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Post by crabtree on Nov 18, 2016 21:23:05 GMT
There's not much left of the original show, is there?
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Post by crabtree on Nov 18, 2016 19:30:18 GMT
I'm enjoying the CD of this, but miss Economy as it was a great song for the gang of friends. I'm worried that Stiles and Drewe are getting a bit predictable...Betty Blues Eyes has been the only one that was a little surprising, and complex and a little dark. I love that show. I'm glad in Sixpence they have solved the banjo problem.....what does HGWells write about said banjo.
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Post by crabtree on Nov 15, 2016 22:26:55 GMT
I adore Noises Off - it truly is a masterpiece working on so many levels, and still remains funny. I just wondered how Play that goes Wrong works without the set up of the backstage character stories.
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Post by crabtree on Nov 15, 2016 19:04:48 GMT
I've not seen any of the Mischief productions, but has Play trumped Noises Off, making it redundant?
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Post by crabtree on Nov 9, 2016 19:39:56 GMT
will it work as a live cinema screening.....the Birmingham Royal Ballet have just done a spectacular if quite literal ballet of The Tempest which boasts some superb underwater scenes. I just wanted a bit more magic.
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Post by crabtree on Nov 7, 2016 19:55:49 GMT
The Beggar's Opera (and A Chorus of Disapproval) has a framing device, and Sweeney, well the chorus are telling the tale of Sweeney Todd. Presumably someone mentioned Follies.
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Post by crabtree on Nov 3, 2016 22:35:07 GMT
anyone remember Square Rounds? Oh my.....
actually, I didn't rate Frankenstein...certainly spectacular but underwhelming at the same time
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Post by crabtree on Oct 31, 2016 8:30:43 GMT
I'll also throw Brigadoon into this melting pot. Some truly great songs (and a few that seem to have 'influenced' Lloyd Webber - 'come to me, bend to me' particularly), but if you start to question how they live the other 364 days of the year then the whole thing falls to pieces. The central maguffin is just a ticking clock device but it's rather hokey.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 31, 2016 8:24:28 GMT
see it for the great cast, and it is still a mighty play. It's good to have Glenda back....I wonder if the play was her choice.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 30, 2016 20:20:18 GMT
and I'm afraid I will never sit through another production of it, but I do have a fondness for some of the songs from Salad Days
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Post by crabtree on Oct 30, 2016 18:25:31 GMT
Lest not forget the much loved/much maligned Martin Guerre.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 25, 2016 22:24:18 GMT
How is she going to be able to work for the next year with all this drama going on. 'Carry on, but we hate what you are doing!'
It seems all Shakespeare is equal - some is more equal than others.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 18, 2016 17:55:27 GMT
Oh I'm afraid I absolutely loved this, especially how they managed to have us rocking with laughter one second, and then very moved the next. I thought it very clever and worked on many levels. Do go and support them.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 17, 2016 7:24:31 GMT
I know that ran for about ten years on its' initial run, and over two years (?) on this run, but I am surprised it did not run longer, or is still running. Did the audiences really fade away, or is it just so expensive to run.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 16, 2016 21:24:04 GMT
A brilliant capture of a brilliant production....yes the first ten minutes was annoyingly edited way too quickly, and there were too few wide shots of the stage to orientate ourselves, and some of the scene changes were edited, but this was a superb piece of film -making. please let this be the film version, glorifying in the theatricality that is so intrinsically a part of it. We don't want a fillm shot on location with real helicopters, thank you. This was superb. No sound issues at the Vue in Altrincham.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 15, 2016 14:50:14 GMT
Am happy to hear glowing reviews of Moby Dick - it is certainly a painful listen to on the CD. Along with Bernadette and Snark, and the rather excellent Metropolis, let's include Leonardo, Which Witch, Matador, and surely the Iron Mask has to be seen again. The Royal Exchange did a brilliant Moby dick years ago, with a simply jaw dropping whale.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 15, 2016 11:48:52 GMT
I must read up on the actual plot, but the voices of Roger Rees and Chita Rivera are so haunting, every croak full of emotion and sadness, and a shared history. Kander and Ebb really have written some amazing musicals- sadly we have not had them all over here. I'd love to see a full scale Curtains here, and Spiderwoman again. I love the music of steel Pier but the story was a bit skewed. And Scottsboro Boys is simply a masterpiece. I love their ragtime/cakewalk music.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 14, 2016 20:16:44 GMT
Can anyone help me with this, anyone who saw this short lived show by Kander and Ebb. I listen to this regularly and only have a loose grasp of what is happening, but just from the CD it moves me so much. It is melancholy and moving and strange and utterly haunting, full of cracked voices. Did the show work? It had such a tragic fate but the disturbingly beautiful score lives on.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 9, 2016 13:44:46 GMT
