection to them on my death. A rather prissy young man looked disdainfully at me and said: 'Oh well, if you must! But we have loads of stuff like that and we really don't want any more.' I heard later that the archive had been closed down! I then heard from an Australian friend that the Adelaide University's Barr Smith Library had an extensive collection of British theatre programme which ended at 1960. I contacted the library and they said they would be thrilled to get my collection when I died but as they were already filling my house, I arranged to ship the bulk of the collection to Adelaide there and then, keeping back just a few special early Australian ones. A few years later I shipped off a second load, by which time programmes were generally getting bigger and bulkier. Anyway, I know that the library is slowly digitising my collection, but this is a slow and labour-intensive process and, to be honest, some of the results online are disappointing, such as with opera programmes the person inputting just lists singers' names without specifying the voice type or the role being sung, which is useless. I am talking about this because it raises the subject of whether collections of theatre programmes from recent times are of any archival value or should they just be dumped. From the era I am talking about (the 1950s in Sydney and the 1960s in London) there was not a lot of archiving going on apart from a few specialised organisations like the Theatre Museum (now part of the V&A) and the Royal Opera House. But I suspect that the programmes people like us have collected over the past couple of decades are already safely archived in various places, including digitally, and there will be no real loss to posterity if they are eventually scrapped, unless our families and descendants are interested enough to want to take and keep them for future reference. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 8, 2018 14:15:12 GMT
Fantastic series and excellent acting by both leads. I see numerous awards for both. It would be great to see other stories about stars of the Golden Age in Hollywood Yes, that would be great. In fact, we are already about to see one actually happening in real time as Olivia de Havilland is suing Ryan Murphy about how her own feud with her sister Joan Fontaine was depicted in 'Feud'. Just off the top of my head, I would be interested in series that are as well-made as 'Feud' even about the Hollywood relationships that were happy, like Bogart & Bacall and Tracey & Hepburn. And an accurate and detailed telling of the Mac and Mabel story including all the other players like Fatty Arbuckle, Mack Sennet's other stars and the various writers of the day. And what about just individual portraits of the great stars of the silent era like the Gish Sisters, Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Gloria Swanson (pace 'Sunset Boulevard'), Eric von Stroheim, Laurel and Hardy, WC Fields... I'm sure some of them would make fascinating mini-series. Or am I just fantasising about old Hollywood...!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 8, 2018 13:33:42 GMT
a lot of glossy adverts including one about the architect Frank Matcham who designed the Palladium. He's not still touting for work, is he? He's been dead 97 years. I believe he's working on a new design for the proposed Wembley Park Theatre!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 8, 2018 11:54:29 GMT
Hooray! This is a topic that has been irritating me for several years – in fact rather a lot longer than that now that I come to think about it. Both the size and the price of theatre programmes have been increasing at an alarming rate until a ghastly new height (or is it low) was reached for a normal programme with the £8 monstrosity for An American in Paris. I didn't buy the £10 'souvenir' for Bat Out of Hell but just kept the Obsidian newspaper and downloaded some advertising material from the internet which I can't find at this moment!
It seems that the A4 size is becoming standard these days for musicals and I don't mind that at £5 if the contents are as good as for Dick Whittington with biogs and good quality photos of the entire cast plus some nice features like all the previous versions of Dick Whittington done at the Palladium, a tribute to Sir Bruce Forsythe, a historical note on the real Dick Whittington and notes on the history of the Palladium plus a lot of glossy adverts including one about the architect Frank Matcham who designed the Palladium. Sure, one doesn't really need all of that but if all musicals would standardise on that then at least we would know what size handbag to take to the theatre! On the other hand, a plain free cast list as given at the Royal Opera House for opera and ballet and, I think, at the National Theatre would actually be even better!
