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Post by sf on Mar 14, 2019 13:57:10 GMT
If they're a young writer/performer it could be devastating, though - it feels gleefully destructive in tone and that opening dig about the writer's name sounding northern is gratuitous and tediously familiar to anyone from the north / with a accent. Not "one of us", say the London arts circle, circling the wagons.
Yes. I've written my share of pans (and been on the receiving end of a couple as well), and I think there's nothing wrong with twisting the knife if you back up each point rather than just writing a string of withering insults, fun as that can be - but as someone from the north who has a slight but perceptible accent, I'm afraid that dig at the playwright's name tells me a great deal about the person who wrote the review, none of it pleasant.
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Post by sf on Mar 13, 2019 17:35:08 GMT
Some girls who sit behind me in history were talking about it today, and they were really annoyed at the government's incompetence in finding a deal, and said it should just be scrapped altogether and we can just forget this ever happened. If only it were that easy. As @baemax and others have mentioned upthread, people are still going to talk about it for years, so even if it IS aborted, it will still be referenced non stop in both political and pop culture.
And even if it's aborted, as I believe it still can (and certainly should) be, there's going to have to be some kind of public inquiry, because the decision-making processes that brought us to this point are catastrophically broken. There's also going to have to be a thorough examination of our electoral laws, because they very clearly are no longer adequate, and there should ideally be a criminal investigation and prosecutions too, because people have broken the law.
We are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.
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Post by sf on Mar 12, 2019 16:09:49 GMT
Fans however are another story. I’ve had memorable encounters with Martin Freeman and Andrew Scott fans before. After I wrote a (very, very not-positive) review of Mr. Will Young's embarrassingly dreadful performance in 'Cabaret' on my blog, I had some very entertaining emails from his fans. One of them suggested I ought to write Mr. Young a personal apology ("Dear Will, I'm sorry you were so sh*t in 'Cabaret' at the Lowry last week..."). Another was headed "WHO THE F*** DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!?!?!" (I didn't read the body of that email). Someone had found the review and posted it to a fan site, or maybe a forum for people suffering from rabies. Those people must have remarkably empty lives if they get so worked up about a complete stranger panning their idol's performance. The irony is that that particular blog post got about fifty times more readers than I'd usually get. If these idiots hadn't made such a fuss about it, the post would have been read by a handful of my friends and a couple of people who stumbled on it via google, and basically nobody would have noticed it.
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Post by sf on Mar 11, 2019 21:31:27 GMT
What’s everyones opinion on when they prevent solo theatre goers from buying 1 ticket in a block of 2? I hate it with the kind of passion some people never experience in their entire life. I think I loathe it more than I loathe the charmless woman in the lobby at Hope Mill the other week who asked me if her group could take the other seat at my table and when I said yes, they could, I wasn't with anyone, came back with "Oh, what a pity you're on your own." I think I even loathe it more than I loathe Jacob Rees-Mogg. It's basically like a big neon sign screaming "HI! WE DON'T WANT YOUR MONEY!"
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Post by sf on Mar 11, 2019 21:03:27 GMT
I found it [Live, Laugh, Love] clearer this time, oddly. Before, yes, there was the frission that it was an error. This time, it was very clear it was a liar being tripped up by his own memory, and thus deeper for me. That's exactly it. Quast played that he'd forgotten the line, and the breakdown sequence didn't quite work as it should have done at any of the three performances I saw. Hanson plays it as Ben, yes, getting tripped up by his own glibness, and to me it's far more effective. On the other hand, Quast sang it better than Hanson does - but Hanson sings it better than John McMartin did on the original Broadway cast recording.
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Post by sf on Mar 11, 2019 20:54:15 GMT
I saw the first UK tour of Chess 8 times, but I was ever so much younger then.
