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Post by Steve on Feb 29, 2024 18:50:42 GMT
Strong reviews in mainstream outlets, with some doubts shown more in the web-based reviewers and bloggers. I wonder why it's that way around. Interesting observation. At a guess, it's that bloggers/web-based reviewers are more aligned with general audiences, mainly going by how much they enjoy a thing, whereas mainstream critics add or deduct stars based on values. For example, encouraging cultural assimilation, solving conflicts, coming up with original ideas, original ways of staging productions, and/or saving the planet, etc, could all be considered positive values that might get critics adding a star to their assessments, even though dispassionately audiences might bot be more entertained by those values. Similarly, applying tried and tested entertainment formulas might be perceived by mainstream critics as a negative value because it doesn't develop the art of theatre, even if it makes audiences happy. This might result in a star or two deducted from a perfectly entertaining show. In the case of "Cable Street," like the "Bend it Like Beckham" musical, or "The Scottsboro Boys," it might be perceived by critics as improving society, reducing racism, a positive value that goes beyond entertainment. For me, the most extreme example I saw of this phenomenon was Michael Billington's review of "2071," at the Royal Court, which he gave 5 stars: www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/07/2071-review-urgent-call-history-royal-court-theatreThe show wanted to help save future generations from one of the most pressing problems of our time, climate change, and Billington gave the play his full 5 star weight. I agreed more closely with one of the more popular comments underneath his review, which included this assessment: "It was a lecture delivered by a man reading an auto-cue (hence no notes) with all the charisma of the diminishing ice-shelves he was describing." I don't think it's wrong that sometimes professional critics want to promote originality or save the world, but that's my guess as to why they sometimes promote productions that aren't necessarily the most entertaining, and also why, conversely, they'll slam a super-entertaining production that doesn't promote such values. Just speculation on my part, of course.
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Post by Steve on Feb 29, 2024 13:23:44 GMT
If you are referring to what I think you are, that scene had the opposite effect on me - I was enjoying the play ok up until then but that bit crossed a line for me. . . that scene towards the end with the siblings … a bit too much. I guess this was the point, to make the viewers deeply uncomfortable. Yes, that's the scene. I very much understand why you don't like it, and I'll say why I love it in spoilers:- In Wagner's Ring Cycle, his romanticism is taboo-busting, with not only the siblings, Siegmund and Sieglinde carried away with each other, but also Siegfried gets carried away with his Aunty Brunhilde. As the siblings cave into their greed for (and break their own moral taboo against accepting) antisemitic-fuelled money, they simultaneously plunge into the same taboo-busting incestuous romanticism Wagner indulged in. The suggestion the play makes is that the whole romantic movement in Western civilisation is psychologically unhinged at some level, and that seems a provocative and worthwhile thing to get audiences thinking about. It's like a little bonus easter-egg thought-provoking kick in the teeth for people who like the Ring Cycle lol. PS: As an interesting aside, Jon Snow and his Aunty Khaleesi, and the Lannister siblings, IN "Game of Thrones" all seem inspired by the Ring Cycle, and GRR Martin comes out on the side of judging their taboo-busting ways very harshly.
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Post by Steve on Feb 24, 2024 23:37:23 GMT
Still, it’s a wild, crazy evening. I love that line! That's why I loved this tonight, because it's a "wild and crazy evening" where I had no idea where it was going, my eyes popping, teeth gritted, the non-realistic mysterious bits rubbing up chaotically against the grubby materialist provocative comedy bits to make a proper theatrical experience, all acted by a fantastic cast. Some spoilers follow. . . This is like Macbeth's witches brewed a play that mixes Yasmina Reza's consideration of the subjective value of Art in "Art," Lilian Hellman's consideration of the power of greed in "The Little Foxes," with a bit of Brecht and a pinch of Hitler. Obviously, it's the pinch of Hitler that rankles. . . On the "MJ the Musical" thread, we've been fretting about how much we do or don't care that MJ (who can't personally benefit from our ticket money) may have done some very bad things, even though his music is a glorious dance party. Similarly, do we care that the most impressive sequence in "Apocalypse Now," uses the grand, frightening and astonishing "Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner, a massive antisemite, or is it ok cos he's dead? Well, Hitler's dead too, and his art isn't as good as Wagner's, so his art is the apotheosis of cases involving whether art is tainted by the evil of its creator, and the set-up in this play is that the painting Daddy left John Heffernan's Philipp and Dorothea Myer-Bennett's Nicola might be by Hitler, and certain buyers might pay a premium for the Hitler name. To sell or not to sell? Are the buyers suckers whose money it's ok to take, or are you tainted by evil for taking the money? There are lots of twists and turns as the other characters push and pull the owners of the painting in lots of ways, and it's at once very uncomfortable to watch but also great fun not knowing what's going to happen. . . At times, I worried that the distinction between stereotypical things the characters were saying, and what the playwright believes, might be crumbling (for example, like anybody else, not all Jews stereotypically believe the same things about "Palestine," or any other issue, and it's unfair to suggest otherwise), however, I think the character/playwright line ultimately stayed safely separate, despite my teeth fraying at times lol. One of my very favourite moments in the play, towards the end is very Wagnerian (gulp), both mischievous sendup and absurd homage, and it gives Heffernan, at his most hilariously banal, and Myer-Bennett, at her most frenziedly wired, a "wild and crazy" theatrical moment that made the whole play immediately unforgettable. With a steely Jenna Augen pleading passionately against the amorality of filthy lucre, Angus Wright at his most Bond-villain camp, Jane Horrocks successfully cast against type as pure evil and Gunnar Cauthery as a supremely entertaining comedy dolt, this wild and crazy evening surely deserves 4 and a half stars from me.
