2,379 posts
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 7, 2024 14:30:52 GMT
My point is that they claimed it was Sold Out yesterday, and tickets were available to buy this morning, but whatever.
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Post by Matt on Apr 7, 2024 17:06:43 GMT
If anyone has last minute spares please message me!
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Post by bobbievanhusen on Apr 7, 2024 19:46:43 GMT
So many sound issues.
And if you're going to cast someone in a wheelchair in a prominent role, find one that can sing. 'Are You There' was painful.
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Post by bigredapple on Apr 7, 2024 19:46:55 GMT
Is there normally dialogue in this or sang straight through?
So far I’m disappointed. There’s a huge list of trigger warnings, and I was expecting something sexier, sadder, more dramatic, traumatic. I’m bored as f***
Also SO many missed mic cues (is that what you call it? When someone is singing and their mic isn’t turned on in time). Why is this so hard to do, are producers hiring on the cheap or something?
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523 posts
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Post by vabbian on Apr 7, 2024 20:08:13 GMT
Possibly the worst thing I have ever seen on stage
Blacklist the sound tech from the West End
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Post by lotster on Apr 7, 2024 20:09:43 GMT
Wow. Sounds like another poor concert. It seems more often than not these concerts are plagued with sound and quality issues. Who is producing this one? I've seen some mediocre ones, but thought the recent Addams Family and Side Show ones were really good.
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Post by normasturban on Apr 7, 2024 21:04:37 GMT
Wow. Sounds like another poor concert. It seems more often than not these concerts are plagued with sound and quality issues. Who is producing this one? I've seen some mediocre ones, but thought the recent Addams Family and Side Show ones were really good. Same producers as Side Show which has made tonight’s show an even bigger disappointment. Side Show was a fantastic night of theatre, this was… not.
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Post by lotster on Apr 7, 2024 21:06:39 GMT
That is a surprise (that's it's the same producer behind Side Show). That was certainly one of the best concerts.
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Post by doornumberthree on Apr 7, 2024 21:33:01 GMT
I genuinely am outraged. Absolutely awful, they need to stop producing these concerts considering they just continually have such awful sound issues - to be charging what they charged for these tickets to have produced something of such abysmal standard is an absolute insult to the entire audience (who quite frankly should all be refunded)
Cassidy Janson was a highlight, Claudia Kariuki would have been a highlight too if I could have deciphered a single word they were singing.
Appalling.
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4,455 posts
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 7, 2024 21:38:17 GMT
Quelle surprise the sound was sh*t - these guys so rarely get it right (Jason Robert Brown was good, and Side Show only had a handful of outright bad moments sound wise, but otherwise the Lambert Jackson ones are usually fairly inaudible) - this does sound like it was particularly bad though.
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Post by bobbievanhusen on Apr 7, 2024 21:42:51 GMT
What I will say is that Laurie Kynaston, who was completely new to me, is a star in the making. He had the best vocals, didn't need to add riffs like some did, abd played it honestly. I will book to see whatever he does next. He would be a fantastic Quasimodo if it ever gets done here.
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Post by gslade on Apr 7, 2024 21:45:10 GMT
I loved this show as a teenager and was so excited to finally see it. Technical issues were shocking making it like a panto by the end. I am so disappointed by how poor it was. I noticed quite a few people left in the interval. Lots of people trying to stifle laughs by the end. Feel so sorry for those actors. Direction was shocking also, lots of people on the tube saying it was like a GCSE drama
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Post by bigredapple on Apr 7, 2024 21:49:53 GMT
Is there normally dialogue in this or sang straight through? So far I’m disappointed. There’s a huge list of trigger warnings, and I was expecting something sexier, sadder, more dramatic, traumatic. I’m bored as f*** Also SO many missed mic cues (is that what you call it? When someone is singing and their mic isn’t turned on in time). Why is this so hard to do, are producers hiring on the cheap or something? FOH literally handing out contact cards for the Samaritans at the end Maybe it was just me, maybe it was the sound issues, I didn’t feel that moved by it? Anyone else? Felt so disconnected from the show and didn’t think there was any chemistry between the two
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Post by greatauntedna on Apr 7, 2024 21:52:45 GMT
I didn’t think it felt current at all!
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6,347 posts
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Post by danb on Apr 7, 2024 22:01:48 GMT
Eeek. Dodged a bullet there then. There was me sat in departures at JFK wishing I was there. Did JLG convince as a preppy sporto type? Was Cassidy Peters Mum?
