The Little Big Things - @sohoplace / NT At Home

I went to the Thursday matinee with some very discounted tickets and curious to see what the deal was since I'd seen some rave word of mouth reviews. Long story short, I didn't think it lived up to its hype. There are some laughs, the cast are incredible and put in some brilliant performances, I love the inclusivity of the casting, and the venue is really nice. I thought the staging was pretty effective in the round, we were sat row b of stalls in the corner so no one in front of us and my daughter loved being right next to the stage and the gangway where cast come on and off. I just didn't connect with the material that much. I did tear up more than once (I cry at everything), but I felt almost annoyed that it had made me cry because I didn't feel like it had earned my tears somehow. It felt somehow quite shallow, and the middle class-ness of it all was too distracting to me. The family dynamics were actually quite dysfunctional and that seemed to all be tied up in a neat bow quite quickly after a brief conflict, without much exploration. They never really acknowledged their obvious privilege. I was sat there thinking these are a bunch of middle class people having kind of basic revelations about there being more to life than rugby and boats. Not to take anything away from Henry and his family, I just didn't feel like it was a story I needed to see told on stage in the way it was. But then I'm not disabled, and I would be interested to know how it has been received by people who are, because if it's meaningful to them then I should probably reassess my opinion.

A significant extension or are talking just a few weeks up to Christmas?

I think they should be able to extend to at least January or February.

If this is the case, then they should really be in trouble for shifting to advertising it as a "strictly limited season" before continuing to extend it any way...

Which is bonkers because this is comping every day of the week.

I've seen the seating plans for next week from the box office system - if you added all the seats sold up for the week you'd barely half full one auditorium.

This must be haemorrhaging cash.

Would add that most things, other than the usual few sell out big hitters, have oodles of availability for this week.

Fun though guessing (and exaggerating) may be it’s only the producers that have the full picture of a show’s financial position IDK 🤷🏻‍♂️

Many seats are held back by box office management teams to make a show look like it’s sold better than it has (because no one wants to book for a show that’s barely selling, especially at “full” west end prices), so there’s probably in actual fact a lot more seats available for this for the next week than what the Nimax site would lead you to believe.

Correct

Agreed in general, but this was not initially advertised as "strictly limited". They changed it partway through, presumably due to the poor sales, and are supposedly now extending it anyway despite the sales not really improving. I think that's some pretty dodgy practices, if nothing else.

Extended to March....wild

Must be selling ok then?

How are they going get bums on seats? Stunt casting, i guess Les Denis is now free