Tag: musicals

concerts, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Avenue Q

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Something a bit different this Sunday – some thoughts about a show, but not really a review because it’s a bit more than that but also there’s nothing for you to book right now.

I took this photo at the end of the Avenue Q 18th birthday concert last month. I said on my Instagram that I think it might be the best photo I’ve ever taken – the cast looking back at their younger selves at the end of the show. That it’s a good photo I know because most of the cast have used it in their Instagram posts about the show, which made my theatre nerd heart happy. That I was in the position to take such a good photo is down to being quick on the booking fingers when the tickets went on sale – and snagging us prime seats in the middle of the middle of the stalls for the matinee show.

Who is us in this context? Well it’s me and my little sister. The West End production of Avenue Q opened just as I was finishing university, and as she was doing her A Levels. I think every theatre geek has a couple of shows that are formative in their development as a theatre fan, and this was one for us. It wasn’t the one that got us into the world of theatre message boards, but it resonated with us at the points in our lives that we were at at the time. If you’ve never come across Avenue Q, it’s a comedy musical that tells the story of a new graduate, Princeton, who moves to New York to start his adult life and ends up living on Avenue Q – a sort of grown-up Sesame Street and through the show he learns life lessons from people and puppets. One of the writers went on to write Book of Mormon, and the music for Frozen (and Frozen 2). It premiered on Broadway in 2003 and it actually beat a little show you might have heard of called Wicked to the Best New Musical Tony in 2004.

I saw the original cast three, maybe four times, and then saw it on Broadway with Little Sis on our five days seven shows trip a year or two later, and again in London with Him Indoors a few years after that. One of those times I saw the original cast I took my then boyfriend, who subsequently blamed it as a factor in our break up for “giving you ideas about needing a purpose”* which was… a stretch. Anyway. Moving on. It’s a show that has a special place in my heart. And it was wonderful to go back to it and see it again, with the actors we loved that first time. Twenty years after its first production there are some things that haven’t aged that well – they did a disclaimer at the front to that end, which felt sensible – but there’s so much that’s wonderful and the nostalgia factor was great too.

And the other thing about Q is how well the original cast have gone on to do. Jon Robyns who played Princeton has just finished up a run as The Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. Simon Lipkin is about to play Fagin in Oliver! in the West End after a successful run Chichester in the summer. Giles Terera has pack of awards for his theatre work – including an Olivier for originating Aaron Burr in the West End production of Hamilton. The only original cast member who couldn’t make the reunion was Clare Foster – and that was because it was opening week for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in which she’s playing the female lead.

Sometimes its hard to tell if seeing a show that you have such fond memories of will enhance your memories or detract from them – we actually avoided seeing a revival of one of the other shows that was seminal for the two of us a summer or two ago because we were worried that it would taint our memories of it – but I’m not sure we ever really worried about this one because it was the original cast and it was billed as “in Concert” although it was more staged than that suggests. So it was great to see the band back together and be reminded how good they are and how fun the show is. And for me and Little Sis it was great timing too – this was our last theatre outing before she has a baby and so seeing a show that means so much to us but that is also about new beginnings and new possibilities was a great way to mark a bit of a moment in both of our lives.

I hope you have a show you have as happy memories of as I do Avenue Q, and that you get the chance some day to have a moment like we did at the Stephen Sondheim for this.

*Other things he blamed: “those books you read and films you watch for giving you ideas about happy endings”. I hope your eyes are rolling as hard as mine are.

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Not a Book: Kiss Me Kate in Cinemas

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You all know I saw this three times at the Barbican this summer, so it’s my duty to report that they recorded the revival of Kiss Me, Kate and it’s coming to cinemas from today (17th November) and I am in fact going to see it, in my local indie today because a) I loved it and b) I want to see how it comes across on screen. It’s one of those event-cinema releases, so the dates may vary (the cinema where I’m seeing it is only showing it twice a couple of days apart at the moment) and you may need to look at either an indie or a larger multiplex cinema, but hopefully if you want to see it you’ll be able to find it.

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Not a Book: Hello, Dolly!

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Another week, another trip to the theatre, and this time to see this summer’s most anticipated and most hyped musical: Hello, Dolly! with Imelda Staunton.

This is the story of Dolly Levi, a widowed matchmaker and meddler who travels to Yonkers to try and find a match for the grumpy and miserly “half a millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, who she’s actually plotting to marry herself and so in the process needs to detach him from his other options whilst also helping his niece marry an artist – a match with Horace is against. Meanwhile Horace’s two clerks at the feed store, who have bene left in charge while their boss is away meeting potential brides, decide they would like to get out of Yonkers for the day and go to New York.

