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Post by vickster51 on Feb 26, 2016 14:14:24 GMT
I vaguely remember going when I was very small to see Grotbags (anyone remember her off the tv, green witch-like woman)in Great Yarmouth. she was quite scary! The annual Sheffield panto was my Christmas treat with my grandparents for years. I think the first I saw was Mother Goose, for which I think I remember entering the Crucible more than the show. Later they moved them to the Lyceum.
As for West End that would have been Cats in 1994 for my first visit to London with my family.
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Post by azincat on Feb 26, 2016 14:16:14 GMT
My first West End show was Starlight Express at the Victoria Apollo. I enjoyed the 'big' production, loved the costumes etc but was really disappointed by the skating/choreography which was (imho) unexpectedly basic and messy. There was none of the footwork, spins, lifts that competitors trained in artistic roller skating can do - I felt that couple of skating specialists in the cast could have vastly expanded the choreographic possibilities and made the show more dynamic. More recently, tours by the Russian Imperial Ice Stars have shown what can be achieved on (ice) skates on stage. Starlight Express remains, for me, a bit of a lost opportunity.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2016 14:23:43 GMT
seeing Aspects of Love in previews must of been late on as it didn't have Roger Moore Alas, Roger Moore never did appear in it. This was another example of ALW's promising a part to an actor who wasn't up to the demands of the role. He dropped out when he realized he was out of his depth and he was replaced by his understudy, the wonderful (and far, far superior!) Kevin Colson.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Feb 26, 2016 14:45:57 GMT
(we'd have to wait until after the show for the hot-dogs which were always sold from stands just outside the Palace, What happened to those hot dogs stands anyway? Now that you mention them, I remember their existance when I first started theatre-going in London in the early 90s, but they disappeared not long after. Environmental Elf would have seen those off. Probably a good job too, the smell of frying onions is very enticing but I bet they were minging!
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Post by d'James on Feb 26, 2016 14:54:23 GMT
My first West End show was Starlight Express at the Victoria Apollo. I enjoyed the 'big' production, loved the costumes etc but was really disappointed by the skating/choreography which was (imho) unexpectedly basic and messy. There was none of the footwork, spins, lifts that competitors trained in artistic roller skating can do - I felt that couple of skating specialists in the cast could have vastly expanded the choreographic possibilities and made the show more dynamic. More recently, tours by the Russian Imperial Ice Stars have shown what can be achieved on (ice) skates on stage. Starlight Express remains, for me, a bit of a lost opportunity. I think comparing people who've trained for years to be ice dancers to musical theatre performers is a bit stupid. How much singing do these ice dancers do? They did Starlight on Ice once, they didn't sing live. I have seen Pearl performed loads of times and when it's done properly the dancing in Make Up My Heart is positively balletic. People love to talk Starlight down, but it's a very difficult show to get right. Let's put your experience down to an off night.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2016 14:55:09 GMT
What happened to those hot dogs stands anyway? Now that you mention them, I remember their existance when I first started theatre-going in London in the early 90s, but they disappeared not long after. Environmental Elf would have seen those off. Probably a good job too, the smell of frying onions is very enticing but I bet they were minging! I think they probably were minging (I never did buy one!) but they added to the atmosphere of a theatre trip somehow. The smell, the cosy lights above the stand...
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Post by lynette on Feb 26, 2016 17:03:50 GMT
Birmingham, pantos and the stage door waiting for the star. Got the autograph of that lion puppet. Then the Alec ( Alexandra theatre ) the usual 'anyone for tennis' stuff through the French windows, with parents and they always bought me a box of chocolates, soft centres each one wrapped in different coloured foil. Then RSC which I have mentioned on here before, the Wars of the Roses, Richard lll. No looking back.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2016 18:11:30 GMT
Jesus Christ Superstar, aged 13. Hadn't ever been to the theatre, but Mum and Dad talked about shows they had seen in the 50's before having a family made finances tight. Saw the listing for JCS in my brother's Time Out Magazine and decided I had to see it.
Went with a friend from school, no tickets, having no idea how to go about buying in advance. Going up on the train from Walthamstow seemed like a big adventure, even more so going into a big London theatre on our own. When we got there the only tickets available were top price tickets, but having a Saturday job (4 hours in a Maynards sweet shop at 25p an hour) I was affluent and didn't care how much I paid once I was there.
Exit two exhilarated teenagers a couple of hours later. I immediately went home to ask my elder brother exactly how do you go about buying tickets, and phoned to book again, sending a postal order for payment (can you still buy postal orders?). Next stop cast album purchase which I drove my family mad playing. We went twice more before moving on to other shows.
