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Post by Dr Tom on Oct 1, 2022 13:23:59 GMT
Those who know the venue and local audience well, how likely is this to sell out? Nothing sells out right now. I want to book, but I just can't confirm dates I can be in Sheffield next summer yet for various reasons. But I'm sure there will be seats available, especially singles. |
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Oct 1, 2022 16:42:03 GMT
Those who know the venue and local audience well, how likely is this to sell out? Sky’s Edge sold out during the run I think ( TallPaul will remember if I’m wrong). Same with Life of Pi. I’ve just booked a matinee and a LOT of the central £45 seats have gone already. Having said that the back four or 5 rows aren’t on sale, sometimes they will put them on sale if demand is high, sometimes they don’t. I wouldn’t hang about if interested to be honest, even if you only get the best £15 ticket you can see and risk losing it if you can’t go. Got mine for £5 as I had a credit. Result! |
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Post by WireHangers on Oct 1, 2022 21:13:35 GMT
Those who know the venue and local audience well, how likely is this to sell out? Sky’s Edge sold out during the run I think ( TallPaul will remember if I’m wrong). Same with Life of Pi. I’ve just booked a matinee and a LOT of the central £45 seats have gone already. Having said that the back four or 5 rows aren’t on sale, sometimes they will put them on sale if demand is high, sometimes they don’t. I wouldn’t hang about if interested to be honest, even if you only get the best £15 ticket you can see and risk losing it if you can’t go. Got mine for £5 as I had a credit. Result! Might just take the plunge and book. My husband is from Leeds and we down regularly so wouldn’t mind planning a trip around the show then taking a wee day trip to Sheffield to watch it. |
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Post by undeuxtrois on Oct 2, 2022 20:31:53 GMT
Pretty painless booking process, was put in a queue at 1 minute to 10 and was in within a couple of minutes and managed to get 2 of the £35 seats for £5 each due to being under 26, fantastic deal and what a great way to get young people into the theatre! How did you make it £5? |
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Post by LaLuPone on Oct 2, 2022 21:41:28 GMT
Pretty painless booking process, was put in a queue at 1 minute to 10 and was in within a couple of minutes and managed to get 2 of the £35 seats for £5 each due to being under 26, fantastic deal and what a great way to get young people into the theatre! How did you make it £5? If you create a Sheffield Theatres account and put in your date of birth it automatically gives you the deal at checkout for any seats below top price, and you can get a maximum of two seats. The offer is only valid for performances from the 8th-20th July though (presumably the preview period) and it’s something like 40 tickets of this nature available per week, so the allocation could possibly be sold out by now. |
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Post by stepha on Oct 3, 2022 7:11:21 GMT
Thanks to the folks here for bringing this to my attention, 2x £35 seats booked - really interested to see what they do with this. The longer I think about a female engineer, the more I can see it working - I think this could make it darker. Am really looking forward to it!
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Post by richey on Oct 6, 2022 8:26:00 GMT
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Post by inthenose on Oct 6, 2022 19:19:22 GMT
Thank you for sharing this. In case anyone can’t watch for whatever reason, here are the takeaways. - She was invited to a meeting with Sheffield Theatres to discuss a role in a musical without knowing what it was. At the meeting she was told it was to play the Engineer and she immediately accepted. - The role will be played as a woman, with whole new backstory and what sounds like heavy rewrites. - Rehearsals begin on the first week of June and will last 5 weeks. Prior to this, she is in Korea playing Grizabella in Cats. - She doesn’t know anything about other casting, but has another meeting with the production team soon where she may find out more. - She doesn’t see the point in talking to former Engineers such as Leo Tavarro Valdez or Jon Jon Briones because she her character is going to be very different. That about covers the new information! |
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Oct 6, 2022 19:55:00 GMT
Aww isn’t she lovely?
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Post by inthenose on Oct 6, 2022 20:07:23 GMT
Yes, she is as nice as they come. |
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Post by theatrelover123 on Oct 6, 2022 20:17:09 GMT
Ahhh I love that Sheffield Theatre in London  |
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Post by wardrobemistress76 on Nov 21, 2022 20:16:41 GMT
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Post by cezbear on Nov 21, 2022 21:58:55 GMT
Seriously.
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Post by Jon on Nov 21, 2022 22:03:00 GMT
I seriously thought it was going to be Sheffield pulling Miss Saigon
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Post by mrbarnaby on Nov 21, 2022 22:11:20 GMT
That theatre company sound a bit stupid. Byee!
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Post by FairyGodmother on Nov 21, 2022 22:51:59 GMT
"Based on Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, it tells the story of a teenage Vietnamese sex worker who falls in love with an American GI and becomes pregnant, but is abandoned by him when the city falls."
Why give away a massive plot point?! Especially when the rest of the paragraph is over-simplified to the point of not really being correct.
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305 posts
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Post by kyvai on Nov 22, 2022 7:23:35 GMT
I’m not sure it counts as a spoiler when the story is 120 years old? That’s all in the first act of Madame Butterfly. Yes I agree this theatre company do come across as quite silly, even written up by the grauniad whom one would imagine might be sympathetic to their point of view. But they are entitled to that point of view,, I respect them sticking to their principles - it must be very important to them, it doesn’t seem that their play (a new play) is currently being produced anywhere else from a quick google, hopefully they can find another venue that meets their standards. Reading their website it looks like they’ve done some really interesting projects in the past. I found this a great response from the Miss Saigon creative team. www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/news/programming-miss-saigon |
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Post by distantcousin on Nov 22, 2022 9:07:36 GMT
When did Miss Saigon start being so "problematic"?
