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Post by sf on Sept 21, 2023 23:34:31 GMT
Saw it this evening.
Some of it is excellent. Some of it is very moving. The direction is often very clever, the performances are excellent right across the board, and I'd throw every award possible at Amy Trigg for her wonderful, wonderful performance as the physiotherapist...
...and there's a bit too much synthetic uplift, and the score is often very bland. Trigg, the two Henrys, and Linzi Hateley supply some of the emotional heft that the music and lyrics lack, and Trigg gives her scenes a welcome shot of vinegar, but the show as a whole could use more of the sharpness the writers give her character. It is genuinely moving, but it is also a bit syrupy. It's very entertaining, but it could have been *great*, and it never quite gets there.
And the poster is awful.
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Post by sf on Sept 10, 2023 16:17:56 GMT
6pm seems too early for an evening performance, 7pm is more likely IMO. The questionnaire specifically asked whether you'd consider performances beginning at 6pm.
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Post by sf on Sept 6, 2023 21:56:13 GMT
But on this thread people aren't complaining about West End prices, they are complaining about prices at the National Theatre which gets a taxpayer subsidy amounting to £16 million a year so their prices should be significantly lower than commercial West End shows shouldn't they ?. Compare The Witches to something like Hamilton. It *does* have significantly lower prices. The Witches tops out at £99 - and yes, that is very expensive, but it's not difficult to find shows in London charging double that for their best seats. And there were a lot of seats for The Witches available at the bottom price point - £20 - when booking opened (I managed to book one of them, and I do not currently have a National Theatre membership - I booked it when the tickets went on public sale, and it wasn't on the first day they were on sale either), and in the Olivier all of those seats have a good view of the stage, whereas for something like Hamilton there's only a handful of pre-bookable seats at a similar price point and the view from them is dreadful.
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Post by sf on Aug 31, 2023 18:26:42 GMT
Oldham Council has ACE money to support cultural activity in Oldham - yes, roughly £600k/year, and yes, that's basically the Coliseum's ACE funding package - and yes, I think a major part of the issue was concerns with the Coliseum's governance. A new board was appointed in March, and they will be overseeing the transition to the new venue.
Certainly, as a (fairly recently) former resident of Oldham who grew up there and has been going to the Coliseum (when I lived in the area) since the late 70s, I think it's fair to say that the quality of what they've been doing over the last few years has not always been at the level it was at in the 80s and early 90s. They've programmed a few real stinkers, but so have most producing theatres. I don't have any numbers, but I suspect audience numbers have dropped, possibly fairly significantly. That's not just about the theatre and their programming, it's about the location, because the Fairbottom Street site is in the middle of a rat-run of bars and pubs that has developed a reputation for being rowdy at best and violent at worst, and it's a part of town a lot of people in the Coliseum's core demographics prefer to avoid after dark (and while the new venue is about a three-minute walk away from Fairbottom Street, those issues do not apply there). I think alarm bells started ringing quite loudly when the Coliseum's previous, fairly advanced plans for a new venue (not on the same site as the current plans, but in the same part of town) fell through a few years ago, because that project was very close to beginning construction when it folded. I'm sure there are things going on under the radar that haven't been made public - but yes, it is clear that ACE and OMBC did not want *the previous* board of trustees to continue running the theatre.
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Post by sf on Aug 30, 2023 20:19:33 GMT
It's going to open the rebuilt Oldham Coliseum in 2026, with Sue Devaney playing Miranda. And Andy. And Emily. And Nigel.
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Post by sf on Aug 30, 2023 20:13:13 GMT
If the local council can find £24m for a new theatre why couldn't they find £600k a year to replace the lost ACE funding for the next 40 years? Because the Coliseum building on Fairbottom Street was no longer fit for purpose, and needed to be replaced. It's needed to be replaced for years, and this is not the first plan for a new home for the Coliseum. And I assume the cost of the new building is being budgeted as part of the much wider regeneration programme that is in progress across Oldham town centre, which will be paid for by releasing various sites (including the current Civic Centre buildings) for redevelopment, whereas the £600k/year would have had to come out of the council's regular operating budget, where they aren't going to be able to find that kind of money.
