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Post by viserys on Jul 8, 2023 8:11:33 GMT
Thanks TallPaul - actually the coach will chuck me out at Meadowhall, but I've worked out that I can take the yellow tram from there to Castle Square and the Premier Inn will be basically next door, so it's really all very convenient! Since we're all exchanging travel info on the fascinating city of Sheffield, do you have any recoomendations for a nice Indian restaurant near the theatre? We're looking at 400DC at the moment.
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Post by viserys on Jul 7, 2023 17:43:45 GMT
viserys is probably paying less for the airfare than I am for the carpark! LOL, I'm actually taking the train (Eurostar) and don't fly. But BurlyBeaR has a point, I paid £7.90 for the National Express bus ticket from London to Sheffield But thanks for the parking info; I'll pass that on to my friend who'll be meeting me (and take me home with her).
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Post by viserys on Jul 7, 2023 9:25:07 GMT
I never left just because a show has been SO awful - I guess I always hope to find something redemptive in the second part. I left three times for other reasons:
- Once because a migraine was absolutely killing me - Once because I hated the first half and then the second half didn't start on time due to the technical problems and we still had a long drive home ahead, so since we couldn't be sure when they'd even start again and we didn't like it anyway, we bolted. - Once (many years ago) at the Regent's Park Open Air because it was cold and miserable and I was still worrying a lot about walking back to the streets through the dark park as a single female, so I just wanted to be gone and get it over with.
I guess I'm bringing these up because people automatically seem to think "they hated it so much they left early" - and it's not always that. I was really gutted I had to leave "Shakespeare in Love" due to the migraine - Tom Bateman and David Oakes from the front row, what was not to like!
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Post by viserys on Jul 6, 2023 12:11:03 GMT
Oh wow, I normally ALWAYS miss this kind of thing, but I'll be in London at the right time. I loved her in Sky's Edge and can't wait to hear more from her.
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Post by viserys on Jul 3, 2023 18:14:43 GMT
Should push comes to shove, I'll look after your case myself! Awww, much appreciated! But I feel safe about leaving the suitcase with a Premier Inn... I'm always a bit doubtful when it's some little corner shop you know nothing about, but surely Premier Inn will be okay and frees me up for a few hours of sightseeing before my friend joins me.
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Post by viserys on Jul 3, 2023 15:44:26 GMT
Surely some must? I can't be the only one! You are actually the only person I know who's ALSO interested in opera and ballet and I don't even know you in person! One friend likes ballet (but rarely goes to see one live) and my Mom likes opera as well as musical (but not plays) and that's about it. But generally I only hear from musical-loving friends that they're going to see a play when it's a star they're interested in seeing on stage.
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Post by viserys on Jul 3, 2023 11:34:39 GMT
You won't embrace A STRANGE LOOP because the content is considered upsetting Oh, no, that was Parade Strange Loop I just can't muster all that much interest in, even though I'm VERY familiar with those voices in my head. If I was living in/near London and could spontaneously go (ideally on a discount), I would certainly check it out, but I have to plan my travels from abroad months in advance and then pick carefully what I want to see in those days, partly because hotel prices are ridiculous now, but also because I just can't "absorb" more than 4 shows, 5 at a pinch, in short succession. I also think musicals can be entertaining AND deeply moving, which is why I'm so utterly in love with Hadestown. I absolutely love the music and lyrics and also how it packs a punch in pointing out the human condition and mankind's ability to wreck things for themselves for eternally doubting themselves instead of having faith. And many of the classics, such as "Carousel" are also very deeply moving and about the human condition without having to be exhausting.
