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Post by sf on Feb 14, 2019 20:17:49 GMT
Roses are red, Violets are smelly, All that I know, I learned from the telly.
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Post by sf on Feb 14, 2019 17:19:59 GMT
Roses are red, Violets are blue, I have some toe shoes Older than you.
(OK, that's dialogue from a musical rather than a lyric. Sue me.)
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Post by sf on Feb 12, 2019 22:11:37 GMT
You're reading a thread about the play. There's really no need for spoiler tags. Some people like to read opinions before they go/before they book, myself included, and I'd like to be able to avoid spoilers for the plot if possible. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Well... as much as I sympathise - really - with wanting to avoid spoilers, avoiding spoilers for the plot (as opposed to staging or performance choices) in this case is likely to be an uphill battle given that the film is almost 70 years old and very well-known and the show stays very close to the original screenplay. It's not unreasonable for people to assume the plot is a known quantity - so your reminder is well taken.
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Post by sf on Feb 12, 2019 21:51:51 GMT
Thank you, all of you.
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Post by sf on Feb 12, 2019 21:10:54 GMT
Ah that's awful sf ,so sorry When you say again, has she had it before?
She had a very minor brush with cancer about ten years ago - not the same cancer - but it's more that her health has been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last few years and this isn't the first time I've had to become her carer.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a setback, not the apocalypse - but as I said, I've had better days. Thank you.
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Post by sf on Feb 12, 2019 21:00:54 GMT
I've had better days. My mum was diagnosed with bone cancer this morning. Still a few tests before we'll know what the most appropriate treatment will be. She's very positive, and I'm convinced that's more than half the battle, and it isn't completely out of the blue, but it's not what we wanted to hear; as the person who'll be her primary caregiver (again), I think we're in for a bumpy ride.
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Post by sf on Feb 9, 2019 20:18:09 GMT
Restricted view dress circle seats £125 It’s been so saddening to watch the meteoric rise in ticket prices over the last ten years or so. Would many actually pay that amount for a revival of FOTR?
Some might. I wouldn't.
I happened to be passing the Playhouse on Wednesday lunchtime, and on a whim I called in and was able to get the one available £20 stalls seat (yes, N24) for a matinee in May. The selection of available seats on the seatplan for the performance I wanted - which incidentally loaded faster on my (not top-end) phone than on the ticket agent's computer screen - was so paltry that I assume they must be holding a lot of seats back to release in stages (and it looks like the seats between N24 and the wall are also going to be £20 - presumably they're releasing just one seat in that bracket now to force people who don't want to see it alone into a higher price bracket). A West End production would only sell that quickly with a huge star in one of the leads, and in terms of box-office draw Andy Nyman and Judy Kuhn aren't in the same league as, say, Jude Law or Hugh Jackman.
(Looking forward to seeing Ms. Kuhn, though. It's... omigod... thirty years this spring since I saw her in 'Metropolis'. I'm old.)
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 16:46:50 GMT
Didn't Shirley McLaine do a version of it in the film Postcards from the edge? Or was it Debbie Reynolds or have I got completely the wrong film?
It was Shirley MacLaine, and Sondheim rewrote a few of the lyrics for her ("I'm feeling transcendental. Am I here?")
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 16:23:19 GMT
As much as I ADORE Melissa, I don't think she's right for the role.
I don't know whether she can sing it. In terms of acting she'd be a fascinating choice, and my guess is she'd do it very well. There's a LOT more to her than those loud comedies.
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 15:58:21 GMT
To be fair, that goes with the material. The source film is brilliant but chilly, and the response it provokes is more intellectual than emotional. But it wasn’t chilling in my opinion, I felt it provoked more laughter than horror. Each revelation of Eve’s scheming unfolded without any shock but more amusement. I loved Gillian but James character at the beginning didn’t feel developed. If alienation aims to provoke an intellectual response how is that response the carried beyond the theatre, a problem we all know with Brecht’s work. Celebrity is a revolving door and fandom isn’t so much about the star as about the fan. I don’t feel any of the themes were explored below surface level.