My father nearly keeled over when I told him I had paid £3.50 for the ticket; just as well I never told him I'd paid for part of my friends ticket too, as that could have well done for him. I think there were comments about the glossy programme as well, but can't remember how much that cost. It was the first of many programmes which I still enjoy rooting through now and then.
My friend gradually lost interest in theatre, moving on to the discos of the era, but the theatre was always far more exciting for me. I never told my Dad how much any ticket cost again though......
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Post by Raven on Feb 26, 2016 19:50:17 GMT
Cats was my first real theatre experience back in 2006. It was a regional touring production and I remember being so entranced by the dancing and the costumes! That really sparked my love for musicals and since then I have been going to London consistently every year to see shows as well as seeing regional tours.
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Post by jasmineneroli on Feb 26, 2016 21:06:32 GMT
I remember being taken to see The King and I with Yul Bryner at the London Palladium, just magical.
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Post by theglenbucklaird on Feb 26, 2016 21:45:40 GMT
Great first post op. And loads of very good replies.
Mine is easy because I checked my spreadsheet and it was only 7 years ago. February 21 2009 at the Fortune Theatre. The Woman in Black.
My best friend had a brain tumour and so I drove him to Campbelltown (about three hours past Glasgow) to see his son for what was going to be his last Christmas with us. As a thank you he got me a theatre and meal voucher and we saw the Woman in Black. Hooked ever since and going to the theatre always makes me think of my friend (and how much money he has cost me in the last seven years), cheers Pete.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2016 22:16:38 GMT
Great first post op. And loads of very good replies. Mine is easy because I checked my spreadsheet and it was only 7 years ago. February 21 2009 at the Fortune Theatre. The Woman in Black. My best friend had a brain tumour and so I drove him to Campbelltown (about three hours past Glasgow) to see his son for what was going to be his last Christmas with us. As a thank you he got me a theatre and meal voucher and we saw the Woman in Black. Hooked ever since and going to the theatre always makes me think of my friend (and how much money he has cost me in the last seven years), cheers Pete. Sad, but what a lovely way to be remembered.
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Post by Coated on Feb 27, 2016 15:28:29 GMT
I vaguely remember some fairy tale like story as a Christmas play when I was a kid, which probably was my first play. A touring group visiting school with a play about King Arthur (at least I assume it was since I remember a song about King Arthur and his friends...)
A Carmen Jones and something with mimes I was forced to go to as teenager - made me hate anything theatre related for a decade or so.
The first play that grabbed me as adult was Stoppard's Arcadia, some time last century. I loved it, but theatre visits remained occasional one offs though the frequency increased somewhat.
This lasted until about 2006, when SRB's Galileo and Goold's Tempest convinced me that theatre might be the best thing since things started. Saint Joan at the National a year later confirmed that suspicion and I haven't looked back since
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2016 15:58:14 GMT
Mine was a trip to see the GODS (Gloucester Operatic and Dramatic Society) in Oklahoma when I was about 4. I was taken by my mother who had nobody to go with after she had been given tickets by her physio. I immediately fell in love with the whole theatre thing and was always up for theatre trips. Those days it was really only pantomime with the likes of Edna Savage and Lita Roza. Later it was visits to the Cheltenham Everyman and in my mid teens even working as a stage hand for a few summers at the end of the pier summer shows in Great Yarmouth. My first West End show was Hair and then I moved to London in 1971 and there started a journey through Sondheim, Shakespeare, Kurt Weill et al. Moved to Madrid in the late 70s but the first thing I do when I visit the UK is plan trips to get my theatre fix. The first time was over 60 years ago and I still wallow in the absolute pleasure it gives me.
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Post by anita on Feb 27, 2016 16:26:32 GMT
Mine was either "Charlie Girl" "Annie get your gun" or "Blitz". After that I was taken to see every Brian Rix farce at the Garrick.
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Post by jaqs on Feb 27, 2016 18:16:37 GMT
My first time in a proper theatre was onstage dancing dressed as a sailor girl rather than in the audience.
I remember seeing panto, Jack and the beanstalk. The enb doing giselle (I was about 7 far too young) and very good am dram The King and I soon after at the same theatre.
My first westend was Joseph with Jason Donovan.
