Opening Night - Gielgud

I could have made magic out of tragic if it wasn't for pesky Mr Barnaby.

"I don’t know about you, but I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all of this."

I gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta. . . yes, my third favourite song from this show is

3. "Magic:-"

This song is a jack-in-the-box of joyous and joyful advice about creativity, jumping poetically out of dark fears and feelings.

As such, it's a great song to listen to if you want to create something.

The song begins in downbeat musings to threatening, rumbling, descending musical notes:

"I wouldn't say I was beautiful
I try to be
That was my hope I guess."

But then, the brightest banjo-chirpy strings smash away all doubts:

"You got to make magic
Magic out of tragic
We are the sunshine
that defines the moon
It takes a long time
for the stars to get here
Don't want to miss it
In your dressing room."

The metaphor of creative inspiration flying through space like stars, which we can only catch if we decide to leave our "dressing rooms," is simply gorgeous and gorgeously simple, much as the magic/tragic rhyme is memorably simple and simply memorable.

But it's the fact that "we are sunshine" who can take hold of the doomy moody "moon" inside us that is truly inspiring!

And its not enough to be told by your parents or teachers you can do it, you gotta show up (Carpe Diem):

"So when they tell you
Tell you that you're able
Yeah when they tell you
Tell you that you can
Still you got to make magic
Or you shouldn't even be here
Wasting the precious
Precious time at hand."

The song is positive affirmations to the highest degree, as those chirpy strings and celebratory trumpets make stopping procrastination and actually doing sh*t sound like the most fun in the world lol!

"My mother warned me about Broadway's light
But now I'm here and I have never ever felt so right
Yeah you gotta do it
Yeah you gotta do it!"

*Ignores the pesky theatre kids, puts the Steve (Sondheim) mask back on, and posts the sternly worded letter to the white star line*

And the band played on. You gotta make magic. . .

My second favourite song in "Opening Night" is

2. "Talk to Me:-"

It is a song for the lonely and lost.

It's a song that can only really be appreciated if you see the show, as Van Hove does a LOT with it, but as its likely now that most people will never see it, I'll describe it below. . .

Spoilers follow. . .

A 19 year old fan is run over, and Myrtle is shaken. She wants to have a drink with her ex-husband, Maurice, for old times' sake:

"Talk to me
I'm trying to tell you something
Open up your ears
And hear what I want to say
There isn't anyone else but me here
There isn't anyone else whose listening."

(I think that bit was sung acapella).

Maurice leaves Myrtle by herself, as he goes offstage to join the others for dinner. She's all alone.

A high pitched wind instrument starts to ascend in up and down waves, as if approaching to comfort her.

Then lower pitched alternating fast-played rumbling piano keys form a warm aural embrace around this lonely broken woman, as she sadly sings:

"One More Dream
That will not come true."

A close-up of her face appears on the left of the big screen, looking right.

Somewhere offstage, her unlikeable ex-husband is lonely too. His image now appears on the right of the big screen, looking left, as if he is looking at Myrtle. He sings:

"One More Wish
That has fallen through."

In reality they are both alone, wishing they were talking. In the fantasy world of the screen, they ARE talking.

They both realise they are alone, and now sing their loneliness passionately into the void:

"Always waiting on a corner
In New York somewhere
Caught between the border
Of hell and high water."

That passion is a bridge to repeat the main phrase of the song:

"There isn't anyone else but me here
There isn't anyone else whose listening."

The phrase has changed its meaning. When first sang, it meant the couple had the quiet to talk if they were willing. Now it means the only person they are talking to is themselves.

Myrtle calls the hospital and discovers her fan has died.

Now, in the foreground of the stage, the director, Manny (Hadley Fraser) and his wife (Amy Lennox) have their own argument. She wants to talk:

"Talk to me
I'm trying to tell you something
Open up your ears
And hear what I want to say
There isn't anyone else but me here
There isn't anyone else whose listening."

He's not interested, and she starts insulting him.

