Mack & Mabel @ Hackney Empire

Bump! Excited for this this weekend, hoping the orchestra is as good as the John Wilson guys but I have no idea

I thought the orchestra was good in Candide in July. Mind you, the last time I saw Candide was at the Menier with a band of half a dozen so almost any orchestra would sound good by comparison!

londonmzfitz A quick look on the Hackney Empire website does show a lot of seats still available. Let me know where you're allocated seats & I'll come & say hi on Saturday - unless we bump into each other in the Ladies, as we have a habit of doing! I'm at the low numbers end of row B stalls.

This was sensational! Such a pure shot of musical theatre joy! Natasha J Barnes acted everyone off the stage, she was superlative! Bedella hadn't done as much homework as the rest of them but when he was in it he was great and Natasha was just so good it's hard not to be upstaged. Would watch this again right now if I could

I am very pleased that paplazaroo and Dawnstar both enjoyed 'Mack and Mabel' so much. I too thought there was a lot to enjoy but for me it wasn't quite up to the superlative standard I was hoping for. I was sitting in the front row of the Dress Circle and my comments are based on what I saw and heard from there.

1. In the very clear and flattering acoustic of the Hackney Empire, the orchestra on the stage sounded rather hard and harsh. It was wonderfully natural but the loud brass and percussion, as well as some of the really hard driven tempi, did rather batter my senses. Yes it was all good fun but a little bit more subtlety from the orchestra would have been welcome at times. And, personally, I could do with a much shorter version of the Keystone Cops chase music.

2 The dialogue, all delivered from the scripts, sounded at times as if they were trying to get through it as quickly as possible. I wished they could have just sat back into it a little more. In all the Ian Marshall Fisher 'Lost Musicals' that I have seen I never felt that the actors were rushing the words and I certainly did tonight.

3. David Bedella certainly sang it well but, as paplazaroo has noted, he wasn't entirely into the role. On the other hand, Natasha Barnes was wonderful, BUT, I wish she could have worn something more appropriate for Act 1 like something girlish and pretty for the young Mabel Normand. She then could have changed to the topless evening dress for Act 2.

4. I loved the two dancing numbers and from where I was sitting it really did look like hundreds of girls: in the stalls they filled the centre aisle and the two side aisles, as well as the whole of the space in front of the stage and there were some in the two proscenium boxes in the dress circle. I thought it was a real coup de theatre and it had the same effect on me as the car going into the orchestra pit in 'Bat Out of Hell' – mild delirium! In fact, the end of the first act with Natasha doing a barn-storming version of 'Where ever he ain't' followed by 'Hundreds of girls' was just magnificent.

5.Despite some good numbers, and an excellent Michael Ball, I was also disappointed with the Chichester production and the one that worked best for me was the scaled down version with Janie Dee and David Soul although that was hardly the show as Jerry Hermann must have conceived it.

6. On reflection, I think what I would prefer is to have a genuine concert version and with a narrator to fill in the story instead of the cast acting out the dialogue from the script. This formula worked brilliantly for 'On the Town' in the concerts at the Barbican recorded by DGG although we did have the luxury of Comden and Green who had not only written the show but starred in the original production as joint narrators. You can have a little bit of dialogue to lead into the songs if necessary, but I thought the dialogue tonight failed to work for me most of the time.

So my verdict? Four stars out of five and just a twinge of disappointment.

I'd agree with that for sure and add that the closest I've ever seen the show get to working was at Southwark Playhouse with Norman Bowman as Mack, that was brilliant!