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Post by sf on Jan 30, 2024 11:49:13 GMT
Expensive too. Most of the stalls is £90+ Very expensive. The royal circle seat that cost me £15 for Accidental Death of an Anarchist - at the back and off to the side, booked in advance, it wasn't an on-the-day special offer - is going for £90 for this.
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Post by sf on Jan 27, 2024 12:54:32 GMT
I saw it last night.
It's the first time I've seen the show since the ENO production (no of course you can't believe I'm that old). Beautiful production, beautifully designed, staged, and performed. Yes, a couple of the actors spoke/sang very heavily Japanese-accented English, but I didn't have any difficulty understanding them. 'Someone In A Tree', in particular, was stunning (and I think it's possibly the best thing Sondheim ever wrote). It's the best thing I've seen at the Menier in several years, and I regret that I'm probably not going to be able to go back and see it again before it closes.
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Post by sf on Jan 20, 2024 19:41:46 GMT
I think the last west end show that had a proper big cast was 42nd Street and An American In Paris. ...and An American In Paris had a tiny band. It did not sound good. You cannot do justice to that music with a band of 13.
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Post by sf on Jan 19, 2024 12:12:52 GMT
Now on sale.
The seat that cost me £20 for A Strange Loop last summer is priced at £60 plus a £4 booking fee.
The seat that cost me £29.50 for My Neighbour Totoro this coming March is also priced at £60 plus a £4 booking fee.
This pricing policy seems... optimistic.
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Post by sf on Jan 18, 2024 20:44:56 GMT
Typical. You wait ages for an Oedipus, and then two show up at once.
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Post by sf on Jan 17, 2024 20:36:15 GMT
Some of us might have seen Adrian Dunbar in the musical Lady in the Dark with Maria Friedman at the National Theatre in 1997... presuming it's the same person! I can't recall how much he sang in that - will have to dig the cast recording out later. He sang in it. That's why I find his casting in Kiss Me, Kate... questionable. Charley Johnson isn't a huge singing role, but he does sing, and Dunbar didn't - let's be kind - reveal the kind of voice that could easily negotiate a role like Fred in Kiss Me, Kate. You can talk-sing your way through his character's material in Lady in the Dark because the score is almost entirely made up of three mini-operas in which the chorus do a lot of the heavy lifting, but you can't take that approach to a song like Wunderbar and expect to get away with it. I suppose it's possible he's a much better singer now than he was twenty-five years ago, but it isn't very likely.
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Post by sf on Jan 8, 2024 15:13:43 GMT
I saw on Twitter (X) that Rishi Sunak was in the audience the other night. And nobody offered him any chocolate?
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Post by sf on Dec 30, 2023 19:48:38 GMT
Must be credited for the original SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM; original London cast of ALNM, founder of SHOW PEOPLE which brought several revue-style entertainments to the (old) Donmar Warehouse and elsewhere. A real gentleman. ...and a wonderful singer. His performance of a song called I Remember on the London cast recording of Side By Side By Sondheim is a masterclass in understatement. There's no grandstanding, no showing off, no extraneous adornments - he sings the melody precisely as written, delivers the lyrics simply and delicately, and finds every last scrap of yearning in the song. It's a very, very fine performance. RIP.
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Post by sf on Dec 21, 2023 10:57:11 GMT
It doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for Nikki to have a northern accent, or for her to sound "authentic to Sheffield". She lived with Poppy in London, and one of the few things we know about her background is that she isn't from Sheffield.
I didn't love Ms. Redding's take on the song either. The riffing is just *too much*.
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Post by sf on Dec 20, 2023 20:37:37 GMT
I also saw it this afternoon, and I also liked it more than the film (and I liked the film). Very strong writing and direction, pitch-perfect performances, evocative designs, and Elvis Costello's songs are lovely, and absolutely in tune with the setting(s) and the period. It's a beautiful production, and it deserves a much longer life.
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Post by sf on Dec 13, 2023 20:18:25 GMT
There are actually 4. You’re missing ‘musicians with an axe to grind’. Two violins One viola One musician doubling violin/viola. That's not enough to provide the sound the score requires without electronic assistance.
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Post by sf on Dec 13, 2023 19:02:31 GMT
I struggle to see how anyone could rate this 1 or 2 stars. Even if you hated the concept, if you were being totally honest with yourself, you couldn’t deny the magnificent orchestra, the flawless vocals of all of the leads and just the care that this has been constructed with. You’d be looking from 3 stars upwards surely? "Magnificent orchestra"? They play very well. The sound design is excellent. The score leans heavily into a sound and a style that depends on a large, lush string section; there are two, sometimes three violins in place of seven in the band in the original production, and seven violins playing together produce a sound that you cannot recreate with just two or three. It sounds like what it is: a cut-down orchestra in which the strings are bolstered by synthesised string pads played on the keyboards. For what it is, there have been plenty worse, but it is not magnificent.