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Post by ruthieh on Apr 7, 2024 22:03:43 GMT
Eeek. Dodged a bullet there then. There was me sat in departures at JFK wishing I was there. Did JLG convince as a preppy sporto type? Was Cassidy Peters Mum? Yes she was. Proper class act.
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Post by bigredapple on Apr 7, 2024 22:07:19 GMT
Did JLG convince as a preppy sporto type? Not to me anyways
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Post by Matt on Apr 7, 2024 22:10:12 GMT
Did JLG convince as a preppy sporto type? Not to me anyways Thought he was a bit flat in character, didn’t get the Jason vibe from him.
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4,455 posts
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 7, 2024 22:14:25 GMT
Were you at the same show as everyone else Matt? 😉
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Post by iwanttix on Apr 7, 2024 22:31:17 GMT
The sound was awful. Mics not on when they should be and I too had trouble understanding what was being said or sang. Cast did the best they could, but for an introduction to this show - it wasn't a great one
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542 posts
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Post by andrew on Apr 7, 2024 22:32:16 GMT
I felt so outraged watching this. The sound issues were absolutely terrible - at what point do we just decide to boycott all of these staged concerts once and for all? So many of my favourite songs (Confessions, You and I, Best Kept Secret) were completely lost due to appalling sound. That being said, Laurie Kynaston is an absolute superstar and I don’t think this role has ever been performed better. His performance was worth the ticket price alone - the girl playing the sister was also excellent.
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Post by andthelight on Apr 7, 2024 22:50:02 GMT
Was sitting in the Upper Circle and was shocked by not only the poor sound but quite a lot of dodgy lighting cues in the first half in particular - a couple of moments where the house lights almost came on…. If it wasn’t for Laurie Kynaston’s outstanding singing, it would have felt like students had taken over the Palladium for a night, dodgy tech and kind of amateurish plotting too.
I thought some of the songs were great, but my friend has been hyping this show up for me for years and I just couldn’t understand why. Half of the UC gave it an ovation though so I suppose as a show it just has pretty loyal fans who didn’t care as much about the slap-dash staging
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Post by Oobi on Apr 7, 2024 23:05:58 GMT
Oof. Major oof. This was… truly very bad. It won’t take me long to list the things I liked, so let’s start off by listing all the people who deserve to be fired.
First up is the director. I’d listened to the Bare soundtrack before and found songs to enjoy, but the work is drenched in early 2000s indie rock energy that works better in high school productions than on a massive West End stage. My eyebrows were raised in the first scene, when the priest, rather than delivering his sermon with understated Catholic gentility, started crowing like a southern baptist. And as the show progressed there kept being lines that landed in that slightly “off” way that evoked laughter in Diana: The Musical. By the time Jason’s ghost was ascending the stairs at the back of the stage while Peter mimed CPR at the front of the stage and a flute played off-key, the confusion in the auditorium was palpable.
Second to be fired is the audio team. I don’t understand how, given the frequency with which concert productions of musicals are staged these days, technicians STILL routinely fail to cue performers’ microphones. Sister Chantelle had it worst; if you told me the soundboard operator was a vengeful ex-boyfriend of hers, trying to humiliate her by intentionally missing the first 1.5s of each of her lines, I would believe you in a heartbeat. And the muffled vocals behind the percussion meant I constantly missed lines in ensemble numbers.
Third up is the lighting designer, which is surprising given how low-maintenance you’d expect this show to be, lighting-wise. They had these profoundly ugly triangle patterns projected onto the stage for almost the entire runtime; it was presumably supposed to evoke stained glass, but all it made me think of was crazy paving. “The Role of a Lifetime”, my personal favourite song in the show, was soured by the bewildering decision to have spotlights slowly turn on and off in parts of the stage Peter wasn’t standing. I guess the idea was that Peter was refusing to “play his part” on the metaphorical stage, but it just came off distracting - like the actor was constantly missing his mark.
Fourth is the guy who played Matt. It pains me to pick on him because I saw him in The Little Big Things and can vouch for his acting chops when playing weepy leading men getting over their trauma, but as a jealous religious bigot he was less convincingly homophobic than the gay character he targeted. His f-slur landed with the spontaneous apathy of a fart. I also question the decision to cast a wheelchair-bound guy in a role that requires him to physically tackle someone, but that’s more an issue with the casting director than the actor in question, so let’s move on.
I have critiques for the score - the tunes are repetitive and samey, the lyrics are amateurish, the themes are underdeveloped - but honestly, I do see why lots of people relate to it. Hell, as an ex-Catholic, I relate to some of it, especially the scenes where Peter talks to his mom and Jason talks to the priest. But those good spots are surrounded by tedious sung-through mediocrity.