Other than that, I don't do repeat visits that often these days, although there are exceptions. I've seen Company twice and I'm going back once more before it closes. I've seen the National's Follies four times, and (again) I'm going back (at least) once before the end of the run. I saw Fun Home and Hamilton twice last year. I regret not having been able to make a return visit to The Inheritance, but logistically it was just too complicated. If I lived closer to London, I'd see more things there more than once. Local stuff is easier, but the kind of work that would hook me into going back multiple times - things like the National's Follies - doesn't happen all that often in this country, particularly outside London.
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Post by sf on Mar 10, 2019 19:35:33 GMT
But that's precisely the point I'm making: it's too late to impose an interval now, but the structure could have been conceived differently in the first place. It could have but it wasn't, and shoehorning in an interval damages the piece. Follies works better performed in a single act. The single exception - and it's not worth getting excited over because it's never going to be performed again - is the book used for the 1987 London production. That was a complete rewrite, and that particular script was structured in two distinct acts, with the moment the central quartet of characters became aware of their 'ghosts' as the Act One curtain.
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Post by sf on Mar 10, 2019 17:51:31 GMT
You could argue that 'Pacific Overtures' follows an unbroken journey from tradition to modernity, but an interval did not damage the structure of that show. ...because it was written in two acts. The first act builds to the image you see in the Act One finale (the Lion Dance morphing into a Cakewalk, a choreographed representation of the erosion of traditional Japanese culture by foreign influences), and then at the top of Act Two the plot picks up somewhere else. That's as opposed to Follies, which is written in a single act, on a single, unbroken rising line of tension from Sally's entrance at the top of the show to the beginning of the Loveland sequence.
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Post by sf on Mar 10, 2019 15:33:12 GMT
I saw 'Passion' in London- I was pretty sure it has an interval. The original London production of Passion, yes, was performed in two acts. The original Broadway production (I saw both) didn't have an interval, and adding one was not an improvement.
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Coffee
Mar 10, 2019 15:18:43 GMT
Post by sf on Mar 10, 2019 15:18:43 GMT
I confess I'm also among those who order "An Americano with milk" since plan regular black coffee seems to have been abolished in the modern coffee shops with all their fancy names. "Would you like room for milk in your black coffee?" (I hear this more often than you'd expect. WAY more often.)
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Coffee
Mar 9, 2019 21:42:28 GMT
Post by sf on Mar 9, 2019 21:42:28 GMT
So to continue, and further, this discussion... How many cups of coffee to people get through on an average day? Often just one, but I make it strong. I consider it a community service: I don't just drink coffee because I enjoy the taste, although I do enjoy the taste. I drink it so that others may live.
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Post by sf on Mar 5, 2019 22:55:04 GMT
Musicals have had a number of these. Kat and the Kings beating out Rent in 1999 (it was quite fun but forgettable), Honk beating The Lion King (parochialism at its worst) the next year. Miss Saigon bested by Return to the Forbidden Planet a decade or so earlier. And for the last of those, the most jaw-dropping thing that season was that Aspects of Love wasn't even nominated. It wasn't perfect, but it certainly deserved a nomination over The Baker's Wife.
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Post by sf on Mar 5, 2019 20:21:08 GMT
Hands up who else has never ever seen the TV show and was hoping for an adaptation of the Altman film?
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Post by sf on Mar 5, 2019 20:07:55 GMT
I strongly suspect that the absence of Hadestown is SOLT's way of saying that they don't approve of the English National Theatre being used for Broadway tryouts. Oh that's an interesting thought, I didn't think about that at all, but I guess it makes sense! I suppose too, Hadestown wasn't made for the National was it? It was made in America and brought over, so it's not like Angels in America which was designed specifically for the National Theatre and then transferred.
It would be one thing if it had been developed jointly with a major American theatre - like, for example, the National's production of Downstate was developed jointly with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago (it played there last year). That's not what happened with Hadestown; it's a commercial management using the National's resources to get a price break on their pre-Broadway tryout. And while three of them gave very fine performances, it leaves a particularly nasty taste that the production's five principal perfomers were all parachuted in from across the Atlantic and none of the local performers cast in ensemble roles are making the journey in the opposite direction. I liked a lot of things about the show (though not the two leads), and reading between the lines I assume the National had to fill a slot in their performance schedule when something else either fell through or had to be postponed, but it wasn't in any way an appropriate use of the National's taxpayer-funded resources.