Now Sheridan Smith's Myrtle and her ex, Maurice, sing again of their loneliness:

"One More Dream
That will not come true
One More Wish
That has fallen through."

But this time the director and his wife join them in a round of this chorus, four lonely people singing alone yet also singing together only through the magic of theatre.

The bridge engulfs them all, singing together, loudly and more desperately, alone but together, yearning:

"Always waiting on a corner
In New York somewhere
Caught between the border
Of hell and high water. . ."

Together they all sing the main phrase of the song:

"There isn't anyone else but me here
There isn't anyone else whose listening."

The phrase has changed its meaning again. First, it was a request to talk privately, then it was a confession of loneliness, but, now, when all 4 characters make the same confession together, it shows the universality of loneliness, which, if everyone feels that way means that noone is truly alone at all. They are all just experiencing the human condition, which includes loneliness.

The music and the lyrics and the direction are all in perfect sync for this one, which is why, in my opinion, it's a perfect theatrical moment.

Lol. I'm sorry.

*Checks Steve (Sondheim) mask is on.*

It's such a good song.

Don't let my baffling explanation put you off.

There's still about another 20 performances, and you can experience it for yourself:)

*Checks noone is looking and removes mask*

Saw the show last week. Started about 10 minutes late and SS sounded like she had a cold in the first few songs. Does every show starts late? Does she always sound a little bit off in the first songs? Could be directed this way...

(My first post on this board. Looked for an answer, couldn't find it.)

Finally saw this yesterday afternoon, more out of curiosity than anything, with very low expectations. My god it’s bad. The material is in no way ready, and that’s only elevated by the bare design which makes it all feel like a try-out of a second year drama school devised musical. I do give them kudos for giving context to the material on the screens. The documentary works really well for the first 20 minutes or so, but then the concept is largely forgotten and the screen becomes a gimmick.

Overall I found it quite a frustrating watch because there IS a good idea at the very core of it, and I can see exactly why Sheridan Smith was drawn to it with the parallels to her own experiences giving it the potential to be a cathartic star turn. But they’ve utterly failed her and I feel bad for her because she - as always - is so enthralling. With stronger material here she could have really shone.

There are bad lyrics and awkward prose galore, but what hit me most in the material was how repetitive the songs are. Choruses are repeated ad nauseum with the actors having to create their own intents and emotions over lyrics that often have nothing to do with what they’re trying to portray. Some of the songs by themselves are nice enough to listen to, but they’re ultimately pop songs and hardly ever push the plot or emotion forward so actors are left making each repeat more intense than the previous chorus because… that’s all they can do. He’s an incredible songwriter, but writing a musical is a totally different beast. Wainwright needed guidance here by someone who understands the art form, and it’s naïve and arrogant of the creative team to assume they didn’t need to work more on the material before subjecting it to such a big stage.

Most frustrating to me was the irony throughout: the main character is literally struggling with material that doesn’t work and more than once declares that it “has to make sense”. How they failed to heed the warning at the core of their own material is baffling.

Having said that, the cast are incredible. Especially Smith and Nicola Hughes as Sarah, both working their arses off to convey meaning and emotion even when they’re having to battle the material itself to do so. Hats off to them, but I do feel sorry for them - with better material they wouldn’t have to work this hard.

I saw The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse last night and it started with about 5 mins of someone hoovering the stage…

Here We Are (the last Sondheim show, in NYC) also started with Tracie Bennett hoovering onstage!

You can see it coming a mile off with the theatre cosplayers going dressed as a hoover!

Me personally I am going to revisit this and go dressed as the dead fan so there might be another empty seat!

Hope you made it home in one piece. I quite enjoy that feeling on having put a lot of effort into seeing something, even if it’s not a guaranteed ‘enjoy’. I remember driving the three hours back from Chichester in torrential rain after ‘South Pacific’ not caring a bit because I’d just seen something so good, whereas I really resented driving home from ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ 20-odd miles away cos I could have been sat at home watching ‘Corrie’ at the end of a busy work week.

