Opening Night - Gielgud

Exactly.

Producers/creatives have every right to re-write/adjust their show during the preview period. That is what previews are for. If you want the frozen, final version of the show, don't book a ticket for a preview.

Problem solved. :-)

On the fence about this one. I went on Friday night so it sounds like the show was quite different to when it started. There were parts I really enjoyed, and others that dragged a bit. I thought Sheridan Smith was working really hard and is very compelling to watch; very good acting and nice singing (save for a few high notes). Nicola Hughes stole the show for me - seeing her credits she has been in lots of things but somehow I have never seen her in anything! She was riveting to watch in the final song of Act 1. All of the cast were great to be fair, though Amy Lennox was woefully underused (as was Rebecca Thornill but she is understudy to Smith so that makes more sense) as to why she is in such a tiny role).

I am really torn about the use of the video/screen. In some parts it worked well, but I thought it was overused. We had excellent stalls seats but at times I wondered why we bothered (given the price) as so much is sung to the camera with backs or sides to the audience so you needed to watch the screen rather than the actors on stage which you can do from much cheaper seats. Same issue someone else had with the curtain, no issue with it for some time but did it really need to remain closed for so long obscuring the view.

It certainly seemed a mixed response from the audience. A few people near us left in the interval and I heard the usher say to a couple that left that the show isn't for everyone and people have left in the interval at other shows. I certainly would stick it out until the end if anyone is on the fence about staying for Act 2.

Overall, I don't think I would rush back to see it, but if a cast recording is released I would listen to it again as some of the songs were very nice. It sits at three stars for me at the moment, I am glad I went, good performances, but a little disappointed overall compared to what I was hoping for!

Do any theatre websites detail what a preview is and what audiences can expect? I cannot see this anywhere on the booking site for Opening Night and in fact throwing two random tickets into my basket for tomorrow does not indicate they are preview tickets. No press or opening night is listed on the page. So while I take your point and in some ways agree, I think there is a gap between what might be reasonable grounds for research and how tickets are being sold.

I could find no mention of preview performances on the booking page when I looked. If it’s a work in progress then fine, just tell people that is the case and reduce the price accordingly. That’s what always used to happen but of course greed greed greed has taken over in the west end.

The cost of previews, for the audience, is barely different from tickets for the fully developed show.
The cost of such previews for the production is bad word of mouth.

What's more worrying to me is – at the beginning of the previews – the creatives didn't feel the same and thought it was good enough to show to a paying audience. I suspect some directorial vanity is slowly being renegotiated.

There's that but also the fact that creatives will never know what they have until they add the most critical element, the audience. What might be impactful in the rehearsal room might die a quick death when placed centre stage, lit and presented to paying punters.

Good on them they are doing the work to try and make it a show they can be proud of. 

...........or Bradford!

The main offence is the book.

I've seen four of Ivo's adaptations: All About Eve, Who Killed My Father, A Little Life and this. The main issue I had with all four was the book. Ivo thinks he can just put the screenplay on stage add some cameras and call it a day as he has done with this and All About Eve. He's not the talented multi hyphenate he or others think he is. Stop having him write his shows!

The problem is here, imo, is that he follows too closely to the film (which is already flawed) and expects it to work. An actual talented book writer should have been hired to adapt the screenplay - take the storyline, expand on the themes, make it more theatrical and streamline everything to make it more understandable for the audience but keep it an edgy character study.

There are some interesting things the film/ musical are trying to say and they just needed someone to mine it and bring it to the forefront. 

That is not to say this is the only problem. The direction had issues. I thought the staging of the death scene was god awful as was Benjamin Walker's solo number.

I think if I hadn't already seen the film I'd be far more confused than I already was. People around me didn't know when and where we were in the story even though titles are used on the screen throughout. The staging is just that muddled. 

I can't see this lasting till July. Word of mouth is already impacting ticket sales and I can't imagine the reviews will be too kind. It's a real shame because I think there *is* a really good musical that could be made out of the flawed and fascinating film. 

Not sure quite how to read your comment, but it’s a great theatre, the Bradford Alhambra, very popular, with an excellent audience base, who are invariably attentive and appreciative. I’ve always loved going .

Tuesday 26th

Hmmmm... what to make of this? Saw it last night and I had high hopes, as I envisioned it combining two of my most favourite types of storytelling, namely psychologically focussed narratives, where someone's sate of mind governs what unfolds before us, and musical theatre. They're two things not often combined, which I find weird considering musical theatre's focus on inner narratives.

Sadly, put me down as one who wasn't a huge fan - not because I found it weird or confusing (I love weird and confusing!), more because I thought it just wasn't very well done.

There was zero atmosphere and it wasn't well served being in a typical proscenium arch West End theatre - if the audience had surrounded the action and we'd been in a less traditional space that would have helped a bit for me. I thought the script and songs were uneven (that's putting it charitably) - about every third scene I found myself really engaged, and then it would lurch into a scene where the characters just delivered lines, either spoken or sung, that lacked any nuance or subtlety, and just shouted out the themes of the script. It honestly felt very sixth-formy to me.

The performances were excellent but for something structured to be driven by character psychology there was surprisingly little depth. All the symbolism - the young dead girl, the older female playwright, the actress caught in the middle, were lit up like big blinking neon signs, screaming 'symbolism! metaphor!' and this wasn't helped by some very clunky lyrics. I think to work it needs to go one of two ways - either make it more explicit OR more abstract. At the moment it tries to do both - having strange psychologically driven happenings that are then just brushed off, or discussed as if they were normal reality, by the other characters ("are you being bothered by that dead girl?"... I'm misquoting, but not by much). Personally, I would have gone way more abstract and subtle, and let the mood of dread just creep over the audience. But for things like that to work, the atmosphere needs to hang thick as treacle, and the writing needs to be powerfully emotive, with huge amounts of subtext for the audience to gradually glean. Granted, this probably wouldn't be hugely commercial, but it'd be so much better than it just falling between stools.

Mind you, I'm still happy this exists, and I'm delighted there are people trying to do something new with the West End musical, and producers willing to see it gets on stage.