ALW's Cinderella - Gillian Lynne / U.K. Tour (rumour)

Where did they put the band for cats? I'm not that familiar with the orginal production of cats but I didn't think there was much set that entered and exited the stage and therefore needed somewhere to be stored off stage?

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a revival of a hit show so it is much easier to get big investments from backers. These things, as I mentioned earlier, are going to be judged on a case by case basis. The amount of investment is always going to be proportional to the investment risk. ALW would of course prefer to have a larger orchestra to work with, what composer wouldn't?

Perhaps not, but it was a Disney movie, Sherman brother songs, it's a family musical, famous name if not movie, so while not a guaranteed success, as no musical is, it's a pretty safe bet for investment. 

I think perhaps that a lot of our disappointment with Cinderella lies with the scale of ALW’s previous output, and our expectation that this would be the same. It is an anomaly because it isn’t the same. It is cheap and synthetic sounding when it doesn’t have to be.

How do you know it doesn't have to be? What information do you have about the investments? It's not an anomaly at all, the only recent show of his (well, relatively recent) to feature a larger ensemble was Love Never Dies, a sequel to his megahit musical Phantom. Even Whistle Down the Wind had a very small ensemble with keyboards standing in for acoustic instruments and terrible sounding synthesized strings. I don't think Cinderella sounds cheap because the orchestrations are so clever that they more than compensate for the shortcomings of sound production. Stephen Ward, on the other hand, did sound cheap and synthetic in some respects.

IIRC they were upstage right behind the set. The part of the set for Cats that wasn't on the revolve followed the curve of the revolve so it cut off the upstage corners of the stage and the band were back there.

It is interesting reading everyone's comments about the orchestra size/ orchestrations. Over here in NYC, the Phantom just re-opened and I have to say I was amazed at the amount of PR surrounding it and ALW making thinly veiled comments at his joy that this production was reopening the way it was with the orchestra that it has (is it the only one around the globe with a full orchestra now?) He didn't go so far as to say it's better than London, which I couldn't imagine him doing after they just reopened. But you got the sense from the PR before the London reopen and this one, that he was far more excited. And from the looks online Phantom is sold out through the end of this year (at least when I was trying to find tickets it seemed that way)

My point - I never thought that the West End would go cheaper on productions than NY. And if it really is a union thing, I'm really curious how Cinderella would make out transferring here with a larger orchestra. Having only heard the score on the recording (which I have listened through many times) there's a lot of beautiful melodies - this morning randomly Far too late was an ear worm even though I haven't listened in over a week But I agree that even the recording sounds sub-par compared to Sunset or any of ALW's musicals.

I agree with you about Whistle Down The Wind, I have no complaints about that either. However, the point I was making is that Whistle Down The Wind didn't have a string section and, objectively speaking, the string sound is not reproduced all that well by synths, whether I mind that or not. It also had synth parts representing acoustic instruments for the same reason as in Cinderella. However, it was a larger ensemble, that's true. ALW would have a larger ensemble if he could. The point I was also making is that synth parts replacing other instruments has nothing to do with the orchestration itself, the part writing. With the right investment, you could simply do a revival of Cinderella in which the synth parts are all transcribed for the acoustic instruments they represent without changing the orchestration. 

“it fancies itself a musical comedy, like “Guys and Dolls” or “Hairspray.” But at the matinee I attended, the silent crowd might as well have been watching Ibsen.”

😮

I wonder if CHF heard that the New York Post was going to be in and removed herself from the proceedings 😁

As my therapist often says…”is it a fact or an opinion?”.

I take back what I said about the review. I only read the first part of the review and thought it ended there, that's why I had such a negative opinion of it. It made the review seem like nothing more than a set of assertions. I now see he does go on to provide a detailed account of his reasons for not liking the show overall. I am in agreement with him about the music (except 'I Know I Have a Heart').