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Post by Nicholas on Feb 27, 2016 21:31:59 GMT
Not for the last time, my first time wasn’t much to brag about. It would have been local pantos (hardly inspiring, but very good fun), getting involved in the odd am-dram (acting didn’t do it for me), and children’s shows live (vague memories, possibly fabricated, of Bodger and Badger Live). We were taken to some West End musicals when we were young – didn’t much care for Phantom, was particularly taken by Les Mis (I think we saw that three times before I was 10, which surprises me now looking back, given how dark and full of dying sex workers that show is (though you’d be surprised how many dying sex workers they snuck into Bodger and Badger Live)), and even, get this, saw Martine in My Fair Lady (undoubtedly it’s that show that prompted my love of musicals, though I’ve vague memories of a local Me and My Girl seeming like the most groundbreaking piece of work to innocent little me, still adore that show). Hell, I even enjoyed Stomp – was I ever that young?
The first thing I remember not just enjoying but adoring, the first thing that inspired the kind of awe only theatre can inspire, was my first NT trip which just happened to be His Dark Materials – it wasn’t until seeing Sir Chuckles in Ivanov during my formative teenage years that I felt that shared emotional weight and inexplicable empathy of theatre and became utterly obsessed, but long before that it was absolutely His Dark Materials which sowed those seeds and wowed me so. I’d loved the books, and add to that the on-stage magic and those tremendous performances from a cast you’d kill to see now – the memories amaze me still. I only now realise how much of that was less down to the stagecraft and more down to how well it spoke to my tender emotions at that young age. Obviously yes, I was impressed by a chasm as big as the Olivier, by the nature of the marathon, by seeing brought to life that impossible story that I knew by heart and loved back then, but it was more to do with the brilliance of the storytelling – said it before and will say it again, the moment that most lingers in the mind is the moment when Samuel Barnett takes off his mask and now he has become Death. Nicholas Wright was the unsung hero of that show. So yes, after that, how could I not love theatre?
In fact, that’s why I’d feel sorry for someone who’s first show would have been something like Treasure Island, or heaven forbid wonder.land – it’s impossible not to be impressed by a place like the Olivier and by the staging only it is capable of, but without a script that makes you care, it’s just empty spectacle, a quick thrill and then home – a bit like other first times I could mention.
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Post by littlesally on Feb 27, 2016 23:19:32 GMT
School trip to see Othello. Timothy West, Alison Steadman and Daniel Massey. Hated it as I was far too young to "get" it. Would kill to see it now!! Oh the folly of youth!
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Post by moelhywel on Feb 27, 2016 23:59:34 GMT
My first visit to the theatre was when I was six and my parents took me to see The Emperor's New Clothes at the old Birmingham Rep. I've just looked this up and see that Albert Finney was in it but all I can remember is that there was a revolving stage and that my Dad got stopped by the police on the way home for some reason. He never drove into the city centre again! After that it was lots of pantos at the Alex where I saw the likes of Morecombe and Wise and Arthur Askey. I still have the programmes for these. I used to love the dancing waters in these pantos. My first play was 1066 and All That, also at the Old Rep followed by Dear Brutus at the Alex. I then graduated to Shakespeare, seeing Romeo and Juliet and Othello (with Mike(!) Gambon as Othello followed by Shaw's St Joan, also all at the Old Rep. I think this theatre formed my love of theatre. I've been hooked ever since on plays light and serious, with periods of intensive theatre going (which I'm in at the moment going to lots of plays in London, as well as B'ham and Stratford) alternating with not so much when money was tighter and I had a family.
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Post by mistressjojo on Feb 28, 2016 4:46:49 GMT
We don't have a lot of panto here in Australia, so most people's first theatre would be a musical or a school production.
My first was Jesus Christ Superstar. I would have been 9, and I remember being more impressed by the theatre than what was on the stage. My first straight theatre was a schools study performance of Henry IV Part 1 by the Sydney Theatre Company, but it was more a staged reading. The first proper play was a promenade performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream held in the botanical gardens at night.
I do remember my first London show - it was Me & My Girl at the Adelphi about 1988.
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Post by bizzo on Feb 28, 2016 16:41:37 GMT
My first trip was to Panto and then my first musical was to see Joseph
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Post by CG on the loose on Feb 29, 2016 7:59:09 GMT
First memory of theatre was my big brother's school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (he was Bottom, which at the age of 4 amused me enormously). They staged it in the open air, under the trees in the school grounds and I remember nothing of the play except the costumes.
For my 6th birthday/Christmas my best friend and I were taken to The Nutcracker in London - I remember the train, the taxi, the foyer but nothing of the ballet.
In my early teens, Pirates of Penzance and Romeo & Juliet at the Minack were the absolute highlights of a summer holiday to Cornwall. (Come to think of it, there was a fair bit of G&S scattered through my childhood, Mum loved it and passed that love on to me).
