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Post by loureviews on Dec 22, 2016 19:10:52 GMT
Far too expensive at the RFH for 'a poor man's Jersey Boys'.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 20, 2016 18:08:56 GMT
Philip Quast. Even now he's a bit chunkier than in the 1980s.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 19, 2016 16:51:02 GMT
I don't know what all the tears were for with Len "retiring". He's just following the money to DWTS, laughing all the way to the bank. You'd think he might have pocketed enough by now but apparently not. Amazing how greedy they get isn't it? Nasty old goat! Is Bruno still on that as well? Nice little money earner I would have thought.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 19, 2016 12:59:10 GMT
Brendan Coyle? Quite a departure from Downton Abbey
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Post by loureviews on Dec 18, 2016 18:45:21 GMT
Three more trips this year for us. The Dresser on Friday, Katherine Jenkins (my husband's pick) on the 27th, and Simon Callow's Christmas Carol on the 29th.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 12, 2016 20:26:16 GMT
Watching (or suffering) the Ball and Boe special at the moment. What were they thinking doing an album and tour together; their voices don't go together at all. In any case, it has made me even more determined to stay away from the 'experience' of hearing him sing Billy Bigelow's 'Soliloquy'.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 12, 2016 7:23:57 GMT
Edward Petherbridge used to be notorious for not just fluffing lines but sometimes having to start the scene over.
I have even seen the great Dame Dench fluff a line, but otherwise no.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 11, 2016 22:15:13 GMT
I loved this, despite the constant ad breaks.
Yes there was at least one technical fluff but come on, it was worth watching for Harvey Fierstein's Edna and Jennifer Hudson's stunning singing.
Hugely enjoyable. Yes the show is corny and cheesy but why knock the live broadcast for that?
Was Kristen 'Miss Baltimore Crabs'? Thought she was awful.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 10, 2016 20:09:01 GMT
£65 is my limit for a WE play or musical.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 10, 2016 18:54:43 GMT
But instead of getting better, it is getting worse. Whatever the cause we have had the 1973 stock all these years and have only now reached meltdown. Of course people are frustrates and annoyed.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 9, 2016 20:26:45 GMT
So unprofessional.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 6, 2016 19:32:50 GMT
Pity they didn't film it. It worked because you could watch it. Not because you could listen to it.
We do however get Don Warrington from the Manchester production on Christmas TV. I will record and watch at a later date. Feel a bit Leared out now.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 6, 2016 19:27:31 GMT
David Troughton as Titus!
Any gossip about what's heading to the Barbican next winter yet?
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Post by loureviews on Dec 6, 2016 16:40:59 GMT
It's been a good year.
Highlights include Show Boat, Guys and Dolls, The Father, No Man's Land, Aladdin, two King Lears, Threepenny Opera, Platonov/Young Chekhov, Opera North Ring Cycle, The Go Between, Northern Ballet Jane Eyre, War of the Worlds, The Magic Flute, a gender bending Shrew, Shakespeare 400, Glenn in Sunset Boulevard, Beautiful, Kathryn Hunter Cyrano and more.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 2, 2016 23:39:24 GMT
Anything with The Agatha Christie Company.
Evening At The Talk House wasn't exactly bad ...
I'd also echo votes for Shopping and Fkg and Fiona Shaw in Mother Courage.