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Post by Steve on Feb 23, 2024 0:16:35 GMT
Saw this tonight and very much enjoyed it. The second half (which has more developed and involving characterisation and more rousing songs) is better than the first half, which is more setting the scene, and has more nondescript songs. Part of setting the scene involves depicting a lot of unpleasant (but necessary) antisemitism, so if you're squeamish about that, beware. There are multiple song styles, some of which hit harder than others, with the rapping never hitting the heights its aiming for. The wonderful Debbie Chazen is underused (as is Jade Johnson, who sounds great), and doesn't get a proper character, which is a bit of a shame. Among a strong ensemble, who sound great together, Danny Colligan is a standout in a difficult main role, and Jez Unwin is terrific in support. Some spoilers follow. . . There have been lots of movies about Titanic, but the reason the James Cameron one is loved by audiences is that fictional DiCaprio-Winslet relationship, smack in the middle of it, as well as the drama they have with Billy Zane. Here, we usefully get the Titanic formula applied to the Battle of Cable Street, whereby Joshua Ginsberg's super-charming East End Jewish boy, Sammy meets Sha Dessi's Irish communist agitator, Mairead, and they both team up to oppose the British Union of Fascists's plan to waltz through Cable Street, protected by the police, while Danny Colligan's hopeless jobless impressionable English local boy, Ron, starts to get seduced by the Fascists (uh oh). . . Anyhow, the plot cleverly does not stop with the eponymous battle, and looks beyond it usefully. Pretty much the entire ensemble, bar the above named characters, play multiple roles of all sorts, including Fascists, which means two things: (1) no actor is typecast as an armband-wearing Fascist, which suggests (2) that anybody could be susceptible to Fascist ideas given the right circumstances. Mosley himself is never depicted, never given oxygen, rather it is the susceptibility of ordinary people to the manipulations of xenophobia, ancient hatreds, and a certain form of virulent Nationalism (eg "British jobs for British people") that is under the microscope. Thematically then, Danny Colligan's Ron is pivotal, and in the second half, he gets a really powerful song, "Shut Me Out," (I'm guessing song titles) where Colligan's impassioned soulful rendition of the song, moved me, and was a highlight, despite his character's villainy. As the heroic plucky lead character, Sammy, Ginsberg heroically delivers Lin Manuel Miranda levels of likeable energetic rhyming, but is let down by no memorable tunes following the raps. Sha Dessi is luckier in the song stakes, and her heroine makes like an anti-Marie Antoinette with an awesome delivery of a song that might be called "Bread." As Sammy's father, who pushes Sammy not to get involved in the Cable Street battle, Jez Unwin delivers so tenderly one of the most moving songs of the piece, "Words," in which he expresses his respect for rationality, as well as his pained disconnect with his son. There are quite a few forgettable numbers, unfortunately, in the first half, with the notable exception of the brilliant choral ensemble song, "No Passeran, Thou Shall not Pass." Debbie Chazen is cheated out of any great solos, though I loved her Jaws-reminiscent line delivery, where instead of needing a "bigger boat," she rather needed a "bigger rolling pin." The Hitler supporting Daily Mail gets it's much deserved and due comeuppance in a much reprised song, "Read all about it," which makes me look forward to their review lol. I felt that the first half was an average 3 stars, with too much history, not enough story, too few bangers, whereas the second half was a moving 4 stars, with more story, the right amount of history, and almost every song a banger. 3 and a half stars from me, which could improve with book and song edits. PS: Running time was as advertised, beginning 5 minutes late at 7:35pm and ending 5 minutes late, at 10:05pm, with one interval.
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Post by Steve on Feb 22, 2024 22:46:21 GMT
Saw this tonight at my local theatre on the big screen. Phenomenal. Did the movie version do anything extra (eg subtitles with character names) to signal who the characters, that Andrew Scott was playing at any given time, were, that the theatre audience would not have seen?
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Post by Steve on Feb 22, 2024 22:37:44 GMT
He was talking about the fact he was sent a video of Sheridan in Funny Girl ahead of casting and his reaction was “meh, it’s ok”… but how he’s gone on to find her a revelation to work with and that maybe his reaction was more about the show than her. That worries me a bit, as I loved "Funny Girl," and if he thinks "Funny Girl" is "meh," then maybe he thinks effective emotive storytelling is a bit beneath him, and he plans to bamboozle us with something so complex and cerebral that all us simple folk will just go "meh" lol. :0
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Post by Steve on Feb 22, 2024 18:49:30 GMT
Saw today's matinee, for the second time, and had an absolute ball! Verity Thompson was on as Kathryn Merteuil. Some spoilers follow. . . I was looking for something cheap and entertaining to fill the matinee slot, so booked "Bronco Billy" last minute for £15 with Todaytix, then promptly got an email it was cancelled at 11am. So I traded the credit for this more expensive Rush show, which Rush was still open, and was charged an extra £9.05 (I guess Todaytix threw me an extra pound as commiseration for the cancellation lol). Verity Thompson was a fantastic Kathryn! While her belt is modulated and magnificent, it isn't as thrilling as the main Kathryn's, but her performance more than made up for this: she was the T1000 upgrade of sly amoral evil, slinking around like the snake-like Jodie Steele in Heathers, but with more considered maturity, making her seem even more malevolent. Since all these teen shows are basically bonding morality lessons for the target audience, her slow-building, dark and absolute commitment to Garbage's "I'm only happy when it rains" and Melissa Etheridge's "Im the Only One" really raise the stakes of Valmont's drama, and the importance of the lesson: "Don't be Evil" lol. As Valmont, Daniel Bravo's distinctive bravura swagger means he remains the West End's most likely future casting as a Prince in a Hallmark movie or a secretly psychopathic boyfriend in a Lifetime movie, but the shocking sudden tenderness he shows in Counting Crows's "Colorblind" (my favourite moment in the show) suggests the former is more likely than the latter lol. Anyway, the 90s numbers are banging and so brilliantly integrated into the plot, all sounding like either dialogue or monologue, and not the pointless performance of plot-unrelated time-wasters you get in something like Cilla the Musical. Rose Galbraith and Josh Barnett remain a hoot as the comedy characters, with Galbraith's laugh-out-loud hilarious rendition of Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign" also serving to remind its target audience that sex is pretty silly, and not to get too het up about it lol. Abbie Budden, as the unattainable religious Sarah-Brown-from-Guys-and-Dolls-like object of Valmont's desire has developed some terrific chemistry with Bravo, and I found myself tearing up from Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" onwards, "Colorblind" being the pinnacle of emotion, despite knowing that nothing in a show like this can possibly be taken seriously. I hadn't planned to see the show again, but I'm delighted to report it's in damn fine shape for a jukebox teen show, and I'd give it 4 stars now.