So this is the point where I admit that I had neither seen the whole film of this one before, let alone a live production. I’ve seen bits of the film and I know some of the songs, but nothing had stood out to me enough to get me to watch the whole film and I’d never felt inspired enough to look out a production. In fact I think the only song I’d seen live before was Put on Your Sunday Clothes, which I saw the John Wilson Orchestra do at the Proms which doesn’t feel like that long ago but was actually the summer of 2011. Goodness I feel old. Anyway, I’ve put the link to that at the bottom and now I’m going to talk about this production.

This is the summer musical at the Palladium, which is the biggest theatre in the West End, and I think it’s pretty clear that this wouldn’t have been put on if it wasn’t for Imelda Staunton in the lead role. Yes it’s a classic, but when you’ve got more than 2,000 seats to fill every night, and a show with more than 20 piece orchestra and sets that include a moving train (that is used once) and a street car, you need a big name. And it doesn’t get much bigger. I have seen her previously do Sondheim in both Follies (which I adored and saw three times across its two runs) and Sweeney Todd, but missed her Gypsy because I had loved the production of that that I had already seen (with Caroline O’Connor in the lead) and didn’t want to pay the prices and was hoping for discounts which of course never materialised. I learned my lesson and I bought these early. And I am glad I did because she is giving an absolutely barnstorming performance – she’s funny and touching, but also hard where she needs to be and she sounds great.

The supporting cast is similarly strong – with Andy Nyman (who I saw be amazing as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof a few years ago), Jenna Russell (who I’ve never seen do anything bad) and Harry Hepple (who was in the same production of Follies as Staunton, but who I also saw in Pippin more than a decade ago) doing fine work in the key supporting roles, but really there is no one giving a bad performance.

Now I don’t think Hello, Dolly! will ever be my favourite musical – to be honest, if it comes back around again I probably won’t go unless it’s got a really stellar name as Dolly because Imelda is enough – but if you do love the show (and the stalls this week was clearly full of people who do love it) and you’re in London this summer then you should really try and see it. And if you’ve never seen it before, I can vouch for this being worth your time – a work colleague who also went this week and wasn’t expecting to love it also really enjoyed it – and the good news is, there are still some reasonably prices seats available.

Enjoy your Sunday!

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Kiss Me Kate

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I’ve got another theatre trip to tell you about this Sunday – because I had a fabulous night out at the Barbican on Friday night.

In case you haven’t encountered it before, Kiss Me, Kate is about a warring couple who are working together on a production of a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Fred and Lilli are divorced, and their relationship dynamic somewhat mirrors that of the characters they are playing in the musical. There’s also subplots with the show’s young ingenue, newly arrived from nightclub singing, and her boyfriend Bill who is also in the cast and has a gambling problem that has led him to sign a $10,000 IOU with Fred’s name on it – leading to the arrival of a pair of gangsters at the theatre.

Kiss Me, Kate premiered on Broadway in 1948 and has music and lyrics by Cole Porter. I saw the last London Revival, which was in 2012 at the Young Vic and starred Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne, and really enjoyed it so I had high hopes for this production at the Barbican which has Tony-award winning Broadway powerhouse Stephanie J Block as Lilli and Adrian Dunbar as Fred. The Barbican has a good track record of producing big productions of musicals (see Anything Goes with Sutton Foster a couple of summers ago) and this is a show that repays a big production.

And this is A Big Production – you can see the size of the set from the photo at the top, but what you might need to watch the video to see is that it rotates*, it’s also got a big orchestra to blast out those Cole Porter standards like Too Darn Hot, Always True to You in My Fashion and So In Love. It’s directed by Barlett Sher, who also directed the Lincoln Centre Production of The King and I which came to the London Palladium with Kelli O’Hara a few years ago and has been touring the UK recently, and so has plenty of experience with big, classic musicals. And he’s created a really enthralling evening at the theatre – the show within a show means that there is fourth wall breaking, interactions with the conductor and the audience and plenty of general chaos.

And the cast are all giving great performances. It’s hard to single out anyone in particular, but if you forced me, I might pick out Nigel Lindsay and Hammed Animashaun who play the gangsters, who made me laugh the whole night building to a brilliant and nearly show-stealing Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Which brings me to one thing that I had forgotten about Kiss Me, Kate, which is how equitably the songs are spread out – everyone in the main cast gets at least one brilliant song and there’s plots and sub-plots galore.

I went with my mum who absolutely loved it – and I had such a great time I’m trying to figure out if I can go again before the run ends in mid-September. It’s had excellent reviews from the actual theatre professionals too – but there are some really good deals available on tickets at the moment – I suspect because the Barbican is out of the main drag of the West End so it doesn’t get the passing trade that some of the other theatres do (this is also an issue for the Shaftesbury Theatre – which had a bit of a reputation of being cursed for shows a few years back). I got my tickets from TodayTix who I use quite a lot these days, but you can get direct from The Barbican as well. And if you’re buying last minute they do on the day rush for £30 too.

