The Little Big Things - @sohoplace / NT At Home

I have to admit, I was tearing up a little!

Now, give me a cast recording!

A bit of eye-mist from me too. The "Guide You" scene was just brilliant, and loads of lovely family moments that were really sweet as well. I'm back reviewing it next week so it'll be interesting to see if they make any changes between now and then.

Will write more later but generally I will say that I don’t think this is worth the gushing praise. Lots of heart and a committed cast and nice staging. Funny in places (mainly Agnes). Great to see broad representation on stage. Shoddy script, terrible lyrics, too many earnest overemoting and glib fun songs, naff choreography, weirdly offensive and patronising about disability in focussing on how everybody around Henry was feeling but little about his feelings and struggles in comparison (and not even showing him with his brush in his mouth). Felt like a touring production of Our House performed by NYMT. What a shame

phew glad to see a few other people not thinking this was the bee's knees. I was very underwhelmed at the interval given all the praise I had seen on here, but I did enjoy act 2 a lot more than act 1. I still left the show thinking it was fine (not amazing or awful, just fine).

Thanks to the rave review from the first night for the tip off for this. So glad I caught it tonight and will definitely be making return visits. A real heartwarming night at the theatre with lots of laughter and quite a few tears.

I completely see the musical comparisons to Dear Evan Hansen particularly in the ensemble numbers - it’s modern theatrical pop music and definitely not one for the traditionalists.

A few weak links in the cast - despite loving Linzi Hateley, I felt she overacted this, had terrible ‘mum’ jokes that didn’t land and her character was rather unlikable. Probably the biggest let down for me. Agnes the physio was absolutely hilarious, so many witty one liners although felt her singing was pretty poor.

Adore Jonny Aimes in everything he’s in - such a beautiful tone to his voice and he delivers a great performance here. Also incredibly impressed by Ed Larkin, the emotion in his performance had me in tears several times.

Looking forward to the cast recording and have had the 3 released tracks on repeat all day. Perhaps give them a listen before booking if anyone’s unsure with the marmite commentary starting to come through. 4 stars from me.

Well it was nice to finally see the inside of Soho Place...

My friend and I merely hated the show, while my other half hated it with a passion.

Act 1 was watchable enough to make us stick around, but Act 2 was like Chinese water torture.

The cast ranged from fantastic to average and some of the directorial decisions were frankly mind-blowing.

The staging and lighting were ok, but none of the music stood out for me.

It is clearly a 'for the masses' show and I have very little doubt it'll probably find a large doting audience, but it really should not be mentioned in the same breath as the rather good DEH or absolutely phenomenal CFA as it is not even a close to either of them on any level.

1/5

Agree about the lift mechanism but as I enjoyed the show so much it didn't really bother me too much. I think if you are sitting higher up you wouldn't notice it so much but in the stalls you are level with it so more noticeable.

I think it's a bit early to call it Marmite - classically a 50/50 love/hate split with very few in the middle.

So far:

12 4/5 star votes - 63% of voters
2 1/2 star votes - 11%
And 5 in the middle on 3 stars - 26%

Guess it is a pattern seen on this board over and over. First couple of previews get raves. Then those that didn't like it come in. So it'll be interesting to see where this one "settles."

Someone posted on Twitter saying there needs to be a cast recording and the show replied "watch this space".

I saw the first preview of this, sitting one row behind Henry Fraser's family, with Henry Fraser on the right, his wheelchair occupying the space of my original seat.

The family and Fraser himself evidently enjoyed all the irreverent humour of the production, laughing alot. As to the rest, I could never be sure, but they clearly loved it overall.

I voted 4 stars myself as I feel this is a rousing, entertaining, thoughtful and meaningful show, with my reservation being that it short-changes us on how inspirational Henry, his family and friends actually are.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Reading the book on which the show is based, it struck me that the "Little Big Things" of the title are threefold:

(1) A little thing like diving into the sea can result in a big thing such as your whole life changing. I was not familiar with "undulating" undersea surfaces, and, like Henry, would not have expected the deepness gradient as you run into the sea to suddenly become shallow. This could easily have happened to me, and this show captures this random sense of human fragility as well as how different Henry must become after his accident from who he was before.

