Tag: musicals

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Avenue Q Revival

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Another Sunday, another show! This time it’s the return to the West End of one of my favourite shows, Avenue Q. Eighteen months ago I wrote about the 18th birthday concert staging featuring the original cast but now its back in the West End until the end of August coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of its West End debut.

Avenue Q is the story of Princeton, a new college graduate, and the people he meets in his rundown neighbourhood after he moves to New York after graduating. The cast is a mix of puppets and humans and the vibe is very much Sesame Street but for adults. Life has changed a lot since this show first hit the stage – smart phones, apps, streaming, *gestures around* the world. And the question for producers staging any revival of any show is how much do you put on the show as it was written and how much do you update to make it work for a modern theatre goer. There were always a few changes in the London version compared to the US one – Gary Coleman was originally a woman on Broadway but was a played by a man in London and lyrics changed to explain Gary’s backstory more clearly, Christmas Eve in London says she worked in a Chinese restauran rather than a Korean deli etc and this revival has mostly followed that pattern – a few light updates to jokes and references but not whole sale cuts or rewrites.

As I said in my prior post about the show, Q has a special place in my heart because when I first saw it I was at the same stage in my life as the characters were and that makes it hard for me to judge how it will come across to people who have never seen the show before and who don’t remember the early 2000s, hard as it is for me to believe that those people can be adults. Now of course that didn’t matter for the concert staging – it was just two performances on one day but for a five month run it sort of does and I’m fascinated to see how this performs in the West End. The night that I went the audience laughed at the first joke and I relaxed. But I was there early in the second week of previews (in fact I spotted original West End cast member now Associate Director Julie Atherton in the audience watching) so potentially a house more loaded with existing fans than it will be later in the run. But that just gives me an excuse to go back and see it again – not that I needed one! I enjoyed it – and enjoyed the twenty minutes I spent on the phone to Him Indoors analysing the changes on the way home too.

Have a great Sunday!

book adjacent, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Into the Woods

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It’s Easter Sunday and if you have a long weekend I hope that it is going well so far, and not too encumbered by the sort of weather that a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK always seems to cause. For the third weekend in a row I have a theatre related post for you and to be honest, I don’t think it’s the end of the run of show posts because I’ve seen a lot of shows in the last six weeks – including two this week alone. But this week I’m going with another Sondheim show to join my posts about Here We Are and the Frogs, Merrily We Roll Along and Old Friends.

Into The Woods is Stephen Sondheim’s take on some of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, intertwining them to tell the story of a childless baker and his wife who try to life a curse that has been placed on them by a witch but finding her a series of items in the woods. This brings them into contact with other story book characters. We’re taken through the story by a narrator. I can’t really tell you much more about the plot than that without giving too much away, but the story takes the familiar fairy tale tropes and plays with them. Sondheim’s music is often tricky to perform – there are difficult harmonies and tunes that don’t go where you expect. Into The Woods has got repeating motifs that evolve through the show – you’ll come out humming snatches rather than having an earworm of one tune stuck in your head. The lyrics are brilliant – clever and often witty and even the spoken lines have a rhythm to them.

In the Stephen Sondheim canon, Into the Woods comes after Sunday in the Park with George and is the second of his three collaborations with James Lapine and is at the tail end of his run of what was probably his best work. I had seen the movie of Into the Woods, but this is the first production that I’ve seen in person – the last time it was in London was 2010 when I wasn’t seeing as much theatre for various real world reasons. That production had Hannah Waddingham and Jenna Russell, this one has Jamie Parker and Kate Fleetwood. Now when I (first) went to see it Jamie Parker got injured midway through the first act* and was replaced by his understudy, and there were also understudies on for The Baker’s Wife and Little Red. But I enjoyed it so much that I went back this week to try and catch some of the people that I missed before they leave (more on that later) and to get a different view of the stage.

