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Post by cherokee on Apr 24, 2024 16:19:19 GMT
I saw Breeding - the previous show - there which I thought was great. The theatre was also laid out with the audience on three sides - like the Donmar - and I thought this configuration worked much better.
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Post by cherokee on Mar 11, 2024 16:52:24 GMT
My thoughts exactly, maybe a two hit wonder. They aren’t ABBA or any other group. a little bit more than a 2 hit wonder they do have some really great songs which I think would be great in a musical 11 top 20 singles Over 50 million record sales Many people wouldn’t know the drifters , temptations , etc bit they still made musicals about them for example Depends on if it’s gonna be the actual fizz story I guess or just using the songs .. but with all the fall outs , coach crash winning Eurovision … David van day defecting to Bucks fizz from dollar trying to take over blimey 😳 could be fun after all Likely to be a legal minefield if it's the 'true' Bucks Fizz story. Bobby Gee retains the rights to use the name and relations between him and the three other original members are NOT good. A partisan story that makes one side or the other to be the bad guys probably wouldn't get off the ground, I reckon.
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Post by cherokee on Dec 31, 2023 12:34:37 GMT
Boxing Day in Richmond all sounded very dramatic. According to Twitter, the matinee started with Merton off ill, and his understudy - a lad from the chorus - came on, got stage fright and refused to come on again. So the show stopped for 25 minutes, and then when it restarted, a very ill - and apparently grumpy - Merton came on and did perform, although he then had to stop for 5 seconds when he felt faint. They then cancelled the evening show, and presumably drafted in the script-in-hand replacement for the 27th! Eeek. I did see from twitter there was a show stop, poorly Paul then evening cancellation. Didn’t realise about the cover. I didn’t get a programme but didn’t think any of the ensemble looked like obvious covers! Do you know if he was a listed cover or emergency? I don’t blame him not going on when he is covering the only star, who a lot of the audience will be there specifically to see and who the script is written around. I think most pantos have emergency covers from within the dancing ensemble, especially since COVID. But obviously covering the Dame - particularly if he's the "name" is a big responsibility for a young dancer, and you can understand him being terrified. I don't imagine he got much in the way of rehearsal either, if any! Presumably the stand-in the following day has had experience of Dame-ing even if he wasn't familiar with this particular show, hence going on with the script.
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Post by cherokee on Dec 29, 2023 18:29:24 GMT
Dick Whittington at Richmond is wonderful. Paul Merton is hilarious as expected, but what really makes the panto is his wife Suki Webster. Because they are both seasoned improvisers, they had a funny line for every little thing that went wrong, as well as trying to make each other laugh. just back on the District Line after the matinee which was missing Paul! I love seeing covers but it is unusual to see a cover who I genuinely don't think knew he was in this show this morning. I didn't get a programme but I don't think his name is in it, a true emergency cover. Not sure if it is fair to name him but he was script in hand for 90% of the show and obviously didn't know the show but gave a great performance. I wish I had the chance to see him after a rehearsal. As has been mentioned Suki is a great improvisor and covered at least 2 parts [of Paul's track] too. It was a bit of a shame to see this show that I know from the palladium shrunk down so much. I did expect flying at the end of act 1. The cast were all great though and it was a great example of 'the show must go on' Boxing Day in Richmond all sounded very dramatic. According to Twitter, the matinee started with Merton off ill, and his understudy - a lad from the chorus - came on, got stage fright and refused to come on again. So the show stopped for 25 minutes, and then when it restarted, a very ill - and apparently grumpy - Merton came on and did perform, although he then had to stop for 5 seconds when he felt faint. They then cancelled the evening show, and presumably drafted in the script-in-hand replacement for the 27th!
