Category: theatre

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Another week in theatre…

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Two more shows this week and I just can’t stop myself from telling you about them! But that’s pretty on brand for me at this point, so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

First up was Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which has had a Christmas season in the West End. I saw the original cast when they were touring the UK back in 2014 (I was shocked when I realised how long ago that was). Since then the Mischief Theatre Crew have done all sorts of things – many of which I’ve seen (Groan Ups, Magic Goes Wrong, the TV series) and now fresh from a run on Broadway some of the original crew are back in the show before it goes out (with a slightly different cast) on a 2024 tour. Having been asked to explain panto earlier in the week on a Discord group I treated myself to a trip to this not quite a panto but based on a panto. I was worried that it wouldn’t be as funny as it was the first time, but I shouldn’t have. It’s still side achingly funny in the first half and when it takes a turn in the second it brings it all back around in true panto style.

Heres the trailer for the TV version of Peter Pan Goes Wrong on YouTube- although I think the TV version doesn’t do the theatre experience justice.If it’s coming to your local theatre, and you like comedy based on physical humour, then this might be your thing. I think if you’ve seen and enjoyed shows like Noises Off then it will work for you.

And then on Thursday night we were at my local for Yipee Kay Yay – which is a one-man retelling of the classic Christmas movie Die Hard. I would suggest having seen the film before you go – we did a refresher the week before to make sure we were ready for it, but I think Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber is nearly well known enough that you’ll get some laughs out of it even if you haven’t. I bought the tickets for Him Indoors for Christmas because he loves a cheesy action movie and he laughed consistently the whole way though (so did I). I asked him to sum it up for you all and his response was: “one very enthusiastic man’s poetic take on the Die Hard movie and how it’s affected his life”. In case that doesn’t make any sense, here’s the 30 second trailer!

Now I’ll admit this is harder to see than Peter Pan Goes Wrong, unless you’re reading this in Oxford on Sunday or live in Adelaide – because it’s going to the festival there in March. But it was a hoot and he said at the end that word of mouth was important- so it’s the least I can do. Here’s the Website in case they add more dates.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong has a week left in the West End, then it’s touring til April. Here’s their website to check if it’s coming to you.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

theatre

Not A Book: Another Week in Theatre

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Ok, ok, this is starting to look a little like boasting, but these were the last things I had in the ticket box before Christmas so I’m going with it!

The first show of the week was Noises Off – again! Yes I only saw it at the start of the year, but it’s back in the West End for Christmas, with a slightly tweaked cast – with Tamzin Outhwaite, Matthew Horne and James Fleet joining Felicity Kendal, Alexander Hanson and the gang. This time I booked steaks tickets on the side that Lloyd-the-Director hangs out in during the first act, so that added a little some thing – and it’s still hilarious.

Tuesdaynight was a really last minute trip to see Private Lives – not the production that I saw at the Donmar Warehouse but one that had older leads with Nigel Havers and Patricia Hodge as Elyot and Amanda before it closed this weekend. I still love the play – but this was the least favourite of the three productions of it that I’ve now seen ( and it should be noted that I loved the Anna Chancellor and Toby Stephens so much I went twice) but it was interesting to see it done with a different age of cast.

And finally, no photo but on Thursday night we went to see some comedy – Dave Gorman at my local theatre’s and that was so, so, so funny. I nearly cried laughing at one point. If you’ve never seen Davec and his PowerPoints I thorough recommend him. I think this is the back end of this tour, but we’ve seen him before and he’s consistently very funny.

And that’s the lot, but it spreads feel like quite a lot – have a great Sunday everyone!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: My Week in Theatre

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A bit of a change this week because I had two nights out at the theatre, both of which were great and both of which were sort of one off things. So I’m bundling them together today because I wanted to talk about them anyway!

So I started the week with a night out at the Jinkx and Dela Christmas show – I went last year and it was fab, and it was equally brilliant this year. BenDeLaCreme is my all time favourite from Drag Race and she and Jinkx Monsoon are a brilliant pair. This years show is a bit meta – they decide they don’t want to do a holiday show, but get trapped by the show and have to do it anyway to try and escape and it’s really a lot of fun. The UK dates are over now, but there’s nearly two dozen across the US before Christmas – and if they’re coming near to you it’s definitely worth the trip.