And as you can see – I was higher up and further back but straight on and that means I could see a lot more detail of the set and the action behind. If you’re going to see this then try and be as front on as you can – I think probably ideally a level down from this seat in Gallery 2 but those seats are pricey – so for the money this was excellent. And I did get to see all of Jamie Parker this time with the original Baker’s Wife Katie Brayben. There were still a few understudies on though – including Little Red again but also Jennifer Hepburn as the Witch. All the performances were excellent, but I can imagine that when it’s the full main cast it is really quite something because I definitely have preferences having seen it twice. I can really see why it earned 11 nominations at the Oliviers – as I said in my Producers review last week I’m expecting the winners to come from this and Paddington. That said I’m expected possibly more Paddington given that Paddington took the Whats On Stage awards – although they are voted for by the public and the Oliviers are voted by the industry so there maybe a difference there. I haven’t seen Paddington because tickets are like gold dust until the summer so I can’t judge, but this is truly brilliant.

In fact it’s been such a success that the run at the Bridge has extended until the end of May, having been originally due to end on April 20th. There is a cast change that comes with that though – the details of which were announced last week and is the reason why I hurried back this week to try and catch Parker and Brayben before they left. The replacements are pretty good too – Rachel Tucker, John Owen Jones and Melanie Le Barrie are all names in their own right, and Hughie O’Donnell is who I saw take over as the Baker mid-performance and he was very good too. Not going to lie, I am tempted to go back again..

Happy Easter if you’re celebrating, happy Sunday if you’re not!

Into the Woods is at the Bridge Theatre until May 30th

*if you know the show, he got injured somewhere in the sequence in the wood shed.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Producers (again)!

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Yes, yes, yes, I realise that this is the third time I have talked about The Producers here. Once when I saw it at the Menier in late 2024 and wrote a review, and then I reminded you of it when the transfer to the West End started last summer. But this week I went back again (third visit!) and I couldn’t resist.

So as previously mentioned, this is the first West End revival of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, the musical version of his classic movie that sees a Broadway producer and his accountant try to put on a surefire flop that they’ve oversold to investors so they can get rich. This revival has four Olivier nominations (the ceremony is in two week’s time) for Andy Nyman (Max Bialystock), Marc Antolin (Leo Bloom), Trevor Ashley (Roger De Bris) and Best Revival. I think it’s going to struggle to win any of them because it’s such a strong year and they’re up against Paddington and Into the Woods (which have been incredibly well reviewed and taking awards in the run up) but it really is an excellent production of a genius show.

Now I mentioned Andy Nyman there, and the reason that I went back to see the show again this week is because Andy is out of the show until mid-May because he’s doing a play in York, and he’s been replaced by Richard Kind. Now if you don’t recognise the name, you will recognise the face because Kind has been in so many things possibly most notably Only Murders in the Building, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the voice of Bing Bong in Inside Out. But he was also one of the replacement Maxes in the original Broadway production, and was also Max when the show played at the Hollywood Bowl and now he’s bringing it to London. And he’s wonderful. It was only his second night when I went (there was a gala performance on night three though) and he was brilliant and more impressively it already looked like he and Marc Antolin had been working together for months, despite the fact that he’s joining a very different production of a show he was last in more than a decade ago. Kind is 69 now, and he’s a tad slower around the stage than Nyman and had a couple of moments where the muscle memory of the old version seemed to kick in, but I’m pretty sure that will iron out – if it hasn’t already.

As you can see I was quite a long way back in the stalls, but that didn’t really matter because it’s not a show that has a lot of stuff happening high up and some how Kind manages to make the more subtle choices he makes reach the back of the room. If you haven’t seen the show already, you could make this your excuse and if you have it’s worth going to see the different version of Max that Kind is giving. I’ve had the tunes from the show stuck in my head all week – in fact some of them are so catchy that they started being earworms at the mere thought of seeing the show again!

The Producers is on at the Garrick Theatre and is booking until mid-September, Richard Kind is in it until May 9 with Andy Nyman returning on May 11. And if you want to see Nyman, there’s a code on the show’s website for some money off if you’re booking more than 8 weeks ahead…

Have a great Sunday everyone.

book adjacent, theatre

Book Adjacent: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

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I know it’s meant to be a series post on a Friday, but I’ve seen so much stuff recently that if I save it all for Sundays, some of it will nearly have finished by the time I get to it. So you’ve got a bonus theatre review today – of the musical based on Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

The story, for those (like me!) who don’t know it, is about Harold Fry a retiree in Devon who receives a letter from Queenie, a former colleague from 20 years earlier saying that she is in hospice care and dying of cancer. He writes a (not very good) letter back – but when he gets to the post box, can’t bring himself to post it so walks to the next one, and then the next one until he decides he’s going to go and visit Queenie – all 600 plus miles – on foot. As he goes he thinks about his life, his marriage and his son and starts to work through the issues in his past. His journey also acquires a cult following – people following it on social media and even joining him along the way.

