Wind in the Willows - UK Tour & London Palladium

I'm being taken to see it this week and rather dreading it. My friend has paid so I may have to pretend to like it if I'm not enjoying it /

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£7.99 on uk itunes.

I See .... Hopefully the price on the Irish iTunes incorrect

Must agree with what has already been said on this. It's quite boring and never takes flight, despite a beautiful set and talented cast. The large group of scouts and brownies behind us seemed almost sedated by the interval. They and a lot of the audience were completely baffled as to what was actually going on.

It's also a shame to see a show in 2017 where all the featured female characters (and there aren't many of them) are depicted as either stupid or boring/worrying mothers. Not a great example to the little girls in the audience. In the age of Frozen and Wonder Woman I thought we'd moved past all of that... a bit of a dud. Avoid.

Saw this tonight and it really was a hard slog. It just poodles along and while the sets and some of the music do the job, nothing quite works. Could not stand Rufus Hound as Toad I'm afraid. Wanted to enjoy it but for me it's less Poop Poop and more just plain old poop. I would say the majority of the audience were in the same boat as me - there were some kids next to us who looked bored out of their minds.

Well. That was as flat as a pancake. Why have they even bothered putting this show on? The script is terrible. The music is so middle of the road it makes Gary Barlows music sound positively cutting edge. Not a single song rises above mediocre.

Performance wise the only redeeming feature is Neil McDermott who is pretty terrific, great energy and a real sense of character and not just reciting his lines... unlike pretty much everyone else. The show came alive when he was on stage, when he wasn't..Zzzzzzzzzz

Rufus Hound is meh. Didn't generate a single laugh from anyone sat around us.
Talking of which, where is the humour? It's so clinically unfunny.

The only bright spot (Neil McD aside) is the design- some lovely stage pictures, it's the best looking show I've seen at the Palladium for years , not an easy stage to design for.

It did make me feel a warm nostalgic glow though for the glorious NT version years ago. One of my top 5 shows of all time.

Indeed.. and a quite spectacular design. Perhaps the best use ever of that drum revolve.

yep the Bennett NT version was excellent, and hinted at slightly deeper things, especially in the relationship between the four. Ever since a kid, and through professional contact with Toad for many years, I always thought that Toad was the loud gay character, with the others being a little more discreet. But to treat Willows as simply a children's story on one level is so wrong...there is so much going on, especially about the industrialisation of the countryside, that Toad escalates, and the whole relationship between the gentry and the wild wooders. and then the females get very short shrift. And into all this comes Pan, and the Travelling Rat. a lot about male friendship and responsibility going on here.

I wonder if the NT have an archive recording of their production? I think, from what I'm reading here, I'd rather see that one.

I was also there last night! Wasn't too bothered about Rufus Hound being off and I thought Chris Aukett did remarkably well as Toad, since he was informed at 5pm, the show started at 7pm, and he had never run through the entire show from start to finish. A couple of semi-noticeable slip ups and a bit "deer in headlights" but that's hardly surprising and he should be ever so proud of himself. He could also have a job as a Rufus Hound impersonator as he looked, acted and sounded exactly like him. If I hadn't have been told, I might even have been fooled. But a nice speech from Simon Lipkin pre-show.

As for the show, well in my opinion it is completely unremarkable in every respect. The ultimate definition of style over substance, with the style also being just ok. Tl;dr BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

It looks alright, I guess, but the stage looked pretty bare most of the time. It looks big, sure, but looking at how much of the proscenium was blacked out, it seemed to me that they weren't using anywhere near the full potential of the Palladium stage. Why use such a big theatre? Lighting was cool and the pretty big orchestra sounded great. Shame they have such dull and bland material to play.

The story/script itself seemed to be a pretty much non-entity. It was pretty much devoid of all humour, it had nowhere near the right mix of silliness, drama and pathos for any child to keep themselves interested and take something away from it apart from shouting "POOP POOP" around the house for the foreseeable future, and too mind-numbingly boring for any adult without an interest in theatre to need to see it on their own. The main character, who appears to have many faults as a person, learns absolutely nothing by the end of the show and is redeemed by no one!! The songs are a big let down. They are masked by a big orchestra and big orchestrations, but they are mostly forgettable with lazy, predictable lyrics and uninteresting music. All a big shame as I usually find Stiles & Drewe to be very listenable and wittily unpredictable. This whole project feels like they've written the most commercial score they can think of (to varying degrees of success) and abandoned all of their usual heart, soul & cleverness.

The character choices and directorial devices were, again, pretty lazy and uninspiring on the whole. Different accents depicting different animals, dress them in a mix of current fashion and animal characteristics, all been done before. I know if it ain't broke don't fix it, but why did they even need to bother at all? And I'm pretty sure Craig Mather's accent would be a terrible insult to anyone who lives anywhere close to the West Country! Choreography pretty bad on the whole, I thought. Not all of it - but a lot of it was reminiscent of choreography you'd expect to see in amateur and youth productions. No disrespect to any of them, of course, but not what you'd expect from a professional show on the Palladium stage! Cast were pretty good on the whole - and they sounded great as an ensemble. But all directed with no real character choices and are made to sound as if they could all drop into Mary Poppins/Made In Dagenham/Half A Sixpence at a moment's notice.

OK, so I realise that all reads as if it's the worst musical I have ever seen. It really isn't. But what it is, in my opinion, is almost worse. It's an unnecessary musical and that is SO frustrating. The team behind it seem to have made absolutely no conscious effort to bring anything new or interesting to this story. The sub-plot of Mrs Otter's daughter has absolutely no drama surrounding it, and neither does the rest of the show. I know it's a family show, but that's not the point. Matilda, Mary Poppins, Chitty. They don't treat kids like they're stupid, they invest in some actual drama, tension and stakes amidst all the fun, and they work because the majority of kids can take it. Here, they seem to think kids can't handle anything above very mild peril and the show suffers for it. There's just so reason for it to be a musical of this scale (though it is nice to see!), especially with an almost 1 hour 20 Act 1. A 90 minute straight-through version would've had more impact. But still, the reaction at the end was extremely positive and loud, which is good. And a pretty well-behaved audience, too.

I'd give it 2* or 3*, maybe even a 3.5* but it's certainly not anything more than that, in my opinion! Press performances Mon-Thurs this week, with the official "Gala" performance on Thursday, which is when all reviews are embargoed until, I believe.