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Post by viserys on Jul 3, 2023 10:32:05 GMT
It's not entirely true away from the WE - more adult musicals have done well recently at the Almeida, Young Vic, Donmar etc - but why can they not translate to that wider play-going audience? What is it about singing on stage, or using music to explore ideas and emotions, that puts so many people off? Music is so much a part of all our lives - it's not like it's some weird niche thing. But that's also where I feel this kind of show belongs. So many of the recent Tony winners (for Best Musical) were a success Off-Broadway, then didn't do well on Broadway, because they just didn't belong on a big stage where they lost their intimacy and also felt overpriced for what were usually rather small shows. I purposely didn't bother with Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway now, because I'd much rather see it in a far more intimate setting in London in 1-2 years, perhaps at the Donmar or Young Vic. I also just couldn't muster any interest in seeing Parade on Broadway - while I do think it's a worthy subject to be telling, I couldn't face sitting through something so utterly depressing. As a movie, at home, okay, but not when I spend a lot of money on an evening out. And also, for me personally - musicals need to engage me with good music and lyrics from the get-go, I have no patience with wannabe profound shows with complicated music you need to listen to 20 times to "get it" or have to work out complicated metaphors. Call me shallow, but it's how it is. As I wrote in the Strange Loop thread, RL is stressful and challenging enough, I want entertainment and emotional engagement when I go to the theatre, shows that make me laugh or cry or ideally both. I guess the avid play-goers just have so much to choose from, why would they want to expand on that? Most musical fans rarely branch out into plays or opera either.
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Post by viserys on Jul 2, 2023 19:15:57 GMT
The use of ‘we’ was to describe the collective opinion here that ‘we’ think CRAZY FOR YOU is a better evening than ‘A STRANGE LOOP’, which is I think a fair claim if you look at the star ratings and posts. Alright, I misread that "we" too, probably because I don't see the forum as a collective "we". I haven't seen CFY yet (will do next week) and have zero interest in seeing ASL, so I can't speak for quality, I just think it must be possible to be supportive of your own favourite show and performer without being so dismissive of another show and performer (calling CFY a shallow boring museum piece or that Stemp may not be equally worthy of an award).
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Post by viserys on Jul 2, 2023 16:13:24 GMT
I hope it's OK to ask here, but maybe others may benefit from an answer too.
Is there anywhere to leave luggage for a few hours? Would the theatre do it? It seems the station doesn't offer left luggage service.
I will be arriving from London in the early afternoon, but my local friend won't be able to join me until the evening (when I can put my suitcase into her car boot), so right now it's either going for a sightseeing walk with my suitcase in tow or just parking myself somewhere in a cafe for the afternoon.
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Post by viserys on Jul 2, 2023 13:07:00 GMT
what feels like a shallow boring outdated museum piece Maybe because there are people who WANT simple good-natured entertainment when we go to the theatre? We're constantly bombarded with all sorts of challenges in the real world - whether personal challenges at work, in relationships, etc. or the general state of the world with pointless wars, climate change and inflation. I really don't care for anything that's supposedly "challenging and outrageous" at the moment. And the fact that A Strange Loop flopped on Broadway seems to confirm that I am not the only one. It's fine if you love the show and it speaks to you, but please don't presume to speak for the theatre community by using the "we" - WE all have different tastes.
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Post by viserys on Jul 2, 2023 11:14:07 GMT
I liked her too
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Post by viserys on Jun 30, 2023 16:06:29 GMT
Foreigner here and for me it's definitely cost + quality.
The cost: As others have mentioned, hotel prices are through the roof. I usually pay around £70-80 per night at the Hub by Premier Inn in King's Cross, but now it's around the £200 mark, which I just can't justify for their tiny shoebox rooms. Regular Premier Inns and Travelodges are even more expensive. I had planned a longer trip in November, but have already shaved two nights off that one and opted for a Premier Inn fairly far out in the Docklands. I am definitely at a stage where I'm ready to cut down on my London trips, both to make them shorter and come over less.
Secondly, quality. During my last two trips I mainly saw shows in little shoebox theatres - Tammy Faye at the Almeida, Band's Visit at the Donmar, Allegiance and From Here to Eternity at Charing Cross and Eugenius at the Turbine. I actually loved them all, but it feels like the mix is off - "musicals" ALSO mean showbiz to me - big sets, a big cast, dance numbers and so on. I am just back from New York, where I decided to see (apart from the shows I had travelled for) Some Like It Hot and New York, New York, simply because I felt so starved for big entertainment. Sure, it's getting better now and I look forward to three big shows next month (Aspects, Groundhog Day and Crazy for you), but it may take time for people to re-discover the offerings.
