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Post by tonyloco on Feb 3, 2019 17:54:10 GMT
PS Contrary to general belief about my age, those programmes from 1929 and 1951 were not from my own personal collection!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 3, 2019 17:43:05 GMT
And here is the announcement about refreshments during South Pacific at Drury Lane in 1951. The programme had gone up to six pence in old money!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 3, 2019 17:37:43 GMT
Here is a notice that appeared in the programme for The New Moon at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1929 regarding refreshments. Note that the interval was a mere 12 minutes. The programme cost three pence in old money.
I will separately post the notice from the programme for South Pacific at the same theatre in 1951 because I can't manage to get both images onto the same post!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 2, 2019 15:44:16 GMT
My list is easy: THE BOOK OF MORMON first and WICKED second! I didn't get much out of MATILDA either but I think that was due to very poor sound where I was sitting.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 2, 2019 15:35:41 GMT
They used to do performances occasionally. I think it was where the Lost Musicals series started - pretty sure I saw a concert-style performance of Do I hear a Waltz? there once The series of lost West End musicals (unconnected to the Broadway one) performed concert versions in a room there for a number of years. Plenty of older performers turned up on stage or in the audience or at Q and As and they were all fascinating, The last one was done in a more theatre type space there but that’s about fifteen years ago (wow, time really has flown). Yes, I believe that is where the Lost Musicals first started, in an oddly shaped room that didn't feel very 'theatrical', but both the Lost Musicals entry on Wikipedia and Ian Marshall Fisher's own Lost Musicals website are very coy about the location of the initial performances. There is a rather vague mention of them starting 'at the V&A' but that's not the same thing!
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 24, 2019 23:49:08 GMT
London really does need a concert hall with decent acoustics. The RFH, RAH and Barbican are all considerably wanting sound-wise. None of them come close to the lovely warm, but detailed sound you get at Snape Maltings or, best of all, the fabulous Musikverein, Vienna. Yes, I have been to the Musikverein in Vienna and heard the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the sound was superb – and that space is basically a large shoe box, and I understand that the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is similar. I have never been to the Philharmonie in Berlin, which the proposed new concert hall for London rather resembles, but I have been numerous times to the concert hall in the Sydney Opera House which is apparently loosely based on the Philharmonie and the acoustics there are frightful. It would be a disaster for London if a new concert hall is built which again turns out to be acoustically poor. Having said that, the relatively new Symphony Hall in Birmingham has extremely good acoustics so it can be achieved, although that is based on the shape of the Musikverein and the Concertgebouw.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 24, 2019 16:56:49 GMT
Well, if London really does need a major new concert hall then let's hope that the acoustics are superb, the public areas comfortable and easily navigable and the cost does not spiral wildly out of control.
Is anybody laying any bets on those three things?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 22, 2019 21:55:57 GMT
The Two Pigeons has an interesting beginning. It was originally mounted for the Royal Ballet's touring company in 1961 but premiered at Covent Garden with Lynne Seymour, who had already been promoted from the touring company to the main company, and Christopher Gable replacing an injured Donald Britton. Ashton then almost immediately mounted it for the main company at Covent Garden where it was danced by various other ballerinas including Merle Park, Antoinette Sibley and Doreen Wells as well as Seymour, with male leads including Christopher Gable and Alexander Grant.
I found a diary note that I saw it on 12 June 1961 at the Golders Green Hippodrome with the touring company led by Lynn Seymour and Donald Britton. I don't have the dates, but I remember seeing it several times at Covent Garden later with the main company, mainly with Seymour and Gable who by then had become a hot couple and were starring in the ballets that Macmillan was creating for Seymour.
Anyway, Pigeons was always thoroughly enjoyable and I am glad to hear it continues to give pleasure in 2019.