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Post by Steve on Feb 22, 2024 10:42:03 GMT
Thanks Dave.
Can anyone who's reached the front of the queue see when the press night is, and whether there are any reductions to these prices in the preview period?
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Post by Steve on Feb 21, 2024 9:58:51 GMT
comparing Michael Jackson's court cases towards children might be an odd comparison to Henry the 8th - but its a fascinating debate on what is or is not socially acceptable I agree that comparing Michael Jackson to Henry VIII, etc, is worthwhile. There are 3 types of works you could make about both of them: (1) A work where Michael Jackson or Henry VIII is depicted as having done bad things, like Six; (2) A work where Michael Jackson or Henry VIII's bad behaviour is not addressed at all, like MJ the Musical (I'm assuming as I haven't seen it); (3) A work where the bad behaviour of either is acknowledged and defended. I don't think people would love any works in Category 3, whereby cutting off your wives' head's is promoted as a good thing. I don't think people would tolerate any work that suggested Michael Jackson's behaviour with children was a good thing. The issue here is whether Category 2 works are ok: for example, a musical about Henry VIII that doesn't mention him beheading wives at all, maybe focused on his hunting prowess, or his composing skills, or how terrible syphilis is, or what kind of a dad he was, where no mention at all of made of the beheadings etc? Tentatively, I think Category 2 works are ok, on a case by case basis lol.
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Post by Steve on Feb 19, 2024 12:38:41 GMT
I've always believed in innocent until proven guilty. Hence I'm happy and comfortable seeing this show and hopefully being reminded how much of a superstar MJ really was. I also believe in innocent until proven guilty, for the living.
For the dead, as with Jimmy Saville (never even charged with anything in his lifetime), I judge on a balance of probabilities.
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Post by Steve on Feb 18, 2024 8:02:12 GMT
He isn’t alive to benefit from it. That's where I draw the line. I love listening to Michael Jackson's music, but I'd never have gone to Thriller Live or this if he was alive to benefit. Now he's dead, he can't benefit so it's fine to patronise his music. If you don't want to go, out of consideration to his victims, that's fine too. There's no right answer, so everyone can make this decision for themselves.
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Post by Steve on Feb 18, 2024 0:43:42 GMT
I LOVED this! One of the Double Features is more of a thriller, the other more of a cerebral but funny conversation. The first one mostly makes you feel something, the second mostly makes you think something. Since the two pieces, both about relations between directors and actors in the film industry, interwoven, are so complementary, reflecting each other, it all works very well together. The actors are uniformly superb, though there is no doubt that it is Joanna Vanderham's astonishing portrayal of Tippi Hedren that is key to making this exciting. Some spoilers follow. . . If you lined up the 4 real life people depicted here by John Logan, there's no doubt that Hitchcock was the most objectively powerful person in the industry (one of the few directors the public could name, a brand name, mega successful and wealthy, with a major ownership stake in his studio) and Tippi Hedren was the least powerful (a model picked by Hitchcock as his muse, famous for being in his movies). It's the power disparity that makes their meeting so nail-biting, with nasty old Hitchcock creating serious predatory vibes from the off by immediately relating an inappropriate anecdote about how Grace Kelly would lick her lips to suggest "cum." Logan loads Hitchcock's dialogue with words that can have double meanings, so Hitchcock may be talking about a film climax, but when he says "climax," Vanderham's Hedren's ultra-expressive face quietly winces somewhere between disgust and fear, and so it goes, with double entendres lacing the power dynamic with disturbingly increasing tension. To make matters worse, Vanderham's Hedren is playing Marnie, an abuse victim, which gives Hitchcock plausible deniability for everything he is saying. . . Anyhow, McNeice is great at playing big powerful icons, having played Wolsey at the Globe and Churchill in a couple of plays, and his powerful poise and deadpan delivery of double entendres is surface calm, but filled with punchy predatory hints beneath the surface. Vanderham weirdly has sort of played "Marnie" before (her character in "The Runaway" opposite Jack O'Connell basically shared Marnie's backstory, exactly), she's also played a "muse" before too (Emun Elliot was ever googly-eyed over her character in the BBC's "The Paradise lol), and she's a massively accomplished stage actor, having brilliantly held her own in the company of superstar stage duo, Andrew Scott and David Dawson in "The Dazzle," but what makes this performance remarkable is how she captures that familiar sense of a Hitchcock heroine's mounting fear and dread, as if in a Hitchcock thriller, while also playing Tippi Hedren, a model turned actress having a quotidian business dinner conversation. The destabilising sense of fiction and reality merging is brilliantly achieved in the writing and the performances of both McNeice and Vanderham. The other two characters are much closer in status. Both Vincent Price and Michael Reeves are men. Reeves gets to tell Price what to do, but Reeves can't do without Price. Reeves is independently wealthy, Price has more credits than you could count. Further, both Reeves and Price have elements of humour and warmth to them, so compromise between the men always feels possible. Because of this, Jonathan Hyde's marvellously witty and evocative Price and Rowan Polonski's tense film artiste (he's like a tortured version of Coldplay's Chris Martin, another public schoolboy like Reeves, who Polonski very much resembles) have a dynamic that is more cerebral, conversational and funny than the more dramatic Hitchcock-Hedren faceoff. The way I look at it is that Logan has created a sort of Freudian set-up, where the Hedren-Hitchcock scene is like the scary uncontrolled "id" of the piece, the Price-Reeves scene is like the "superego," a rational debate about art, relations and morality, which puts us, the audience, in the position of "ego," having to mediate between these two interwoven and reflecting scenes, comparing and contrasting in our own minds to decide the meaning of it all. I give this 4 and a half stars of complex, cerebral enjoyment anchored by a neo-Hitchcockian performance to savour from Joanna Vanderham. PS: I just remembered that McNeice's Churchill was in the same "The King's Speech" play where Jonathan Hyde taught Charles Edward's King how to speak. Here, his Vincent Price really needs to teach McNeice's Hitchcock the same thing lol.