I also tend to agree on the quality of new writing, whether it's Broadway imports or home-grown stuff, but I'm tired of the noisy pop music being used so often these days, and the clunky lyrics. Most of the songs in "New York New York" are cribbed from the Kander/Ebb back catalogue and hearing those older songs now was such a big difference in lyric quality, it's quite depressing.
Then of course there's Brexit: Less than half the adult German population has a passport, because we can travel within the EU and a few other countries on ID cards, so that's a big group suddenly not being able to travel to the UK anymore/wouldn't bother getting an expensive passport just for the UK. This also includes school groups, where every pupil needs a passport now and children from many countries are required to get a very pricey visa on top of the passport - needless to say that teachers and parents rather choose another country, often Ireland for the English-language angle. I'm sure it's not just Germany either; there are probably many other European countries that can't use their ID Cards for traveling to the UK anymore and all of these are missing bums on seats.
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Post by viserys on Jun 22, 2023 14:27:47 GMT
I finally got through, too - still lots of availability in all categories indeed, so just keep hanging in there.
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Post by viserys on Jun 22, 2023 13:45:42 GMT
My guy is at about 60% now, I think.
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Post by viserys on Jun 22, 2023 13:23:36 GMT
I wonder how many people can actually access the website at the same time? Seems we're all just stuck?
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Post by viserys on Jun 22, 2023 12:53:16 GMT
The queue is now officially paused. Clearly the little guy is exhausted and needs a break.
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Post by viserys on Jun 22, 2023 12:13:16 GMT
the little guy is moving now, but nothing tells me what number I am in the queue
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Post by viserys on Jun 21, 2023 7:52:26 GMT
has Damien Lewis been on stage since the loss of Helen McCrory? I would love to see him back at some point He just released his first album and is touring with that - so sort of being on stage, I guess. Would love to see him on stage again, too, might even tolerate hearing CHF screech through "As long as he needs me" for him.
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Post by viserys on Jun 15, 2023 7:56:36 GMT
If it can sustain in Bochum, why not? It's really become more of a theme park attraction in Germany than a musical, attracting people who wouldn't normally go to theatres. And of course there is far less choice in Germany, especially regionally. The only other big musical in NRW is the very new and very well selling Moulin Rouge. In fact I think Starlight Express may benefit from people who travel to Cologne for that now and may think "let's see Starlight Express again as well, it's been 18 years". Their competitor Stage Entertainment has been helping them alot (inadvertently) by closing the only other musical theatre in the Ruhr Valley (in Oberhausen) because they couldn't make it work and focusing mostly on Hamburg and a bit less on Stuttgart (which gets the hand-me-downs from Hamburg). There is endlessly more choice in and around London. I still don't get (based on the replies I got on the Newsies thread) why a location like Wembley which is far more accessible by car, isn't more popular with families especially, since it must be much easier and cheaper to wrangle kids into a family car for a day's out, park close to a venue, feed everyone ice cream and see the show, rather than all the faff of getting into central London. The accessibility by car is another pro for Starlight Express here - the theatre is within an hour's drive of 20 million people and just off the motorway exit, which makes trips there very easy.
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Post by viserys on Jun 14, 2023 7:02:44 GMT
A third man musical was staged in Vienna in 2016, was it this one? I've tried searching for it but with not much luck This IS that musical. It was planned, but was never actually staged. The Vereinigte Bühnen Wien who are the big musical producers had a string of flops with home-grown new musicals (such as Schikaneder with music by Stephen Schwartz), so they probably got cold feet and focused on either developing new jukebox musicals or revivals of older musicals. Edit to add: Not surprised by the negative feedback so far. These things that are written "on commission" and just for the paycheck are rarely ever inspired.
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Post by viserys on Jun 13, 2023 11:49:54 GMT
I'm a bit confused about all the moaning about the bad location, unless you're a tourist who stays in Central London and might not be keen on venturing out into the suburbs.
But if you live anywhere in the greater London area, shouldn't be all the same whether you take a tube to Wembley or to Piccadilly Circus?