And talking of the Golders Green Hippodrome, I have previously discussed with the theatremonkey the loss of this important suburban London venue where I saw a number of wonderful performances of ballet, musicals and revues in the 1960s. It would be great to have it returned to the purpose for which it was originally built and to join the theatres at Richmond and Wimbledon in presenting touring shows.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 14, 2019 23:15:26 GMT
The audibly of the words at ENO has been poor for around 20 years. For that reason they might as well sing everything in the original language. Prior to that it could be variable but was generally good and could often be outstanding when you had singers of the calibre of Janet Baker, Felicity Lott, Ann Murray, Valerie Masterson, John Tomlinson, Richard Van Allan et al. Yes, tmesis, you are right. I was going to mention the fact that earlier generations of singers had better English pronunciation than the current lot, and it was even better in the smaller auditorium of Sadler's Wells in Rosebery Avenue. In fact, when I started going in the 1960s we had singers (some of them Australians) like June Bronhill, Elizabeth Fretwell, Ronald Dowd, Eric Shilling, Kevin Miller, Donald Smith, David Ward, Joyce Blackham, Alberto Remedios, Patricia Kern, Derek Hammond-Stroud and others whose every word was totally audible and understandable in every part of the house. And for those who remember seeing the first 'Force of Destiny' production at the Coliseum, you will know just how clear and penetrating the English words could be when sung by Derek Hammond-Stroud (Melitone), Donald Smith (Alvaro) and Joyce Blackham (Preziosilla). Sorry to go off on one of my reminiscenses but there's no point in performing opera in English at the Coliseum if the audience can't make out more than the occasional word of what's being sung, which used not to be the case with the Sadler's Wells company at Rosebery Avenue.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 14, 2019 12:22:42 GMT
I see in the press that the old canard about ENO singing in English has come to life again.
As we have already discussed earlier in this thread, ENO has a number of problems and I believe singing in English is not by any means top of the list. I haven't been to all that many ENO performances in recent years but at my last visit (to see Aida) I could barely understand any of the English words that were being sung and I believe that with the standard repertoire of French, German and Italian operas the audience is better off looking at English surtitles than trying to catch all the words of an English translation that, no matter how good it is, will inevitably cause changes to the music that the composer wrote to set the original 'foreign language' libretto.
As I have said before, if ENO wants to cater for an audience that can understand all the English words they are singing then they really need to be performing in a smaller and more intimate venue like perhaps the Barbican Theatre. But I suspect that raising the question of singing only in English is just a distraction to the larger problem of how ENO can best survive while fulfilling its role as London's second opera company alongside the Royal Opera.
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 6, 2019 23:31:16 GMT
Look out – here comes a tonyloco anecdote linked to Dress Circle.
Back in 2007, I produced a 3CD compilation set of all of June Bronhill's EMI recordings under the title June Bronhill – The Platinum Collection released only in Australia, but due to a cock-up between Abbey Road and EMI Australia, one of the tracks from Robert and Elizabeth was not actually the Bronhill version but was sung by Angela Richards.
I had previously asked the staff at Dress Circle (probably Michael) whether they could sell such a Bronhill compilation and they were very enthusiastic, so when it was released in Australia they ordered a sizeable quantity which apparently sold very well. As soon as I discovered the mistake I immediately suggested that Dress Circle should tell anybody that bought the album about it but they said they were sure their customers would be much happier discovering the mistake for themselves!
Do you know that not one single customer came back and reported they had spotted the fact that one track was sung by somebody other than June Bronhill. I took it therefore that Dress Circle's customers were not the aficionados they pretended to be if they couldn't spot the ringer among the rest of the 61 June Bronhill tracks!
I am joking here but it did surprise me since Dress Circle had sold quite a lot of copies, and I can now take the opportunity of asking whether anybody reading this post has a copy of June Bronhill – The Platinum Collection and, if so, did you realise that 'You only to love me' (I think) from Robert and Elizabeth is sung by Angela Richards?
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Post by tonyloco on Jan 3, 2019 12:29:35 GMT
The classics were still common currency on the radio and people singing them to themselves etc, so even if you didn't know they were show tunes, you became familiar with the style of songs and singing. Then doing shows in school, then being taken to two. The monkey's comment about show tunes being common currency on the radio back in earlier times reminds me of an anecdote from my early days in Australia. As I mentioned in my previous post, the first big Broadway show to hit Australia after the second world war was 'Annie Get Your Gun'. It opened on Broadway in May 1946 and almost all of the songs, even the minor ones like 'Who do you love, I hope?' and 'The girl that I marry' were recorded by the major American pop stars of the day. These recordings appeared immediately in the Australian 'hit parade' so by the time the show itself opened in Australia in July 1947, the songs had already been and gone and seemed 'old hat'. This upset the Australian music publishers, who managed to get an embargo placed on all songs from Broadway musicals being performed in Australia in any way shape or form before the shows themselves had been staged in Australia. This ban therefore applied to all the songs from the 1956 Broadway musical 'My Fair Lady' which did not get an Australian production until 1959, and when Liberace arrived to give concerts in Australia in February 1958 he was horrified to find that he could not use 'I could have danced all night' in his act. Liberace's aggrieved reaction to this situation of course provided some useful media publicity for his concerts and Liberace just somehow managed to find something else to replace 'I could have danced all night'!
