Opening Night - Gielgud

Their cruelty is long established. The Scum should not be given the time of day, and personally I wouldn't be facilitating clicks to their website.

Sheridan Smith's forté is in showing convincing raw emotion. Who can forget The Twelve Days of Christine which I believe is Inside No. 9's episode with the highest feedback rating on IMDB. She's no different in Opening Night, giving a superb performance. The failings here are not down to any of the cast.

No. Most people on here are critical of the musical and not Sheridan. Many of the posts are praising her performance.

It's the show that's dreadful, not her. The piece with specific text and images at the start makes the reader think that it's all her fault, it's only right at the end of the piece that they acknowledge she was receiving a standing ovation. But most people wouldn't have read that far. It's devious.

The three producers were all involved in A Little Life which was very successful so no surprise they decided to work with Ivo again.

I think Sheridan Smith will be fine because not all shows will be hits and she has had plenty of duds. I wouldn't be surprised if she signed on to work with Ivo.

You don’t have to read very far before you get to this quote  “Sheridan put on an excellent show, but the material she and the rest of the cast had been given to work with was pretty shocking - with poor songs and a dull storyline.” which is exactly the majority view here. I’m no defender of The Sun but I don’t think they’re being unfair here. 

I think the paper knows full well Sheridan is great in the role, but it's a better story to pretend everyone hates her.

Awful.

I saw this the second night and there were bits I liked and others I didn't. I knew what to expect when it came to the story since I recently watched "Opening Night" for free on YouTube - I gave up after about 10 minutes on my first attempt but went back to it and it grew on me the second time. Everyone who has said they hate the story could easily have saved themselves a few pounds by not going. As another poster mentioned, it clearly says "John Cassavetes' Opening Night" and that's what you should expect. I think a lot of people were expecting something different from Sheridan Smith and were probably more likely to walk out. We had two people walk out in our row. I don't know how they could hate it that much to not see it through. The acting/singing is good.

Regarding the music, I love Rufus Wainwright and knew that the best way to listen to his music is to really listen and open yourself up to the musical journey. I don't agree that the songs have to be similar. It's unfortunate that Rufus' music sometimes takes a few listens to really "get it" and that doesn't translate well to a West End show. Also, as others have said, the music was too loud and I had difficulty hearing the lyrics, maybe they've fixed that problem.

I applaud Sheridan for taking the risk with this - I still love her. I don't think that this will be career ending for anyone. There's way too much talent for that. I hope they'll be able to pull this off. One criticism I have is that as an American, I felt the accents were pushing it a bit too hard. Just because it's about Broadway, it doesn't mean everyone should have a New York accent. John Marquez had the best accent of everyone.

I'm not a theatre person, or know anything about structuring a show. It might help to have a few more lines of dialogue to help the story come across. I just don't think "Opening Night" deserves the vitriol it's been getting from some. I don't live in London or I would go see it again after it officially opens. And yes, I would miss the hoovering.

I also think that the preview captions are confusing as everyone is on stage all through the preview. But maybe that is being too literal for this piece. 

Someone here said exactly that: "Is there a way back for van Hove? This is at the level of career-ending."

Yes, that was me. It's difficult to see how anyone would be prepared to back him on another big project. He's pretty much shown that his gimmicks are all he has in his toolkit, and he will have alienated a lot of his audience who would need some coaxing to try again.

Maybe he'll direct a straight play without any distractions and prove me wrong.

Ivo has had a few duds like Obsession and The Human Voice but this show will not kill his career.

His track record means that he will get work.

The framing device of the TV  documentary was never developed and just seemed  an excuse for using cameras. Several filmed scenes were "private" moments where a film crew would not have been present(eg the sequence on the couch) so there was a lack of consistency in that set up. Having seen several of Ivo's previous shows I did feel this was all a bit lazy and retread of his signature techniques and ,for a show which presumably sees itself as cutting edge, all a bit dated. I agree about the lack of theatrical atmosphere. I was never clear what was a rehearsal or performance. With creatives/cast sitting at the side it all looked more like a TV /film set.