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Post by cherokee on Dec 28, 2023 22:04:37 GMT
Top 5 of the year would be
The Motive and the Cue (National) Standing at the Sky's Edge (National) The Way Old Friends Do (Criterion) Accidental Death of an Anarchist (TR Haymarket) Good (Ambassadors)
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Post by cherokee on Dec 12, 2023 18:36:13 GMT
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Post by cherokee on Oct 1, 2023 21:23:48 GMT
Entrance applause is not a "thing" here and again the only time I've experienced it was for Angela Lansbury.What does it mean anyway? Thanks for all your previous work...Oh look, I recognise you ....or..Thanks for turning up? I think your average West End star would be startled to get a "hand" on their entrance. I remember going to see The Drowsey Chaperone and there was clearly someone planted at the back of the Stalls to kick off a round of applause on Elaine Paige's first entrance. There was an initial pause where they waited to see if it would occur spontaneously, and after a gap just long enough for it to be awkwardly obvious that the show would not proceed until we had all applauded, a lone clapper did his duty...
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Post by cherokee on Sept 11, 2023 19:42:38 GMT
John Owen Jones has just posted on Twitter / X that he is out for the rest of the run, due to an ongoing viral throat infection. Peter Forbes has taken over as Dindon.
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Post by cherokee on Jul 30, 2023 13:27:08 GMT
I completely agree, but just to add its not just a straight actor thing. I've seen plenty of gay performers ham up the gayness for cheap laughs. Exactly, which makes an actors sexuality irrelevant. No, it doesn't at all. And with respect to theatrefan62, they're talking about a different thing. Sure, gay performers can ham it up and get laughs from being camp. Is that cheap? I don't know. I suppose there are instances where it can be - it depends on the material. Julian Clary, for instance, uses his sexuality and his effeminacy to get laughs, and is brilliant and hilarious, and I would never describe it as 'cheap'. He's a master of it, and I certainly wouldn't dream of putting his performance in the same category as Douglas Hodge's. And as I said earlier, the big difference is authenticity. Watching Clary on stage, I as an audience member am in no doubt that the character he is portraying is gay. I was unable to do that while watching Hodge as Albin. I simply couldn't suspend my disbelief because his gayness was performative, inauthentic and ultimately unconvincing. Which is not to say that a heterosexual actor couldn't have delivered a convincing performance, just that Hodge was unable to. And as I sat in the audience watching him, the one thought in my head was: I am not watching a gay character, I am watching a heterosexual actor failing to inhabit a role convincingly. So although sometimes I agree that an actor's sexuality is irrelevant, in this instance it was fundamentally at the root of why I couldn't believe in Hodge's Albin.
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Post by cherokee on Jul 30, 2023 10:49:10 GMT
I was confused at first by the 'miscasting', but it became apparent that the big plot twist wouldn't have worked without it. So it was clearly an artistic decision, and a necessary one at that.
Having said that, I'm afraid I wasn't engaged by the material either. Sophie Ward is a delightful actor but some of the other performances were not to my taste and a little overwrought. It didn't do anything for me.
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Post by cherokee on Jul 28, 2023 13:20:33 GMT
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Post by cherokee on Jul 28, 2023 11:01:29 GMT
A horrible, clichéd version of a camp gay man by a heterosexual actor which lacked any authenticity whatsoever. I didn't believe him as Albin for a moment. I'm not sure what being hetrosexual has to do with it. Are you under the impression that a gay man would be more authentic? It's not exactly a role with much nuance. If you want authentic, should the role have to be played by someone who's an aging drag queen? It has everything to do with it when a performance is unconvincing. I have no problem with heterosexual actors playing gay roles: Andrew Garfield was brilliant in Angels in America. But in Hodge's hands, the camp mannerisms and physically felt, to me, forced and inauthentic. It was an imitation of how a straight man thought a camp, gay man behaves, and I didn't buy it for a moment. Others clearly felt differently, but it ruined the whole show for me. So please don't misunderstand me when I criticise Hodge's performance as inauthentic. I'm not an ideologue who believes queer roles can only be played by queer actors. But I feel I'm entitled to call it out when a non-queer actor plays a gay man poorly.
