Sylvia - Old Vic

I saw it last night, I thought it was a wonderful evening and it has the potential to be absolutely outstanding. It won't actually take much more work as most of it is cutting things away rather than adding or changing.

First thing - make a cast recording in advance of its return and promote it so that people know some of the songs as these songs are some of the best British musical theatre songs I've heard in a decade or more.

Second thing - put more buttons on songs, especially in the early to mid parts of both acts. The audience were desperate to respond and they did when possible but you can use that audience energy and really hype the audience up. Keep the latter ends of each act without them to build up the tension, though. The show is profligate with its songs because of this, one example that I thought was ready to build to a climax and that energy release was 'No Angel in the House', so make the most of these great numbers.

Third thing - I loved the wide net it used for the story but some things, however good, need to go. The way that the poor were sidelined comes across in the second act but using Annie Kenney more in the earlier parts would make this arc more powerful. If anything, I'd cut some of the Sylvia/Hardie romance, it's fine but it could be more secondary.

Fourth thing (and by far the most important and necessary) - get a new technical team. You have cast, staging and numbers that work so, so well yet the lighting adds little and the sound is very poor indeed. You need to hear the words and (on occasion) I had to look at the captioning at the side of the stage to check what I'd heard. Work with the Hamilton people, their sound is pristine, crystal clear, yet this in comparison was more like listening to it on an old mono radio. The sound should envelop the audience and so the action appears to surround them rather than seeming to emanate from behind the prosc. arch. The tech team are the hidden weapon of any modern musical, when they don't deliver then it makes everyone else's job more difficult.

Fifth thing - employ a bigger band, a lot of the music demands a good horn section (and who doesn't like a good horn section?) There are some four-to-the-floor disco stompers, for example, that practically demand some horn interjections and counter-melodies.

The show is brilliant, it can become epic.

(One massive gripe with the Old Vic, whoever decided it was a good idea to not send out physical tickets should be put on toilet cleaning duty, given how much it contributes to a show starting late. After faffing with getting a phone or ipad out, it needing the passcode putting in again and then the email not opening properly there could be many more people not waiting impatiently to do the same)

Cast album, please!

P.S. I wonder if Angela Lansbury ever thought she'd see her Grandfather as a character in a musical!