I said chilly, not chilling. There's a difference.
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 15:56:52 GMT
I saw it last night.
I can pick a few holes in the writing - the lyrics, in places, are a bit pedestrian - but it's an incredibly effective piece of theatre. I was living in Canada on 9/11 (although not in Newfoundland), this is part of the story I watched unfold on the news that week, and I found the show very moving indeed. It's a pity not every song in it is as good as 'Welcome to the Rock' and 'Me and the Sky', but this is one of those pieces of theatre where the whole is (much) greater than the sum of the parts. Clever direction, excellent performances, and I particularly loved Rachel Tucker.
I did NOT particularly love the way the lights went down while three or four dozen people in the dress circle were still taking their seats. That's bad house management; somewhere in the communication chain, somebody slipped up. It wouldn't have killed anybody to hold the show for another 90 seconds.
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 15:41:31 GMT
All in all as my companion said ‘theatre should make you feel something, I felt nothing’. To be fair, that goes with the material. The source film is brilliant but chilly, and the response it provokes is more intellectual than emotional.
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Post by sf on Feb 8, 2019 15:40:24 GMT
Saw the matinee and loved it. It's very different from the film, as you'd expect from Van Hove: where the film is all moment to moment melodrama, this is all stately, doom-laden, Titanic floating toward an iceberg. I also saw it yesterday afternoon, and my response was very similar to yours. I loved it - the production is elegant, mesmerising, and ice-cold (which is absolutely right for the material), and Gillian Anderson and Lily James are stunningly good.
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Post by sf on Feb 4, 2019 12:29:18 GMT
I liked it very much, and much preferred Tamsin Greig to Sherie Rene Scott's un-performance on the Broadway cast album.
It helps that the London cast were not directed to play their entire roles in ridiculous cod-Thpanish accents. It also helps that the London production had a Lucia who understands what consonants are and is capable of articulating more than one-and-a-half vowel sounds.
The new finale is lovely, and Ricardo Afonso's 'My Crazy Heart' was breathtaking.
The London cast recording (now the official reference recording for future productions, you can hear it on the show's page on the MTI website) is absolutely terrific. It's a great pity it's never been commercially released.
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Post by sf on Feb 4, 2019 12:24:28 GMT
I watched both.
I was living in Toronto while the US series was being filmed there, and I have to say they did a spectacularly terrible job of making Toronto (mostly relatively flat apart from the ravines) look like Pittsburgh (really NOT flat).
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Post by sf on Feb 3, 2019 22:36:25 GMT
The signs in the theatre said it would be 2hrs 10 mins, it was actually 2hours 20 and no interval! I don't really want to give my opinion yet, apparently they'd never performed it in front of an audience before or performed the play the whole way through before so I'll give it a while to bed in. Not performing it the whole way through before a preview seems.... ill advised. It’s a preview, not a dress rehearsal.
Not defending it, but this would hardly be the first production where that's happened.
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Post by sf on Feb 2, 2019 2:01:05 GMT
Yes, the Roundabout production was the first time 'Marry Me a Little' was included at the end of the first act. The Donmar revival, which also used it, was a few months later. What was the act one close before that? Where did marry me a little come in show before then?
The act one close before that was a short reprise of the Bobby-baby opening theme at the end of the scene following Getting Married Today.
Marry Me a Little was not in the show. It was written for the original Broadway production for the spot that is now occupied by Being Alive, and replaced before rehearsals began by a song called Happily Ever After, which in turn was replaced by Being Alive during the pre-Broadway tryout run in Boston.
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Post by sf on Feb 2, 2019 0:47:19 GMT
I think, though not 100%, that it was the first time that Marry Me A Little had been included as the Act 1 close. Yes, the Roundabout production was the first time 'Marry Me a Little' was included at the end of the first act. The Donmar revival, which also used it, was a few months later.