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Post by Steve on Feb 15, 2024 13:40:24 GMT
What time were you out Steve? Is it still 10.30/10.35 ish? Ta. 10:35pm, Dave.
It was the interval that overran as the first half was the exact 2 hours predicted on the sign on the wall (ending at 9pm), but the predicted 20 minute interval expanded to 30 minutes.
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Post by Steve on Feb 15, 2024 0:18:19 GMT
Saw this tonight, and I thought Danny Sapani was a exceptional Lear, especially in the first half. Yael Farber brings her full spectrum of atmospherics to bear on the story as well as a few original takes on parts of the story. There's a lot to love. Some spoilers follow. . . Sometimes directors come up with an overarching concept for a Shakespeare production, that enhances it, as Rupert Goold did for the Soviet Macbeth (it made all the terror make sense, as well as making it all even more terrifying), but that is rare, and Yael Farber doesn't manage to do that here. What she does do is:- (1) Bring her supreme sense of atmospherics (I still shudder at Tituba circling a crepuscular Old Vic in her production of the Crucible) - there's an onstage piano, occasional onstage violinists, a fair few accomplished singers in the cast (Gloria Obianyo, Fra Fee, Faith Omole, Clarke Peters), background music, sound effects, haze effects, wind effects, rain effects, ingenious uses of plastic, etc; (2) Work in original bits and concepts here and there: eg: (a) Gloria Obianyo's rude and defiant Cordelia was something special and made Danny Sapani's Lear's own tantrums make a lot of sense, in that she's a bit of a chip off the old block lol; (b) The formalistic radio broadcast feel of the opening scene, whereby the characters are playing roles in a media show, rather than engaging with each other, contributed to the effectiveness of said Lear-Cordelia dynamic; (c) Clarke Peters's Fool is more Sensei than Comedian, and he's a wonderful one and we absolutely don't get enough of him; (d) there's a Globe on stage at the beginning of the Production. . . Anyhow, Sapani's Lear is less a frail old man caught up in a storm, rather he IS the STORM, a whirlwind of confusion and rage, and it is as if the storm comes spiraling straight out of his psyche. For me, this made for an uber-powerful and rousing first 2 hours, before the interval, but in the last 70 minutes, his lack of apparent physical frailty was only partially counterbalanced by his well-acted mental frailty, diluting the tragedy somewhat. As far as the singing goes, the highlight for me was Gloria Obianyo's Cordelia's utterly haunting rendition of a song that sounds a LOT like Mariam Wallentin's theme tune for Ridley Scott's "Raised by Wolves," with both pieces evoking a sense of the circularity of existence, how we always and inevitably end up right where we began, a loop of creation and destruction. As well as loving the insufficient appearances of Clarke Peter's Wise Fool, and Gloria Obianyo's stormy Cordelia, and Danny Sapani's even more torrential Lear, I thought Akiya Henry's Goneril was quite the unstoppable dynamo, Fra Fe's corrupting outsider of an Edmund (he wears the backpack he carries a lot more convincingly than Leo Bill's Horatio in the Cumberbatch Hamlet) sinisterly and louchely showed he was capable of a LOT more than sweet singing in musicals, and Hugo Bolton's Oswald was deliciously reminiscent of the youthful appearances of John Heffernan, swanning in and out of moments with a slightly camp scene-stealing aloofness. All in all, I'd rate this 4 stars.
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Post by Steve on Feb 14, 2024 13:51:17 GMT
Me neither, and apparently they've done 15 full length parody musicals, and this concert is a "best of" showcase of songs from all of them, by the original cast.
I am officially very old that all this happened without me noticing lol.
Anyway, for those who are interested, there is no presale for the matinee just added, so from Friday 10am at LWTheatres, it's first come first served.