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Post by sf on Aug 26, 2023 17:05:50 GMT
From Paddington to the west end this is a game changer. Last night, Wizard of Oz, admittedly starting at 7, 5 mins walk to Bond Street, back to Paddington, and managed to get the 10.03 to Didcot. We were home by 11. Pre Lizzie Line, there is no way… Exactly. Travelling in the same direction (though not as far), I find the Elizabeth Line often means that after a show I am home half an hour earlier. That quick jump from the West End to Paddington makes a huge difference.
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Post by sf on Aug 26, 2023 17:03:18 GMT
...I use it regularly, I live in Windsor and my usual route into London is via Slough. Windsor is a good example. I travelled there from central London to see Frank and Percy, and I was surprised that the train there took so long, about an hour in fact. Waterloo to Windsor is usually around an hour. Via Slough, the journey time is generally significantly less than that. The quickest connections from Windsor to Paddington via Slough - which admittedly use GWR trains rather than the Elizabeth Line - take 30 minutes. What *is* a game-changer from here is the Elizabeth Line for journeys *across* London. I went to meet my cousin and her husband in Stratford the other day (it's a convenient halfway point between where I live and where they live, with good train connections for me and easy parking for them). Getting there from Paddington is much quicker and easier than it used to be. Coming home from the West End after a show, it's very convenient to get on the Elizabeth Line and just change at Slough. Getting to the Barbican is much easier. And so on. In terms of journey time, the benefits from here are marginal - but it is often significantly more convenient than going to Paddington or Waterloo and then getting on the tube. And there's air conditioning all the way, and in summer that can be a big deal.
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Post by sf on Aug 26, 2023 14:52:44 GMT
Perhaps it's because I don't live in London, but even the Elizabeth Line shocks me as to how primitive it is in the 21st century. The seats are incredibly uncomfortable, there are no on-board toilets, and the time to get from Heathrow Terminal 5 to Tottenham Court Road (just under 19 miles) is a staggering 37 minutes. That's an average speed of just 31mph. And all this for how many millions! The seats are perfectly OK for the journeys the trains are designed for. I don't find them uncomfortable. 37 minutes from T5 to Tottenham Court Road is pretty good given the number of stops the train makes on the way. Paddington to T5 on the Heathrow Express is about 20 minutes; by the time you've got off the Heathrow Express at Paddington, made your way to the Elizabeth Line platforms, and got on the next eastbound train, you haven't saved much more than perhaps five minutes. Given that Heathrow Express uses the fast lines between Hayes and Harlington and Paddington and the Elizabeth Line doesn't, that's a huge achievement. Speed, anyway, was never the point. The Elizabeth Line represents - on its own - a 10% increase in rail capacity in central London in terms of the number of people per hour the network is capable of moving. On that basis, it is a huge success. (Yes I use it regularly, I live in Windsor and my usual route into London is via Slough.)
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Post by sf on Aug 12, 2023 20:30:32 GMT
Angela Lansbury was English so she wasn't putting on an accent. And go wash your mouth out for saying it was "dodgy". 😀 Eh? Isn’t she putting on a cockerney accent rather than her usual English accent? And it does sound not quite right. Lansbury's accent on the Sweeney Todd cast recording sounds like what it is: deliberately exaggerated music-hall cockney.
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Post by sf on Aug 7, 2023 15:55:32 GMT
I also want to know why Caton wasn’t on the recording.. it can’t be that her vocals were inferior surely? I like her voice I saw it in very late previews. She has a nice enough voice, but she sang flat all the way through. It was not a good performance.
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Post by sf on Aug 4, 2023 20:02:52 GMT
On the tracks they've previewed so far, Ashford sounds like a non-native speaker who learned the role phonetically from another non-native speaker who recorded Mrs. Lovett's lines with pebbles in her mouth. It is possibly the most incompetent English accent ever recorded - yes, surpassing her own (dreadful) performance on the (unlistenable, because of the bad accents) Kinky Boots OBC. Some of the sounds she makes ("splarshing") don't occur in any territory anywhere in the world where people speak English. In terms of competence, she makes Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins sound like Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady.
And the strange thing is, her accent is clearly the result of a series of very careful choices. She worked at it. And it is utterly, dazzlingly, jaw-droppingly awful.