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Post by sf on Feb 1, 2019 21:51:50 GMT
It was presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company, which means it played a scheduled limited run, after which it didn't transfer. It was quite common even then for productions in New York's nonprofits to play a few weeks of previews before they let the critics in, so what to British eyes looks like a bit of an imbalance between the number of previews and the number of regular performances actually isn't all that unusual. It didn't transfer mostly because Boyd Gaines, the leading man, had terrible vocal problems during the run (although he doesn't sound bad on the album) and missed a lot of performances on doctor's orders; there was talk of recasting, but the reviews for the production as a whole weren't wonderful, and there wasn't much momentum for a transfer without Mr. Gaines.
The album is OK, with a few very nice performances on it - the highlights are Veanne Cox's Getting Married Today and LaChanze's Another Hundred People. It was revelatory at the time because you could hear the counterpoint in the opening number far more clearly than you can on the 1970 recording, but it's probably not going to be anybody's definitive recording of this material.
Transfer to what?
Another theatre for an extended run.
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Post by sf on Feb 1, 2019 19:17:36 GMT
[...] although for me the definitive one - sorry, Beth Howland - is Veanne Cox on the 1995 Broadway revival album. She nails the sheer terror underpinning the song, she's all the funnier for NOT going completely over-the-top and overplaying the laughs, and her diction is astonishing. I think she's also the only recorded Amy who sings the melody absolutely correctly. How strange, your post has made me realise I’ve never listened to this cast recording! I just hopped over to SondheimGuide.com and was surprised to read this production had 43 preview performances before a run of 60 - that’s quite unusual, isn’t it? Also surprised to read the choreography was by Rob Marshall. I’ll listen to the Veanne Cox version later tonight - would you recommend the rest of the album?
It was presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company, which means it played a scheduled limited run, after which it didn't transfer. It was quite common even then for productions in New York's nonprofits to play a few weeks of previews before they let the critics in, so what to British eyes looks like a bit of an imbalance between the number of previews and the number of regular performances actually isn't all that unusual. It didn't transfer mostly because Boyd Gaines, the leading man, had terrible vocal problems during the run (although he doesn't sound bad on the album) and missed a lot of performances on doctor's orders; there was talk of recasting, but the reviews for the production as a whole weren't wonderful, and there wasn't much momentum for a transfer without Mr. Gaines.
The album is OK, with a few very nice performances on it - the highlights are Veanne Cox's Getting Married Today and LaChanze's Another Hundred People. It was revelatory at the time because you could hear the counterpoint in the opening number far more clearly than you can on the 1970 recording, but it's probably not going to be anybody's definitive recording of this material.
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 20:21:27 GMT
Madeline Kahn is one of the few audio recordings of Not Getting Married Today that I think do it justice.
She is, although for me the definitive one - sorry, Beth Howland - is Veanne Cox on the 1995 Broadway revival album. She nails the sheer terror underpinning the song, she's all the funnier for NOT going completely over-the-top and overplaying the laughs, and her diction is astonishing. I think she's also the only recorded Amy who sings the melody absolutely correctly.
(The clip doesn't credit her, but the soprano is Patricia Ben Peterson.)
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 20:14:39 GMT
Also yes, joking and Moose aside, people do rally at times of crisis. And hell if cynical New York was rallying, you bet your arse Canada welcomed people stuck there with open arms. It's also- and this is a tangent now- easy to forget just how terrifying, and 'unknown' an event 9/11 was. We've sadly become jaded by terrorism attack now. But the sheer scale of that event- and the immediate worldwide impact, is perhaps easy to forget so long after (not for those directly affected of course) what I'm saying I think is there was a sense of genuine- forgive the word choice- terror, and a sense that people did indeed need to rally together against what had happened, and whatever was going to happen 'next' especially in those first days.
