3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 24, 2024 12:31:00 GMT
I guess it’s tricky as there are so many different things on at once so more difficult to find a general meet up ( compared to say ballet where I know forums do meet up in intervals but that’s much easier as fewer productions and fewer venues!). Yes, it's a lot easier with ballet. I spent 14 years seeing opera at the ROH without ever meeting up with anyone but once I started going to ballet I started recognising regular attendees & now, after a few years, I can almost always find people I'm acquainted with to have a chat with in the intervals.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 16, 2024 22:21:28 GMT
They also tend to release standing tickets at midday for sold-out shows, if that happens to be an option for you (though I appreciate that going on short notice and standing for a whole show definitely isn't for everybody!). No, I wouldn't fancy standing. (I once tried standing at the Globe & keeled over. Admittedly it was 30 degrees but it's put me off standing.) Also as I don't live in London while I could get down at a few hours' notice I'd prefer not to have to do so.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 15, 2024 22:54:56 GMT
Assuming a cast change is on the horizon, I'd love to see the current cast one last time. I was hoping they'd announce the change quite far in advance but it's not looking like that now if that mid-May date is anything to go by! Not sure how likely a return visit will be at short notice with the ticket prices being what they are and the lottery so difficult to win these days. Last night's triumphs at the Oliviers will probably up the demand for tickets too - no bad thing.
Seconding this but having received yet another "Sorry not this time" email today it's not looking likely. I won the lottery at my very first time of trying last May & no luck since. I don't know how some people have managed to see it so many times without bankrupting themselves, unless they manage to go every Monday.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 14, 2024 18:06:21 GMT
I'm pleased to see from Twitter that Pappano won the Outstanding Achievement in Opera. Any other result, considering his 22 years as Music Director of the ROH vs the other contenders in the category, would have been ridiculous.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 2, 2024 21:23:17 GMT
Oh wow what a magical experience Swan Lake was. I had goosebumps the minute I walked into the ROH auditorium. Bracewell and Kaneko were utterly captivating. This was my first ballet but I’ll definitely be seeing more in future. The sheer athleticism and story telling from the entire cast was incredible (special shout out to Leo Dixon too). Not actually ditto, as I was at the evening performance. Though I had seen the matinee cast previously on 15th March. I didn't want to do 2 Swan Lakes in a day, having tried that in the last run.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Apr 2, 2024 15:17:43 GMT
I’ve been wanting to see Bracewell for a long time now and he did not disappoint. He’s such an effortless performer. Is there an easy way to track his future performances? Other ballet companies have wonderful websites in which every principal has a page with their future performances listed, but alas ROH's falls short even there. The ROH's website did used to have upcoming roles listed on the dancers' biography pages but unfortunately that disappeared when the website was revamped a few years ago. (Frankly that revamp made many aspects of the website less good than they were before IMO.)
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 30, 2024 16:03:43 GMT
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 28, 2024 16:26:34 GMT
It was no more than a mildly amusing part of 'Magic Goes Wrong' so I'm amazed it's been spun out into a full show. Given Henry Lewis has said in interviews that he's been keen on magic since his childhood, I suspect it might be at least partly due to his personal keeness. Even with MGW, when it did its second stint in the WE after being interrupted by covid & rewritten he was one of only 2 of the original cast to return to the show, so it feels as if he must really like it.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 26, 2024 13:59:55 GMT
Considering seeing this on Wednesday. My ten year old loves their stuff and has seen Goes Wrong and Peter Pan live, and the BBC series. Does this have any blood/gore/accidental dismemberment? If you look on the previous page, this point was raised last year.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 24, 2024 19:28:25 GMT
That's about the same length of run as the revival of The Dante Project this season. I'm pretty sure that didn't get near to selling out so I doubt they could sell a long run of Maddaddam.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 24, 2024 19:24:46 GMT
I wonder what that critic would make of Jenufa, where a baby actually is drowned!
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 23, 2024 19:35:14 GMT
I'm not a subscriber either but I could read it because the link, which is from a Times critic on Twitter, comes with a share token. I'm afraid I am hopeless at writing summaries. If no-one else can read it either then I suppose I'll have to ask the moderators to remove it.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 23, 2024 15:55:56 GMT
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 17, 2024 13:25:36 GMT
I loathe Wayne McGregor's work. So cold and isolating. On the other hand Ashton is very twee ... I agree with you on McGregor but not on Ashton. I think I read somewhere that there is going to be a new production of TOSCA this coming season, with Freddie De Tommaso. I think maybe Lise Davidsen may be Tosca. As long as the season is cast with good singers, I am not overly bothered what the operas themselves are. The current production of Tosca is one of the few period-appropriate productions that the ROH still has left so I really hope it's not going to be replaced. It's the productions that I'm bothered about.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 17, 2024 13:22:48 GMT
I saw them together on Friday, having seen them separately in the 2022 run, and thought they both gave excellent performances.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 16, 2024 20:04:21 GMT
At my local theatre, the Cambridge Arts Theatre, they never do any ticket discounts even if you ask at the box office only minutes before a performance when less than half the tickets have been sold. So I've several times bought the cheapest seat I can at the back of the stalls then asked the ushers once I've got into the auditorium if I can move forward. Usually it's allowed, to various extents, e.g. most recently I was allowed to move from row U to row N.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 16, 2024 19:57:23 GMT
People have been saying that for several years & thus far it's not materialised. As BRB are doing it next season, including 3 performances at Sadler's Wells, that might indicate the RB still won't be. At least I'll finally get to see it. As the RB last did it in 2016 & I first saw them live in 2018 I've been waiting to see it for some time.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 16, 2024 18:37:42 GMT
On the Royal Ballet side, the only production that seems to be confirmed is Wayne McGregor's new(ish) piece Maddaddam, which has already been done by the National Ballet of Canada. Going by the reviews, and my dislike of everything else I've seen by McGregor, I'll be very happily avoiding seeing it. Based on the usual patterns of revivals in recent seasons, I'd take a guess that Romeo & Juliet, Sleeping Beauty & Cinderella are all possibilities.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 13, 2024 21:16:46 GMT
I hope I'll be able to get up to Leeds for the revival of Ruddigore, which I loved when they brought it to the Barbican in 2011, and maybe for Love Life too, as the cast appeals. If only train tickets weren't so horrendously expensive.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 12, 2024 21:54:13 GMT
There seems to be an anti-musical bias. Even in the performer categories, plays get 5 nomination slots and musicals get 4. What’s that about? I thought the same when reading the nominations list earlier. It also seems a bit off to have "Best Actor" and "Best Actor in a Musical". It implies that the proper actors are the ones in plays & the ones in musicals are a bit of an afterthought. Surely "Best Actor in a Play" and "Best Actor in a Musical" would be a more polite way of differentiating it.