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Post by loureviews on Dec 1, 2016 21:49:49 GMT
It's not that bad. 8-9 mins is the most I've had to wait for a train. That can be a problem at rush hour when they are usually at 2 minute intervals, but outside of those times all seems to be well.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 30, 2016 18:07:22 GMT
I've never 'noped' so hard at a combination casting/show. In fairness I don't mind Boe as a singer and person from what I've seen of him but I wouldn't go out of my way to see him. Can't stand her or the musical itself though. I love the musical too much to see it mauled. Especially at those prices.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 27, 2016 21:37:52 GMT
Is it just me or McKellen is a bit old to play Norman? I recall at some point he says smth about being with Sir for the past 16 years and it sounds as if this job has been a major part of his life, like he's given his prime years to Sir. Sounds a bit weird when you are 75 and look it. Though McKellen naturally is a brilliant actor. I'm inclined to agree. It was good to see him work with Hopkins but they were both too old for this play.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 27, 2016 18:34:07 GMT
My review of this, ported over from my blog:
November 2016 will be topped and tailed for me by two new productions of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, and this first one is a rather significant one, as it represents the return to the stage of Glenda Jackson after her quarter of a century career change to represent Hampstead and Highgate (later Kilburn) in Parliament.
The Old Vic is not the most obvious venue for a modern dress, Brechtian, Lear, with its Victorian proscenium – however, director Deborah Warner and her co-designer Jean Kalman have created a staging which at first looks as if might use the whole stage space (it is fully opened out and set with movable walls, screens, and plastic chairs on which some of the cast sit and chat before the action starts). In fact most scenes are staged on the front of the stage, which projects into the auditorium necessitating the removal of the first few rows of the stalls.
So, a minimal set and staging (and each scene number projected on to the screens or on top of the proscenium – perhaps to assist those new to the play to stay engaged throughout its mammoth running time; 3 hrs 35 on the final preview on Thursday), and modern costumes. Jane Horrocks’ toxic Regan wears killer black heels; Rhys Ifans’ Fool is dressed as Superman and in one scene dons a scary clown’s mask; Karl Johnson’s Gloucester wears jeans.
Glenda Jackson plays the King, and although there is no gender impersonation here, she dons androgynous blacks and reds and has her hair in a short and severe style. Her authority effortlessly commands the stage in her first appearance, in which her love for Morfydd Clark’s sweet Cordelia (they arrive hand in hand) curdles so quickly to rage you almost have sympathy for Regan and Goneril (a steely Celia Imrie), having to cope with so changeable and terrifying a parent. She displays a sarcastic vein of humour too, in the ‘crawl towards death’ line, and later, in her interplay with the Fool’ and she handles the storm scenes well in flowing shirt and long socks, in despairing, shattered senility.
Johnson’s Gloucester elicits sympathy as he appears less of a statesman and more of a meddling Polonius-type, and although some of the audience seemed to find his ‘I have no eyes’ line amusing, it was deeply felt and beautifully delivered. As the bad son, Edmond, Simon Manyonda first appears doing an exhausting workout with skipping rope and press-ups, before dismissing his doting brother Edgar by mooning the audience. He is a studious and serious traitor, colluding with those watching from the dark and mocking the two daughters who, barren and frigid in their respective marriages, salivate over him.
Edgar, played by Harry Melling, is good in the Poor Tom scenes (curiously by the time we get to the ‘naked fellow’ lines he is clothed, but he does disrobe completely earlier on), although he overdoes the speech stating his father’s ‘heart burst’, striking his chest repeatedly in the echo of a heartbeat. I note he is one of the Troughton acting family as well as a Harry Potter alumnus, and can see some of his family potential (his uncle David is soon over at the Barbican in the second November Lear I mentioned earlier, playing Gloucester).
Rounding out the cast are Danny Webb as a psychotic Cornwall, all smiles before the steel temper strikes (the blinding of Gloucester is done well, with suggestive shadows and piercing Regan scream); William Chubb as a sympathetic Albany, trapped in a marriage which has decayed for years; Gary Sefton as an ingratiating Oswald; and Sargon Yelda as a strangely young and vital Kent. The scene where the King of France accepts a dowerless Cordelia is somewhat spoilt by his comic accent, but that’s a small criticism.
This is Glenda Jackson’s moment, though, and she surely shines. Her interplay with her fellow cast is convincing – in particular with Ifans’ Fool, Yelda’s disguised Kent (and earlier, in his banishment scene), and her daughters. Her ‘howl, howl’ as she is dragged in on a carpet with her deceased young daughter is heart-rending, and her refusal of Gloucester’s request to kiss her hand ‘let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality’ is nicely done, as is her recognition of him despite her previous staggering madness with leafed crown.
