Prince of Egypt - Dominion / Cinema Release

Is anyone in here there tonight? I’m going Friday so will report back then

The Opera House Manchester is similar in size to the Dominion though? Makes sense for it to go in there x

Doesn't make sense to lose all the Christmas traffic. I mean, does the Dominion has anything booked for Christmas or is the expectation for PRINCE to extend?

There are a few pictures of the stage online, unfortunately it looks very similar to the barely there US set, there seems to be some fancy lighting design patterns going on though. Hopefully it looks a lot better in action.

I was at the first preview tonight.

Scott Schwartz (director) gave a little speech at the start warming of the potential for technical hiccups but in the end there were no show stops or major mistakes that I could see. The staging Is pretty bare but consists of a central platform which pivots towards the audience at certain moments - most impressively when the Red Sea parts and a platform extends into the auditorium, which the Hebrews walk down through the central ailse. There’s also a brilliant moment when the Red Sea collapses in on the Egyptian army, and it tilts so steeply that all the ensemble slide into the orchestra pit screaming in terror. VERY cool.

It really does look a bit empty and cheap in certain scenes though. They really heavily on projections and interpretive choreography. Some scenes looked like amateur theatre. The choreography is incredible though - particularly in Look Through Heaven’s Eyes. It was so good it got a spontaneous ovation mid way through. The band sounded incredible in Deliver Us and generally throughout. On the downside, I thoughr the new songs were pretty forgettable and the book pretty poor - very on the nose at points, not helped by a surprisingly flat performance from the two male leads. They didn’t have much to work with though. I also thought the fight scene between Moses and Ramses was pretty cringeworthy and the first act overly long. Pacing is a bit off in Act 2 - it ends very abruptly. I’m sure these issues will get ironed out though.

Other highlight - real pyrotechnic meteorites raining down on the stage during the plague scene. Ring of fire which lights up around the salves at the end of act 1 during a rousing reprise of Deliver Us.

Promising stuff.


But lots of issues to iron out.

I suspect anyone who goes into this without seeing the film will have issues with it - it is rather necessary to set the expectations I think...

Worth adding I didn't want to leave. Whilst I wasn't loving it, I was going to see it through. But due to it staring 20 minutes later and the interval being nearly 30 minutes, it would mean I was going to miss connecting parts of the journey!

I would think the film would set my expectations very high for some scenes of epic proportions and awe (the scale of the film is so large and grandiose) which it sounds like this will not deliver so watching the film seems like a bad idea tbh.

I loved this last night, finding it less the hollow spectacular epic I feared it might be, and more a surprisingly human, intimate and subversive take on the biblical story, which, by humanising both protagonist AND antagonist, at the expense of the divine, has every chance of appealing to a broader audience than believers alone. That and the fact that it's got a terrific cast, exciting choreography and luscious tunes!

Some spoilers follow. . .

Adapting this bibical story into a musical for the West End stage is astonishingly daring. A show by believers for believers (eg the aborted "Heaven on Earth") could never generate enough footfall to be a viable business proposition, and tampering with the story too much could kill it's core audience.

After all, for believers, the Passover is a testament to the glory of God, but to nonbelievers, a story about the mass killing of innocent children to exert political pressure on powers-that-be sounds like terrorism.

I think this dichotomy haunted the movie, "The Prince of Egypt," which didn't even get a Blu-ray release until it's 20 year anniversary. That movie, opted for spectacle as it's USP, as only animation can show the plagues of Egypt on such an enormous scale in such ravishing detail.

A musical, a format in which a single flying helicopter passes for spectacle, could never rival the film in epic scope, and this musical doesn't really (there are a couple of decent coups-de-theatre) try, using bare sets, video projections and presenting plague montages wherein you'd need to be a Biblical scholar to identify when one plague ends and another begins.

Instead, this musical is all about the feels of Moses, Ramses and Tzipporah, featuring some pretty dazzling dance choreography and some glorious tunes, only a few of which appeared in the original movie.

