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Post by danielwhit on Aug 30, 2021 11:42:28 GMT
Oh come on. Lee Mead had the top job and got that via a much publicised TV show. Naturally everyone was itching to see him. Same as Jason Donovan was the superstar to lead the '92 production, quite possibly Sheridan the star people booked to see two years ago. But Linzi isn't even the main performer for the Narrator - people here have beein cheering when they saw her instead of Alexandra Burke instead of demanding their money back. Linzi is an insider gift to the musical theatre community, but certainly not a star name one could expect refunds for. The entitlement is baffling. I just found out that I won't get to see CHF when I finally get to see Cinderella in early October, since she's on holiday that Saturday. Am I disappointed? Yea, especially since I think it's rude to take holidays this early in the run of a brand new show. Will I shriek for my money back? Hell no. Who knows, the understudy may give one of those "a star is born" performances. I agree with almost everything except for the idea that it's "rude" for a performer to take holiday several months into their contract (when did Cinderella rehearsals start properly, May?). Problem is some need to take holidays pretty early as a production can't be in a position where they lose several people at once late in the contract cycle, especially when you consider understudy availability especially if 2nd covers know multiple tracks etc.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 28, 2021 10:43:24 GMT
O dear. -You've got me worried now. My hearing isn't great at the best of times. Don't worry, if it's anything like the (Saturday evening) performance I saw the audience will help you out by singing along...
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 27, 2021 20:07:48 GMT
It's May Day Bank Holiday. I can't recall if he's a Socialist but he's def very pro-worker rights. There will be the usual march n London and elsewhere, organised by the trade unions. If it is due to that I'm very surprised they got as far as putting tickets on sale before it was clocked and altered.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 25, 2021 10:47:35 GMT
I've a hunch that the presence of a pop star will make seats in the front row much more difficult to get. I'm going to leave it if I can't get the seats I want. I've learnt from shows like Frozen and Singin' In The Rain that it can pay to wait till nearer the time to book. I've just managed to book front row for the matinee on the 21st! They're definitely out there and this isn't selling out anywhere near as quick as I thought it might! In fairness though you posted that 30 minutes into "priority booking" when there were still queues restricting the number of people able to book. It won't sell out overnight, shows never do these days, but by the time performances roll around there won't be empty seats.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 19, 2021 22:28:13 GMT
anyone know if we can expect any new West End recordings for a trailer? suddenly receiving a lot of promotion through online ads for the show, and as much as I do love Willemijn, still seeing the German promo footage after years of being a fan pains me a little Don't worry, if you have enough of that we occasionally get a shot of Idina to spice things up a bit. Agree with the most recent post, they don't bother as they don't need to. Wicked has almost always sold on the brand not on their casting, so it doesn't matter who's got green make up on in a trailer with the OBC recording playing over it.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 19, 2021 22:25:28 GMT
Ok, I'm looking forward to that - I was gutted that it didn't run long enough last Christmas for me to get down there. I imagine we'll get more of the names when the official announcement is made. I suspect many of them were contracted for this winter already.
Only one I can quickly check on is Paul Zerdin - who has a tour finishing on 22nd November. Not impossible dates to work around this I guess..