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 29, 2018 14:37:07 GMT
Personally I found the third and final part left me far behind as I was not familiar with most of the more 'recent' films he mentioned (apart from Saturday Night Fever and Grease) and of the current big three (La La Land, Moulin Rouge and The Greatest Showman) I have seen only Moulin Rouge. Oh yes, I have seen the film of Bugsy Malone but I try to erase that from my mind as I personally found it quite inappropriate to use children in that way.
So I guess it's all my loss and I am stuck in the past with Busby Berkeley, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Jane Powell, Kathryn Grayson and the rest of the Hollywood musical stars from the golden age.
Much more interesting to me in fact was the long documentary on the life of Frank Sinatra shown afterwards in several parts which I found truly fascinating for the many facets of the Sinatra story that it presented as well as the surrounding stories of the rise of Las Vegas and the Kennedy mafia, not to mention the real mafia, McCarthyism, racism and other significant events in recent American history.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 28, 2018 13:33:12 GMT
Readers of this Board will know that I am always pleased to get an opportunity to talk about my theatre-going career stretching back many years so look away now if you have heard all this from me before!
It all started back in Sydney in the late 1940s when I was a very small child, born in 1937. My mother frequently took me to variety shows at the Tivoli, which did twice-daily performances for the entertainment of American service men who were in Sydney both during and after the second world war. She also liked musicals and I can clearly remember seeing White Horse Inn which featured a rain storm with real water forming a curtain of rain just behind the footlights, and a revolving stage to show something like four different sets and for the finale, the set revolved showing each of the different scenes one after the other. I can also remember The Desert Song, and was surprised when at the end of the first Act the Red Shadow broke his sword across his knee to show Margot how strong he was. The sword was made of wood, which even to me didn't seem very realistic but it made for an impressive dramatic moment!
But the real milestone for me was the 1947 Australian production of Annie Get Your Gun with the wonderful Evie Hayes. Although being aged just ten I can remember seeing the show several times and not only were all the songs big hits on the radio but we also had a copy of the vocal score which provided the basis for sing-alongs around the piano for our neighbours! After Annie we had a succession of the Broadway productions of Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Paint Your Wagon, Brigadoon. Call Me Madam (Evie Hayes again) and Kiss Me, Kate among others. It was always a matter of great regret that Sydney did not get to see either Carousel or Guys and Dolls back in those days, at least until I left Sydney in February 1960 to come to London where I have been frequenting the theatre ever since.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 28, 2018 12:58:31 GMT
I thought it was a very entertaining episode, with both teams well matched, despite a rather uneven start, and everyone contributing sensibly, which isn't always the case on this quiz on the celebrity version or the normal one!
The old friend referred to by Phantom of London was presumably Michael Billington.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 26, 2018 15:08:39 GMT
Coming to this discussion rather late in the day, I have just seen the Royal Ballet's 'new' Swan Lake broadcast on BBC TV yesterday and of course I have some comments.
Firstly, I thought it looked magnificent with superb sets and excellent costumes, and just to hear that glorious score as the music for a full-length romantic ballet is a treat in itself. I thought the choreography worked very well both as preserving the much-loved Petipa-Ivanov material and as adapting it for a major company to dance in the present day and age. I particularly liked the way Benno was given an important dancing role as well as just being the Prince's bezzy mate! I was happy to see Ashton's Neapolitan Dance in Act III but some of the other items in that Act didn't really work as well as I was hoping, but perhaps that was just me remembering certain past glories like Monica Mason and Georgina Parkinson in their feisty Spanish Dance back in the 1960s.
As to the principals, I thought Muntagirov was great but somehow there was something missing for me in Núñez's performance, even though she danced impeccably. She didn't move me as Odette or thrill me as Odile as certain other great ballerinas of the past have done, specifically Fonteyn, Beriosova and Makarova to name my top three. It wasn't until Act IV that I started to feel that Núñez's Odette had begun to work, when of course I wanted to feel it in Act II. And I also felt that sensuous glamour was somehow absent from Odile's seduction of the Prince in Act III.