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Post by Steve on Feb 14, 2024 0:13:37 GMT
Saw this tonight, and thought it was marvellous. A perfectly staged, perfectly acted family drama, that makes Chekhov feel melodramatic, but which is gripping in it's smallness, in it's detailed characterisations. For me, the most minutely observed period piece at the National since "After the Dance." Absolutely exquisite, with an exquisite ensemble fizzing with the chemistry of recognisable family dynamics, informed by a profound understanding of human nature, I found it deeply moving. Lindsay Duncan is a laugh riot. Some spoilers follow. . . There are dramatic templates that you can imagine were in Dodie Smith's mind when she wrote this, for example, there is something of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" about the way Bessie Carter's family "companion," Fenny, has doe eyes for golden son, Billy Howle's Nicholas, who just sees her as a friend. But again, this is minutely observed, and makes Jane Austen seem even more melodramatic than Chekhov, so it never quite plays the way you think. Howle's character was originated in 1938 by John Gielgud, and having so recently seen "The Motive and the Cue," I found myself imagining how Gielgud might have played the part, as every line of Nicholas is amenable to Gielgud's bouncy, plummy, witty, fast-talking delivery complete with emphatic punchline. Howle doesn't do that. Instead, he just exists in the role, in the character's day to day joviality, punctuated by brief moments of existential angst, inhabiting the lines naturalistically, losing laughs to enhance authenticity. That authenticity is there in every performance, even that of the children, such a good job has Emily Burns, the director, done with the staging and performances. Bessie Carter's Fenny, especially, is so detailed in her reactions to everyone around her that you can't help being drawn in to her (small) dramas. Sometimes, there are massive laughs to be had in the character interplay. Such is the case with Lindsay Duncan's matriarch, who has spent so much of her life organising other people's lives that every time she does it, and she does it again and again, it gets funnier and funnier. Precisely because Duncan never overplays or overemphasises any of it. It's just who her character is, a deadpan bulldozer bluntly and gently butting heads with a family constantly ducking out of her way lol. Smith is at once deeply liberal (her characters by and large live and let live) and deeply conservative (family bonds are everything), with a lowercase "l" and a lowercase "c" respectively, and the effect is like that of a warm embrace. Among the tiny human day to day battles being fought by the characters, I rejoiced in Kate Fahy's Belle's caustic and brazen battle with aging, with Bethan Cullinane's Cynthia's awkward battle with secrecy, with Jo Herbert's Hilda's matter-of-fact battle with OCD, with Amy Morgan's Margery's pragmatic battle with mundanity and with Malcolm Sinclair's heartfelt battle with mediocrity. Small battles, big feelings. Ultimately, this superb ensemble proves that what goes around comes around: what was once old can feel so fresh and new again. Simply wonderful. 5 stars from me.
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Post by Steve on Feb 13, 2024 21:13:43 GMT
“As well as Karimloo, I loved Chumisa Dornford-May as Wednesday, the character who delivers the only forward motion in the story. While not as impishly comedic as Carrie Hope Fletcher in the role, she nails Wednesday's feisty attitude, drives what plot there is hard, roars and reacts off the other performers and makes an entertaining rousing crescendo of her numbers.” I thought Kingsley Morton was Wednesday? No, it wasn't. Coincidentally, I did see Kingsley Morton a couple of weeks ago in MTFest's 1 hour preview of the upcoming "Romy and Michele the Musical." She did all the narration and she was very funny. I should probably start a thread on that, if there isn't one lol.
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Post by Steve on Feb 13, 2024 19:18:16 GMT
I also took advantage of the dynamic pricing to see today's matinee for the performers, as I knew from seeing the 2017 tour that it's an average show. Sam Buttery was brilliant and on form this afternoon. This enormously slick production (it is more than just a concert, being fully staged) struck me as more focused on the love elements than the 2017 tour, which focused more on the laughs. That said, as a variety show full of all kinds of declarations of love, it worked very well, and was always entertaining. Some spoilers follow. . . The plot feels very sequel-like, as if it's just about showcasing characters you already love, with little to no impetus: essentially, the first half is a tepid rehash of "La Cage aux Folles," which the second half barely bothers to pay off, indulging instead in a presentation of quirky love songs. Where Cameron Blakeley excelled at excitable quirky, Ramin Karimloo excels at emotional expressions of love. The elements that are funny are Buttery and their wide-eyed effusive passion for the moon, Dickon Gough and his sudden movements materialising out of utter stillness, as well as his growling (he reminded me of squirrels, which in frozen stillness emit grumpy growls of different lengths and intensity to scare each other off lol), and above all, Kara Lane, who took her end-of-first-half perverse number to Mama Rose levels of belt and bravura and beyond, eliciting an enormous ovation. Regarding Michelle Visage, this is in no way "Yas Queen camp." Instead, her Morticia is very much a part of the slick stillness of the production, a character moving at half-speed and half-emotion with utter confidence. (Before every big song, for every character, there is this scene-setting stillness that allows each song to grow into it's moment). And to my astonishment, Visage can really sing, she hits all the notes in perfect pitch, and rises to a flourish as well. Of course, Karimloo's singing is far more rousing, sensitive, modulated, making hay of every little emotional build and explosion of emotion, in a chaotic story that otherwise bounces all over the place. As well as Karimloo, I loved Chumisa Dornford-May as Wednesday, the character who delivers the only forward motion in the story. While not as impishly comedic as Carrie Hope Fletcher in the role, she nails Wednesday's feisty attitude, drives what plot there is hard, roars and reacts off the other performers and makes an entertaining rousing crescendo of her numbers. All in all, this was a four star rendition of a 3 star musical, meaning I'd rank it as 3 and a half stars of engaging entertainment. PS: From a slightly delayed start, the show ended at 5:30pm, and I was out by 5:35pm.
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Post by Steve on Feb 13, 2024 18:24:19 GMT
I'm quite fond of camp horror too, although I've never seen Michael Reeve's Witchfinder General, something I need to rectify. . . It's an interesting play, if not a great one, and it's well executed. Four stars. One act: 19:36-21:05 Thanks for the review. I'm really looking forward to this now! Just a note of caution about "Witchfinder General:" as I recall, it's absolutely brutal with nothing camp about it whatsoever. Zero laughs. It's just a nightmare vision of a nightmare society. I think that's why the film is remembered, because it really stands out from all that camp Hammer stuff. :0
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Post by Steve on Feb 10, 2024 23:23:45 GMT
What was the witty comment? You can put it in spoilers if you like. Railing against the price of tickets and asking for refunds for everyone.