And would the location not actually be beneficial if you were going to take the family by car? No driving into Central London and parking is presumably cheaper in Wembley as well.
And there's so much on offer around there - you could go shopping in the nearby Mall, there's plenty of food places and if you need to lure Dad with sports, they could book a tour of Wembley.
I'm genuinely interested, partly because of what this means for the Troubador Theatre's future and partly... well, just because.
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Post by viserys on Jun 7, 2023 14:13:50 GMT
Wow, that was fast. Great news indeed, it's a such a fun little show with a big heart.
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Post by viserys on Jun 4, 2023 9:42:58 GMT
Ah well we’re not so keen on ID cards in the uk. Is that issued by a doctor? Ah you say “office” I guess using doctors letters? Our “office”, the DWP, has such a terrible reputation they really really wouldn’t be trusted to do it correctly. Well, Germany LOVES bureaucracy and officialdom. Looking it up, yes, it's the German equivalent of your DWP (Versorgungsamt) who issues the ID. I had to make an appointment there for a hearing test which determined how bad my hearing was and then got issued my ID that confirmed 70% deafness. Each ID has a few symbols stating what kind of entitlements you get - for me, the biggest relief is that I only pay one third of Germany's vastly overpriced idiotic TV license per year (used to be fully free even, but at some point they realized that deaf/HoH still benefit from the smattering of subtitles they grant us). Others can use public transport for free or can take a free companion everywhere, etc. Apart from the TV license my main benefit is indeed reduced prices for all sorts of events. But honestly, I'd rather pay full price for a musical here that was offering captions than the reduced price for something I can barely follow. The absolute lack of captions for live entertainment, combined with Germany's idiot obsession with dubbing foreign movies rather than showing original versions with subtitles, means that there's still very limited accessibility for deaf/HoH people. I'm lucky in that I live in a big city where two cinemas DO show original versions (but only sometimes with subtitles) and not far from the Netherlands, where everything is shown OV with subtitles. Whenever I'm in London I feel like people are far more helpful and attentive in general to people with special needs, which I appreciate time and again. Staff in theatres have also been wonderfully helpful with things like those hearing loops (which don't really do much for me) or the smart glasses at the NT.
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Post by viserys on Jun 3, 2023 17:28:46 GMT
How do you prove disability? Blue Badge? PIP or other benefit? Doctors letters? Not everyone has the first two and Doctors letters can be embarrassing and confidential. Here in Germany you get a special "ID" with your photo and some other data along with just how bad your disability is and to what kind of help this entitles you. For example, mine states that I have 70% hearing loss (which was once officially determined by the right office). I can book tickets for theatres, sports stuff etc with an Acccess discount and when you enter the venue, you need to show that ID to prove your entitlement. Well, theatres actually rarely check, but the football stadium ALWAYS demands proof (probably because it's more liable to being abused, dunno). When I applied for Access discounts in London, the German ID has always been accepted for proof too.
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Post by viserys on Jun 3, 2023 16:37:33 GMT
I worry about it disturbing others and I don't want to get verbally abused for it (anyone remember the Hadestown incident a while back?). I think that "drama" was blown way out of proportion and generally performers are aware of the existence of these handheld thingies (and they can't really be mistaken for smartphones). That said, I find them more useful for sitting in the dress circle anyway, so they match your sightline better than having to keep looking up and down between stage and device in the stalls. Here's what it looks like (and size in proportion to the playbill) - Access customers were included in the presale by opening the access phone and email line. I had to email to find out, but at least they did this given that many don't bother and let disabled people wait even if they signed up to book early. I'm sorry you had to email them - I find that whenever I've signed up for a presale, I can just have my friend phone the box office that day, explain the situation and get Access tickets. In Hadestown's case it was extra easy because I know the Lyric Theatre has two Access seats in Row C of the stalls (I booked them for the Marley Musical and for Aspects), so when I saw those weren't available to book in the presale, I poked my friend to phone Nimax and she got them for us. - What surprised me most - I asked about what proof/documents they wanted and turns out it was not even needed! I'm guessing they will want to see it on the day so will bring it with me but it's nice to not be demanded for it for a change, makes me feel like everybody else. It sounds like it will be great for those still waiting for diagnosis. Honestly, I prefer being asked for proof or register as an Access client as it makes me feel more at ease to be able to prove that I DO need the Access benefits rather than just pretend. They probably trust in people's integrity, but I generally don't. And if too many people abuse the system, they might cut down on Access seats/discounts - as has already happened with ATG.