I haven’t read the book that this is based on but that really didn’t matter to en joying the show – it just means that I can’t tell you how far this deviates from the book in terms of the story.There is darkness and sadness in the story as it unfolds (which I haven’t gone into because: Spoilers) but ultimately it is a life affirming slice of a normal man’s life who decides to do something abnormal on the spur of the moment. Mark Addy is great as Harold, but Jenna Russell is really heart breaking as his wife Maureen – she was actually nominated for an Olivier award for this last week, and I think she really deserves it. I’m not sure there was a weak performance – but I thought the puppet dog was particularly effective.

The music is by Passenger, who I couldn’t have named a song by but when I looked it up I did know Let Her Go (video below so you can see if you know it too) and I would describe it as sort of folk inspired and fitted really well with the design of the show too. This started at Chichester last year, and I’m glad it’s got a London run so more people can see it.

This is on at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket until April 18th.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Hadestown

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Another week, another theatre review, and given that the Hadestown cast is changing at the end of this week, I would have posted this last weekend, if it wasn’t for the fact that I think more people know about Hadestown than they do The Battle.

Hadestown tells a version of the story of the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the story transposed to an industrial factory version of the underworld, which Eurydice escapes to because of poverty and hunger. The show has a slightly complicated production history, which included a run at the National Theatre in London in 2018 before it went to Broadway and won the Tony for Best Musical Tony in 2019. It then returned to London in 2024 to take up residence at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, where it has proved tremendously popular and commanded ticket prices and availability to match.

This explains why I only just managed to go and see it – I go to a lot of shows and I have rules about how much I will spend. I did try for the period the other summer when the original Broadway cast came over here for a limited run ahead of a pro-shoot, but the fans were there quicker than me to the cheap seats, and so it took a good ticket offer before Christmas to get me there (and if I’d realised it was during the Winter Olympic Skating programme I would have picked a different date!) to see what all the fuss is about. I have a mixed record with Best Musical Tony Winners. I tend to prefer the Big and Fun when it comes to musicals and the Tony’s can sometimes go with the Not Big and Fun option. There are a few years when I look at the nominees and I am genuinely torn between which I like more (La Cage aux Folles vs Sunday in the Park With George in 1984, Avenue Q vs Wicked in 2004 – and I still wish I had had the chance to see Hugh Jackman in Boy from Oz) but in the main I am a commercial musical girl except when it comes to Sondheim.

All of which is to say that I can see why people love this (and I know several people who do) but it is not my thing. It is clever and it is well staged, but it is not a Verity Show. Our show was sold out – yes it was half term week, but there were also a few understudies on and it is clearly the sort of show that has a fan base who want to see as many different people in the roles as possible – because they have a loyalty card you can get stamped to get access to special merch. And I respect that, even as it makes me feel super old, because I would absolutely have been in the market for that for We Will Rock You back in the day. I would probably still have my special WWRY merch in a drawer the way I still have my Gaga t-shirt. So all in all very much a Nice To Tick Off The List for me more than anything else. I can confirm that my current count is 29 out of 76 best musicals (with another 3 if you count amateur productions), 22 out of 49 Best Musical Oliviers and I still have another seven (across the two lists some appear on both) that I could tick off if I pull my finger out and get to the long runners in the West End I still haven’t seen. Maybe 2026 is the year…

Have a Great Sunday!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Titanique

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Don’t panic everyone, it not a Sunday everyone, but we’re into December and I’ve seen so much stuff in recently that I want to talk about and as I try valiantly not to go too Christmas, too fast, and all the bookshops are Christmas central at this point with all the same book and gifts I thought I’d treat you to a bonus (non-Christmas) show today – although it would make a good festive outing if you wanted to, just saying.

So in case you can’t tell from the programme cover, Titanique is a jukebox musical parodying the film Titanic. It features the songs of Celine Dion and is told from Celine’s point of view after she interrupts a tour of a Titanic museum to claim that she is a survivor of the sinking. It’s another short show too – 100 or so minutes, no interval* and it really comes in, does it’s thing and ends on a high without outstaying its welcome.