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Post by sf on Dec 13, 2023 4:03:00 GMT
Not in rank order:
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Assassins
Guys and Dolls
Rose
Standing at the Sky's Edge
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Post by sf on Dec 12, 2023 18:26:04 GMT
Finally saw it last night.
It doesn't do a particularly deep dive into the Sondheim catalogue. It does what it says on the tin: it gives you a cast of spectacularly gifted singing actors (and Bernadette Peters) running through a selection of favourites. It's staged and packaged very nicely indeed, it's thoroughly entertaining, the cast obviously love doing the show, and a few of the more senior performers in it are clearly having a great time doing the kind of ensemble tracks that they haven't had to do in decades, because this is a show in which nearly everyone joins the chorus at some point.
Highlights: Bonnie Langford's 'I'm Still Here' Joanna Riding's 'Getting Married Today', which is possibly the best thing in the entire show Janie Dee's 'The Boy From...' Gavin Lee and Clare Burt's 'The Little Things You Do Together' Clare Burt's 'The Ladies Who Lunch' Lea Salonga's 'Loving You' and (particularly) 'Everything's Coming Up Roses'. One of these days she'll make one hell of a Rose. Lea Salonga and Jeremy Secombe's 'A Little Priest' The full company singing 'Sunday' at the end of Act One.
And while I'm far from Bernadette Peters' biggest fan, it's undeniably moving to hear her, almost forty years on, deliver the lines that lead into the beginning of 'Sunday' ("they are your words, George..."). Her 'Losing My Mind', too, is significantly better than her performance on the Broadway revival cast album of 'Follies', though it would pretty much have to be.
I could quibble with some of the song choices - giving Jason Pennycooke the Mandy Patinkin solo version of Buddy's Blues was not a great idea - and at £12 the programme is outrageously expensive even though it contains a lot of nice photographs (it's Sondheim, I bought it, this is just about the only show for which I'd ever contemplate paying that much for a programme), but it's a wonderful celebration of a peerless songwriter, it's clearly been put together with tremendous love and respect, and Julia McKenzie, who directed it, has the good sense to keep it moving very briskly, and to not let it drag on and on. There's a little bit of cheese around the edges (more than a little in the couple of places Ms. Peters is unfortunately allowed to speak), but that's inevitable in this kind of show; overall, as big, splashy tribute shows go, this is just about as good as it gets.
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Post by sf on Dec 9, 2023 18:32:12 GMT
...and also, one of the "delights" of seeing a family-oriented show from a seat on the end of a row: discovering just how few parents these days can be bothered to teach their children to say "excuse me".
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Post by sf on Dec 9, 2023 17:18:09 GMT
Saw it last night.
No technical hitches, and it's a very likeable show. Clever, witty music, phenomenal performances, a very funny book, and a few things that need tightening up. It could stand to lose a few minutes (and the National *really* needs to get better at getting people seated and starting the show on time), and 'Get Up!' has to be restaged if the show has a life after this, because the current staging of it is so flat-out bad that I can't believe it made it out of a rehearsal room. Apart from that, it's enormous fun. Sally Ann Triplett, Daniel Rigby, and Katherine Kingsley are clearly having a great time, and the kids are flawless.
It's not going to be the sort of worldwide hit Matilda was, simply because it's a much darker story with a much darker ending (which I think Lucy Kirkwood's adaptation negotiates quite well). But it does deserve a longer life, and I want a cast recording. I really wasn't in the mood for a Festive Family Show last night - lousy week, not enough sleep - and I had a much, MUCH better time than I was expecting. A solid four stars from me.
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Post by sf on Dec 2, 2023 19:26:15 GMT
Saw it this afternoon. Fascinating, gripping, beautifully written and directed and designed, nowhere near as naturalistic as it first appears, and something I'll be thinking about for a long time.
Was it a fun afternoon at the theatre? No, though it is occasionally very funny. It is very good indeed, but it is not an easy ride. It's also not something everybody is going to enjoy, so do your homework before you buy a ticket.
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Post by sf on Nov 27, 2023 16:49:27 GMT
I watched it over the weekend (I have what might be a flu-y cold, or might be Covid, though I'm testing negative, so I haven't moved far from the sofa for the last few days). It's absolutely charming, it's beautifully produced and staged, the guests and the band are wonderful, and of course Ms. Waddingham herself is fabulous... and I think it's exactly the right length. It's very easy for these things to outstay their welcome, and it was the correct choice (and I think Ms. Waddingham said in an interview somewhere that it was her choice) to put together a relatively short programme that is over before the law of diminishing returns sets in.
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Post by sf on Nov 11, 2023 13:55:00 GMT
Saw it last night.
Jenna Russell is wonderful, and so are the rest of the cast; the show is still lovely (I saw it in Sheffield) - but there's a level of magic in this show that Bronagh Lagan, this production's director, does not find. It's not bad, it's worth seeing, it's still a very moving piece, and it's a terrific role for Jenna Russell and she never puts a foot wrong, but there's something missing from this production - though maybe you wouldn't notice it if you hadn't seen Daniel Evans's staging.