Tuesday night was Mandy Patinkin, doing a solo concert run in the West End for just under two weeks. I went because he’s a bit of a Broadway legend – Tony award for originating Che in Evita, original George from Sunday in the Park with George – and I like to see the big names from across the pond when they come over here if I possibly can, but I wasn’t expecting him to manage to make me cry – twice! It’s a really well put together show, with loads of songs, some you’ll have heard of, some you won’t (or at least I hadn’t) and it’s just him and his pianist and a chair (and a towel). That’s it. And yet his singing – even at seventy years old – can make you feel so much emotion. Really worth it, even though there is very little legroom in the side of the circle at the Lyric. So very little. I think it must have been where I saw Avenue Q with Him Indoors years ago where we were nearly late and the seats were so cramped that Him Indoors never managed to get into the spirit of the show. I won’t forget again…

I have two more trips planned this week – I’m making the most of the run in to Christmas while I can!

Have a great Sunday everyone.

theatre

Not a Book: Old Friends

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This was my Tuesday evening entertainment this week and of course I was going to write about it, given that I bought the tickets the day that they went on sale and have been looking forward to it for months.

Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is the West End run of the tribute show that Cameron Mackintosh put on with some of the best known and most loved songs from his long producing relationship with the late musical genius. It’s on a limited run in the West End with headline stars Bernadette Peters (her first ever West End show!!) and Lea Salonga (Princess Jasmine herself) along with support from West End powerhouses like Janie Dee and Joanna Riding.

And I was in musical theatre heaven – I’ve seen Company, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, Follies (three times!), Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along so there were a lot of songs that were familiar to me. I have the Sondheim 80th birthday prom on the Tivo and have watched it more times than I can count, and I’ve watched the various documentaries about his life that have popped up in the last few years. So it was wonderful to get what is essentially a greatest hits concert – and to try and guess who was going to sing what – the programme has a song list but not who is doing which bits. And there are plenty of options for each one – as more than one of the cast have played each role. I was mostly right, but there are a few gender-swapped suprises. And it definitely brought home for me how wonderfully Sondheim wrote songs for older women. It’s not just Send in the Clowns, it’s Losing My Mind, and Everything’s Coming Up Roses, I’m Still Here, The Boy from and Ladies Who Lunch AND MORE. Just wonderful. I’ve been humming the songs for days.

How it will work for you if you don’t know your Sondheim, I’m not sure, so I had a bit of a hunt around to find the trailer for it with the most singing in it (see above!) but I think there are enough songs here that you would know – there’s West Side Story here too and A Little Night Music that you would probably enjoy it – and at least come away wanting to see the full version of some of the shows. I loved it so much I would go back again. And who knows, I might well go back and see it again.

It would be remiss of me to end this post without mentioning the amazingly talented Haydn Gwynne, who died this week and who should have been in this show. She had to withdraw days before previews started for “sudden personal reasons” – which sadly turned out to be a cancer diagnosis. And now, just weeks later she’s gone. I saw her in Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown and The Audience – and I know she would have been fabulous in this – because she was in the original tribute show last year. So leave you with part of her performance of Ladies Who Lunch from that show, which if you’re in the UK you can find on iPlayer to watch again – which we did on Friday night.

See you tomorrow everyone.

theatre

Not a Book: Crazy For You

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I actually saw two shows in the West End in four days last week, so I guess I could have written about either of them, but as Dr Semmelweiss is a limited run ending at the start of October (and has been selling well so if you don’t already have tickes you might not get them) and Crazy for You is under two months into a six month run, I’ve gone for the musical. Also much as I think Mark Rylance is the greatest actor I’ve ever seen live, I just love Gershwin’s music.

So this is a revival of the early 1990s musical, which in itself was based on the 1930 Ethel Merman vehicle Girl Crazy. The original Broadway production won the Tony, the original West End production won the Olivier, and I suspect this one will probably get some nominations this year. It originated at the Chichester Festival (one year I will make it to Chichester, so much good stuff starts there!) and has come into town with the four leads intact (although I saw the Standby Bobby who was performing for the first time and who was excellent).

To the plot – which feels like it could have come straight from a Fred and Ginger film to be honest: Our hero is Bobby,a wannabe dancer who is working in his family’s bank because he hasn’t been able to persuade any one to give him a role on stage. At the start of the show he tries to convince theatre impresario Bella Zangler to give him a chance without any success. Then his mother appears to tell him that he needs to take over her share of the bank and to do this he needs to go to Nevada to foreclose on a theatre in the town of Deadrock. Deadrock is a mining town that has seen better days, filled with cowboys and one woman – Polly – daughter of the theatre owner. Bobby arrives in town, falls in love with Polly at first sight and comes up with a plan to save the theatre, but when she finds out he’s the man sent by the bank, she suspects it’s a trick and won’t give him the time of day. And so Bobby decides to pretend to be Bella Zangler and sends for his friends the Zangler chorus girls to put on a show to save the theatre. It’s all going reasonably well – I mean except for the bit where Polly thinks Bobby is someone else, until the real Zangler turns up in town to see what his dancers are up to.