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 18, 2021 16:20:00 GMT
Sorry but I completely disagree with the comparison to 2019. The core show is still the same but this production is clearly designed for a central comedy narrator. Linzi is great at straight singing but there's not the humour here that there was two years ago. Yes, it was heavy handed with SS, that's what everything is designed around For example all the kids stuff doesn't work without a knowing wink and nod which has been wiped out in 2021. Audiences are not responding to it as well as they did a couple of years ago, at least not comparing the matinee I saw then with the matinee I am in today. To be honest I'm disappointed they've copy and pasted the same direction and production without any adaptations for the fact their narrators are singers and not comedians at heart. It feels lazy - and they've still got the same set piece causing grief that caused so many show stops! (today three crew members had to come on mid show and it still wasn't attached properly) Your comment about the applause reminded me that once on here someone thought a play stopped for 20 minutes while a character cleaned some rubbish off the floor - we do sometimes overestimate (the applause was more like 20 seconds for anyone reading this). Enjoy the second half! You should have said hi. I just remember feeling embarrassed to be there last time it was so awful. Would you deny the applause Linzi got after ‘Pharoahs Story’ today or at the bows? The place was full and I certainly didn’t hear any complaints. Yeah, there were many people there for Linzi and she got the applause as a result - that's clear (to be fair we went to this performance because my partner wanted to see her). However applause definitely doesn't mean everything, I raise you Pharoah and the applause there... No complaints, true, nor should there be - it's a strong production done well and Linzi in particular did a very good job with the production she has been put into. My point is just it doesn't sit quite as well as it did because the dynamics at the centre are totally different. Not worse, just different.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 18, 2021 14:36:20 GMT
Is this really the same show I saw a few years ago with SS? It has energy, humour and above all is pure joy. Someone including you in the joke is not the same as the heavy handed humour of last time. Linzi is just ace and looked overwhelmed by the two minute entrance applause she got before a note was sung. Great fun. Sorry but I completely disagree with the comparison to 2019. The core show is still the same but this production is clearly designed for a central comedy narrator. Linzi is great at straight singing but there's not the humour here that there was two years ago. Yes, it was heavy handed with SS, that's what everything is designed around For example all the kids stuff doesn't work without a knowing wink and nod which has been wiped out in 2021. Audiences are not responding to it as well as they did a couple of years ago, at least not comparing the matinee I saw then with the matinee I am in today. To be honest I'm disappointed they've copy and pasted the same direction and production without any adaptations for the fact their narrators are singers and not comedians at heart. It feels lazy - and they've still got the same set piece causing grief that caused so many show stops! (today three crew members had to come on mid show and it still wasn't attached properly) Your comment about the applause reminded me that once on here someone thought a play stopped for 20 minutes while a character cleaned some rubbish off the floor - we do sometimes overestimate (the applause was more like 20 seconds for anyone reading this). Enjoy the second half!
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 13, 2021 22:47:48 GMT
Shame there doesn't seem to be any scope for NT Live to pick up the broadcast of this they had planned for last year. Unless I've missed something.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 13, 2021 22:45:05 GMT
Reopens 14th September and highly recommended. Has it been delayed? I was sure I saw a poster the other day in the tube saying it was either back or resuming in August. I may be wrong. Still need to go and watch this sometime - for a non-conventional theatre the production is lasting a pleasingly long time.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 13, 2021 22:38:36 GMT
This all sounds so grim. When I last saw this about 10 years ago, it was the worst audience I’ve ever sat in. The row in front were eating boxes of steaming stinking pizza throughout and talking on their phones during the show. Part of me does wonder why theatres seem so reluctant to deal with this kind of behaviour. I guess the argument is the disturbing patrons have paid for their tickets, but the counter is everyone else has also paid - and not for the karaoke/smell along version!
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 9, 2021 22:31:53 GMT
After skimping out and going for £10 tickets a decade ago (the joys of my student days!), I've "splashed out" on central stalls this time around in previews.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 5, 2021 20:28:15 GMT
What was that Left at the interval Ah, did the weather hold up tonight? Considered going but forecast was making me doubt the fact it would go ahead.
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 5, 2021 18:00:55 GMT
Just been online to buy another ticket for 15th September , & the performance isn’t available. How odd. AKA sold out?
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 3, 2021 21:56:47 GMT
Gosh you’d all be having palpitations here at Lion King where less than 10% of the audience are wearing masks I’d say. That's better than the 1% at Jersey Boys last week that I spotted.. The “About” page on the Barbican website has gone from saying that Sutton Foster is scheduled for all performances including matinees up to 10th October, to now saying “ All casting is currently confirmed until 17 October, more news to follow on performances beyond this date.” Now that is interesting. From memory the next thing in that space are the RSC from mid-November. Limited extension? Is there a chance the RSC could be knocked out and this given a longer run? Or that it would have a break for Christmas (one assumes Mr Wilmot for one is already pre-booked) then come back in Spring as an open ended production? Seems silly in a way for the Barbican to land a hit this big and not capitalise on it if they possibly can. Is any production booked into the Barbican next year that we know of yet?