As a man who doesn't carry a handbag, what I do carry is a dark plastic carrier bag about 14" by 16" (from M&S and other stores) which serves both to accommodate the programme as well as some Strepsils, plus my dark glasses, folding umbrella, scarf, cap and folding walking stick once I am safely in my seat at the theatre. I can recommend this, perhaps in addition to a purse or handbag as required.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 8, 2018 9:29:06 GMT
Yes, Caiaphas, I was there yesterday at the 5pm show and I agree with every word you say. It was all just wonderful. And, like last year's 'Cinderella', despite the 'spesh' acts like Diversity and Paul Zerdin, everything melded together convincingly, which I can't say for the first Palladium panto I saw back in the 1960s starring Cliff Richard and the Shadows!
One thing that struck me is that although it was a bit light on some traditional panto material like the Ghost Scene ('It's behind you!'), the kitchen scene where everybody gets covered in flour and a full version of the songsheet number, I was rather glad to avoid them, especially when what replaced them was so entertaining and fitted together so well.
I was also impressed at how neatly the writers had repeated from last year Nigel Havers's participation as an actor desperate to increase his role but had done it so cleverly so that he became a major part of the fun.
It was also my first show for 2018 and I just hope the new year continues so spectacularly well.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 15:12:08 GMT
I love the Apollo and will be back there for Evanescence in April, but that’s what I see it as...a rock/music (not even pop) venue. I remember seeing Riverdance there back in the day and feeling so detatched from the performance because of the size. The circle is huge & if you’re not in the front blocks you may aswell stand outside. I’d welcome any new venue in west London as it’d be nearer to home! 😀 Yes, I saw Riverdance at the Apollo from somewhere relatively close in the stalls and it was fabulous. Also, many years earlier in the 1960s, I saw the Duke Ellington Orchestra from somewhere in the middle of the stalls. They started playing 'Take the A train' while the curtain was still down and it was a real thrill when the curtain rose to reveal all those legendary musicians like Paul Gonsalves and the Duke himself actually there playing live on stage. It is unlikely that I will go to anything there any more but it is indeed an iconic venue.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 13:55:03 GMT
Ben out for rest of Lowry run with a broken ankle Will the understudy go out a youngster and come back a star? Sounds like a great idea for a musical! Hold that taxi!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 13:46:08 GMT
Shows how long ago I lived in London 😂 Sorry danb if I sounded pompous (which I did) in my response. I would love a new local theatre, something like the Swiss Cottage Theatre, within walking distance of where I live, and I really hope that comes to pass in the not too distant future.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 13:28:34 GMT
Surprised they don’t use Wembley conference centre & Earls Court 2 for the stuff they always use Hammersmith for. Is it stage size? Personally, I am really only interested in what happens at Wembley as it is where I live. The Wembley Conference Centre was demolished in 2006, which is when the current Wembley Arena was refurbished as a concert venue. The Arena holds 12,500 people and is basically a large, rather uncomfortable, concert venue and totally unsuitable for theatrical presentations. The new venue proposed for Wembley Park is intended to seat 1,500 people and be used as a theatre. I know nothing about Earls Court 2 except that Wiki says it was an exhibition centre that closed several years ago and has now been demolished. I'm not sure why another venue is needed for the things that currently take place at Hammersmith. The 'Apollo' is a very fine large theatre seating something like 3,500 people and as far as I can tell is very much 'fit for purpose'. It has a decent stage (I saw 'Riverdance' there some years ago) and seems to work perfectly well for recording TV shows.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 0:40:06 GMT
Tonight we saw the final two episodes of 'Feud' and I am really in bits. As Tibidabo said, it just got better and better as it went along and Jessica Lange's performance was really tremendous as the ageing Crawford. I thought the imaginary dinner party at the end was a stroke of genius and was typical of the high quality of the writing and directing throughout the whole series. As noted before, all the production details were first rate and I am already feeling deprived now that it has ended. It should scoop the pool for whatever awards are given for the best in TV – it could have been ghastly but it was in fact magnificent.
