Aspects of Love - Hope Mill MCR / Southwark Playhouse

Interesting thought, as my thoughts after seeing this was that it seemed like an ALW attempt to be more Sondheim.

I was there at the matinee too, it was quite a popular performance with members here it seems!

Really enjoyed Sat eve’s performance, even with the fire alarm a little way into the first act that stopped the show briefly to much bemusement all around. Much preferred it to the Menier production from years ago but yes, would have loved more of an orchestra at times.

I still giggle smuttily at the line “you’re girlfriend’s going to love that donkey”! Mind you, it’s practically the only thing young Alex hadn’t got round to. Well that and poor Elizabeth. 😀

And Anything but Lonely was worth the ticket price alone!

True, very naive and needy. And I found Felix to be a very strong Alex.

I nearly grabbed a cafe seat but took the row right behind in the end.

😀 Even Elizabeth the normally reliable housekeeper couldn’t rustle up some cheese toasties and a mug of Horlicks to serve mid-song!

Well I was at the final performance and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel. The things I'm certain of are:

- Kelly Price and Madalena Alberto were sensational
- Jerome Pradon was very weird but it somehow suited the character perfectly
- Whoever made the decision to cut the orchestration should be shot. There were some beautiful melodies in there that were begging to be swept up by a big string section, and I felt that much of the beauty of the score was lost in the fairly flat piano accompaniment.
- The plot is much more interesting than I expected - normal, flawed people making mistakes and screwing each other over is far better than the trite love stories I was expecting.

The things I'm not so sure about:

- Felix Mosse: his singing was good but he had this weird two-mode thing going on where he was either doing a very quiet head voice or a big full vibrato-heavy chest voice. There didn't seem to be much in between. I also wanted him to make Alex a little less likeable - his outbursts would be far more satisfying if they had some context and didn't just come from nothing.
- The score itself: as I said, there were some beautiful melodies, and Anything But Lonely is a showstopper, but Lloyd Webber really didn't use his leitmotifs effectively in this one, it's all a bit heavy-handed and not helped by the cheesy hammer-it-out Love Changes Everything chords.
- The staging: the direction was good (apparently previous productions have focussed on Alex, whereas here Rose is very much the centre of things, which I feel was a good move) but I could've done without the set twirling and didn't feel the cafe tables added anything. Perhaps it's less intimate without them but it just made the playing area even smaller, and there's not much space at SWP to begin with.

So on the whole a good production, but has left me slightly mystified and wishing I had seen the original production for some extra context. I shall keep my eyes open for future versions and see if I can find more clarity.

So some thoughts...

I find the show enormously repetitive and it reminds me musically of some of ALW’s other (better) works, particularly Sunset Boulevard. I found the story largely watchable but the characters somewhat unsympathetic. The performances were fine. Jerome was indeed weird, as I hoped, but not laugh-out-loud bad. He actually had a certain odd charm to him and I thought he was very well cast. He really was the quirky, strange Uncle!

Elsewhere, I rather enjoyed the performances and the cast certainly left nothing behind.

I did not enjoy the plink plonking piano arrangement, which was wafer thin. Again, I understand it is purely financial reasons which force such decisions but it really hurt the score.

Truthfully I don’t think this show really has much going for it. It isn’t “marketable”, the characters are very hard to like. Having a flawed hero in Alex is all well and good, but despite the show’s length and recititive nature, I came away feeling only Rose and George’s characters had any sort of journey.

“Anything but Lonely” stole the show. A break from the tedium of constany leitmotifs perhaps, but that was clearly the big number of the show. Not “Love Changes Everything” which is repeated to the point of irritation. Brilliantly performed, it was my biggest take-away until I got a big take-away afterwards.

Despite the budget production, a lack of musical oomph and basic staging, it was the show itself I had qualms about. It’s just not to my tastes.

I’m no prude. I just truly didn’t give a toss about anyone except Jerome and even that was for purely fan-ish reasons. “Anything but Lonely” aside, there wasn’t much to remember.

I felt some moments were just plain weird in the storytelling too; time passing wasn’t adequately explained, for one. A character walks off, then a new scene starts and I have no idea if this is the next day, 2 years later, or why their relationship has changed. It felt like an adaption of a novel, despite the way too lengthy run-time.

I giggled at the mincing, twirling scene changes, which felt almost comically over the top. Like a wilful pastiche of the essence of theatre. They looked stupid, which made me laugh.

2*’s until “Anything but Lonely”, which made it 3*’s... but Jerome was in i, so 5*’s and a RAVE from me.

Interesting reference to Aspects of Love in this interview with Jon Pertwee. Anyone know if there's any truth in him being offered a part? IMDB reckons he was approached after Roger Moore pulled out.

Yes, first I've ever heard on this. However I do know Kylie and Jason were approached to be in the Doctor Who stage play/show. I doubt they could have possibly afforded them!!!