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Post by sf on Mar 5, 2019 16:47:39 GMT
Jenna Russell wuz ROBBED, I tell you. ROBBED.
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Post by sf on Mar 2, 2019 23:18:32 GMT
OK. So.
It's good, and Ms. Lagan redeems herself here for her awful 'Promises Promises' a couple of years ago, which was so bad it very nearly stopped me from buying a ticket for this. She's done a very good job here with difficult material.
If you know the recording, a lot of this version of the show will be unfamiliar. It's been very heavily rewritten - in terms of the score, not entirely for the better. This is probably the best music Charles Strouse has ever written for the theatre, but in this version of the show some of the songs have been chopped up and re-sequenced in ways that don't entirely make musical sense.
Good performances from the whole company, and Rebecca Trehearn is tremendous.
Starting a performance a full half-hour late demonstrates absolute contempt for the audience; it's unprofessional and there's no excuse for it. Particularly here: this isn't London, the transport system in parts of Greater Manchester shuts down surprisingly early, and where I live, less than ten miles from the theatre, those thirty minutes are the difference between getting all the way home on public transport and having to get a cab part of the way. I'm sorry they (apparently) had a difficult dress rehearsal - but please, Ms. Lagan, deal with your problems on YOUR time, not mine.
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Post by sf on Mar 1, 2019 22:17:20 GMT
That's because they always go to people who have priority booking (£80.) I've seen it three times from row B in the stalls but only because I've coughed up that amount. Even then, within half an hour or so there's usually nothing left in the front three rows. I must say that paying £80 in order to be able to buy a £15 seat does seem counterintuative to me. (See also the ROH.)
It works out at £6.70 a month. To me, the benefits are worth the cost, and it's not just about early access to tickets. It's about supporting the institution.
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Post by sf on Mar 1, 2019 19:22:04 GMT
It depends if you want to see faces. The stage isn't that high (I'm in the front row for my second visit), but the set is massive and action takes place at upper levels at times. Certainly not the back of the circle, though, that's a long way back for an intimate piece. Really it comes down to legroom and your height. Row A has a lot more legroom than the others. The view is better maybe from B or C if you are shorter than 5ft 4 or so. Otherwise, view too is about the same. I've seen Follies before but it was my first show in the Olivier and all my return visits have been almost the exact same seats in the third or fourth row of the circle so I'm not experienced with the view from the stalls. I'm not too short so I think I'll go for the front row since it doesn't make much of a difference and I don't think I've ever been in the front row somehow so I may as well do it with my favourite one! Thanks for your help.
For what it's worth, I saw it from the front row on Wednesday afternoon - and also in 2017 - and this production works quite well up close.
I also saw the original run from the back row of the circle; it was a different experience, obviously, but perfectly OK, and there's some value in seeing the 'big picture', which you don't get in the first couple of rows in the Olivier stalls. Having said that, if the choice is between the front row in the stalls and the back row of the circle, and there's no difference in price, I'd take the front stalls.
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Follies
Mar 1, 2019 15:50:58 GMT
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Post by sf on Mar 1, 2019 15:50:58 GMT
Oh no, what do you mean?? I thought it was absolutely breathtaking, not only the highlight of Joanna's Sally, but the whole show. It brought the character together for me and had a huge emotional impact. I do however wholeheartedly agree on some of your other points - the tableau being gorgeous, Claire Moore's costume kinda weird, Peter and Janie fab as ever :-) A lot of people just prefer the traditional staging of Losing My Mind where Sally is on a completely empty stage and it allows the song and actor to speak for themselves. Generally speaking,I'd be one of them. I did not love the way the number was staged for Imelda Staunton, and - in theory - I'd prefer the actor playing Sally to just stand still and sing the song. It's a Follies number - it's meant to be performed rather than acted. And having said that, I thought what Joanna Riding did with it was absolutely stunning. I knew about it before I saw it, and it sounded like a completely wrong-headed choice, but she completely pulled it off. I thought she was absolutely spectacular.
