All the Angels, Sam Wanamaker

Well,at least SWP stays authentic with candles and all. Miss this place tremendously. Would you recommend seating in the Pit or Lower gallery for this?

Charming, but dramatically inert.

Like Farinelli, at this same venue, it's about the quasi-spiritual value of music. Handel's music, to be precise, since half the arias sung in "Farinelli and the King" were by Handel, including Farinelli's closing number "Lascia ch'io pianga." This time, it's all about Handel's "Messiah," the writing of it, and putting it on.

Where music was a matter of life and death in Farinelli, with Rylance's depressed King saved only by the music, and Farinelli's life stolen from him because of it, here everyone is just short of cash, particularly Handel, whose operas are tanking, and who needs a hit.

David Horovitch's grumpy German-accented Handel is irreverent, repeatedly using the word "sheisse," Sean Campion's sly narrator, Crazy Crow (and part-time bodysnatcher. . . he needs the cash too) is equally irreverent, repeatedly using the word "fecking," and Kelly Price's singer is on the run from a scandalous past. Thus the mood and backstories contrast with the spiritual nature of the production they are all putting on.

Unfortunately, the play stops at backstory, and has no story. The singing and acting are great, but this is a huge dramatic step down from Farinelli, which used it's drama to super-charge the spirituality of the singing. I was blown away by that production, but this one never added up to more than the sum of it's beautiful parts.

At least I had fun imagining the Kelly Price was still playing Sister Brown in Grandage's production of "Guys and Dolls," and that Adam Cooper's Sky Masterson would rush in and rescue her from the mundanity of the dramatic construction. He didn't.

3 stars.

So sorry to hear this Polly1! Hope it is better soon!