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Post by couldileaveyou on Nov 22, 2022 9:08:04 GMT
When did Miss Saigon start being so "problematic"? Literally when it opened |
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Post by max on Nov 22, 2022 9:58:28 GMT
I think the culture has moved on from 'yes the themes are difficult but surely we sympathise most with Kim and condemn US actions' to 'when can we have South Asian / South East Asian characters who elicit more than sympathy?'. New Earth say in their statement that they understand the production is going for a 'new reading' of Miss Saigon, but they have to make decisions for their production and staff right now, and can't know in advance that they're going to be comfortable to be co-programmed with whatever the outcome is. I think they expressed that well - leaving space for the production to be revelatory, but frankly believing the problems they have with the material are too 'baked in'.
As a personal reaction, I've only seen the DVD of the live show. I felt incredibly uncomfortable thinking of the performers playing the Vietnamese women - how excited their families must be that they've made it to the West End, and then they're mainly involved in bump and grind routines. It's not wrong that this sex work is depicted, of course, but as actual people have to play these roles from within a relatively small community (and even smaller performing community) it's understandable many want what's next rather than what's already been. Will be interesting to see how the reinterpretation goes.
I was enjoying the recent 'South Pacific', then realised we hadn't had 'Happy Talk' yet, and that could torpedo the whole thing. As it turned out, the song's re-orchestration brought a complexity and mordant tone that absolutely brought a three-dimensional character angle to Bloody Mary. So Joanna Ampil has experience of reinterpreting roles to have more complexity. It can certainly be argued anyway that the (male) Engineer can be played Emcee-like, almost savouring the madness around him satirically and sundering his own morality as part of that. I wonder if playing it female may make that more difficult, as the relationship to 'the girls' and womanhood will be different; perhaps they have an entirely different angle in mind.
How much of an original you can pull in a new direction, confound, interrogate, rug-pull and critique, before you break what fundamentally worked will be interesting to see.
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Post by cezbear on Nov 22, 2022 10:14:52 GMT
I think the culture has moved on from 'yes the themes are difficult but surely we sympathise most with Kim and condemn US actions' to 'when can we have South Asian / South East Asian characters who elicit more than sympathy?'. New Earth say in their statement that they understand the production is going for a 'new reading' of Miss Saigon, but they have to make decisions for their production and staff right now, and can't know in advance that they're going to be comfortable to be co-programmed with whatever the outcome is. I think they expressed that well - leaving space for the production to be revelatory, but frankly believing the problems they have with the material are too 'baked in'. As a personal reaction, I've only seen the DVD of the live show. I felt incredibly uncomfortable thinking of the performers playing the Vietnamese women - how excited their families must be that they've made it to the West End, and then they're mainly involved in bump and grind routines. It's not wrong that this sex work is depicted, of course, but as actual people have to play these roles from within a relatively small community (and even smaller performing community) it's understandable many want what's next rather than what's already been. Will be interesting to see how the reinterpretation goes. I was enjoying the recent 'South Pacific', then realised we hadn't had 'Happy Talk' yet, and that could torpedo the whole thing. As it turned out, the song's re-orchestration brought a complexity and mordant tone that absolutely brought a three-dimensional character angle to Bloody Mary. So Joanna Ampil has experience of reinterpreting roles to have more complexity. It can certainly be argued anyway that the (male) Engineer can be played Emcee-like, almost savouring the madness around him satirically and sundering his own morality as part of that. I wonder if playing it female may make that more difficult, as the relationship to 'the girls' and womanhood will be different; perhaps they have an entirely different angle in mind. How much of an original you can pull in a new direction, confound, interrogate, rug-pull and critique, before you break what fundamentally worked will be interesting to see. Your points are valid but with such changes you're talking about creating an entirely different show. Surely going forwards the point is to write stronger shows and roles for underrepresented communities, rather than try to completely change an existing work? I don't understand why every show needs to be a perfect representation or cancelled. I'd love to see more shows inclusive of Asian performers - and not just colour blind casting. That doesn't mean this show needs to be tossed in the 'problematic' pile. Otherwise it's like saying this show is the only show that can possibly be responsible for representing this community, which is far more problematic. Look to the future - new shows, new roles - instead of looking back to see what you can pull apart. (That's a general 'you', not you specifically max!)
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Post by vabbian on Nov 22, 2022 10:15:56 GMT
Snowflakes need to detach art from reality, Miss Saigon is objectively an amazing musical
In any case, not staging Miss Saigon would rob Asian actors of one of the few dedicated opportunities they get when it comes to theatre. Now that would do more harm than good
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Post by distantcousin on Nov 22, 2022 10:16:53 GMT
When did Miss Saigon start being so "problematic"? Literally when it opened Maybe in the US. |
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Post by og on Nov 22, 2022 10:52:42 GMT
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Post by couldileaveyou on Nov 22, 2022 10:54:42 GMT
Miss Saigon has been consistently accused of racism for over 30 years, for a number of issues that range from casting to lyrics in made-up Vietnamese and depiction of Asian women. You can agree or disagree, but you can't pretend that Miss Saigon being problematic is a new trend.
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