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Post by sf on Jul 28, 2023 13:49:17 GMT
What is this? Did Wildhorn write this and it was staged in Korea or something? And this is the English language version? 1. Musical adaptation of a popular manga series. 2. Japan first, but yes. 3. Yes. Having seen the show in Tokyo, part of me is curious - but maybe it's better left as a memory. in Japanese.
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Post by sf on Jul 18, 2023 15:51:31 GMT
The brief abstract on the Young Vic's website is rather strongly reminiscent of the plot of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's 'Appropriate'
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Post by sf on Jul 9, 2023 15:31:56 GMT
The Man In The White Suit. Witless One Man Two Guvnors knockoff, and the cast couldn't save it.
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Post by sf on Jul 6, 2023 22:59:46 GMT
Is this a serious possibility? Wasn’t aware NT host others’ productions in this way? they did for standing at the sky's edge!
And My Brilliant Friend.
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Post by sf on Jul 5, 2023 16:12:16 GMT
Loved this last night. Funny, furious, perfectly cast and directed, and I don't know how Daniel Rigby does that eight times a week. Will go again before it closes.
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Post by sf on Jul 2, 2023 23:00:51 GMT
For clarity, the £90 restricted stalls were from TodayTix on Fridays and Saturdays. If you go directly to the box office they are £77.50. Much more reasonable for a restricted view seat at the rear of the stalls. Not. I found the rv dress circle seat I sat in for Dreamgirls perfectly acceptable. Do we know how much they are? Half way back with a bar in the way? That's what I booked (I sat there for Dreamgirls too), and I paid about £50 including the booking fees.
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Post by sf on Jun 29, 2023 2:02:12 GMT
Andy Serkis (and Lorraine Ashbourne, who is now his wife) in the title role in a Hungarian musical called 'Doctor Heart' at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 1991. Also at the Royal Exchange, Kate Winslet as Geraldine in a production of 'What The Butler Saw' (1994), and Hugh Grant as Eric Birling in 'An Inspector Calls' (1986). I think you win this thread. Has Hugh Grant done any other stage acting?
He'd done a few things at the Nottingham Playhouse and in fringe venues before that, but I think 'An Inspector Calls' was his last stage credit.
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Post by sf on Jun 28, 2023 22:57:50 GMT
I saw it this afternoon.
I liked it very much. It's a very talented, very intelligent piece of writing, there's some terrific music in it, it's staged very cleverly and there's a wonderful cast. I suspect some of the Tyler Perry stuff got much bigger laughs in New York; overall, I think it's very entertaining but sometimes also very self-indulgent - there's a fine line between ruthless self-examination and navel-gazing, and the show crosses it several times - and it isn't quite as edgy as it thinks it is.
Jackson is obviously a major talent, though, and this is a spectacular debut.
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Post by sf on Jun 27, 2023 18:55:14 GMT
Andy Serkis (and Lorraine Ashbourne, who is now his wife) in the title role in a Hungarian musical called 'Doctor Heart' at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 1991.
Also at the Royal Exchange, Kate Winslet as Geraldine in a production of 'What The Butler Saw' (1994), and Hugh Grant as Eric Birling in 'An Inspector Calls' (1986).
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Post by sf on Jun 26, 2023 16:50:56 GMT
Unlike some I've never had an issue with Chichesters core audience, but I did notice at Assassins the audience was noticeably more diverse in all demographics. I love chichesters golden age musical revivals but it would be good to see them tackle more sondheim. A Little Night Music, and Into The Woods would be great there. They've done A Little Night Music and it transferred to the Piccadilly.
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Post by sf on Jun 25, 2023 14:57:09 GMT
To keep the cast in tact, it would need to transfer in the Autumn I’d think. Are there any avail theatres? It may not transfer to a west end theatre …. I could make a case for the National to put it in the Olivier... (I know, I know. But I can dream.)
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Post by sf on Jun 24, 2023 21:12:13 GMT
Saw it this afternoon.