But having said all that, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole performance overall and I am very pleased that the Royal Ballet has such a magnificent new production of one of their most important pieces of classic repertoire.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 22, 2018 1:32:32 GMT
Same criticism again this week about not giving enough credit to the composers. In this episode Brand made a point about the clever use of the main theme in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" but although there was a very brief picture of Michel Legrand with the director of the film, I had to Google the name of the film to confirm that it was Michel Legrand who had written the music.
Also, although Brand did mention Leonard Bernstein as composer of "On the Town", he failed to point out that MGM ditched most of Bernstein's original stage score and commissioned new music from Roger Edens, including the title song "On the Town" which Brand played as an example of the driving rhythm of the music in the film, giving the impression it was written by Bernstein.
And I'm not sure that mixing bits from Indian, Chinese. French and even Nazi musical films with mainstream Hollywood musicals really worked comfortably, although it made for a very interesting comparison.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 14, 2018 22:50:51 GMT
Although the company was back to almost full strength, there was a new face in the male chorus for Getting Out of Town. 42nd Street is set in 1933, and this lovely gentleman looked like he was born in 1933, or soon after. I did wonder if, in addition to a complimentary glass of champagne, our good friend tonyloco had also been offered a small part! Whoever he was, and whyever he was in just that one number, good luck to him. What a show to be part of, however briefly. No, TallPaul, that wasn't me in the male chorus for Getting Out of Town in 42nd Street on Wednesday night. As much as I would love to be up there on that stage, I regret that my days of treading the boards are now behind me. And I was actually born in 1937 so I am four years too young to fit the description of whoever it was that caught your eye. But thanks for the thought!
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 14, 2018 22:41:07 GMT
Did anybody notice a very serious omission in the first part of The Sound of Movie Musicals?
After a brief mention of Cole Porter as composer of the stage show 'Anything Goes', we were told that the music for the film 'Hallelujah' about African Americans was not authentic because it was written by Irving Berlin, who was Anglo Saxon. Hello? Irving Berlin was a Russian Jew!
But after this glaring solecism, I can't recall that we heard the name of any other composers, which seems tough for a programme in which the songs are the main reason for its existence. It was even more strange that the continuing thread throughout the programme was Neill Brand playing many of these tunes on the piano and commenting on their musical construction without once ever mentioning the names of the composers!
Did I miss something here?
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 9, 2018 12:15:20 GMT
Just a few random comments on the music, which gets stranger and stranger! I thought both Joe's dances were seriously sabotaged by unsuitable music and his dancing skills were insufficient to overcome the disadvantage caused by the music; the orchestra managed to make 'La Cumparsita' sound almost unrecognisable for Faye and Giovanni; and the so-called Viennese Waltz to 'You're my world' for Stacey and Kevin didn't feel remotely like a Viennese Waltz (Craig commented obliquely on that).
Oh well, just the final now to come next week to bring to an end a seriously disappointing series and I really don't much care who wins, even though I will still watch it – old habits die hard!
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 4, 2018 11:26:06 GMT
The Conville years were the best, followed by much of the Talbot years. The Open Air featured real rep -- you could see the same actors in two or three plays a week. Now, a musical takes over a huge chunk of the season, so the rep is no more. RIP David Conville.