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Post by danielwhit on Aug 1, 2021 0:40:35 GMT
Can't quite get over how much of a mess they've made of this theatre. Flows for audience members are horrendous - who's bright idea was it to have a main bar in the foyer? I get there's limited space but even so.. I might be misremembering but I think the old Trafalgar Studios had a bar in the foyer as well. Now you mention it I think you're right - however it now feels very prominent in the space. I suspect part of the difficulty is the venue now has a much(?) larger capacity than it did before - so issues of audience flow are clearer than they were in the Studios 1/2 set up. Certainly the corridor at the back of the dress circle (old back of Studio 1) was very cramped today with queues for the ladies, gents and people trying to get to the bar/back. Gents, by the way, I hope you like getting close and personal with your fellow audience members.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 31, 2021 22:48:41 GMT
Must be the post lockdown release but it’s as if everybody wants this to be the best night they’ve had in ages. This is what I am finding hard to cope with at the moment, I enjoy the things I've seen but I feel like I'm an isolated little bubble of just enjoyment and everyone around me is completely crazy, whooping, cheering, screaming, jumping to their feet. Since this is the Anything Goes topic I probably should talk about it, I did enjoy seeing it, Sutton Foster was definitely the highlight. I have definitely enjoyed several other shows more and weirdly during the interval I had songs from a completely different musical in my head! That's how I felt tonight at Jersey Boys re: audience going crazy. To be fair it was there this afternoon when I saw Anything Goes to some extent too. I've been thinking about this all afternoon and still can't find anything substantial I'd gripe about here. It's a very obvious 5* production. Superbly cast and holds up extremely well for a musical written in the 1930s! Perhaps I'm somewhat rose tinted after not being in a capacity audience since pre Covid, impossible to judge. How much of the book was rewritten a few years ago? I get the impression there was probably a fair bit of recrafting as some of the jokes would surely never have seen the light of Broadway in the 30s. The only minor, and I mean minor, criticism I could make is the cast were clearly egging the audience on for a big reaction after Blow Gabriel Blow. And a seagull bashed into the set. Other than that, faultless. Oddly enough as you mention it I kept getting sparks from both Singin' In The Rain and The Sound of Music during the interval.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 31, 2021 22:41:53 GMT
I was a big fan of Des McAnuff's work directing 'Tommy', though I didn't get the same buzz of his ideas here. Saw it way back at the Prince Edward, and I've forgotten: is there a frame at the beginning and then we're looking back? I found it so distracting that the onstage graphic sign is done with some form of LEDs (?), and not aesthetically right for the time period of most of the action. Projection work for 'Tommy' was a work of art. Yeah, framed as "modern day" (Well, 2005ish modern anyway), then "you ask four guys and you get four different stories, but they all start..." sets us back to the start of the story. Yeah, the LED stuff never grated on me in the Prince Edward etc, but with it now being front and centre rather than to the wings, it's much more distracting now. Plus a lot of the signs have been moved to be LED rather than real props, so it is used more too. Plus, was the original cast just 11 plus band (of 7)? Or have a few more roles been doubled now?
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 31, 2021 19:54:59 GMT
Can't quite get over how much of a mess they've made of this theatre. Flows for audience members are horrendous - who's bright idea was it to have a main bar in the foyer? I get there's limited space but even so..
Plus, was it past all wit of man to put 'seats number..' this way signs? Dress Circle 1/2/3 means zero to most audience members.
Show wise so far - the core is good (because its a replica production) but at the moment not a patch on what it used to be. Audio mix is off whack totally (even when the audience aren't being the Fifth through Ninth Season) and there's a awful lot of comic potential just being glossed over.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 31, 2021 15:02:47 GMT
Anyone know if they're doing day seats for this ? Thanks. They are doing rush through todaytix for £25 Today I got centre stalls row K through this, so they're good seats too - sometimes rush tickets seem to be filling the edges, here they're clearly filling the centre too.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 30, 2021 12:39:08 GMT
Might be partially influenced that rehearsals start on 9th ahead of a first performance on 13th. Hopefully there'll be a refresh soon, this casting news has made me doubt whether I'll book to visit this tour in all honesty.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 29, 2021 16:10:56 GMT
If that has gone and wasn't just a blip the other day it would be a shame - that is one of those "hang on, how..?" moments which both gets the audience thinking and ensures there's no bizarre break in action on stage.
As others have said, there's no safety reason why that would have been culled - and from a casting perspective it's a bit of a silly reason to mess with the staging when most people wouldn't have noticed as Christine's double was always directed to face upstage anyway...
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 29, 2021 16:07:29 GMT
Yeah, it is aiming for a different atmosphere than Play or Pan, for sure.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 29, 2021 16:06:33 GMT
I'm looking forward to this. I saw it in its last encarnation in the West End and wasn't particularly taken by it, however it flew off the page for me when I read the script previously in a way that seldom happens.
In fairness I did see it from the balcony last time, at least that won't be a possibility these days...