First West End show was Annie, at 17 - a ticket in the gods as I passed through London on my way home from two months in Europe before catching the late train home, arriving in Devon with the newspapers at 4am the next day.
Then I moved to London and a habit formed...
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Post by londonmzfitz on Mar 1, 2016 13:09:08 GMT
My older sister bought panto tickets for me and my younger sister, Cilla Black in Aladdin at the London Palladium, which (ta google) was 1970. I'd have been 11.
First play - School trip, The Taming of the Shrew, which we were "doing" for "O" Level, Susan Hampshire at Kate, Nicky Henson as Petrucio, at the Shaw Theatre on the Euston Road. 5 November 1974. I have the ticket stub somewhere. Something absolutely magical happened. Brought Shakespeare off the page.
First musical - Pirates of Penzance with Tim Curry, Michael Praed, Pamela Stephenson, George Cole, which I saw 3 times, and still have the programme (dusty and dog-eared), with Yakety Yak at the Astoria around the same time.
Memories!
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Post by 49thand8th on Mar 1, 2016 18:15:18 GMT
The first thing I ever saw on stage was a children's theatre production of... Pinocchio? Maybe. Or Snow White.
First professional show: Miss Saigon, Los Angeles 1995 First Broadway show: Les Miserables revival, 2007 First West End show: Jersey Boys, 2009
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Post by missmelon on Mar 3, 2016 10:28:10 GMT
First thing I have a vague memory of seeing was Jack and the Beanstalk at my local theatre during panto season. I was probably about 4 or 5? And I don't remember the panto itself, just the fact that I had a dream that night where the giant came into the house and my nan (family was all staying with her for the night) pulled some major kung fu fighting moves on him... First proper theatre memory would probably be seeing Cats for my 8th birthday, a few months before it's original London run finished. Absolutely fell in love with the show, got the stage film version and grew up watching that. Still love it, saw it in London twice last year (Kerry Ellis, such a good Grizabella!) and then have tickets to see it on tour in June. Safe to say it's still one of my favourite musicals!
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Post by Peach on Mar 3, 2016 11:15:31 GMT
My first time was panto when I was about 4, Tony Blackburn and Ann Aston in Cinderella at a theatre in East Ham that is no doubt something else now.
Then a primary school trip to see The Plotters of Cabbage Patch Corner at Sadlers Wells.
My first Shakespeare was Twelfth Night, probably at Theatre Royal Stratford. I don't remember who was in the cast, only that Sebastian was hot and his scenes with Antonio had quite an effect on 15 year old me.
Also saw a pre ALW version of Phantom of the Opera around the same time.
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Post by zsazsa on Mar 3, 2016 13:25:04 GMT
First experience of theatre was, like many in this country, pantomime. It was Sinbad The Sailor at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness and featured many of the cast from Scottish soap opera 'Take The High Road'.
The first musical I saw onstage was an amateur production of 'Calamity Jane' by Lochaber Showstoppers in Fort William.
My first pro show was 'The Phantom Of The Opera' at the Edinburgh Playhouse.
First west end show was 'Starlight Express' and my first Broadway show was 'The King And I' last year.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2016 13:47:16 GMT
I know I went to see 'Robinson Crusoe' as a smallish child but have zero memory of it except that I got a badge...
We didn't really do theatre when I was a kid (too poor...still am thanks to my theatre habit) so my first 'proper' theatre was as a teenager seeing Gillian Anderson in 'What the Night is For' ...nothing like a bit of adultery for a first trip to the theatre. However I was enchanted with the experience (and Roger Allam) and fell hard and fast. Despite listening to musicals from a young age the first musical I saw was The Boy From Oz on Broadway, and again it was all downhill from there...
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Post by RedRose on Mar 4, 2016 12:32:47 GMT
The Christmas Plays during Primary School - massive waste of time and money -next city with a theatre over 1,5 hours away, we got there by bus. Very badly adapted German fairytales. First time I was impressed by theatre was a touring production of The Physicists at a small location (another school trip) I was 13 or 14 and my love of theatre had started on that day. Since then I have enjoyed all of my theatre school trips and went even voluntarily when others preferred to watch a pop concert.
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Post by greenlantern on Mar 4, 2016 23:04:05 GMT
First Professional show I saw was - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at Swansea Grand First West End Show I saw was - Les Miserables with Linzi Hately as Eponine First Broadway Show I was was - Tarzan
I still remember each one vividly and the feelings that accompanied them.
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