But at least we still have Dame Olivia de Havilland's lawsuit to look forward to!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 7, 2018 0:12:34 GMT
One thing that bothers me about productions of operas that alter the setting, and I mean really significantly as regards both place and time, or introduce major changes to the story as with the recent 'Lucia di Lammermoor' at Covent Garden, is how does this read with people seeing that particular opera for the first time? Yes, they might hear some outstandingly good singing but do they go away thinking that is actually what 'Lucia di Lammermoor' is about?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 6, 2018 14:23:33 GMT
Thanks for the heads-up on this – it's the first I've heard of it. The site is within walking distance of where I live so I will be very interested in seeing it open, provided I don't close first!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 6, 2018 13:54:15 GMT
Carmen's death is foreshadowed throughout the opera, most specifically in the cards scene in the 3rd Act where she keeps drawing the death card. To change the ending is to betray everything which has gone before. Brilliant observation, mallardo – you have hit the nail on the head!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 5, 2018 13:18:47 GMT
I hope they'll use real cats. That reminds me of an episode when I was working for a major record company. We were approached by a film producer who had an idea to make a film based on 'Romeo and Juliet' but using live cats. I did a deal licensing film synchronisation rights for one of our recordings of the complete score of Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' for quite a sizeable sum of money and a few months later the producer got in touch to say he would like to show us some of his advance filming. I got together a number of the senior company executives for what we expected to be a rather unusual experience and we settled down to watch the filmed material. Well, it was all totally meaningless – just a lot of cats walking around aimlessly. This went on, and on, and on..... and my colleagues gradually sneaked away out of the darkened room. Eventually the room was just about empty but the cats were still walking around on the screen to Prokofiev's music. I don't know whether or not the film was supposed to have dialogue overdubbed but what we saw was lacking any speech and seemed to be total rubbish. Needless to say nothing further was heard of the project and the record company made a tidy profit out of the deal, as did the conductor of the recording with whom we shared the fee. On the basis of that, I would not recommend filming ALW's 'Cats' with real moggies, pussies or any other kind of felines!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 5, 2018 12:35:07 GMT
My view on this is that in general opera houses should respect what the composer and librettist have written and mount operas according to what is specified in the score and in the libretto. I realise this is not always practical with some of Wagner's stage directions but with Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet and the rest of the traditional operatic canon, I want to see on stage what the composer and librettist intended. If a director wants to change both the setting and the ending of 'Carmen' then he should find a composer and librettist to go back to Mérimée's novel and compose a new opera that covers the changes the director wants. And the same for all other cases where productions have made significant changes to the original operas – the source material is all readily available, so write a new opera with new music and new text to incorporate the changes. If they want to mount 'Carmen' as written by Meilhac, Halévy and Bizet then do so as it stands! Yes, I know that opera is apparently likely to wither and die if it becomes a series of museum pieces, but if that is to be its destiny then so be it and let Verdi, Puccini, Bizet and co have a dignified end and not be degraded and ridiculed by inappropriate 'modern' stagings of their masterpieces.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 4, 2018 23:47:17 GMT
I think your Follies and my Follies are two different shows. A concert to me is not Follies, it’s songs nicely sung with no drama. Give me an actor for a Sondheim show anyday, it’s the character, the emotion, the mood that counts not perfect singing. I should also say that I’ve taught both acting and singing in my time and I’ve always seen the skills as transferable. As such the songs were performed the best I’ve seen, such as Losing My Mind and Could I Leave You, they landed more as pieces of Drama within the show when treated as sung monologues. The main performer I responsed to the least was Quast, although that may be as much to do with the character and my issues with him. Yes, I can see that we definitely have to agree to disagree. For me, Barbara Cook's performance of 'Losing my mind', even in concert, still has genuine dramatic depth and for me is preferable to the exaggerated and over-dramatic version I heard Imelda Staunton give at the preview I attended. To me, that was way over the top and made me want to tell her: 'Calm down, dear, it's only a musical!' Yes, I know I am being flippant but that's how I actually felt whereas I was totally involved and moved by everything in the whole show at that Palladium performance in 2007, which was in fact effectively fully staged and dramatised and nothing like a concert.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 4, 2018 15:52:55 GMT