And that’s a rough outline of some of the key points of the first act, and as much as I’m going to tell you so I don’t ruin all the fun of anyone going to see it. It’s got a bunch of Gershwin’s most recognisable songs – pilfered from all over his catalouge – like Embraceable You, Someone to Watch Over Me, I Got Rhythm and three from my favourite Fred and Ginger movie Shall We Dance – the title number, Slap that Bass and They Can’t Take That Away From Me.

It’s quite an old school plot and it’s a quite old fashioned musical in many ways and there were what sounded to me some fairly ropey American accents , but it’s directed by Susan Stroman so the dance routines are absolutely on point – with some wonderful tap dancing – as well as some great physical comedy and obviously the music is wonderful and they’ve got a nice big band to play it (in West End terms). If you like shows like Anything Goes, or the recent stage version of Top Hat, then this is a show for you.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

theatre

Not a Book: A Strange Loop

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This week has seen at the Proms to hear Beethoven and Elgar but also to the Barbican to see a new musical. I have more Proms to come – and they’re one offs – so today we’re talking about A Strange Loop.

A Strange Loop is a musical about a queer black Broadway theatre usher writing a musical about a queer black theatre usher writing a musical. Still with me? Good. Usher’s story is told by him and his six Thoughts, who are the inner voices in his head and also play all the other characters in the play. It’s very meta. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2020 and the Tony for best musical in 2021.

It’s a really powerful piece – and although I wasn’t sure where it was going or how it was going to end, it did come back around (yes, that’s a loop reference!) from a very bleak point about 20 minutes from the end. The music is great – I came out humming some of the songs and the cast are giving stellar performances. It is definitely not a show for younger audiences – there’s a warning that it’s not suitable for under 16s because of the themes it’s dealing with. So I’m not surprised that it’s on a limited run at the Barbican rather than in the West End. It’s definitely worth seeing if you’re a musical fan though – and I’m not sure when it will come around again. And of course there aren’t that many musicals that have won the Pulitzer – it’s the first since Hamilton, and one of only ten total. It runs until September 9.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Buffy Revamped

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Happy Sunday everyone. Did I spend my Saturday night laughing about Buffy? Yes I absolutely did, and now I’m going to tell you about it!

In Buffy Revamped, comedian Brendan Murphy takes you through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 70 minutes mainly in character as Spike but he does pretty much play everyone at some point or another. But not Riley. Because there would be no point to playing Riley. He was pointless. Anyway, this is full of 90s in jokes as well as all the in jokes about the show and quotes galore. And you’ll get to do a bit of singing too.

I had an absolute ball – it’s funny and inventive and made me feel just the right amount of nostalgia. It’s fast paced and rattles through the events of the series – at the start you wonder if it’s going to get everything you want it to mention in, but some how it does. It’s not surprise to me that it is off to the Edinburgh Fringe in August because it seems like the perfect fit for it. It’s also touring all over the place before and after that – including a couple of nights in London next week. Well worth an evening if it’s coming near you.

If the apocalypse comes, beep me.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Post Covid theatre

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Writing about Noises Off last week got me thinking about the post-Covid theatre scene and what’s been going on for the last couple of years. I was a big theatre goer before the pandemic and it was one of the things I missed the most, so I was straight back in as soon as I could and I’ve been trying to see as much as I can, but there are definitely some changes – beyond the fact that I changed jobs during the pandemic and work shifts less now which has changed things a bit for me personally.

When the West End first started to reopen, it was mostly just the long runners but it is starting to perk up again now with new stuff coming in – even if it’s revivals or return engagements. I’ve revisited a few of my old favourites, but it’s been quite hard to get good ticket deals, because there weren’t as many shows going – which I’m hoping is because they’ve got lots of demand rather than the fact that the prices are so high now they can afford to not sell as many tickets. Because the prices have gone up, and my ticket budget hasn’t gone up by the same amount.

