The Little Big Things - @sohoplace / NT At Home

2nd balcony was absolutely fine, looking down a bit but you’re not looking at the top of their heads.

Was at the matinee today and fabulous performances from all the cast. Really thought provoking.

I did exactly the same! Agree with all your points.

Linzi Hateley has just put a pic up on Instagram of Abbey Road Studios and says "I'm going in".

Caught the matinée of this on Thursday and I enjoyed it. Some catchy songs, some genuine pathos, particularly when Linzi Hateley is on stage. I would have liked a little deeper character development but I'm aware that that can be trickier when writing a true story, particularly when the people involved are still around and involved!

Best thing: Genuine feelings ahoy! Could see a lot of tears around the audience and that's one of the reasons I go to musical theatre.

Worst thing: The choreography isn't for me. Not a criticism so much as just not for me. Although I must say Jordan Benjamin gets everything possible out of it. He really gives 100% committment despite his part being limited.

A mixed bag, but I'd see it again.

To be fair, most of the choreography is sign language isn't it? 

Appearing at the Royal Variety Performance

I saw this yesterday evening, and I'm kinda surprised by how much I disliked it. While well-staged, I found it to be a shallow, schmaltzy bore, laden with bland music and cliche characters - less "feel-good", more "Hallmark movie".

It's like... every conflict is plausibly deniable. Is the Dad working too hard? Maybe - but he doesn't seem to be neglecting his family; he's the one who does all the work to get Henry painting, for example. Is the Mom irresponsible by taking her son clubbing? Maybe - but Henry had a good time and it's not like anything bad came of it. Are Henry's brothers hiding from him out of shame? Maybe - but they all stood by him earlier in the act, working together to prepare the house for his return from the hospital. The end result is a show where every character is more or less on the same page for the entire duration, except for one scene in the second act where they all spontaneously turn into massive assholes. The writers were apparently aware that pacing-wise, the show needed a big argument at approximately that point in the script; they just had no idea how to set it up or to resolve it or to execute it.

The framing device of the two Henrys is interesting in theory but I don't think it's utilized fully. Younger Henry never mounts any serious resistance to the idea of moving forward, while older Henry never surrenders to hopelessness. For the most part, they agree with each other and work together, which doesn't lend itself to compelling drama. The script make a big deal out of younger Henry's refusal to remember the accident, but then in act 2, he sings a song about it and reveals that what happened is exactly what the audience thought happened: he jumped into the sea and landed on his head. Why was this such a big deal?

I've seen some people in this thread compare the music to Dear Evan Hansen's. While stylistically they're very similar, DEH has the advantage of tonal diversity; the somber, lullaby-esque melody of Requiem sounds nothing like the pulsing momentum of Disappear. For the most part, if you took the lyrics of one DEH song and tried to arrange them to the melody of another, the result would feel discordant.

The Little Big Things, on the other hand? I'm actually kinda stunned by just how many of the musical numbers can be summed up with "upbeat, life-affirming pop anthem sung by whole company". We've got the opening number, we've got the flashback sequence in the Portuguese bar, we've got the act 1 finale, we've got the act 2 opener, we've got the Monopoly club dance, we've got the title song... They aren't bad songs in of themselves, they just all sound the same! It would be like if every other song in DEH was You Will Be Found.

I cannot believe how much I loathed Agnes. To be a mentor character is one thing. But to be a perfectly insightful and discerning mentor character, who also gets all the funniest and cleverestest lines and immediately endears herself to every other character she meets? ... No. Just, no. This character is not real; she's a puppet, and every time she opens her mouth, you can practically see the writer pulling her strings from on high, compelling her to dispense the exact pieces of idealized wisdom the other characters need to hear in that moment. Her dialogue swings between "sagely life advice" and "snarky undercutting humor" with predictable, pendulous regularity; I feel like it could've been written by an AI trained on the dialogue of coaches from sports movies.

Also... look, I hate to play the "swap the sexes" card, but Jesus Christ, swap the sexes. Imagine if an adult male medical professional flirted openly with an underage female patient of his, visited her house wearing a fetish outfit, then took her out to a club. It's seriously f***ed up that this behavior not only went unexamined, but was consistently played for laughs.

On the positive side of things, the staging was pitch-perfect. I don't think I've ever seen lighting used so densely throughout a show. The single most powerful moment of the evening for me was the momentary blackout in the accident flashback - very simple, very effective. Loved the use of harnesses too.

Finally, if you haven't seen the show, you'll just have to trust me when I say that the scene where Henry got his balls fondled by his brother was great. It felt real to me in a way that the rest of the sanitized material did not.

4/10. I'm clearly in the minority on this one though.

Thank you very much! I hope all my negativity doesn't make me sound too crotchety. It's often easier to write about shows you dislike, but for balance's sake I'm going to start forcing myself to leave positive feedback on shows I enjoy, even if the posts are short.