A person who actually paid for a ticket would hardly start that sort of thing, as it's a confession he's a mug lol
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Post by Steve on Feb 10, 2024 23:07:19 GMT
Saw this tonight, enjoyed a lot of it, especially everything Paul Hilton related. Some spoilers follow. . . The set in the first half is some kind of Brechtian thing, hard lit despite no visible skylight, with all sorts of revolutionary graffiti on the walls, the least appealing of which was an exhortation to kill the Buddha (too chill I suppose). The blocking also doesn't lend itself to a believable intimacy among the characters some of the time. I recall how lovely the intimacy was in Jessica Brown Findlay's Hamlet, where she played Ophelia opposite Andrew Scott, and the two of them together just won my heart. Could have used a bit more believable humanity, a bit less Brecht, as I feel you've got to really buy the humanity before it gets threatened by the plot, even if you suddenly go Brechtian later (which it does, very effectively). On that human note, I really loved Vilberg Andri Palsson, standing in for the indisposed Zachary Hart as Billing, a character I haven't really paid attention to in the past: his earphones-on, gentle, vacant, morally-malleable long-hair was spot on recognisable from every student common room everywhere lol. I like music, and the live music did serve to humanise the characters somewhat, even as it slowed down the plot. I wished Matt Smith would sing his "American Psycho" numbers instead though, but that's just me (I loved that production so much lol!) This production has an embarrassment of good acting talent, so Nigel Lindsay as a capitalist ghoul and Priyanka Burford as a compromised liberal are good fun. But it's Paul Hilton's antagonist, Peter Stockmann, who really stood out for me: the weaselly gelatinous jibbering of a Jacob Rees Mogg contained beneath a steely, aggressive Dominic Raab surface. Hilton makes every scene he's in come alive, regardless of the staging. Matt Smith rules in the second half, especially when he gets Hulk angry. Never having attended a political event, it makes me realise why people do it, the lure and electricity of being shouted at. Anyhow, against a witty comment from a probable plant, many members of the audience did pipe up in the interactive bit, which used mics, and involved comments from all areas of the theatre. I know they were real cos they failed to address what speech they were actually reacting to, and just got indignant about the plot instead. The Duke of York is probably a bit too boxy and claustrophobic for really exciting staging involving audiences. I remember how, at Chichester, Hugh Bonneville got quite a work-out running up and down those broad, diagonal aisles, visible to all. But even if he is constrained physically, Smith nails the emotions. Anyhow, I think this will bed into a 4 star show, but at this early stage, it's more like 3 and a half stars. PS: The front 3 rows (AA, BB, A) got given Macintoshes in the interval to protect them from possible (washable) paint splashes. There weren't any major splashes tonight, but there could have been.
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Post by Steve on Feb 10, 2024 19:07:35 GMT
Unfortunately, the prices are indeed crazy, but reassuringly, the Gods seats are MUCH better than you would expect from a typical show. This exceeded my expectations by a country mile! Given the integration of live recording by cameras, with prerecorded material, it hit me like the best episode of Jackanory I've ever seen, an episode that could have been directed by Katie Mitchell at her best. It works on multiple levels, and is as much performance art and art installation as it is a theatrical narrative. Some spoilers follow. . . I formed a view of what this might be like before I booked, and I thought it'll be good but not great, certainly not worth the price of the Stalls or the Dress, so I went for Row E of the Upper Circle at £39.25 (evil dynamic pricing might have raised these tickets to £79.25 by now). Anyway, I was proven wrong on two counts: (1) This is truly GREAT storytelling, where not only do the acting and technology fuse to tell Oscar Wilde's gothic monstrous period story in the wittiest and most exciting way possible, but also, for me, it was clear that the storytelling works equally well from the inside out, where a parallel story, about our modern fusion with technology, is also being told, and Oscar Wilde's story has been chosen precisely because it is the perfect tool with which to tell that parallel story about where we are now. With an absolutely bravura performance by Sarah Snook at the centre of both stories, I felt that overall, this was an utterly dazzling piece; (2) My assumption that I had bought a crap seat was also proven wrong. For me, the measure of a crap seat is that you can't see the expressions of the actors. When we see an expression on someone else's face, our own faces mirror those expressions subconsciously, and we feel the feelings they feel. Therefore, if you can't see a (good) actor's expressions, you miss out on a great deal of the emotional rollercoaster ride of a show. Not so here, where the cameras are like "Sunset Boulevard" on steroids. Where Jamie Lloyd doled out his projections judiciously, this show ladles them on like the multiple big screens at Glastonbury, and then some! That is the point of the meta-narrative, I would argue, in that we are watching one woman create a metaverse movie reality in which she can be anyone and anything. Since the movie, and creating it, are the point of the show, it's not a bug that most of the time you are watching the movie, rather than Snook herself, but a feature. Snook appears as all the characters at once, all prerecorded but one, in which she flits between the characters. She is like David Bowie at play, creating versions of herself, in such a way, that like in Bowie's Lazarus, the work could survive without her if she was to disappear completely. The iPhone motif, with it's image apps, which one poster above didn't like, is , for me, a paramount illustration of how powerful the technology we have at our fingertips is, how close we all are to being Dorian Gray, narcissistically curating versions of ourselves on screens that don't match reality: how playfully fun it can be, as well as how dangerously destabilising it can be. From the Gods, we can see the whites of Snook's eyes, in multiple characters. We feel the whole game of the evanescent reality that she is creating, it's gleeful camp dress-up playfulness, but also we feel the mystery of where she herself lies hidden amongst all her selves: which one is she now, what is real, what is fake, how much is play, how much out-of-control narcissism? We see the history of art leading to where we are now, with Picasso style cubist shots of Snook's face, as Dorian Gray, simultaneously, from all angles, the fragmentation of one identity, even as she appears as other identities simultaneously. And, my goodness, the narcissism with the iPhone is such a moment of now, as well as a brilliant illustration of Wilde, that I was overcome by how wonderful this show is, and how fine the view from the Gods, where the audience get to vicariously live in the deepfake future, along with Snook, for a couple of hours, in the dark, out of sight, out of harm's way. Anyway, at it's core, this is the best, and most witty, and most gripping Jackanory version of Oscar Wilde imaginable. Soon, we will all be Dorian Gray. 5 stars from me.