But there was one occasion when the two things wondrously coincided, namely during the production of Kiss Me, Kate, when 'Too Darn Hot', the number that opens the second act, portrays the members of a repertory company playing The Taming of the Shrew sitting outside the stage door on a hot night bemoaning the heat. And this is exactly what we had on stage: the members of a genuine repertory company, being a collection of actors of varying ages and sizes and not a look-alike theatrical chorus. It was a truly inspired moment and one very unlikely to happen under other circumstances. It remains one of my most special memories of The Park, and I have quite a few of those.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 3, 2018 10:46:57 GMT
Literally watched the results show because of Adam Lambert... what talented man! But it once again just showed how disrespectful it is to the guest singers on the Strictly results show to make then share the stage with a pair of professional dancers. I know it is the format of the show but I found it particularly annoying last night when so much prominence was given to the dancers while I wanted to concentrate on enjoying Adam Lambert's performance.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 2, 2018 12:52:40 GMT
You are too kind Tony. Jobbing actor of that period, definitely not. And I'm afraid I have a total aversion to the Open Air Theatre having never got over being forced by my mother to sit on a stone slab, in the pouring rain, for 3 hours before I could even pronounce 'spear carrier.' (I might be mixing the stone slab bit up with that place in Cornwall, but you kind of get the idea of what my early childhood was like...😣. Consequently, I really don't do outdoors in the UK.) I hear what you are saying, Tibidabo, but the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park is actually a very comfortable venue and if it does start to rain then there is ample covered shelter in the extensive bar area for the entire audience to remain dry. And the open-air setting with trees and shrubs as a background can provide the most magical experience at the end of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on a calm summer's evening when fairy lights suddenly appear in the branches of the trees to enhance Shakespeare's evocative words as the actors perform the closing scenes of the play. It is a unique experience, which I first encountered in about 1965 when the audience still sat in treacherous canvas deck chairs that might collapse at any moment, and continues to this day to work its magic in varying degrees whenever 'The Dream' is staged there. And it is also a surprisingly effective location for musicals as the recent successes of 'On the Town' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' among others have shown. So I hope one day you will change your views on outdoor theatre and give Regent's Park a go one warm night in the future!
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 1, 2018 23:10:09 GMT
Ashamed to say, as he was obviously such an important figure, I had never heard of David Conville. Always an education tonyloco ! You are a historical treasure trove. I think I may know the answer to this, but did you know him personally? Yes, I was resident pianist for seven years for the annual fund-raising gala in the Park at the latter part of David Conville's era. The organising of the gala was mainly done by Ian Talbot – a triumph of diplomacy every time, keeping all those guest performers happy – but David was always around and generally made a cameo appearance in a sketch or something like that. I worked with him only once on an actual production, which was The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1984 starring Ronald Fraser, Kate O'Mara, Berwick Kaler and Dora Bryan with Richard E. Grant also in the company. It was done in a Victorian setting and I found recordings of music played on barrel organs and hurdy gurdies that was used to create an appropriate atmosphere. I was surprised and delighted to find that David mentioned me three times in his book The Park.
But, Tibidabo, if you were not a jobbing actor working in British theatre from the 1960s to the 1980s or a frequenter of the Open Air Theatre during that period then it is unlikely that you would have heard of Mr Conville.
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Post by tonyloco on Dec 1, 2018 11:38:35 GMT
The actor David Conville, who died on 24 November aged 89, began running the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park in 1962 with David William as artistic Director and founded the New Shakespeare Company there in 1963. He handed over the management of the company to Ian Talbot in 1987 but continued to play an active role in the work of the theatre for over 50 years in total. To this day the Open Air Theatre remains one of the jewels of London's theatre scene and we all owe a great deal to David Conville for his pioneering work at this very special venue.
The story of the Open Air Theatre is fascinatingly told in David's splendid 2007 book 'The Park' (Oberon Books), which is crammed with information about all the productions and the many actors and actresses who performed there.
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Post by tonyloco on Nov 26, 2018 0:28:11 GMT
I was hoping to be surprised and delighted by the Callas Hologram Concert at the Coliseum tonight but alas my reaction was exactly the opposite. From the third row of the Dress Circle the sound of the onstage orchestra was poor and the sound of Callas's voice was unnatural and unrealistic. The hologram itself was quite clever, although at times I could see one of the orchestral music stands through Maria's spectral head, and as the evening wore on it became less and less convincing.
Naturally I had some musical criticisms, like it is just about acceptable to perform the Habanera from Carmen without a chorus, as indeed Callas herself recorded it on Callas à Paris, Vol 1, but not acceptable to perform 'Casta Diva' without a chorus. And for tonight's programme, 'Casta Diva' was the finale and I thought it made a very down-beat finish without the cabaletta. I was expecting a final encore of 'O mio babbino caro' but that did not happen, perhaps because we didn't applaud enough!
As somebody who saw Callas live several times in concert and in opera (Tosca and Norma), I can vouch that Maria was not only a great singer, as can be heard from her many fine recordings, but she had oodles of personality and charisma of which, by its very nature, a hologram has none. The somewhat elderly audience tonight applauded dutifully but I didn't get any sense that they were bowled over by what they saw and heard.
I'm certainly glad I didn't pay £115 for my ticket which came to me courtesy of Warner Classics.