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Post by sf on Nov 5, 2023 6:46:01 GMT
I haven't seen it. There's a gallery of production photos on the theatre's website. Yes, it looks like a pretty elaborate production: Rock Me Amadeus - musicalvienna.at
(Scroll down, the gallery is a fair way down the page.)
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Post by sf on Nov 2, 2023 1:30:45 GMT
If it includes 'Mon Histoire' - 'On My Own' - it's not a staging of the original concept album. On the original concept album that melody is used for a song called 'L'air de la misère', and it's sung by Fantine.
The Cameron Mackintosh/Trevor Nunn/John Caird version of the show was translated back into French for runs in Montreal and Paris in 1990-91 (I saw it in Paris). There's a cast album, but it's been out of print for a very long time - pity, because it's one of the very best recordings of the show, with a spectacular cast.
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Post by sf on Oct 21, 2023 4:28:32 GMT
For anyone who might know, if all the songs were from shows Cameron was involved in, why was 'Live Alone and Like I' in it, when it was written for Dick Tracy? 'Live Alone and Like It' was used in a revue called 'Putting It Together', which Mackintosh produced.
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Post by sf on Oct 20, 2023 16:29:06 GMT
A brilliant talent with razor-sharp timing and a wonderful singing voice. Memorable in everything she was in, from Nice Work to City of Angels to Women on the Verge... to The Windsors. And her Christmas episode of Drop the Dead Donkey is one of the funniest episodes of a British sitcom ever made.
RIP. 66 is no age at all.
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Post by sf on Oct 19, 2023 22:52:10 GMT
Saw it tonight (and bought the script on the way out).
I loved it. It's a very clever, very angry, VERY funny deconstruction of the impact a century of unthinking Orientalism in popular culture has had on Asian-Americans and they way they are perceived by (white) society. The last third of the play could use a little tightening (and lose a few minutes), but overall, for me, it absolutely worked. And the performances are spot-on.
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Post by sf on Oct 12, 2023 20:09:11 GMT
Would anybody be able to enlighten my party on the price of the programme? Just the usual one, not the bells & whistles version. £8.00, which is a rip-off.
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Post by sf on Oct 8, 2023 23:33:02 GMT
They considered Dreamgirls a new musical 35 years after it premiered, so there's no way they'll treat this as a revival They considered Lady In The Dark a new musical 57 years after it premiered. Which is loony. It wasn't even the first UK production, just the first time it had been done in London.
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Post by sf on Oct 8, 2023 14:22:40 GMT
Pretty sure they all have a door that leads outside. The stage door isn't the problem, it's more it would have to be retimed since Broadway orchestra seats are on street level. I realised today that the metaness of this production of Sunset extends beyond this production. The play Salome by Oscar Wilde played at the Savoy so it's a fun Easter Egg. It would have to be retimed in any other venue anyway, just as it was (presumably) carefully planned, mapped, and timed for the Savoy. That simply isn't an issue.
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Post by sf on Oct 8, 2023 13:44:42 GMT
I do wonder how the Act 2 opener could work in a Broadway theatre because they're built differently to the ones in London? Pretty sure they all have a door that leads outside.
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Post by sf on Oct 7, 2023 1:38:58 GMT
Saw it this evening.
It's a very, very stylised production, and everybody has been directed to give very, very stylised performances, to the point where it sometimes feels like every line reading has been drilled (you know, rather like watching English-speaking performers who learned their roles phonetically in a German-language production of a British or American musical in Vienna or Hamburg). It's visually arresting and the singing is excellent. Lloyd obviously has a lot of ideas about the blurring of reality and fantasy, people who live their lives through a camera, ageism in Hollywood, and the blurring of reality and entertainment, but the production, overall, is intellectually sloppy and sometimes a bit too knowingly self-referential, particularly during the title song (which is a technical tour-de-force).
I think it's a very brave thing for Ms. Scherzinger to have taken on, and she does everything that is asked of her very well - but I'm not absolutely sure that the way she's been asked to play the role within this very stylised framework completely works. Her final speech - the "mad scene" - is just about the only thing in the show that sounds spontaneous rather than rehearsed, and I think that's a deliberate choice; that speech is very good.
The cut material was not missed.
The orchestra needs more strings. There's a certain sound you can only get with a bigger string section, and this score is full of it.
Overall - it's very entertaining, it is absolutely worth seeing, it offers a fascinating take on the material... and it's one of those productions where you maybe shouldn't try to think too hard about what the director is trying to say about the material, because his choices don't quite add up.
I would be very interested to go back and see it on a night Rachel Tucker is on. And I might.
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Post by sf on Oct 2, 2023 23:31:30 GMT
and you could not put this in Soho Place as you can't just...do this in the round.... I don't know if they've used that set-up yet - I've only been there once, for The Little Big Things - but sohoplace was designed to be a flexible space, and is configurable as a thrust stage as well as a theatre-in-the-round.
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