Now, I haven't seen the movie in 20 years, so I can't be trusted on this, but I recall Ramses to be an increasingly diabolical character in that movie, driven by overweening arrogance and cruelty in the latter stages, a pretty black and white villain. If I'm right in my recollection, that Pharaoh Ramses is gone, to be replaced by a much more agreeable and relatable figure in the musical, torn apart by political winds that even the man on the Clapham Omnibus would understand, and fiercely loyal to his adopted brother, Moses, to boot. Liam Tamne's Ramses portrays a vulnerable, brotherly, loving, and naive Ramses for whom your heart might break.

Luke Brady's Moses is even more likeable and relatable, a man trying to do right by everybody. He is not made to own any atrocities committed in his name, as when such scenes are played, God's own voice comes out of Moses' mouth. Later, Moses describes the Egyptians as "victims" and seems compassionate and mournful for what God has done to them.

And this is where the musical feels subversive, for God's actions are left to God alone, the unfathomable, with no human being unmitigatingly endorsing them, and no black and white villainy to bolster God's motives.

But perhaps that is not even the most subversive thing about this show. Indeed, the most subversive thing is how little God appears, with my watch reading 9pm without a single supernatural event having happened.

This is clever, as the dramas, of loving brothers pitted against each other by fate, and of unexpected and humorous romance against the backdrop of jeopardy, take centre stage, and emotionally draw in an audience that may be resistant to religion.

Indeed, I think I know more from this musical about the names given by Moses to his sheep, innocently charming and romancing Tzipporah, than I know about the names of the plagues that later ensue upon the Egyptians.

Not only does God have a bit part, when he does show up, the burning bush is played by the whole ensemble as a deliciously exciting Diversity-does-the-burning-bush routine (actually, even more diverse than Diversity, as women and men together tumble, leap and fly over each others' heads to create the Bush). The effect is to put the full spectrum of humanity and the beauty of dance into the depiction of God, which makes God at once wondrous and invisible, for it is not God we are admiring, but talented dancers.

Christine Allado impressed me so much as Tzipporah, how she could dance so vigorously and sing so vigorously at the same time, something most pop stars avoid like the plague lol.

She, along with Tamne and Brady lift this show with song and humanity. But above all, it is Brady's sympathetic portrayal of a Moses, trying and failing to do right by everyone, that really hit the spot for me, often on the verge of tears, always trying to lift with humour, ever gentle, and with a more commanding voice than his staff.

I won't pretend the storytelling is complex, but it is classically entertaining in the dilemmas it sets up, and in its politically complex love-hate personal relationships.

And in addition to the central three actors, Gary Wilmot absolutely rules his one big song (just as he ruled the panto at the Palladium recently), and Alexia Khadime's underdeveloped character sings beautifully.

The whole ensemble is pretty wonderful, actually.

In summary, if you want epic scale mega-sets and accurate Bible study, forget this. If you want a hugely complex and original story, also forget it. But if you want classic emotive drama and romance, beautiful songs and singing, wonderful ensemble dancing and a charismatic lead, this really hit the spot for me, and it might for you too.

The subversiveness of this show is that it wants to entertain its general audience more than it wants to lecture them. I loved it, and unlike the film, would happily see it again.

4 stars.

You love the word subversive! 😉

For those who have seen the show, how long was it?

Saw it tonight and it really didn't do it for me.

The singing is wonderful and the dancing is great (not the choreographies tho), the cast is truly first rate and deserves a much stronger creative team. The book is weak and so are most of the new songs (with the exception of Heartless in the second act), but it's a dream to have "When You Believe" sung by such fantastic vocalists. It's a gorgeous song, and luckily they reprise it like 75 times so you can fully appreciate it.

The true problem here is the direction by Scott Schwartz, whose only achievement is reminding us what a sad thing nepotism is. He just wastes a lot of occasions without creating momentum, such as God's apparition, that passes by and goes without further notice. What bothered me is not the cheap look of the production (those of you who thought Aladdin looked cheap will have a fit watching this). I've never been one to care much about lavish sets, they tell more about the budget of the production than the skills of the designer. The problem of this production is a complete lack of imagination, creativity, and stage-craft. There is no idea, no vision behind it. We live in a time where the wildest fantasies can be recreated on screen with technology and money, live theatre should try doing something else. A rising platform is just that, tech and money, and to use only projections is such a waste of the medium. The only clever moment is the tenth plague, where he manages to do something simple but touching, the rest is just community theatre with a large budget. It really felt like a wasted occasion for me, especially since the cast is truly top notch.

**