Mrs Doubtfire - Manchester Opera House / Shaftesbury

Right- was it in Seattle before or after it’s Broadway run?

Saw this tonight thanks to a last minute front row ticket popping up for £30 at 5.30pm.

So I was the furthest left on the front row of the stalls (A26) and have to say the view was extremely restricted. I’m 6’3 and I would say I probably missed 40-50% of the show, with some scenes at the back of the stage happening and I couldn’t even see their heads, only hear their voices. I think because the row curves, the centre of row A will have a better view than the sides, but the stage is extremely high, similar to front row of Hamilton, and the leg room was also very tight.
I’m not complaining though, it has a warning on the ticket of restricted view and was only £30, which I thought was decent value for the view. But I wouldn’t be happy paying £60 or £70 for this seat, which I think I’ve maybe seen the front row for sale for.
Also very strangely this evening, there were 12 empty seats in the front row, with only 4 being filled, but they were definitely not available to buy when I bought mine 2 hours before the show, and the rest of the theatre was sold out.

As for the show, I really enjoyed it. There was enough of the classic, quotable lines from the movie thrown in, and some great new jokes along the way too.
Comparing it to the Broadway soundtrack, I much preferred ‘That’s Daniel’ so this was a welcome addition, but I really missed ‘you’ve been playing with fire’. The new song contains elements of it, but it seems like more of a comedy song than playing with fire, and it was such a powerful song for Mrs Sellner. I think I’ve seen a bootleg clip of it from Broadway too a year or two ago and loved the staging of it.

Overall 4 stars from me, really enjoyed myself and will definitely go back.

I'm in exactly the same position and price paid for our booking this coming Thursday evening and planning to request a move - there's plenty of availability at present.

FJ has posted about a near empty front row and reduced prices there on Monday evening so I'm hopeful we will be offered a move maybe without even asking. Will post how we get on.

 I went there this evening before seeing another show ( thanks to Elizabeth Line on a rail strike day!)  and arranged an exchange with no problem.

 Got two great seats in row E now.

No. I just said to the box office clerk that I had become aware  there is a high stage, and restricted view warning on the the front (and second) stalls row now, and that the front row was being offered @ £30 whereas I had paid double that .

He explained briefly about the stage design and offered me two seats in row E with no payment needed. Very helpful and all sorted in 5 minutes with printed tickets issued, and that was at 6.45 on a performance night.

I will probably revisit on my own later in the run and book front row if it stays at £30, but my partner is with me tonight and she is much shorter than me so combining that with knowing the seats have been halved in price made me decide to request a switch in advance and it worked out I could do so in person.

I didn't like this much. Gabriel Vick does a great job but the show is not very exciting and a bit boring. The music is unmemorable and the choreography just not very good. What i hated the most was the portrayal of the gay characters.

It will never cease to amaze me how gay characters are still portrayed in many musicals as over the top camp stereotypes.

Before saying it “tanked” on Broadway, you need to understand everything that went on with the show, with it starting a few days before the shut down and then when it came back having to continuously stop for weeks and start again never building momentum or an audience and having ticket sales repeatedly stop cold.
We’ll obviously never know if it would have been a hit or not but saying or hinting that it “tanked” because of a perceived portrayal of gay characters is completely disingenuous.

The brother and his partner are the same in London as they were on Broadway. I liked them both, not saying anyone else has to. My point was linking them to the shows failure is wrong.

I'm seeing it tonight and looking forward to it!

Not quite, it reopened in the October but was hit pretty badly by the Omnicron wave (which forced retrospective closure of Jagged Little Pill and very fast closure of other such as Ain’t too Proud and To Kill a Mockingbird). It then announced hiatus to March, which eventually became April, and just never built the momentum and then announced closing. I genuinely think it would have had a decent run of a year or so bad it not been for the pandemic.

I can see it doing very solid business in London, and out on US tour. The timing is certainly the reason for its Broadway failure.

Glad you posted this, I felt exactly the same after seeing it in Manchester and was beginning to feel I was in a minority for not liking it.

As well as the pandemic, I think the show suffered on Broadway because it came quite soon after Tootsie closed. I personally loved Tootsie, but despite being praised as a show and winning some Tonies it was quite heavily and publicly criticised by the transgender and non binary communities for its outdated portrayal (and play for laughs) of its central man in a dress. Mrs Doubtfire definitely suffered as a result since the general feeling seemed to be that producers had learnt nothing from the Tootsie controversies.

Some Like it Hot, on the other hand, is currently running and has not only taken note of all the issues raised around Tootsie/Doubtfire but actively made it a show which reflects and celebrates our current understanding of trans people. As a result, it's being hailed in a way Mrs Doubtfire totally failed.

I should add that I'm not trying to say all three shows deal with the same issue, or even find laughs in the same trope, but the discussion around them has been similar. Gender is a huge topic in the USA (moreso than over in the UK) and I do think Mrs Doubtfire's failure to learn from Tootsie's mistakes was a factor in its failure in the USA. In the UK it doesn't have that same battle because a) we haven't had Tootsie, and b) through panto dames and our own self deprecating drag culture, we're generally less sensitive about using gender bending and cross dressing within comedy.