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 28, 2021 21:50:11 GMT
What exactly is shameful? People are allowed their own opinions - and hers, that people should comment when they've seen it and not be negative about changes made for safety reasons, isn't outlandish. People here have made the same observations over the last year or so. Yes, there's a potential problem with tone here, but the substance isn't problematic - certainly not enough to be fired for as at least one commentator suggested. Plus, she's in a far better position than the rest of us to know if the original creatives are spoken about in the rehearsal room / theatre. And I'm sure you realise yesterday would not have been her first day on the job.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 28, 2021 12:59:29 GMT
So just to check - is Frozen having a couple of nights off to facilitate this?
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 28, 2021 0:22:36 GMT
Thanks for the explanation re the LED. Re the being less butchered than some corners were worrying...I'm not sure. I think everything that was said a year ago has pretty much come to pass, the exception being the chandelier. Fair point - to be honest it's extremely difficult to work that out from a first preview and a reasonably small range of commentators who were actually there. I don't have the time or inclination to go back and try to piece together every mooted change and if it seems to have come to pass. I'll gut judge it when I eventually get down to 'er Maj's.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 28, 2021 0:17:59 GMT
With all that has been said tonight about the current state of the show, I'm still curious to see it for myself. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I heard on social media that tonight's performance was a preview, so maybe they'll fix up/add things, but that could just be my wishful thinking yet again. But then again, I'd rather 'Phantom' still be running that not, whatever state it's in. At least it is somewhat close to the original, even if it isn't completely the same. It's the first performance of a new production of a musical, this definitely fits the category of first preview. Worthwhile noting most new musicals have around a month of performances before they're totally locked down and introduced to the press. Obviously this is a special case creatively, but from a technical perspective it is a new production. There would have been all kinds of things not quite running how they should. That's not to say everything that didn't run ideally would have been detectable to the audience, but it's probably a fair bet that something(s) seen tonight are not in their final version yet. Don't expect changes, obviously, but there may well be effects reintroduced which were not in place tonight.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 28, 2021 0:08:58 GMT
The previous version (to me) felt dusty, dark, bleak at times, and some of the mechanics of the theatre - whilst charming- felt clunky and cumbersome. I knew tonight would feel more modern, fresher - the lighting was excellent in particular. I also wasn't a huge fan of the big drapes, do was glad to see them go. It's subjective - I feel great about aspects of the new version, but there's bits I'm less fond of and I can't put my finger on it, other than to say I fully understand why purists or fans of the original show are so upset. I'm happy with the new version but was never fully wedded to the old version to care enough about the inevitable changes. The most noticeable change for me was the music, and I did believe that they could bridge the gap. I was wrong. Perhaps it needs to bed in and they can use some of their clever surround wizardry to create a fuller spectrum of sound. It's admittedly difficult to tell from photographs alone, but it looks almost too brightly lit (as did Leicester) now. The old lighting was obsolete, though, so not sure what they could have done...but is there no way to recreate the patina of 'gloomth' that the production needs using modern technology? I feel when posters here are saying that things were creaky, it's just set pieces that needed more care and attention, which I certainly agree was necessary. That didn't merit chucking away the entire production and replacing it with this, IMHO. Yes but as stated before the key issue was maintenance of the theatre as a whole. The production was never designed to last as long as 35 years, so there's little wonder that the underlying theatre itself needed a repair job that couldn't be done while the production was running. At that point, when you accept that you need to temporarily close the show, rip it out to fix the theatre itself, it becomes an interesting debate over what is best to go back in - as we've seen played out over the last year or so. Personally, it would have been best had they sorted the technology they wanted to do out but then have it visually identical to the previous version. Obviously that hasn't happened, but it sounds from tonight on here that the show has been butchered less than some corners were worrying. And the issue with lighting is just the nature of LED unfortunately, you can dim them and soften the edges but the quality of light is different. At home if you replace a filiment bulb with an LED one you'll notice the difference no matter how much the packaging originally said you wouldn't. Also much more energy efficient (and therefore environmentally friendly), FWIW.
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Post by danielwhit on Jul 27, 2021 19:14:32 GMT
Have we had confirmation yet if its the original Mischief group reopening the show at the Apollo or if it'll be a different cast?
Interesting that they were all leaving it around the time of the first lockdown, so my suspicion was they had all performed their last and they'd all be in full production mode for Goes Wrong Show by now (if they haven't already wrapped that and it entirely passed me by).
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