I wouldn't mind about The Mousetrap being a long runner, if only it thrilled and was a good production of a good play. It is none of those. Has there ever been a thrilling Agatha Christie on stage, full of unbearable tension? I suspect not.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 9, 2016 10:08:10 GMT
I'm so thrilled that people are discovering the Rivals time and time again. I was lucky enough to be involved with the royal exchange's production all those years ago, with a truly stellar cast, including Patricia routledge assaulting the audience. It's very easy in a limp production for the piece to be upstaged by Mrs Malaprop, but the paly is full of great characters. Oh the spectacle of the nationals' Michael Hordern/Geraldine McKewan's version with the whole of bath there on stage. It is still a masterpiece.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 7, 2016 22:03:43 GMT
I have never heard this piece ridiculed. It's always praised as a masterpiece, and rightly so. It is a perfect ballet, strong on narrative, character, wit and warmth. And despite its' French history it is absolutely British through and through. I'll admit that perhaps some less cartoony design would be welcome. I've grown up alongside the piece and revisit every so often and I have never tired of it.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 6, 2016 19:00:44 GMT
Even in concert form 'Make your garden Grow' from Candide reduces me to tears. I love the way it just builds and builds, with such simple pure thoughts
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Post by crabtree on Oct 4, 2016 20:51:37 GMT
I feel mean having written that as it is a remarkable piece, but not just quite as magical as I had hoped.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 4, 2016 20:49:39 GMT
and I agree with Mallardo about the Broadway production. It was the biggest thing I'd seen on stage outside of an opera house, and had enough cast members to make that brilliant complex opening work, and yes what a score. But I felt there was a real journey in those two and a half hours, and such strong visuals, right from the opening stereoscopic viewer. I loved every second, every note and every cast members. I took someone who hates musicals and he was awe struck, never imagining musicals could have such scope. I love the stories of the smaller characters like Houdini and Evelyn on the swing, and as I remember the Houdini stunts were impressive.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 4, 2016 19:05:37 GMT
I do adore the works of David Bintley (finding them more intelligently thought through than the gaudy showbiz of MB- though it's wrong to admit that) and have seen nearly everything, and confess to seeing Still Life at the Penguin Café probably about thirty times, and have cried every time. I love his narrative ballet's such as Edward II and Hobson's Choice, and went to the premiere of The Tempest, and it is good, very good, but rather safe and exactly what a stage production of the Tempest would be without words. Boy, does Prospero's blessing of Ferdinand and Miranda go on and bring everyone in, including characters not mentioned in the play - OK, I understand gods can appear and bless people but heck there were suddenly a lot of dancing shepherds on a deserted island - though part of me seems to remember that they are mentioned, so I will shut up. It is very literal, but for all it's predictability it rewards us with a sensational last five minutes and an unbearably touching final piece of business. The music is not as lush or as mysterious as perhaps it could have been and did not seem to flow, but the sound of waves topping and tail the show was lovely. For a piece about transforming magic, the magic was rather missing - it's not short on spectacle and is very, very easy to follow - even if there is no central character. Prospero is a little sidelined here. The design is a bit dull, and the costumes are glittery period costumes - though I was confused by Caliban wearing court pantaloons - maybe they were cast offs from Pospero. Some great flying, and odd sea creatures, and a spectacular storm, but it didn't leave me drained or with my mouth of the floor as his ballets such as Cinderella, King Dances or Carmina Burano have. It does have it all, but it just seems, using appropriately watery images, a little flat and diluted.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 2, 2016 21:41:34 GMT
Make Our Garden grow - Candide
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Post by crabtree on Oct 2, 2016 10:22:52 GMT
thanks CG. Yep in LLW, I think, the grass rolled back and a huge billiard table rose out of the floor., as did the huge turret in LLL. A great pair of productions with ravishing music, and LLL is my favourite Shakespeare comedy for that ghastly sting in the tail.
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Post by crabtree on Oct 1, 2016 22:58:00 GMT
I hope the sets are still as lavish as they were in stratford, though there will have to be considerable restaging. Does the LLL turret slide on, rather than rising up through the floor. And the billiard table?
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Post by crabtree on Sept 30, 2016 20:50:23 GMT
Oh dear, what a blow they have had. almost ready to open after all these years, and then the stage has a fire, and with the fire and subsequent water damage, the production, I gather, has been cancelled for this year. My reading of French is not great but that was the gist. They were practically open, and even had a sitzprobe after the fire, but the damage was worse. The French don't have much joy with our style of musicals, but in recent years they've had many Sondheim and Singin' in the Rain and such at the Chatelet and all was looking upbeat. This is a blow, an expensive one.
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Post by crabtree on Sept 30, 2016 20:19:35 GMT
I'd cast Celia Imrie in this somewhere, and Susan Jane Tanner, and Josie Lawrence and Janis Kelly, and Jill Pert and Sandra Dugdale...
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