A nod, too, for the design of the storm, with projections, sound, and large black plastic sheet simply shaken. The effect is spectacular.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 27, 2016 18:31:52 GMT
My review of this, ported over from my blog:
Another collaboration from RSC power couple Antony Sher and Gregory Doran, this Lear is opulent, regal, but, except for David Troughton’s magnificent Gloucester and Natalie Simpson’s sweet Cordelia, the play is strangely unmoving.
A very lengthy opening scene has the displaced and homeless sitting on the stage until they are rudely scattered ready for the entrance of the king, a Sher hunched up and swathed in furs, with a rasping voice. He appears behind glass which is slowly lowered to reveal the full majesty.
He gives away his kingdom to the empty flattery of his daughters, who clearly loathe him (later, each will recoil from his offered embrace), and in a first display of a mind in disorder, disowns his ‘joy’, Cordelia, cast adrift in her bridal gown to be taken up by a sympathetic King of France.
Antony Byrne portrays Kent and in disguise, particularly, as a tattooed skinhead, he excels, and his final scene is well played. Graham Turner plays a Fool first confident, funny and chatty, but eventually bewildered in the eye of the storm. We do not see him in the second half, as is usual, but we are concerned for his survival.
As the brothers who war due to the one’s legitimacy and the other’s bastardy, Paapa Essiedu was not convincing for me due to his total sarcasm for all around him and his throwaway asides; better was Oliver Johnstone’s Edgar who went from a bookish fop through impersonation as Poor Tom to sword-wielding champion with ease.
The relationship between Regan (Kelly Williams) and Cornwall (James Clyde) is presented very much as one orchestrated by her (when he is mortally wounded and asks for her hand, she coldly walks away without a glance). I much preferred Nia Gwynne’s Goneril, a lady with pure ice in her veins.
The eye-gouging scene may be misjudged – I had trouble hearing lines spoken within the perspex box from the stalls, so I feel for the gallery – but the effect is probably on a par with the thrown eyeball over at the Old Vic.
Where this production misses for me is the final mental disintegration of Lear. I was not moved either by his recognition of Cordelia or his ‘howl, howl’ at her death. And I know Sher has the emotional pull in other roles (his superb Willy Loman, for example) so this was a surprise.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 27, 2016 12:05:22 GMT
I saw the Jacobi but all I really remember is the weird chanting of Blow, winds ..
It wasn't a standout production for me.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 26, 2016 17:55:56 GMT
Just back from the Sher and Doran Lear. Bags of spectacle. Sher plays Lear very safe and doesn't push himself so this falls shorts of great - quite different to Glenda the other week.
The powerhouse here is David Troughton. His Gloucester is fantastic. Edmund is simply annoying and displays no evil or even motive for what he does. Edgar is marvellous as is Graham Turner as the Fool (but as ever, where did he go in par two?).
Silly perspex box idea for the eye gouging scene and the Old Vic's version has a lot more menace thanks to Danny Webb. This Cornwall is presented really as a puppet of his bloodthirsty wife Regan.
The daughters are all good. Antony Byrne is a fantastic Kent.
But I'm glad I saw both productions and in fact for me Glenda and Deborah have the edge.
I'm getting a little bored of Doran's safe Bard.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 25, 2016 22:44:26 GMT
Spookily enough my brother is on Radio 2 conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra in Friday Night Is Music Night with Wayne Sleep and they are playing the Carousel Waltz. I just had an awful thought of Wayne Sleep being cast as Mr Snow.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 25, 2016 19:42:27 GMT
January for me.
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Post by loureviews on Nov 25, 2016 15:45:30 GMT
Would go either to Richmond or WE. This would be very interesting to contrast with Sher's version.
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