I saw Sylvia at the Old Vic the other week, which had a run as a work in progress there in 2018 but is now back as a full production – which I think shows you the effect on the time line of shows that the pandemic has had. New musicals often take a couple of years to make it to the West End (if they make it to the West End) because there is a process of workshopping and looking for backers that takes place as well as potentially trying it out out of town. And because everything has been closed, that hasn’t been going on at all. Hopefully we’ll start to get some properly new stuff soon – maybe some of the stuff that was workshopping when everything shut down in 2020 will make it’s way through. So far there have been plenty of plays (particularly plays with small casts) but not so many musicals. The good news is that transfer of the Tony winning Oklahoma revival started its West End transfer this week – after a Young Vic run last year. And it’s definitely encouraging that that Chichester Festival Theatre has announced a full programme for this year this week, including new plays, old plays and a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, which is one of his shows that I haven’t seen so I’m seriously hoping that it is good and gets a London transfer.

Outside the West End though it is still a little slow. I used to see a fair bit of cabaret and comedy in the off-West End scene, and that really hasn’t come back much yet. Whether it’s the fact that the margins are too small, or the venues have closed or even that there aren’t as many people around in London I don’t know, but it’s been a struggle to find stuff that I want to go to so far.

Regional theatre is running on a slower time table too. We used to see quite a bit at our local theatres, but most of what has been coming through so far has been touring productions of shows that we’ve already seen – either in the West end or on previous tours. Northampton’s Royal and Derngate used to be a reasonably big regional production house, but that hasn’t properly come back into gear yet, and the artistic director has announced that he’s leaving this spring, so that may also have put a crimp on things. Fingers crossed that the new artistic director brings as many good productions as the last few have and we’ll see some new shows in Northampton that eventually make their way into the West End or national tours the way they used to.

But there definitely seems to be light at the end of the tunnel at last – and if some more tourists come back to London, maybe we’ll be back to what used to be normal by the end of the summer.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Noises Off

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Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone. Its not an NFL themed post today – but if you want some American football action, may I point you at last year’s post. Instead I am back at the theatre where I’ve had a good week – in the space of seven days I’ve seen Sylvia, the new musical about Sylvia Pankhurst and Noises Off, Michael Frayne’s classic comedy about a touring production of a farce. I’m writing w the latter because I love a book within a book and this is a play with in a play. And it made me laugh until my sides ached.

Noises Off follows a theatre company as they put on a production of a sex farce called Nothing On. Each of the three acts is the same act of the play – starting with the disastrous final rehearsal, then the backstage view several weeks into the tour and finally the last night of the tour from the front. I don’t know what else to say without ruining it. Tempers fray? Personal relationships… sour? Anyway as the play goes on you see the show descend into chaos as the actors’ personality quirks and flaws slowly but undermine the show.

The play has just turned forty and you don’t really get sex farces any more, so on that front it is a bit dated, but I think it still works, especially as Frayn apparently has been lightly revising it over the years. I saw it a decade ago at the Old Vic and I think it was just as funny this time around. We went for my mum’s birthday (happy birthday Jo!) and she thinks she’s seen it about every ten years since it was new – and thinks this one is the best she’s seen. And I can vouch for the fact that she laughed until she cried! I think the second act is my favourite, because I love the backstage view, as you hear the action out front while the actors frantically mime out their issues behind the scenes. Although the final pay off is just genius and build on everything that you’ve seen all evening.

It’s not cutting edge or avant garde, but it is very funny and sometimes the old ones are the best ones aren’t they? And it’s got lashings of slapstick humour as the cast hurl themselves around trying to keep the show going in increasingly difficult circumstances. Just brilliant.

Happy Sunday everyone.

theatre

Not a Book: Best of Enemies

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Getting this in quickly before the barrage of Christmas posts as I went to see this the other week when it was in late preview stages and it’s now open and has been reviewed.

Best of Enemies is a new play by James Graham about the televised debates between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jnr at the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1968. The two men represented the new left and the new right respectively and hated what each other stood for. In real life, they remained enemies for the rest of their lives – with lawsuits and counter suits – extending even beyond Buckley’s death when Vidal was still happy to insult him. The play uses transcripts of the dialogue from the TV debate for those sections and imagines what was going on behind the scenes.

In the play Buckley is David Harewood and Vidal is Zachary Quinto. Casting a black actor as the white Buckley does highlight the times when Buckley is talking about race – but that’s not the main focus of the clashes between the men shown in the play. Quinto is excellent as Vidal – arch and snarky and supremely confident in his own abilities and beliefs. The staging – as you can see from the photo has TV like windows – that can show you the control room behind or be used as TV screens to project the actors during the debates, or the sections of rival newscasters talking you through the events of the day.

The play is making the argument that the debates are the start of the commentator-led, TV politics that has turned into the polarisation you see on social media – and while that may sound like a bit of a reach, the debate sections of the play feel very timely – almost spookily so at times. I thought it was really, really good – and if you’re in London before the 18th of February and fancy a show, this would be a good pick.