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Post by Steve on Feb 8, 2024 23:45:34 GMT
Matinee report: Meh - go and see Till the Stars Come Down instead, and have a pie and a pint with the difference.
1971 film with the marvellous Walter Matthau far superior.
Vis a Vis the Matthau film, we have very different tastes. I found it turgid and excruciatingly unfunny, although possibly it is played more realistically than this stage version, which works against it as it's supposed to be funny. The lightness of touch and comedic stage skill and timing of Broderick is what makes the second and third plays in this stage production really zing for me. He lifts average comedic material into big laughs by going lighter and broader than Matthau, in my opinion. For those who have any interest in seeing this average play, I'm confident we'll never see a better version than this one in my lifetime (which admittedly isn't likely to be particularly long lol).
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Post by Steve on Feb 8, 2024 22:50:38 GMT
Speaking of which, the only issue I had with the show is the use of Margaret Thatcher as comic relief. Thatcher’s policies are still having a major impact on people across the country. We all remember her and were impacted by her. To turn her into a posh caricature who sings, raps and dances didn’t sit quite right with me. Your review was a good read. Thanks. Some spoilers follow. . . With regard to the Thatcher bit, which I loved and was a highlight for me, I'd say it's fine to laugh along with villainous characters in the theatre, as there is often, as here, an intentional meta element, in which it is the comedienne, Julie Atherton, you are laughing along with, her camp and mischievous and provocative rendition of the character, rather than the character herself. I mean Simon Russell Beale had me laughing along with the character of Stalin in one play, and objectively, he's far worse than Thatcher. Besides which, on another note, for about half the country, Thatcher is still regularly voted, in polls, as the best PM we ever had (and the worst by the other half, of course lol), so for them, they might object to the "villain" characterisation, whereby Geldof has to badger her into not taxing money that would otherwise feed the starving. And of course, even then, Thatcher was not wholly outrageous, as those who considered it awful that pop famine fundraiser charity money was being taxed VAT might not have considered it quite so outrageous that similar VAT was charged on an Eton College (also a charity, by law lol) fundraiser at the time. Thatcher was arguing for the equal treatment of all charities under the law, and the right to raise funds (ie taxes) that would go to benefit all UK citizens. Of course, since then, the laws have changed, and VAT would not now be taxed on even an Eton College fundraiser, I believe (I might be wrong lol). :0
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Post by Steve on Feb 8, 2024 19:25:18 GMT
Lots to like at Arts Ed this afternoon. We had the Boheme company, and an outstanding Roger in Ben Fenwick. I was also there this afternoon, and wholeheartedly agree that this was fantastic fun, and that Ben Fenwick is oven ready to step into the leads of Bat out of Hell, American Idiot or We will Rock you right now lol. Some spoilers follow. . . This is a really hard-hitting production in a couple of ways:- (1) First, you can forget about the woke twenties, with demure sensitivities about what performers are asked to perform. This feels like it was made and conceived in the period in which it is set: the lurid nineties. At one point, I wondered if I had mistakenly teleported back in time into Raymond's Revuebar. Anyway, from an audience perspective, the jarring feeling of being transported back to a more overtly exploitative time actually works for the production, as it not only illustrates the capitalist exploitation that the heroes of the show are rebelling against, it also allows them to triumph over it with the sheer steel and passion of their performances: Sedona Skye's Mimi is utterly irrepressible, and her relationship with Ben Fenwick's Roger is pure fire; (2) Second, there is a Jamie Lloyd-Sunset Boulevard cut-the-crap individualistic fierceness across the board, I felt. The lovey doveyness of the commune is sidelined a little to make more room for a ferocious volcanic battle for survival of the characters, naked emotions exposed on a bareish (ladder at the side, rolling props and chairs) stage, making their interactions even feistier and more electric than you'd expect. In addition to the unsmiling roiling passion and perfectly modulated and powerful rock voice of Ben Fenwick, I thought that a charismatic Josh Latunji was superb in the thankless role of Benny (the capitalist villain), winning us over with a sweetness of pitch and glowing charm. As Collins and Angel respectively, Hayden Cable and Asher Forth completely won me over with their interactions, their final scene devastating. And the ensemble put tears in my eyes with their powerful choral renderings of the Larson classics. All in all, I was moved and rocked to an easy 4 stars by this production.
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Post by Steve on Feb 8, 2024 14:11:09 GMT
This is generally ok, with Victoria Hamilton-Barritt worth the price of the ticket. Some spoilers follow. . . The movie was a gentle wistful comedy about losers reinventing themselves. This show didn't have the confidence to be JUST that, and mixes in some of the broadest comedy imaginable, involving Inspector Clouseau type assassination attempts and whatnot, most of which misses the mark, and confuses the tone of the whole thing. Also, the added competition element, ala Strictly Ballroom/Dirty Dancing/Saturday Night Fever, etc, which wasn't in the film to my recollection, also feels too shoehorned in to really work, and confuses rather than enhances the wistful story elements about losers finding their places in life. Of the added comedy elements, ONLY Victoria Hamilton-Barritt is actually funny, but she IS hilarious, and her big second half number, "Mama's Done With Sweet" is SO diabolically funny that that number alone was worth the price of the ticket for me lol! Emily Benjamin was marvellous in "Cabaret," but lacks the light comedic touch that someone experienced with light comedy, like a Strallen, might bring to this sort of thing, so her lead character never really galvanised my affections, although her voice does complement Tarinn Callender's powerful voice and they do sound great together. Luckily, Karen Mavundukere, as the lead in the circus type numbers is an absolute joy to watch, raucous and effervescent, and really puts the Barnum & Bailey into the Bronco Billy Circus scenes. But in the end, the lack of tonal consistency means that the losers-make-good scenes are defused by the broad comedy and vice versa, with only Mavundukere and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt cutting through. But oh my, Victoria Hamilton-Barritt's "Mama's Done with Sweet" is too funny for words, a sly camp winking malevolent delicious diva display that sent me home happy. 3 stars.