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Post by cherokee on Jul 27, 2023 15:09:25 GMT
I much preferred Roger Allam to Doug Hodge. The less said about Graham Norton the better… Oh yes, Douglas Hodge was AWFUL. I couldn't understand the acclaim he got for it. A horrible, clichéd version of a camp gay man by a heterosexual actor which lacked any authenticity whatsoever. I didn't believe him as Albin for a moment.
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Post by cherokee on Jul 19, 2023 22:03:53 GMT
I loved this. Daniel Rigby! What a tour de force. Hilarious - just couldn't take my eyes off him. And a terribly relevant message at the heart of it too. Very glad to see it in the West End.
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Post by cherokee on Apr 7, 2023 14:23:11 GMT
That latest statement does not sound as if it comes from someone who has left the show amicably or willingly. He sounds bitter and angry. I'd be very surprised if it was his decision to leave: sounds like he was forced to and really isn't happy about it. Things must have got very bad for the playwright to be evicted from his own show. I wonder if we will learn more in time.
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Post by cherokee on Mar 31, 2023 14:34:14 GMT
Thoroughly enjoyed this. The audience gave a collective "ahh" of empathy when Paul O'Grady's voiceover started at the very beginning of the show.
And the whole thing was heart-warming, joyful and hilarious. Sara Crowe an undoubted highlight - she really deserves more acclaim - but as a fan of ABBA, it ticked all the right boxes for me. I ended up with tears in my eyes, and sevearal audience members were on their feet by the end.
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Post by cherokee on Mar 29, 2023 16:00:50 GMT
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I found it ambitious and exciting: very pleased I got to see it before it closed. At first I wasn't quite sure about {Spoiler - click to view} Jimmy's death Thought it was a bit of a cliché, especially as it kind of came out of the blue unlike {Spoiler - click to view} Harry's decline, which seemed more integrated into the story, but then I just gave in to it. Horrible freak occurrences are a part of life after all. (It just meant that {Spoiler - click to view} the two white straight males in the story were the ones who didn't make it to the end alive!) Fabulous performances though. And yes, the songs didn't further the story the way they would in a traditional musical, but that didn't hugely bother me either.
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Post by cherokee on Mar 29, 2023 15:54:10 GMT
It's strange. I was considering going to see this, but if they don't know when it will be on again...?? It's presumably not illness or COVID, as they'd just say that if it were the case. So, what's going on? Is the set design so elaborate that they can't perform without a crucial piece of tech, and also so complicated that it can't be fixed after 5 days?
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Post by cherokee on Jan 24, 2023 19:40:38 GMT
Surprisingly enough, it's not Cheryl who's had to pull out of the show, but her co-star Hugo Chegwin. Which is what happens when you hire an actor whose only experience is improvisational comedy and is unable to actually learn lines.
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Post by cherokee on Jan 12, 2023 7:18:58 GMT
Really makes my local Crossroads panto in Belfast look really pathetic in comparison. If we had Jack and the Beanstalk this year I would put money on the beanstalk being a rope and a step ladder. To be fair to your local panto, I imagine if they were able to sell tickets for £150, they could afford a more spectacular beanstalk as well.
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Post by cherokee on Jan 8, 2023 14:22:31 GMT
I thought that was a very strange elimination. What criteria are the panel using when they make their decision, when objectively Piece of Cake sang far better than Rubbish? Lulu herself seemed a bit shocked to be the first one to go. It was almost as if it was rigged to go against her... The two worst singers (Rubbish and Pigeon) went head to head, where she was up against arguably the best performance of the evening (Rhino), and she was then eliminated when she was by no means the worst of the Bottom three...