I’m glad I saw it, but I for one won’t be disappointed if this show is consigned to cult musical theatre history. 3/10.
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Post by bobbievanhusen on Apr 7, 2024 23:12:46 GMT
Whilst there were sound issues, I don't feel there was anything to be outraged about. Disappointed, yes.
The guy playing Matt might have been sick, that doesn't excuse him screwing up the big confrontation in act 2, forgetting lines abd suddenly having an English accent.
Overall it was the Bare that I know from the recording and it was nice to hear it again, but it did feel dated and could have done with some staging, an idea of the setting and costumes. Ivy, the party girl with a reputation was wearing a bomber jacket most of the night.
One thing that did occur to me watching this tonight, was if Jason stayed at Ivy's, had sex and got her pregnant, where was Nadia, Ivy's room mate and Jason's sister during all that??
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Post by marob on Apr 7, 2024 23:29:25 GMT
What I will say is that Laurie Kynaston, who was completely new to me, is a star in the making. He had the best vocals, didn't need to add riffs like some did, abd played it honestly. I will book to see whatever he does next. He would be a fantastic Quasimodo if it ever gets done here. He’s currently at Wyndham’s in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. I saw him years ago in The Winslow Boy. Am happy to see he’s doing well for himself, but I seem to be fated to miss pretty much everything he does on stage. Still a but gutted my performance of Spring Awakening got cancelled, especially having planned a trip around it, but looks like I dodged a bullet with this one.
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986 posts
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Post by nash16 on Apr 7, 2024 23:34:52 GMT
Stop supporting this kind of cash-grab concert.
They do no one any favours.
And the amount of time that sound team will have had to get everything right will have been ridiculously small.
Stop feeding the beast.
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893 posts
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Post by max on Apr 7, 2024 23:40:07 GMT
This may be a naive question, but could these venues that tend to house concerts of musicals (Palladium and Drury Lane in particular) have an 'always available' sound design that's default for quick set-ups? Or is the problem that a lot of these events want to go beyond simple concert staging and over reach with complexity? I guess however good the sound template, it's no good if the person in charge fails to switch mics on, on cue.
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Post by Seriously on Apr 7, 2024 23:59:28 GMT
The sound op is usually hearing the musicians and orchestration for the first time that day. And often the script has been butchered by the director in rehearsals (and changes due to people dropping out at the last minute) that the script they inherit to mix to bears no relation to the mics that need to be raised.
As The Palladium is so expensive to hire, there'll have been a get-in to put the equipment (lighting, sound, etc) at around midnight to 9am. Then the orchestra will have the morning to set up. In the afternoon there'll be a run of the show, where the cast finally get to see how little space they have, and the director will be stopping every 2 lines to re-block something, and the lighting designer will be 3 cues behind. Often you don't even get to run the full show with everything as you have to stop to let the audience in.
The sound op is trying to follow every line in a script he's seeing for the first time, whilst juggling the band, sound effects, special effects, and cast mistakes. So they do their best. If you get an amazing sound op, it's easier. But it's always difficult.
The real fault here are naive producers who don't understand that you need more than a day to put a show in and to tech it properly. But they won't pay for that, despite charging top rates for tickets.
And the other culprit here is the woeful standard of directors these days, who rarely understand how to schedule and run a rehearsal room. They seem to think the tech is just another rehearsal, when actually it's valuable time for all the other departments who are finally joining the process on the day.
You cannot put a sound system and lighting rig in from midnight to 10am, then have an orchestra sound check from 10-1pm, then a cast in for blocking, lights and quick changes from 2-5 and expect a professional standard show. Yes sometimes you get lucky, but it's a massive gamble that producers are taking with YOUR money.
This one sounds like the perfect storm of a bad sound op, a inadequate director, and cheapskate producers.
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749 posts
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Post by horton on Apr 8, 2024 6:50:19 GMT
Balancng sound in such circumstances can be tricky, but un-muting mics in time shouldn't be that hard in a concert setting. Seems they had a very novice sound designer/ op.
These producers are taking their audiences for suckers.
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Post by lotster on Apr 8, 2024 6:54:50 GMT
Having been very disappointed by a few, I decided only to book discounted tickets to these concerts as often they do have people in their casts I really want to see. The Addams Family and Side Show really encouraged me that these CAN be good, but then hearing about this one and also Made in Dagenham a few weeks ago, puts me off again. I really want to go to the Pippin one, but they really do seem very hit and miss.
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