A show like Follies, however, gets the acting absolutely right. Cardinal Pirelli, you and I have already exchanged similar opinions on '42nd Street' elsewhere and I hear what you are saying and accept your view. I cannot however agree with what you have just said about 'Follies' if you are talking about the current production at the NT. At the preview that I saw, I thought that the large space of the Olivier stage encouraged some of the performers to over-perform their numbers, presumably as encouraged by the director, Dominic Cooke. This is a musical and those numbers are songs and should therefore be sung. Listen to Barbara Cook and Julia Mackenzie singing 'Losing my mind', Eartha Kitt singing 'I'm still here' and so on. Honestly, I thought Imelda Staunton as Sally was auditioning for Lady Macbeth in 'Losing my mind'. The same was true of some of the other songs like Janie Dee's 'Could I leave you' and Di Botcher’s ‘Broadway Baby’. For me, the perfect realisation of 'Follies' was the semi-staged one-off gala at the Palladium on 5 February 2007. The cast was led by Liz Robertson, Maria Friedman, Tim Flavin and Philip Quast as the two central couples and we had Imelda Staunton singing ‘Broadway Baby’ and Kim Criswell singing ‘I’m still here’ – and it was all superb. Perhaps I should add that I saw the original London production and also the recent Albert Hall performance and I am familiar with the original Broadway cast album and the famous New York concert. Maybe I have misunderstood and you are talking about the acting of the characters in the dialogue sections outside of the songs, but I am not sure one can separate the two in 'Follies'. Anyway, perhaps we should just agree to disagree and enjoy or not enjoy the various productions of the musicals that we see!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 4, 2018 15:10:28 GMT
I wouldn't exactly say 42nd Street didn't live up to the hype, because I saw it early in previews before there was much hype, but I came out of it thinking "Great production of a so-so show" & then found almost everyone but me raving about it on the board. It makes me feel guilty for not loving it like may people do but, having revisited twice, I still feel it lacks the depth of characters for me to really love it. I went back again too, having seen it earlier in the run, thinking it may have improved but it hadn’t changed. Plus part of the set fell off. I was at least glad that one of the most irritating performers fell over when he bounded onstage at the start of a number and had to be replaced. Small mercies and all that... I can't speak for the rest of the members who have fallen in love with '42nd Street', but for me personally it brings to life in a thrilling way a batch of vibrant American songs from the 1930s that I have known and loved for almost my entire life of eighty years. The orchestrations are superb, the playing of the orchestra exciting and the singing and dancing sublime. I have also been a fan of musical theatre for seventy of those eighty years, starting with 'Annie Get Your Gun' in Sydney in 1947 and for me the clue in the name is 'musical'. In '42nd Street' there is enough of a story to form a framework for all the brilliant songs and the amount of joy and pleasure I get out of each viewing of this splendid production more than justifies my devotion to the show. I appreciate that everybody has a different expectation of what they go to see at a theatre but for me '42nd Street' is the complete embodiment of everything I love in a musical and ticks all the boxes, rings all the bells and gets six stars out of five!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 2, 2018 12:17:05 GMT
I’m definitely leaving this one to the youngsters. I will stick to Bat Out of Hell, Company and 42nd Street for my theatre entertainment in 2018 - or have I got it wrong? May I come back to my previous post and explain that it is not the ticketing procedure that is putting me off 'Hamilton', it is what I saw of Lin-Manuel Miranda's previous show 'In the Heights'. My visit started off badly because there was a long list of covers in the foyer for that performance saying what roles they were playing but not who they were covering. As there were no programmes available, I did not find out until the show progressed that David Bedella, whom I particularly wanted to see, was one of the performers not on. Once the show started, the sound was ear-splittingly loud to the extent that I found it impossible to understand most of the lyrics, and the general rap and hop-hop style of the music did not greatly appeal although it was acceptable. Then as the interval approached, there was a change of scene from the street to a club and I had absolutely no idea what was happening on stage so at that point I took advantage of the interval and went home. So, based on my experience with 'In the Heights', it is not surprising that I don't have a strong urge to go to the trouble of spending rather a lot of money to get a ticket to what seems to me to be a seriously over-hyped show that is unlikely to blow me away. As a devotee of musical theatre for some 70 years I would quite like to see it at some point, but as yet I have not seen 'Harry Potter', so when I said I would leave 'Hamilton' to the youngsters I was just being realistic!
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