If Pappano doesn't win the Outstanding Achievement in Opera category then it will be ridiculous. The other 2 nominations aren't remotely comparable.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 7, 2024 21:51:46 GMT
I’ll defend the hoovering bit, at least. It’s done during the overture - something we don’t really get much of anymore in musicals. Is it needed? Not really. But it just symbolizes getting ready backstage. Does that mean as well as not being to hear the overture properly due to half the audience not bothering to stop talking, as is so often the case at WE shows, that you also can't hear the overture properly due to the noise of a hoover?!
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Mar 7, 2024 17:37:15 GMT
( have managed to get a ticket for the Manon at the Royal Ballet which I just can’t resist - and the acts are all less than an hour 😁) Though the curtain call is bound to be longer tomorrow as it's Alexander Campbell's farewell performance.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 25, 2024 20:22:39 GMT
In a way it is a deeply conservative production because it just recycles a lot of fashionable but commonplace directorial conceits irrespective of whether they serve the play or not. Here we have video cameras, slow motion, audience interaction, microphones, glitter balls, anachronistic pop songs. We also have torches (commonplace) and UV light (rare but not unknown) but in the form of UV torches which is new. The only really new idea was at one point they had the entire cast appear wearing blue dresses and long blonde wigs - even as I type that it occurs to me how ridiculous that sounds in a production of Macbeth. This sort of thing is why I haven't seen any Shakespeare plays for some years! There isn't a single thing on that list that I wish to see in a Shakespeare production.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 25, 2024 16:50:00 GMT
What a mess this production is. All the witch scenes at the start have been entirely cut which gets things off to the worst possible start. A low point comes in the English scene when Malcolm (a young black woman) gives us a karaoke version of Yes Sir I Can Boogie - I felt sorry for her and the rest of the cast (and audience). 2* Whe I read things like this I wonder if directors have got to the stage where they're just competing for who can inflict the stupidest possible things on classic playes.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 25, 2024 16:44:30 GMT
The production is fun and quirky and reminded me of the 'power house' days at eno, how the desert was created was wonderful. The production photos should be fun to look at! Oh dear, I was hoping they'd do a fairly straightforward production but clearly not. I've seen the majority of ETO's output since 2005 but with their new AD chaging the production style it looks like I'll be seeing a lot less of them.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 24, 2024 13:12:32 GMT
marob I've thought of another sort-of one. He's not been in TPTGW but in The Comedy About A Bank Robbery: George Hannigan, current WE Sergeant Trotter.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 23, 2024 17:54:45 GMT
Name that stands out there for me is Daniel Fraser. He was actually in The Mousetrap a couple of years ago as Giles Ralston. Makes me wonder if anyone else has appeared in both? I guess if anyone knows it’ll be Dawnstar ? The only person I can think of off the top of my head is Laurence Pears, who played Giles Ralston in the tour a couple of years ago. I didn't see him in it though as by the time it got round to my local theatre the cast had changed. In fact I've never actually seen The Mousetrap. I can't say I recognise the names of anyone in the new TPTGW cast apart from Daniel Anthony.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 16, 2024 22:03:30 GMT
I'm not sure whether or not I'd see it again. So, 8 months later, I did see it again. I wasn't keen enough to travel the 60 miles to London to the Park Theatre but when I found it had started touring again & was at my local theatre this week I decided I was happy to travel 4 miles for it! Dave Hearn left the production after the Park run & his role is now being played by George Kemp. Since the characters have the same names as the actors this means that the character is now named George rather than Dave. It was interesting seeing the show with a less than half full audience compared to when I saw it in Ipswich at an almost sold out performance. The cast certainly had to work a lot harder in the audience participation parts to persuade people into participating.
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 16, 2024 21:51:38 GMT
Looks like this is touring after its West End run. It's Manchester bound in May. There were 2 or 3 venues they should have visited last year & had to cancel when Peter Pan Goes Wrong went to Broadway which they promised to come to later. I know Bath was one of them, can't recall if Manchester was. So at least part of a post-WE tour will presumably be going to the cancelled venues. Audiences have only had to wait about a year!
|
|
3,927 posts
|
Post by Dawnstar on Feb 16, 2024 21:16:32 GMT
I'm much sadder about what's happening to WNO, which has always been my favourite of the regional companies, than I am about ENO. Strange to think now that little more than ten years ago, they still had the resources to perform Wagner (their 2013 Lohengrin was terrific). I didn't see Lohengrin but I thought their 2010 Meistersinger was excellent, and also their Tristan & Isolde which was the first live Wagner I saw back in 2006.
|
|