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Post by sf on Mar 1, 2019 3:54:30 GMT
As my working day ended near the Nash I thought I would pop in to buy the new Company script. Wasn't on the Sondheim shelf with all the Follies merchandise and accedimic books it also wasn't with Sondhdeim's other scripts. I had to ask for it as it was in the warehouse. The staff are all very nice and polite but when they can't manage a release... It was on the shelves in the bookshop on Wednesday afternoon. How do I know? I bought one. Oddly, they didn't have it on the souvenir stand in the lobby at the Gielgud on Wednesday night (I saw Follies in the afternoon and Company in the evening).
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Post by sf on Feb 28, 2019 23:35:13 GMT
In related news, the Gielgud Theatre has just been severely shaken by what witnesses describe as an extremely localised earthquake. Seismologists have traced the epicentre to one of the star dressing-rooms.
Hahaha :-) I mean of course I know could never have been her - but if they had to go with one of Nunn's Normas, give me Patti, Betty or EP any day. (Of course, REALLY they should have someone who is a) a great singer and b) currently in their 40's in the role but hey ho......)
I'm just glad I saw Company LAST night and not tonight. If I'd had to take shelter until the shaking stopped before I left the theatre, I might have missed my train home.
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Post by sf on Feb 28, 2019 23:26:12 GMT
This could have been the best film ever with Dame Patti.....
In related news, the Gielgud Theatre has just been severely shaken by what witnesses describe as an extremely localised earthquake. Seismologists have traced the epicentre to one of the star dressing-rooms.
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Follies
Feb 28, 2019 14:59:07 GMT
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Post by sf on Feb 28, 2019 14:59:07 GMT
Has Felicity Lott returned to the show yet? She has. Or at least, she was on yesterday afternoon, and she sang it beautifully.
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Post by sf on Feb 25, 2019 21:16:14 GMT
Obviously I had to boycott the whole ceremony. They didn't nominate me for anything AGAIN.
It's just not good enough.
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Post by sf on Feb 25, 2019 15:37:34 GMT
Seems like a great line and yet more is still to be announced. I'll definitely be seeing Street Scene. If mattinaes were scheduled Ceasor and Greek would also be on the list. www.operanorth.co.uk/
I will certainly see Street Scene. Probably more than once.
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Post by sf on Feb 24, 2019 16:35:32 GMT
Surprised the West End run (with Barrowman rather than Tom I believe?) was so much later. Barrowman got one of the all-time great snarky reviews for Matador, I think from Sheridan Morley in the International Herald Tribune: "John Barrowman played the Matador and lost."
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Post by sf on Feb 24, 2019 15:25:51 GMT
EDIT: Just seen the news breaking that May is, indeed, postponing the vote, maybe until the middle of March. This is insanity. At the very least, it demonstrates absolute, unyielding contempt for both Parliament and the electorate. Matthew Parris's hatchet-job in the Times the other day appears to be right on target:
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Post by sf on Feb 24, 2019 15:16:57 GMT
Oddly, while it's listed on Amazon, it does not yet appear on TCG's own website. They've published a number of Sondheim's other musicals, though, so it's not all that surprising that they're (finally) publishing 'Merrily...'.
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Post by sf on Feb 18, 2019 18:28:36 GMT
But that’s not the same production as La Jolla, right?
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Post by sf on Feb 15, 2019 15:26:22 GMT
Maxine Peake cliams she can’t sing, which is a shame as, if she could, she’d probably be the fiercest Mama Rose ever! Ha! So spooky, i was wondering who they would cast and hers was the first name that came to me, before i thought she probably cant sing. Which may be an issue!!
That hasn't always stopped people from playing the role. Can Julie Hesmondhalgh sing?
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