Streaming and IG LIVE performance thread

Thank you for that suggestion. Joseph was much better using YouTube on the TV. Not perfect but significantly better.

Not entirely sure if this counts, but several West End/UK artists have joined Cameo, which is a website where you pay money to get personalised video messages from a celebrity/performer. Several people I support aren't really charging more than £15 which in my opinion is reasonable, as any videos that I've had have been very good effort - e.g. people have learned new songs on request, done fully choreographed musical numbers and used professional equipment such as recording mics.

If anyone is considering getting one, always use the website and not the app. Apple/Google take a cut from Cameo which makes the app more expensive. Website is www.cameo.com.

Friday Night Is Music Night on Radio 2 tomorrow night, 7pm - Best Of The West End concert from the Royal Albert Hall. Not live, it was held in March. Cast include Ramin Karimloo, Marisha Wallace, Mazz Murray, Ben Forster, Ruthie Henshall, Lauren Samuels... 😀

What's the source? I can't find it on their website and there's something else in the schedule.

I found myself a bit conflicted on Ostermeier's vision of the play, perhaps because I have such a relentless crush on a vision (John Haidar's for Headlong) that was the complete opposite.

The world Ostermeier's characters inhabit is one of merciless power politics, but he doesn't care about why it is like that, he just cares about exposing it for what it is. And he doesn't care about his characters, either, in fact he seems to despise them a little. Which is, of course, a fair point of view, but it somehow felt so clinical, so harsh, so brutal... I personally felt it stripped the play of some of its possibilities. His Richard's deformity felt literally just like an augmented depiction of everyone else's pure ruthlessness, he himself nothing but a mirror(ed) reflection of the society he lives in. 
I thought there were some great ideas in it - my favourite perhaps the glitter jacket and the snail fist-bump as an illustration that politics is one big 'stage' anyway, a joke, that language is worthless because there is no integrity behind it, and the fact that they 'straightened' Richard out for coronation with the corset and neck brace, because there is no politician that cannot be 'polished' to suit the purpose of power, as nasty as he may be. (Oh, and those fake hugs when everyone agreed to make peace with each other at the King's command! Those were beautiful!) I loved tiny details like that. But overall, the play felt a bit 'hollow', it was about one thing and one thing only.

Consequently, while I found Eidinger's performance absolutely incredible, I missed excavating and discovering some depth to his character. 
I've seen some other Richards this past year, and they all exhibited traits that were slightly odd to me, or made no sense (driven by their respective directors' desire to leave their mark, I guess, but it just didn't work for me). Ostermeier's/Eidinger's wasn't like that, he made sense, he was just pretty one-dimensional as a character, reduced to banal evil. Consequently, his unfortunate demise came so suddenly, but failed to move me. But maybe I've just failed to pick up on something in it that Ostermeier wanted me to.
Overall, I enjoyed both Eidinger's performances tremendously, but found 'Hamlet' to work better as a play in Ostermeier's vision.

I hope Schaubuhne show both again, though. I would love a repeat viewing.

Last minute changes to the Radio2 timetable tomorrow according to Ben Forster's Instagram, new airdate for the RAH concert TBC.

Official London Theatre has put together a calendar of upcoming streaming stuff

officiallondontheatre.com/get-your-theatre-fix/

I agree - I watched it for Eidinger's performance, but the rest of the court paled into identikit insignificance and as a whole it didn't work for me in that sense (and making Margaret male was unforgivable - I'd like to see some sex-swapped roles the other way, thanks! This company seems to operate on the Smurfette principle, very male, very white).

He did it well - my issue is the casting. In all the Schaubuhne productions I've seen, there have been few women in the cast. Hamlet doubled Gertrude and Ophelia - I get the point being made about Hamlet's attitude to women, but why not cast actresses 'sexblind' in some of the male roles, acting 'male'?

7pm tonight.

Well, I watched about half an hour of that Curve Importance of Being Earnest, and I hated it. It's a good play, but that felt like a bad 6th form production to me. The sound was dreadful, and they were all shouting and rushing all the lines. Not for me.