There was - and as someone who was living in Canada on 9/11 (although nowhere near Gander), I'm very much looking forward to seeing it next week. Several friends in Toronto have sent me positive reports.
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 19:59:14 GMT
For £40-45, those seats are decent value I think I got those for - god, something like a tenner? - for Inishmore booking early last year. Centre of the row, back of the circle. It must have been cheap cos I gave two away to my brother and his gf, though I noticed they did hike the prices up later.
I got one for about £15 for Quiz, but that was a TodayTix special offer.
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 18:47:25 GMT
Just booked - tickets are on sale via nimaxtheatres.com right now. £97.50 premium, then £67.50, £57.50, £47.50, £37.50, £25. £10 off all prices 7th to 20th June. Will say that they have been very decent about the centre block pillar seats in the stalls. For those who don't mind sitting that far back, P7 or 18 for £25 can't go that far wrong, if you prefer it to the upper circle, I'd say.
...and I've just booked P7. My classic compromise when a production involves a few people I really want to see and a writer I'm not a fan of: buy a ticket, but make it a cheap one.
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 16:12:48 GMT
The joys of dynamic pricing. For the back row? Won't people go "sod that, I'll watch it on NT Live"?
To be fair, it's not all that large a theatre and the view from the back row of the dress circle is very, very good. For £40-45, those seats are decent value (which is why I booked early). I don't like the sharp upward trajectory of pricing in the West End, but I could justify pricing those seats higher than £40-45.
£85 seems to me to be a step too far.
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Post by sf on Jan 31, 2019 15:17:34 GMT
Looks like some £65 seats have been released on the back row of the dress circle for most dates, in case anyone's interested. Looks like they are £85 ;(
The joys of dynamic pricing. The day tickets went on sale, I paid £40 for a seat in the back row of the dress circle at a preview. They were £45 for performances after press night.
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Post by sf on Jan 30, 2019 18:17:37 GMT
Gary Wilmot and Laura Pitt-Pulford set to lead the cast, alongside Gabriel Vick, Paul Keating and Sev Keoshgerian. Looking forward to hearing Laura Pitt-Pulford sing 'Something Better Better Happen'. As Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Vick... I'm looking forward to hearing Laura Pitt-Pulford sing 'Something Better Better Happen'. (Actually hearing Mr. Vick - I mean, at all - would be a step up from his woeful performance in 'Promises Promises'... except maybe not, because the few times you COULD hear him in that show, he sang flat.)
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Post by sf on Jan 29, 2019 19:01:18 GMT
I'm on the sofas outside the Olivier and a little mouse just popped out to say hello #awkward
Did it at least buy a coffee and a theatre ticket before it logged on to the free wifi?
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Post by sf on Jan 29, 2019 13:09:39 GMT
I think it was only originally running until the end of January anyway, so the extension through February was pretty good going. I do have an idea that had it not run at Hampstead, it may have done slightly better. There were a number of people, including myself who thought, "we had an amazing time in the intimacy of the Hampstead theatre, to see it again in a bigger house would spoil it, and besides, we're busy and can take a pass on a repeat visit." That has to take a pretty good chunk of target market clients out of the buying pool, I feel. Exactly. I saw it at the Hampstead Theatre; if it hadn't run there, I'd have seen it in the West End. If I lived in London I'd have seen it again at the Playhouse, and I would probably have seen it again if I'd had a slot free for it on a day when I was going to be in London anyway, but I don't. Full-price West End tickets are expensive, walk-up train tickets are prohibitively expensive, I don't enjoy travelling via Megabus, and the timeframe on special offers on TodayTix etc usually isn't compatible with finding reasonable advance-purchase train fares. Seeing it once will have to be enough.
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Post by sf on Jan 28, 2019 13:58:22 GMT
Is "all new songs from Robbie Williams" intended as a threat? Because it's utterly terrifying.
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