I actually really struggled with how to describe this because it’s so off the wall but also at times it’s closer to a cabaret or comedy night than it is to a traditional musical. I would need to see it again to be sure, but it felt like there was a fair bit of improv coming from Astrid Harris as Celine. And you can see that dichotomy in the Olivier Awards categories it was in – it won Best Entertainement or Comedy Play (beating among others Ballet Shoes) but also Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Layton Williams as the Iceberg (and various others). Lauren Drew, who was the original Celine was also nominated in Best Actress in a Musical.

I had a great time and would recommend it for people looking for a fun night out, but I think because of all the pop culture references it’s probably more one for adults, and maybe even millennials and up. I’ve never seen the film Titanic, but I’m old enough to remember it coming out and know what happens in it, so all the jokes about the film landed for me all the same. I can feel that this could end up being a show that groups go to on a night out – and there are definitely deals to be had on the tickets to make that happen. It’s in the Criterion which is at the smaller end of West End capacities (as well as being probably the most underground of them all) and also in one of the prime spots for passing footfall on Piccadilly Circus right next to Eros so it has that in its favour to keep it going for a while – The 39 Steps managed nearly a decade in there, and I think The Comedy about a Bank Robbery would have lasted longer than its four years if it hadn’t been for the pandemic. And I liked it enough that I’m not ruling out going back to see how the improv changes – or how a different cast handle it. But there are just so many shows I want to see that I haven’t already been to that I suspect it won’t happen in the near future!

Have a great Sunday.

*which made it three in a row in the West End for me – with Born With Teeth and Clarkston the other two.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Producers is back

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Happy Sunday everyone and your reminder that if you missed the Menier Chocolate production of The Producers last Christmas, it’s now transferred to the West End and previews started last night (30th August). I’m off to see it again in about ten days time – so I may yet report back on how or whether it has changed a lot in the move from a very small theatre to a bigger one, but in the meantime, here is my review from last winter as well as their performance at West End Live in June.

book adjacent, theatre

Book Adjacent: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

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I’ve got another lovely theatre visit to tell you about this Sunday – but if you want to see it in London, you’ll need to hurry, because it is only on in London until September 7th, then it’s back out on tour around the UK.

I can’t believe there’s many people out here who don’t know the story, but in case you don’t the four Pevensie children have been evacuated to escape World War II and find themselves living in a big house, owned by a professor. In the house there is a wardrobe that leads to the land of Narnia, which the children help free from the tyranny of The White Witch, with the help of Aslan the Lion and some talking animals. This is a really neat and compact adaptation – it’s a tight two hours ten including interval, which considering the 2005 movie was two and a half hours, and the 1988 tv series which I grew up on was 6 parts and nearly three hours in total. It’s still got all the stuff you remember – Mr Tunmus, the Turkish Delight, the Beavers, Father Christmas etc – so you won’t be disappointed on that front, but short enough that children (hopefully) don’t get too fidgety*.

I wouldn’t exactly describe this as a musical, but it has got some songs – wartime inspired in the “real” world and then folky ones in Narnia. The supporting cast are playing the instruments as well as dancing and playing multiple characters so they’re a really talented group. The children near me seemed to find Maugrim (the chief of the secret police) scary, but that was the only bit that seemed to be an issue- and I think the child in question was about five. There are some great bits of stage illusion and puppetry too so it would make a great alternative to a panto if you’re near Salford at Christmas.

Honestly it really flew by and I would totally recommend it, maybe not as a first show for children but certainly as an early theatre experience. It’s got some really clever puppetry and set design to turn a stage into a magical land. I don’t even think you really need to be familiar with the original book to enjoy 5)3 show.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is at Sadlers wells until early September and then it goes back out on tour around the UK. You can find tour dates here.

*the night I was there someone had been giving out bags of popcorn and the noise was insane for the first 20 minutes or so, but there wasn’t any restlessness before the interval.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Sondheim Shows

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I did two Stephen Sondheim shows in just over a week and I have thoughts. I mean I always have thoughts, but I particularly do this time. You may remember from my post about Old Friends (which coincidentally has just finished up a run on Broadway) that I have seen a lot of Sondheim documentaries and love a lot of his music.

