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

And life would be boring if we all thought the same.

Final show of my trip : just got a front row seat at the box office for 30 pounds. Finger crossed for this one. 😀

I've seen it a couple of times and to be honest, I believe the main reason for laughter at this point is that the gunshots make people jump so violently that they then collectively laugh at themselves for jumping.

It's one of my biggest bugbears with the show, as it really spoils the moment. They should use recorded gunshots that sound realistic but aren't as loud and sharp, or at least find some sort of prop gun that doesn't have such an explosive discharge.

The have now made Linda's scream of anguish more prolonged and louder, which seems to suppress the giggles.

Minimal changes, not a 'revised version' as has been reported. A number of line changes, mostly to tighten it up/make the story a little clearer. Cinderella's soliloquy has been cut down quite a bit, for the better.
Carrie was on, though you wouldn't know it from the lack of her appearing in any photos.
ALW & Malala did a speech at the beginning, auctioned off some artwork & a video about the charity was shown.
Goody bags & champagne for all.

Literally none of those things were changed, to my surprise. More to do with emphasising the town's business, I think. Basically it's not a re-write but to be fair no one ever actually said it would be other than a rumour in an article. The changes are minor, of the sort you'd expect to happen in previews. There's no 'fix'/big re-write here and none of the obvious changes were made. With that said, everyone seemed to enjoy it greatly, and I even managed to not completely dislike Carrie (who sounded a little strained in places).

I can give you a few quick thoughts from last night.

I won the lottery draw, so ended up in one of the £25 seats near the back of the Circle. The view is fine and I think there were a lot more lottery winners than usual last night. Otherwise, it was pretty full.

I arrived quite late and straight from work, so not quite in the finery of many of the others. Very tight security around the theatre with road closures, plenty of police and wand searches.

Lots of celebrities, but mostly of the type of person who looks vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite name. Plus other people who wanted to be seen. I did spot (I believe) two Pussycat Dolls (not together) and managed to narrowly avoid crashing into Barry Humphries on two different levels of the theatre!

Apparently there was free champagne but I totally missed it.

The show started with a video, then a speech from Andrew (who called this show the real opening night), then from Malala (very well received). This was followed by a charity auction with two Sotheby's auctioneers for a painting by Shamsia Hassani (Afghanistan's answer to Banksy) which went for £21,000. I don't know much about art and I didn't have a spare £21,000 (or more) in my wallet but somehow I think the buyer got a bargain there!

As for the show, I thought it felt tighter and I noticed a few line cuts (but also some jokes that were either new, or just no one had laughed at before). But nothing majorly different from when I last saw this a few weeks ago. I believe all the leads were on, but I couldn't get close enough to a cast board to check.

There was a nice touch as well with a goodie bag (specially printed) including a programme with a special sticker, a poster, a pen and details of how to donate further. With not all the seats being filled at the back I did notice a few people amassing quite a collection of these, so do check out eBay soon if you like this type of thing,

I missed the champagne, but based on the number of people who got up during the show many others didn't. From the Circle, I could also see a record number of phone lights (some dimmer than others), plus people taking photos, but they may well have been celebrities. The ushers did have their work cut out.

It did feel like a successful and special night!

Making big changes to a through composed musical is far more problematic than a traditional book musical. You can end up seriously damaging the structural integrity of the music, and I would much rather that remains intact than that they make the story better but sacrifice the former. The music is the most important thing of all to me. People talk as if you can just rearrange things, cut things out, put things in, without any consequences. I'm pleased to hear that the changes have been minimal. I find that when they interfere with things they usually make it less good. 

It’s strange but Cinderella very much presents as a traditional musical with dialogue song dialogue song rather than ‘through composed’ in the way Les Mis is for example. I agree the music is important but if the story is nonsense you cease to listen while you’re trying to make sense of the enormous plot holes?
Either way I agree that’s it’s far too late to change anything substantial at this stage. Previews should only be for tiny changes. The work to the script should’ve been done way back before it even saw a sniff of an audience.

It's hardly a 'through composed' musical as you call it, definitely not in the way that Aspects is. It's very much a stop start kind of show and they could easily make changes by cutting stuff. Man's Man, Hunks Song, any of the many reprises all could be shortened or cut with very little changes to the music and zero difference to the plot.

It's fundamentally through composed though you're right that there is more dialogue than in some of his other shows. I love Man's Man, I think it's a wonderful song, but of course you will want everything cut that you personally don't like, it's human nature I guess.