Mozart: Her Story- Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

I was also quite intrigued by this when it was first announced and was actually looking forward to seeing it......then I listened to all the songs and was bored beyond belief, so passed on getting tickets


The (supposed) set design is really something else though

Lots of papering to fill both shows, so hopefully someone from the Board will have got in on a super cheapie and will report back.

Yea this was definitely a miss. I left at the interval so only saw act 1 but the material did absolutely nothing to grab me in the hour and a half I saw and despite the best efforts of the cast I couldn’t wait to get out of there after the first half hour or so.
Also whoever was in change of the lighting needs to have a long day tomorrow to sort that out, was awful this evening with multiple cues completely out of time, spotlights on the wrong side of the stage, and an entire song where only the characters legs were lit.
Sound wasn’t great but honestly surprised it wasn’t worse.

Wowee, I was thinking about the 20+ musicals I watched within the past 6 months and this easily ranks in the worst 2.

There's a lot of issues with the book here. I counted 5 conflicts that were resolved simply by one party dying - the conflicts set a foundation for the plot to flow but nothing happens. I also quickly realised that many songs follow the pattern of argument - emotional song - scene and everything gets bland and predictable.

There's so much build up regarding the empowerment of women musicians and then it... fizzles out. To my understanding (I got pretty distracted at the end tbh), they're just told "no" and sort of accept the status quo..? I get that it's historical and it probably happened this way, but then why write such a musical? The themes of family and love fizzle out too, again because of someone dying.


Act 1's finale establishes a few conflicts meant to drive act 2, but one of them is done so poorly that it's hard to suspend any disbelief. The father steals her kid in the middle of the song, but naturally there's no resistance put up by anyone, because how else would the plot progress? Everyone knows the obvious repercussion for female empowerment is child kidnapping.
[bt]
The cast are powerhouses and are superb, but when everything is an emotional soli and the writing is so bad, it takes so much out of their performance.

Set design wasn't much, but it shouldn't be, for a 2x performance.
1/5.

A few people stood for I assume their favourites, friends or family.

There was then the forced “I can’t see I’ll stand ovation” from the people behind. But in the dress circle maybe 10%?

Honestly not sure. The direction was VERY poor. Lots of moments you wonder why something was done in that way.

It’s a shame as the director has a great performative credits, but this isn’t their calling. If the piece was perhaps one act it may have been 3*. However as it stands it paints most characters as extremely unlikeable.

Spoiler - They also end with a song “composed” by the protagonist after the curtain call (Ignatius heart - though I’m struggling to find anything that backs this truth up online) either way it regretfully highlighted how bad the rest of the material was 😂

There was a well-reviewed play at the Watermill Theatre in May/June, billed as "the overdue story of the other Mendelssohn". FANNY, about the overlooked composer sister of Felix, was written by Calum Finlay.

Women shoved aside, even banned from expressing their art, is good material - but this 'other Mozart' musical doesn't sound like it's got there.

I think I enjoyed it more than most (possibly after seeing the Little Piece of You concert, which was worse by comparison), but not on the strength of the material- as previously said, the final (non-original) song was easily the best.

I agree that it wasn't a strong feminist retelling of anything, the book was laboured, and the songs were unmemorable.

Anthony Rapp definitely still has it, and it was a pleasure to see him live for the first time, but I'm not sure why his character was given so many songs.

Laura Pitt-Pulford was a delight as ever. Criminal that she spent half of her big solo unlit! I'd happily see Gabrielle Brooks in whatever she's in next.

This would need a lot of reworking to have any future life, I would think. After this and the dreadful Little Pieces of You a few weeks ago, perhaps putting new material which clearly hasn't been workshopped enough on in a venue this size is a mistake.

I’m so pleased you have picked up on the score and the lyrics as I had exactly the same thought!

This for me was just not ready (there tonight and also went at the interval) some of the songs the count was singing should have been her with a few lines reworded to apply to her part, they introduced characters that hadn’t been introduced who then went into big solo songs which made no sense without their backgrounds.

And my biggest annoyance with this was the actors pretending to play the MD’s piano while he was playing! From the Royal Circle you could see their hands about 20/30 cms above they keys!

Not impressed something of that quality being allowed to perform that in such a prestigious theatre and charging a fair amount for tge privilege! (Yes I was on a comp so didn’t pay) but feel sorry for those who did

Perhaps this is a daft question but why wasn't there enough time for rehearsals? Hasn't the theatre been dark since Frozen closed?

Not a clue just going off what the director said beforehand that they didn’t get into the theatre until 8am yesterday (Saturday) morning

Going to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels concert next Sunday and really hope after hearing about this one it's much, much better. There are some good ones. Pippin for example this year and Something Rotten.