The first of the duo was Here We Are, Sondheim’s final show which he was working on for about the final decade of his life. It’s based on two Luis Bunel films and is as bonkers as you might expect considering that. It’s also, as you can probably tell from the video below possibly Peak Sondheim. There were a bunch of moments where the music reminded me of other Sondheim shows, which I don’t remember ever thinking at one of his shows before. I would not suggest you pick this for your first experience of Sondheim, but if you like him you will probably enjoy this – even though it has a lot less singing than I was expecting. The production at the NT had a brilliant cast – Jane Krakowski, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Rory Kinnear, Martha Plimpton, Paulo Szot and Tracie Bennett have got five Oliviers, three Tonys and an Emmy between them – and they were great. I am so glad I saw it, but I won’t be running back to see it again the way I did with Follies.

The second show was the Southwark Playhouse revival of The Frogs, which is Sondheim’s musical based on the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes from 405BC. Sondheim’s version premiered in the mid 1970s and was described as “freely adapted” from the original, and then in 2004 Nathan Lane “even more freely adapted” it to the current book and Sondheim wrote a bunch of new songs for it. The plot is that the god Dionysus and his slave Xanthius are going to Hades to bring back George Bernard Shaw to raise the standard of drama being produced. If you’ve watched the recorded version of the original Old Friends concert or the Sondheim 80th birthday concert, the song from this that you will know is Invocation and Instructions to the Audience.

And it was such a good night. The cast was great, especially the ensemble who were rotating through different roles as well as acting as a chorus and the dynamic between Kevin McHale (of Glee fame) as Xanthias and Dan Buckley as Dionysus was great. I laughed a lot and came away humming the music. I definitely liked it more than I liked Here We Are – if another production of Frogs come around in a few years time I would go and see it again, and this is the one that I would be recommending to people of the two.

From my observations the night that I saw it, there was a considerable amount of the audience who were there to see Kevin McNally, rather than because they love seeing Sondheim shows. But that’s fine. Sondheim can be a hard sell, and a plot based on an Ancient Greek comedy might also not appeal to the casual theatre goer, but this was so good and so much fun hopefully they all went away as happy as me and might give another Sondheim production a go in future. I hadn’t actually been to Southwark Playhouse since it moved to it’s current location (which is more than a decade ago so shame on me) and so I was playing seat roulette a little bit but my front row spot on one of the sides was great and you really were quite up close and personal with the cast!

Both of Here We are and The Frogs finished yesterday, so it’s already too late for you to go and see them so sorry about that. And as ever with Sondheim who knows when they will be put on again. Oh and by the way, I’m still hoping for a DVD of the National Theatre Follies…

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Operation Mincemeat

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It’s Olivier Award Sunday everyone and although I have everything crossed for Simon Lipkin in the Best Actor in a Musical category for his turn as Fagin in Oliver and for Ballet Shoes in some of the other categories, I thought today was a great opportunity for me to talk about last year’s Best New Musical winner Operation Mincemeat, which I saw in the West End in mid-March.

Operation Mincemeat is a comedy musical devised by the group Split Lip, based on a deception operation carried out by British intelligence during World War Two. The Allies want to invade Sicily, but the island is swarming with Nazi troops. So they need to come up with a plan to disguise the invasion plans. There is a five person cast who all play multiple roles across the course of the show, with quick changes coming out of your ears.

This got total rave reviews when it opened – but I’ll admit that their Olivier Award performance left me more confused than enthused. Add in a complicated ticketing policy and it’s taken me a while to get around to it which is a bit of a more fool me situation because it’s so good. It’s funny and clever and it’s going to point out a few issues going on with the plan as well as highlighting some of the people that tend to get forgotten about in the history books.

I saw the new cast – because the original team have just opened the show on Broadway (press night was actually the same week that I went to see it in London) and they’re all giving cracking performances in what must be quite indimisating circumstances- given that the original cast was the four creators and the winner of the Olivier award for best supporting actor for his role in the show.

This has just extended again in London – so there’s plenty of time to go and see it – and as I said they run a range of schemes for tickets. Find the details here.

Operation Mincemeat is at the Fortune Theatre in London

Side note: I thought that this was the only West Emd Theatre I hadn’t been inside – it was previously the home to The Woman in Black for about 30 years and I don’t do horror – but then I realised that I haven’t been to the new Soho Place theatre yet so I haven’t actually completed my set yet. Still at least it’s an excuse to go and see something else…