An extraordinary clever piece of direction/design that manages to draw clear links between the stories of the various assassins, the flip side of the American Dream, the way the US political system weaponises patriotism, the proliferation of guns and gun violence, the US's vapid media culture, Trump, and January 6th. And an equally extraordinary performance from Danny Mac, and a very good one from Peter Forbes too.
I know the show backwards (a very long time I wrote a chunk of an MA thesis about it; I haven't looked at it in quite a few years, but I was still a line ahead of the book all the way through the show). I did not expect a production of Assassins to surprise me the way this did. A couple of things need refining - the Emma Goldman scene didn't work - but it's a confident, intellectually rigorous, tremendously entertaining revival with a fascinating take on the material. My biggest complaint about it is that the Chichester run ends today and I need to see it again.
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Post by sf on Jun 20, 2023 21:26:09 GMT
It's slight, sweet, middlebrow, predictable - exactly what you'd expect from the poster - and sometimes very funny. It's also too long. It's a two-act play that is crying out to be a ninety-minute one-act. Allam and McKellen are charming, it has a nice set, and it needs to lose twenty-five minutes of stage time and the interval.
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Post by sf on Jun 17, 2023 21:04:20 GMT
Saw it this afternoon. It might be the first stage musical ever to be written, directed, and performed by ChatGPT. Or rather, it might as well have been. There is no spark. There is no inkling of why any of these people wanted to retell this story. There's just dreary music and dreary lyrics - yes, we get it, Lime rhymes with slime - performed by a cast who would clearly rather be somewhere else. I can't blame them. There is one bright spot: {Spoiler - click to view} The Act One finale quotes a tiny snippet of the Harry Lime Theme. That's nice, because it means once in the show - just once - you get to hear about four bars of really great music.
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Post by sf on Jun 16, 2023 14:59:15 GMT
- Nancy having a song felt a little random as she's a minor character, but the actress had a beautiful voice and it was pleasant enough. The song can feel a little random but it's actually a great way to open Act 2. All through Act 1 the focus is on Phil and the ensemble play very stereotypical small townspeople who Phil just uses for his own enjoyment and has no care for. And Playing Nancy makes you stop and go "there's more to these people than you think" and makes you care for them which is what Phil learns to do over the second Act. Phil essentially manipulated this woman to get her into bed alongside taking advantage of pretty much everybody in town for his own pleasure. And this song just takes the focus away from Phil for a moment and forces you to pay attention to these characters who have just been a joke up until that point. Not just that - the point of the song is that Nancy is also trapped in a cycle that she is unable to break.
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Post by sf on May 24, 2023 15:30:26 GMT
This wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell as a regular production, but as a concert it will probably attract a good mix of Wildhorn fans, fans of the original manga and East Asian culture and whoever gets cast in the leads. I'd actually be far more interested in this as something fresh and unusual than the rehashes of shows that were in the West End not long ago or the bland stuff Wildhorn churned out for continental Europe on a conveyor belt for years. Not generally a Wildhorn fan - at all - but having seen the show in Tokyo, I'm interested in seeing this.
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Post by sf on Mar 17, 2023 6:18:35 GMT
Fair enough, but boy, we could not disagree more. You were also the one, if I read the thread correctly, that lambasted someone for calling it 'worthy' then praised everything about the subject of the show without mentioning that actual elements of music, design, direction, score until the poster you went after mentioned it. Not sure why a show this dull brings out such passionate feelings but I guess that is what makes theatre interesting - we each come away with something different. Again, no, that's not precisely what I said. I'm not going to regurgitate a discussion I had in another venue here, but once again I must kindly request that you not put words into my mouth. Thanks.
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Post by sf on Mar 16, 2023 23:37:40 GMT
I hear ya Bobbie. Someone on Talkin' Broadway mentioned that number as the 'the most thrilling staging of a musical number currently on a West End stage'. Sadly, they were not joking. That was me. I said I thought it was the most thrilling musical number on any London stage. I did not mention the staging, and I did not elaborate. But just to be clear, what I found thrilling was specifically the music. It's a terrific song, performed spectacularly well by a cast of superb singers and a top-notch band. I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with everything I write online, but if you're going to argue a point then please argue the point I actually made rather than your careless misreading of it. Don't assume I meant something I did not say, and don't put words into my mouth. Thanks.
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