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Post by Steve on Feb 7, 2024 22:39:41 GMT
Saw this tonight and thought it was terrific. The music has too many minor keys for my taste, potentially too samey and sad, but what is wonderful about the piece is how the whole is massively greater than the sum of its parts, as the cheeriness of the book counterbalances said sad saminess until it is no longer sad and no longer samey. The same goes for the plot, which is ultra high concept and phoney, but the very human relatable characters similarly suck the pus of contrivance right out of this wound. Big picture is the piece is unique, charming, romantic, involving, intriguing, funny and moving. Grace Mouat and Jacob Fowler are both wonderful, and work wonderfully together, creating real chemistry, with Fowler a revelation. Some spoilers follow. . . I didn't see the livestream of this piece during lockdown, featuring real life couple, Hadley Fraser and Rosalie Craig, so I can't compare, for those that did. The high concept set-up of this two-hander is that Ben (Fowler) has forgotten his prior relationship with Ami (Mouat). This allows Mouat's Ami to romance him all over again, without revealing their prior relationship lol! We cut back and forth between the "Before" (first relationship) and "After" (second relationship) timelines for the duration of the show. Because Fowler's Ben is unaware of the first relationship in the After segments, he is perpetually the nervy skittish fast-talking sensitive intelligent witty charmer, while Mouat's Ami gets to comically (and romantically) play him like a fiddle for vast chunks of the running time. This is an intrinsically funny set-up, which acts as a much-needed counterpoint to the wistful, minor-key, plaintiveness of the music. And the actors act the hell out of this set-up, even at this (typically affordable) first preview. Fowler's ability to be sweetly sensitive, as well as foot-in-his-mouth nervous and klutzy, as well as fast-talking and witty, and make that all add up into something supremely endearing and charming, is key to the enjoyment of this piece. And Mouat beautifully allows her character to appreciate all these qualities of Fowler, even as we do, which is why their chemistry feels so lovely. No, I generally would not listen to such minor-key sad samey music (one song is like an inferior version of Keane's "Somewhere only we know," without the major key lift), but as part of this show, and to my absolute surprise, it really really works, and the plaintiveness compliments the character work to make a magnificent whole that touched me tonight. 4 and a half stars from me. PS: Running time was 1 hour 30 minutes (8:05pm - 9:35pm), played without an interval. PPS: All seats and angles looked as if they afforded good views, with the director sitting in what would typically be thought of as the furthest back, most extreme side view, tonight, and to my eye, she would have got a view almost as good as anyone else, so equitably is this piece blocked.
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Post by Steve on Feb 7, 2024 17:59:30 GMT
Pippin - MountviewThis is an abstract production even by Pippin standards, but enjoyable, held in the Mountview Backstage Theatre. . . . Unusually, almost all the seats were marked as reserved, so there were only 10 or so seats left. There are only three rows (seating on three sides of the performance area), so even in the back row, the view was fine. . . The sound and vocals are very good. . . Saw the matinee today, and agree with Dr. Tom that it's abstract but enjoyable. A mixed bag, as the conception of the production works against the thrust of the narrative, in my opinion, resulting in a bit of a static feel, that stifles the exuberance of many individual and ensemble performances. I saw the Illusion Cast, and felt that some performances were wonderful. Some spoilers follow. . . At one point, the entire ensemble whip out smartphones, and the idea is that social media makes you miserable, like many other things that are actually in the Pippin book. Which would work in Pippin if we ever felt the allure of it in the first place, which then would allow us to feel the disappointment of it. But the Leading Player here, Liberty Ashford, with a commanding voice to match Adele's (the most impressive and powerful and full voice to listen to, and who really needs to play Sally Bowles one day), is portrayed as a disaffected, alienated, sarcastic, miserable Emo from first to last. There is no way anyone could imagine that following this Leading Player about could be magical. So we really don't feel the magic or allure of much at all. Consequently, the main Faustian conceit of Pippin the Musical, that Pippin is seduced by the Leading Player to try out all these alternative routes to happiness, feels false. There is magic in individual performances, however, with Eve Humphrey being an obvious and invaluable recruit to the Mischief Comedy franchise, as her blustering bullying Charlemagne got a great laugh from every blunt bolshy gleeful pronouncement. Her tongue close enough to her cheek to border on camp, her comic timing her missed. As Fastrada, Rosie Toolin had a mischievous comic breathiness redolent of Katherine Parkinson, and an exquisite singing voice, and in no apparent role at all, Chiara Ritchie had all the effusive infectious intelligent main character energy of a Lea Michele. Anyway, every time the ensemble sings and dances, there is magic in it, even if it doesn't tell a coherent story. 3 stars from me.
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Post by Steve on Feb 7, 2024 10:23:06 GMT
I went £45 Row B of the Stalls. (Row A is not on sale). Row C and back (excluding Premium) is £65.
Back of the Stalls Row N (and some of Row M) is £25.
Premium is £85 - £95. Back of the Circle is £20.
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Post by Steve on Feb 4, 2024 23:58:50 GMT
Love it, especially “Goodge? What the hell is that?” Maybe it refers back to a mixup of their characters in the play too, where her character calls him "Pootch" because he buys his shoes from "Pucci," but he corrects her that he buys his shoes from "Gucci" so his nickname is "Gootch."
I guess it's not quite "Goodge" lol.
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