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Post by tonyloco on Nov 18, 2018 0:05:21 GMT
Yes I know who you mean. She got married and came back as dance commentator on take two a few times. Name? I thought Charles was very good. I wonder why he was not so good to start with. Joe overmarked and Lauren undermarked. But that's Strictly. Found her. Natalie Lowe. It was Natalie Lowe who was in the previous version of Rip It Up with Louis Smith and Jay McGuinness using music of the 1950s and she was credited as being the originator of the idea and also of creating the choreography – she was also brilliant as a performer. I didn't get a programme for the current 1960s version (mainly because I went home in the interval) I but I don't think she had any involvement in the show, which may well be why it was so inferior in every way to the 1950s one!
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Post by tonyloco on Nov 14, 2018 15:15:56 GMT
Actors who like telling us how they’re riddled with insecurities, terrified every time they have to perform, crippled with stage fright etc. Apparently they’re saying that despite ‘hating’ what they’re doing they will carry on doing it at a huge personal sacrifice ... for us. Don’t bother. If that’s how you feel either keep it to yourself or step aside and let someone who actually enjoys the job to take your place. If you don't already know it, may I recommend you all to Noel Coward's brilliant song "Why must the show go on?"
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Post by tonyloco on Nov 11, 2018 13:07:00 GMT
today everything was earsplittingly loud and heavy Is that because of the studio equipment of the day, partly, tonyloco . Funny enough, I was wondering it as I was listening to a CD of WW1 and 2 songs, and I've always put the slightly high and tinny voices down to that as much as the style of the day. I never heard any of the groups of the 1960s live in concert (apart from Cliff and the Shadows at the Palladium in a pantomime!) and my comments are made solely on the basis of their recordings. Just a few months ago I went to a brilliant presentation at Abbey Road called 'The Studio that Became a Legend' when I sat in Studio Two and heard extracts from recordings by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Freddy and the Dreamers, Cliff and the Shadows, Helen Shapiro, Cilla Black and other 60s artists played back on top class equipment in the very room where most of the recordings were made and it was a memorable experience. What I heard at the Beck Theatre, Hayes, certainly bore no resemblance to anything I heard at Abbey Road. If I remember rightly, the instruments at Hayes were a lead guitar, a bass guitar, a keyboard and a drum kit, sometimes with a second guitar. The over-amplification of this particular combination made for a harsh and opaque wall of sound, over which the voice or voices were laid and to me it sounded distinctly unmusical. Of course, had the presentation of the show (choreography, costumes, staging, etc) been better then I might not have minded the sound so much but, compared to the 1950s show, it struck me as being all very much inferior. At Richmond I was drawn in by the winning performances of the artists whereas at Hayes I was put off by the poor quality of all the other components, of which the over-amplification was just one element, and the three guys were overshadowed by what was going on around them. I don't want to see the boys have a flop in the West End but unless the show is seriously overhauled before it opens at the Garrick then I fear the worst.
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Post by tonyloco on Nov 10, 2018 18:19:22 GMT
I wasn't going to get involved in this discussion but so far nobody seems to have seen either the previous version using 1950s music with Jay McGuinness, Louis Smith and Natalie Lowe or the touring version of the current show using 1960s music with Louis Smith, Aston Merrygold and Harry Judd so having seen both, I thought I would add my views.
I thoroughly enjoyed the 1950s show which I saw at Richmond but hated the 1960s one at Hayes and this is what I wrote in my diary:
"The three boys were lovely, but that's about all. The show for me was not nearly as enjoyable as the 1950s one and today everything was earsplittingly loud and heavy which is not what that music was originally like at all back in the 1960s. The Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' was the most expensive track ever recorded up to that date because it was subtly mixed not because it was the loudest ever put on tape! I thought overall the choreography was uninspired and the costumes for the three boys were not good. The second half may have been wonderful but I left in the interval.
Aston is hugely talented as a singer and dancer and it just shows what a dotty show 'Strictly' is that he got booted off so early in the series. Louis moves well enough but he performed an adagio with a leggy brunette that included several breath-taking lifts and the whole thing was just magical and demonstrated why he won 'Strictly'. Harry Judd is not in the same league as the other two but he is rather sweet and plays the drums nicely."
I was astonished when I saw that it is coming in to the Garrick for such a long run and I cannot believe that the addition of Jay McGuinness will pull in any more punters. Personally, I would have added Natalie Lowe, but what do I know?
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