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Post by cherokee on Dec 21, 2022 14:05:25 GMT
I always thought it bizarre that everybody on 'Who' and 'Torchwood' treated it like it was a huge joke at the time. Presumably there were people who were uncomfortable about it, but if the powerful people are OK with it, nobody else felt they could object. I think if he'd shown any awareness that he'd behaved inappropriately things might have gone differently for him, but he seems unable to acknowledge that he's done anything wrong.
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Post by cherokee on Sept 19, 2022 21:33:24 GMT
I thought this was quite enjoyable, whilst not quite living up to my expectations. Saoirse Ronan was fabulous, but I thought Sam Rockwell was a big disappointment - his low energy, shambling performance became very one note and slightly irritating when juxtaposed against Ronan's sparkiness. It meant that the moment when she 'betrayed' him kind of went for nothing. I also found the mixture of real people with fictional events a little baffling and in slightly poor taste...
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Post by cherokee on Aug 13, 2022 9:26:21 GMT
Absolutely. Above the Stag's modus operandi has always been slightly amateurish. Programming seems to happen very late and shows are announced quite last minute, but that's now twice this year - first in March and again now - that they've suddenly announced they're closing, leaving directors, writers and actors high and dry, and saying as much on social media. Nothing about these circumstances suggest that they couldn't have been anticipated. However unfortunate the details, the whole thing smacks of incompetence. If it were me, I'd think very carefully about working there in the future. Even if they do move somewhere else, who's to say it won't happen all over again?
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Post by cherokee on Jul 19, 2022 21:57:20 GMT
I'd rather have Boris back than Truss, I think she would be a disaster for the Conservatives at an election. Seems to me that the likelihood of Truss being a disaster in a General Election is the sole point in her favour.
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Post by cherokee on Jun 2, 2022 16:16:04 GMT
I found this very ordinary. Goodman does a good job as Poirot, but other than him, the cast is full of weak links. Mary Debenham & Colonel Arbuthnot are particularly appalling, although Mrs Hubbard and the Princess are not much better. Greta is about the only suspect who makes any kind of impression. All of which is a real hostage to fortune when you have the likes of Lauren Bacall, Wendy Hiller & Sean Connery in your mind...
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Post by cherokee on May 25, 2022 14:14:18 GMT
For anyone who's been, is there decent mobile/4G reception in there? I'm hoping to meet up with different sets of friends who are arriving at different times and are in different sections of the arena. Will we be able to communicate? Failing that, is there an obvious location where we could meet? A merchandise stall? Or are there several of them? Thank you!
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Post by cherokee on May 2, 2022 16:40:02 GMT
I think that there will obviously be all of the big hits, but I’m happy to hear that the two singles from Voyage are in there, and the previously mentioned ‘The Visitors’. I’d love to hear some of the cracking album tracks from Voulez Vouz and hopefully Summer Night City which is a bit of an underated gem in my opinion. I'd be surprised if both 'The Visitors' and 'Summer Night City' were on the setlist. The chorus melodies in those two songs are pretty similar and I think that hearing them both in one evening would make that rather obvious.
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Post by cherokee on May 2, 2022 16:11:43 GMT
I quite enjoyed the play. Nicola Walker gives a solid central performance, and the Welsh choir sounded beautiful. But my God, did I find the framing device irritating! Poor Gareth David Lloyd is reduced to wandering around, issuing stage directions. "There's a knock on the door"; "She enters, carrying a vase." I found myself wanting to scream: "I know!! I can see it in front of me!!" Thankfully it peters out in Act 2, but there's still far too much of it. Although the point when the playwright stops the action and tries out a different version made me cringe. It really feels like they didn't have enough confidence in the original play to just stage it without a pointless framing device.
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Post by cherokee on Mar 31, 2022 11:58:37 GMT
I had my doubts about Stephen K Amos when he was cast in My Night with Reg, as I knew him solely for his work as a stand-up comedian, but I was delighted that he turned out to be the strongest member of the cast. Real stage presence, and great comic timing. I think he'll be a great Doolittle.
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