Which leads me directly to talking about the first half closing number, "Life is Thin," my favourite song in this show, performed by the character of Sarah Goode, the writer of the play-within-the-play, "The Second Woman!"

Spoilers follow. . .

1. "Life is Thin:-"

Ostensibly, Sarah Goode, the writer, is "the third woman" (ie an aging post-menopausal woman) who scares the heck out of Sheridan Smith's Myrtle ("the second woman," no longer young but not yet old) with her dour dreary script about aging, "The Second Woman," catalysing Myrtle's retreat into a destructive imaginary fantasy friendship with "the first woman," Shira Haas's dead 17 year old Nancy (youthful, reckless, passionate, bonkers), which Myrtle, having had a psychotic break, perceives as real.

As if that wasn't bonkers enough, as is universally common in this show, a much bigger metaphor outweighs and overthrows the "reality" of this already absurd situation in the final song of the first act:


The title of the song ("Life is THIN") gives the first clue, as the "thin"-nest thing about our lives are our constricting arteries, which thin until they eventually kill us, if something else doesn't get us first;

The second clue is the beat of the intro music, which thumps a heavy bass two-pronged "boom boom" heartbeat motif as the intro. The music to the song that follows, accompanying that heartbeat, piano and percussion jazz-inflected funky sixties-style dance music, reflects a dance of death conception to the song, whereby we mindlessly dance along with our lives until we suddenly cop it;

The third clue is that the song is framed as a series of interruptions to Myrtle working on the play, nattering away with the director and her ex-husband, as Sarah Goode watches on, lying in wait, to interrupt Myrtle's ramblings, like a heart attack which can suddenly interrupt our day to day:-

She gutturally growls (if sung by Nicola Hughes, in the manner of Shirley Bassey singing a Bond song) or eye-brow raised, scowling sneers (if sung by Jennifer Hepburn) the following lyrics:

"This silly world we're living for
Can disappear in the matter of a minute
Don't get your hopes up anymore
Life is Thin."

The diabolical infinite expanse of (not so) Goode's vision becomes clear, as she dismisses any human pretensions to permanence, like Shelley in "Ozymandias," snarling

"The Pyramids are a house of cards."

Then, she cautions:

"It's over before you know it
It's over even before you blow it
You're welcome
and thanks for coming
Yes I've been patiently waiting for you
And now
You're in."

Like in Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand," Sarah Goode isn't so much Good as GOD, patiently waiting for us to expire, to welcome us in to the afterlife. Not only does she sneer that we are likely to "blow" our plans, we are likely to expire "even before we blow it" lol. I mean, not even having the chance to blow it, that's really mean!

As Michael Palin said in "Monty Python," "Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition:" and so it is with Goode, each interruption of Myrtle's play-within-a-play, leaping out to get Myrtle like the Spanish Inquistion, a closeup of a hidden Goode towering and glowering over proceedings, even as Goode herself disappears off stage left, hidden from Myrtle and us on stage but only revealed by Van Hove's omniscient enormous threatening screen, plotting Myrtles demise, her voice growing louder and LOUDER with each interruption as death draws near.

With each interruption, the immediacy of the danger Goode represents lyrically increases:

Whereas initially she gloated that we could die "in the matter of a minute," in a subsequent verse, she suggests that

"this silly world we're living for
Can explode in the heat of a moment"

and most sinisterly, she subsequently concludes that,

"This silly world we're living for
Can expire in a FRACTION OF A SECOND."

Louder and louder, with greater and greater urgency, Hughes' belt tops most anyone you've ever seen as the song concludes with one more

"It's over before you know it
It's over even before you blow it
You're welcome
and thanks for coming
Yes I've been patiently waiting for you
And now
You're in."


Hilariously, the song ends in a musical Bond parody flourish, mimicking the music of the gun barrel sequence in every Bond film where Bond appears at the end of the barrel, except here, it is Nicola Hughes' Goode, Sarah Goode, who turns to shoot Myrtle dead.

About 16 performances remain of this incredible song, and it remains to be seen if the superlative Nicola Hughes will return for any of them. If she does, it's "Time to Die."