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Post by viserys on Jun 2, 2023 18:14:05 GMT
Not gonna lie, I don't care for Wildhorn's forever samey sounding shows in general (sludge indeed), but this one made me sit up and take notice, because a musical based on a manga and generally involving East Asian contemporary culture is such a breath of fresh air. I'm really glad that this part of pop culture is gaining more traction in western theatre - My Neighbor Totoro has been a similar success for the Barbican and while the K-Pop Musical flopped on Broadway, at least it got a chance to exist.
Meanwhile Evita feels done to death and I can't muster any interest in LND at all. So I'm quite happy really to see that Death Note has caused such a stir and if it does indeed encourage them to mount a production - hopefully somewhere better and bigger than the Arts - I'd be there for it.
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Post by viserys on Jun 2, 2023 8:15:24 GMT
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Post by viserys on Jun 2, 2023 7:08:59 GMT
I have only had the chance to use the National's smart caption glasses once and it has pros and cons, but overall I LOVED them.
The biggest pro: The captions appear directly below the performers or above their heads (depending on how you hold your head at that moment), so your eyes don't need to dart between performers on stage and the caption screens on the sides (which depending on their exact position can be really annoying). I really loved that, it had a bit of a comic book feel with "speech bubbles" appearing right above the performers. You can also adjust the size and color of the captions to your liking.
The con for me personally: As my eyesight isn't what it was, I need normal glasses to watch things on stage properly and the smart glasses press onto those, so for a while I worried about getting a headache from the pressure and was relieved when the interval came and I could take the smart glasses off for a while. That may be a personal thing though (and won't affect those not needing normal glasses).
The bigger con would probably be their cost, but if theatres could afford them or get subsidies for them, I'd be all for them, as they are definitely better than the little handheld caption screens from Broadway, which still require you to keep looking between them and the performers.
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Post by viserys on Jun 2, 2023 5:55:42 GMT
Ah, my kind of thread! I am hearing impaired and since I have discovered the magic of captioned performances, have pretty much given up on trying to see straight plays without them as they make a world of difference. With musicals it's not quite so bad, as there's usually a cast recording that helps me to familiarize myself with the lyrics ahead of seeing something or when it's based on a movie as it so often is these days, I can go in knowing the general plot. Access in the UK is generally a whole lot better than here in Germany, where "assisted performances" don't exist at all, so I feel bad about complaining, but I think there could be room for improvement. As I have to travel from Germany, I can't be in London as often as I want and even if I am able to build one trip around a captioned performance for something I want to see, I always have to compromise. So more captioned performances would be great. Or... I have greatly come to admire the closed captioned system they use on Broadway. Before the show you can get a little handheld device, the size of a phone and it will deliver your personal captions throughout the show. They are available at most Broadway shows, so they open up performances ALOT for me. There's also an app called GalaPro that works similarly for your own phone, though the one time I tried that, it didn't work. Maybe it has improved by now and I think it would be a great alternative for London, if the classic CC system from Broadway would be too expensive to introduce. Another thing that really annoys me is that ATG has basically scrapped the Access seats in the front stalls for all their London theatres that enable deaf/hard of hearing and sight impaired people to sit close to the stage at a reasonable price. It's only a few seats per performance, so surely it can't make a big dent in their takings. PS: lemur - fully agree on how obnoxious it is that they make you call for Access tickets - if I could easily pick up the phone to make phone calls I wouldn't be needing Access tickets in the first place. The argument given is usually that they don't want you to submit payment details by email, but surely there must be a work around. Luckily I have a wonderful friend in the UK, who does the phone calls for me/us and joins me on the companion ticket to be my ears. Between having learned about the Access system in itself and her help with tickets, my theatre going in London has vastly improved in the last years.
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