Jonny Amies is marvellous as Henry before the accident, the shy, sporty innocent, and as his more knowing compassionate future, Ed Larkin is almost as good. For me, this dialogue of two Henrys (similar to Sondheim's Follies, in which young and old interact) is the heart of the show, it works brilliantly, and it echoes the transformation described in the original book;

(2) To surmount seemingly insurmountable obstacles, doing one little thing after another can lead to achieving apparently impossible big things. As in Laozi's philosophy, "a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step."

I felt that the show dilutes Fraser's herculean achievements, in this aspect. One of the songs in the show is "Miles and Miles," and is one of the best, but in no way does this show reflect all the single steps that Fraser took to achieve the metaphorical miles he travels. For instance, on stage, the paraplegic Ed Larkin, playing post-accident Henry, bombs around the stage in a wheelchair using his hands. But one of the great focuses of the book is how, as a tetraplegic, without use of his hands, absolutely nobody ever thought the real Henry would get in a wheelchair without a head brace, but how, using his shoulder muscles, a special chair, and his rugby-related exercise discipline, he achieved what nobody with his level of injuries at Stoke-Mandeville Hospital had ever achieved before.

Further, in the show, a heroic doctor called Dr Graham and a physiotherapist called Agnes inspire a doubting Henry back to life, but in Henry Fraser's book, the hospital and physios are so focused on expectation management, believing Fraser will be 18 months in hospital and unable ever to lift his own head, believing Henry's ambitious goals will damage him psychologically, that Henry and his family must seek outside help to achieve what the medical establishment thought was impossible.

So, when Fraser says in his book that it felt like travelling "miles and miles" to get from that hospital bed to the outside, the real journey of Henry is more awe-inspiring than the show suggests.

(3) To feel motivation in unexpected and dire circumstances, the little acts of love of family and friends and teachers and acquaintances amount to one great big inspiration to motivation. This aspect of the love of family and friends, written about by Fraser in his book, is badly diluted by the show, which sexes up the drama of the plot by conjuring up internecine family battles that are an anathema to anything in Fraser's book.

In the show, Linzi Hately's mother frequently comes off badly, tossing out bitter accusations and doubts and whatnot, but in the book, her (less dramatic but more inspirational) stiff upper lipped restraint over her own emotions is paramount to her directing a million hospital visitors her son's way, while friends insure she never needs to cook a meal, by cooking for the family, so that the family members can instead give all their time to Henry. And all these countless visitors must travel 50 miles to Stoke Mandeville just to visit Henry, which they did, day in and day out. The way these community members come together in Fraser's book is much more "Come From Away" inspirational than the dramatised doubts of the family members depicted in the show, whereby they turn on each other.

That said, the anthemic and rousing style of the songs in this musical, whereby one voice builds to multiple choral voices, does quite wonderfully reflect the way Fraser's whole community of people come together.

Anyway, Malinda Parris sings with glorious positivity and belt as Dr Graham, Amy Trigg is hilarious as the dominatrix physio, and while these characters are obviously embellished composites, I have to admit they are great fun to watch.

In the end, any telling of Henry Fraser's story, even one with a dramatically sexed up dossier (the character of potential love interest, Katie, seems to be conjured wholecloth out of nowhere), is an important and meaningful story, and this telling is entertaining, in both it's truths and it's made up dramatic bits, and the anthemic music (I could hear echoes of U2 in some numbers lol) makes it all that bit more emotional and fun.

But, having read the book, Henry Fraser and his family and friends remain more of an inspiration to me than this benign,fun, rousing musical gets to grips with.

4 stars from me.

LOL, so, errr, a bit like Come From Away then?!

(FWIW I found the staging as good as Come From Away, the lighting better and the music much better! But then melody is of course subjective!)

I'm not sure if this will be the next Heathers or Six mostly because it's not that type of show, it's more akin to Come From Away

I assume that it'd be quite difficult for even an actor in a wheelchair to portray a tetraplegic hence why they decided to forgo that element. 

It's interesting about the comments about Fran Fraser not coming across well in the musical compared to the book but actually I thought it was fairly realistic about how she blames herself and her family for Henry's accident.