Pretty Woman - Piccadilly / Savoy / Tour

^Just had a heads up from TT about ‘exclusive’ opening night tickets on 2/3 which may be of interest.Maybe they will throw in a glass of fizz or something?

I really liked Happy Man's costumes / costume changes ...  but agreed, for Vivienne the dresses (apart from the lovely blue with white spots) looked naff, especially as the premise is she's shopping high end stuff. 

Stupidly excited to see what critics make of this.  I *so* enjoyed my evening there on Valentines Day I really hope it gets great reviews.  

This is like fan-fiction, where everyone is adorable, and soar over obstacles effortlessly, and yet, I LOVED it, as the four central characters are SO adorable!

Some spoilers follow. . .

The piece knows it's not a social documentary about asset-stripping and sex work. It self-identifies as a "fairy tale," which the book asserts at every opportunity, even including a fairy godfather in Bob Harms, which holds true whether his character is called Mr Thompson or Happy Man or whatever.

But even so, this show crosses the line between fairy tale and fan-fiction. An actual fairy tale puts severe obstacles, like cruel stepsisters and/or omnipotent witches, between protagonist and wish-fulfillment. Not so here, where even the most minor distress to Aimie Atkinson's Vivian is resolved in the very next scene.

This is like tiramisu without the alcohol, or cream without strawberries, sticky sweetness without any bite.

But it's so sweetly delicious, as there are 4 irresistible characters, who I enjoyed spending time with so much that I didn't feel the need for drama of any kind.

Proud but bumbling Aimie Atkinson is adorable. Chiselled yet soft-centred Danny Mac is adorable. Flashy avuncular Bob Harms is adorable. And Impish full-hearted beaming Bellhop, Alex Charles is ADORABLE SQUARED!

And when any of the adorables dance with each other, or sing to each other, the adorability factor multiplies exponentially to even higher heights.

If you have a sweet theatrical tooth, it's impossible not happily gorge on this show. Just manage your expectations and don't expect a drama, a documentary, or even something as gritty as a fairytale lol.

For me, I did feel the missing ingredient of drama for about ten minutes of the running time, but my overwhelming feeling was that I was mind-numbingly happy just spending time with the above theatrical "characters" lol. It's like a wonderful dream in that you want it to go on precisely because you know it amounts to nothing.

Urgh, those reviews are nauseating...

I saw the Time Out review last night - posted 5 hours before the end of opening night, so he wasn't there last night.

It's quite customary for reviewers to see a late preview once the show is frozen.  What point are you trying to make?

It's still a tawdry story- not just for "modern feminists" intoanewlife- it always was a shabby story and not all of us bought into it even when the film came out.  It helps us to remember how crass that period of history was though (and how mistakes are repeated).

"Ice-cold...skin-tingling unpleasantness," "regressive", "overpriced", "cynical" and "tasteless".

That's the quotes for the posters sorted.

I was literally gonna post this .... the Metro review is unnecessarily vicious! I don’t like when reviewers just pile in.

“Danny Mac, meanwhile, somehow keeps landing plum West End roles despite having the stage presence of a bar of soap. As Edward Lewis, his lovely empty features don’t change at all beyond the condescending affection he adopts whenever he looks at Vivian being goofy, as though she were an adorable puppy.”

“There are several icky, bordering-on-soft-porn sex scenes (although such are the subtle variations in Mac’s performance, they are easy to confuse with Edward’s business meetings).”

😬