bickypeg

Oh i didnt like his marius, vocals were ok but an actor he isnt. Reminded me of nick jonas

Showstopper, on 20 April 2013 - 12:01 AM, said:

Tommy died two years ago and nobodies noticed

Saw this last night. I will do my best not to be too hysterical about it, and what follows is just my take on it, not what is gospel...

Some parts of it I enjoyed; mainly the large production numbers of the bigger hits - aside from the ridiculous blow up things in Spice Up Your Life. Choreography was largely very tight too, it seemed. The number Viva Forever was beautifully rendered by Ben Cura too, I adored that arrangement. The pit sounded phenomenal throughout, so hats off to the MD and his team; the sound quality was brilliant and so loud as well; I seem to remember thinking the same coming away from Ghost.

Great performances few and far between. Notably from Hannah as Viva; adored her voice, and loved Kirstie Skivington who was on as Diamond, very well suited. In addition, Hatty Preston's Minty was great, with impeccable timing, but the hash-tag thing began to grate on me towards the end. Sally Ann Triplett and Simon Adkins did solid jobs too, thought they were a bit under-used but can of course see why the focus is largely on the four girls.

Now the book. It's just dreadful. Coarse joke after ridiculous near-profanity after coarse joke after another (etc). Some got laughs, some certainly didn't. I thought Act 1 held up fairly well but about 15 minutes into Act 2 the whole thing just falls apart. It was the first time I've ever felt uncomfortable in a West End theatre. Seated high up in the (near full) Upper Circle, there just reached a point where everyone was looking at each other as if to say, 'what on earth are we witnessing here?'. Cue heads in hands and much muttering and laughing throughout the sparsely thin dialogue that made up the rest of the show. 2 Become 1 is a cringe-fest. Agree with previous posters on the abrupt ending but was nice to see the girls back together one last time. And the blasting mega-mix at the end is all very well but is surely an effort to try and get people to dance away the previous 2 hours' troubles!

I am not going to slag off the actors because I appreciate they all do the best job the can with the material given. But the characters of Suzi, Johnny, Simone, Karen, Lance and to a certain extent, Mitch, I just found so bland and irritating. They added nothing to the story really, and Simone in particular has far too much stage time. The over-arching concept itself is not a bad one at all but it could have been executed so much better. But safe to say, with such a talented cast, I left the theatre disappointed for them: that despite what I am sure is a mammoth effort each night, the end product is largely forgettable.

Had the misfortune of seeing this the other weeks and yikes it is a shocker in spite of a very impressive cast. But so predictable and tedious. makes WWRY seem practically Chekovian. A shame as I was quite looking forward to it.

wh... I just... I just donn't... Ok...

Show pairs are extending their 2for 1 offer on Viva "due to popular demand". That's the funniest thing I've seen this week - selling cheap theatre tickets due to popular demand

I attended a master class with Elaine Paige Tuesday afternoon at the Haymarket Theatre which was truly excellent with some fascinating and indispensable advise regarding performing musical theatre. She had seen Once and her comments on the performances in this show were very perceptive - I will not repeat them here. Suffice it to say her comments did not lead me to beat a path to the box office for this.

Still dont think this will be a hit.  It will be lucky to get passed its booking period.Plenty of empty seats when I went. The publicity about this show isnt extensive either. The two leads are excellent and so it the music. In particular the emotional and haunting piano solo and the studio session song -When your minds made up. The main weaknesses are the story, pace, dialogue and some very dodgy acting by the supporting cast. If you sit in the upper circle the sound is not good and the impact of the show isnt as effective. It was ok but it didnt blow me away like most people who have been.

Theatremonkey's review has this comment which I think sums this up - "Everybody thinks “The Book of Mormon” is THE West End show of 2013. They are wrong, it is “Once.”"  http://www.theatremonkey.com/PHOENIXbooking.htm

Ensemble in the sense that they're all equally responsible for what a mess it is?

Saw the final preview last night - was so impressed by it. Beautiful staging, beautiful music. The two leads are just brilliant, both deserve awards when they come round next year. They sing beautifully, but most importantly their characters are so believable. Never seen such subtle acting in a musical in a 1,000 seat theatre! Very classy.I loved Book of Mormon, but really think this show is in another league - this is by far the more innovative show in terms of taking musical theatre into a different area/style. I really hope the critics embrace it. If there's any justice this will be a massive success. Go see.

Programme nice... £6 though.

Hannah Waddingham - Send In The Clowns

Honoured Guest, on 08 April 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

That's probably the most cogent explanation of the piece I've seen but when watching it no overarching theme seemed apparent.  It's a series of vignettes about unrelated and unalike individuals who killed or tried to kill a president for their own very unique motives.  It's a first class entertainment because it's Sondheim but, for me, it lacks the crucial point of view.

Wonder if they'll change the beginning of act two tonight?

dannyboyjohnson, on 07 April 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

Oh dear. Its basically that no one is doing anything much with it. It works in the original because Geri starts it with her distinctive tone and then Melanie C (particularly)  Mel B and Emma take it away with theirs. If you sing it without distinctive vocals it just goes nowhere . I thought they had hopes of getting that  with some of the people they reportedly had in the workshop -  but going for raw, inexperienced vocalists just produces something that sounds like an X factor audition that Simon won't like.

It would work well on stage if you just had Melanie C's track done with half the mpact , and if you made it a big spectacular,  as in
https://www.youtube....h?v=kEK7Bm6A6sE
Or if you had 4 people who sound distinctive as in the original
https://www.youtube....h?v=5JD6ejmlpa8

I think they  are doomed though by their decision to try and avoid having anyone identifiable as individual Spice Girls. As soon as you sing this properly someone has to sing Melanie C's distinctive bits. - as soon as you do that,  you identify one of the girls as her - and it doesn't take long then  to identify them all and identify who is not there at all. Basically,  you have a musical where you have Spice Girls songs that don't, and can't, sound like the Spice Girls - which doesn't strike me as one of the smarter ideas in Musical Theatre history.