Have a great Sunday – here’s hoping for an England win tonight…

*I love a rotating set – one of my early London theatre memories is of a production of the Wind in the Willows at the National Theatre where the set not only rotated but it came up from the ground, and more recently I loved the production of Follies – again at the national – which had a rotating set – although that just had a front and a back where as this has three sides.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Sister Act – the Musical

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I braved the theatre during half term week and lived to tell the tale! I wish I could say I was being strategic with my show pick and picked one where I thought there would be less children, but I would be lying – I went to Sister Act because it’s a short summer run and there’s a cast change coming at the end of this coming week, and the fact that there was a front row ticket in the lottery on the day was an added bonus!

This is the musical version of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie about a lounge singer who sees her casino boss boyfriend have someone murdered and is hidden in a convent for her own safety until she can give evidence at his trial. The first thing to note is that there are a fair few changes between the movie and the musical – the most obvious being that it has an all new set of songs written by Alan Menken, the composer who wrote the music for a string of Disney movies in the early 1990s, like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Do not go expecting to hear any of the Motown hits from the movie – or Hail Holy Queen etc. it’s also set in the late 1970s rather than the early 90s, Doloris’s boyfriend owns a club that he won’t let her sing at – rather than a casino where she does sing at – and it’s set in Philadelphia rather than Reno and Adam Francisco.

I thought the changes really worked – if you can’t have the music from the movie – which I assume would have been near impossible on a licensing front for the Motown front, especially given that there were a few jukebox musicals using some of the artists music at around the same time – then make some changes to make it its own thing. It was obviously going to need more music than the movie had – and more characters were going to need to sing, so it worked really well.

I didn’t see this when it was in the West End originally – I didn’t have the budget for theatre going at the time and I was also working a job where I started at 4 am so late nights were not my friend – but this has got a cracking cast at the moment, so I feel like I might have picked the right time. Beverley Knight is playing Doloris and Ruth Jones is playing Mother Superior – later on this summer Alexandra Burke takes over as Doloris and Lee Mead joins as Detective Eddie Souther. It’s also got Lemar – who I always thought deserved a bigger music career than he got – playing Doloris’ boyfriend.

Basically this is a big, fun, colourful night in the theatre – in fact in a theatre where I spent a lot of time as a teenager, but that’s a story for another day.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

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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: 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.

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Not a Book: Wicked!

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This is a not a Book post because I have never managed to get to the end of Gregory Maguire’s book that Wicked is based on. And it’s not through lack of effort – I’ve tried several times, over a period of years!

Anyway, last weekend we went to see Wicked, which was my third trip to the show. I remain convinced that it’s one of the best of the family musicals for older children, and the reaction of my nieces confirmed that. While Matilda works for anyone old enough to sit through a musical, Wicked works for nines and up who have seen the Wizard of Oz, especially if they’re girls. And there’s always something special about sharing a show that means a lot to you with other people. The nerves while you’re hoping that they’ll like it. The relief when they do – and the excitement that you have someone to talk to about a thing you like – it’s like lending a book except that you get to experience it again at the same time. Bonus.

My earliest internet community was based around musicals and so back in the day I was waiting for this to arrive from the US – and went in a group to one of the previews – complete with Idina Menzell (way before everyone knew her from Frozen, I was in there ahead of the crowd). I already knew a lot of the music but I hadn’t read any spoilers and it really blew me away. I remember saying at the time that the level of spectacle was the mid 2000s equivalent of Phantom of the Opera. And 15 years on it still works on me. I always forget bits of the detail – despite the fact that the CD still lives in my car glove box*, and when I did car commuting I sang along to it all the time and I still now all the words. Him Indoors is not a musicals person generally, so it’s always a risk taking him to stuff, but even he conceeded that Wicked is clever – even if he said it didn’t need the songs!

Anyway, as I’ve said before, having to stop doing everything in the pandemic really crystalised what is important to me and what I missed (and what I didn’t ) and so now things are opened up more and the theatre companies are putting stuff on again, it’s a delight to be able to go back and do things again. In fact, this trip should actually have happened before Christmas, but was postponed because of a positive covid test in part of the family. I’m working on refilling my theatre ticket box – so undoubtedly you’ll be hearing more about my outings.

Have a good Sunday and please try not to doomscroll.

* current car glove box CDs: Rufus Wainwright Vibrate, Wicked Original Broadway Cast, Martha Wainwright’s Piaf Record, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings Give People What They Want, Caravan Palace Caravan Palace. It’s a small glovebox.

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Not a Book: Matilda the Musical

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Another post from my trip to London the other week. As well as the Elizabeth and Mary exhibition and a wander around the national gallery, we went to see Matilda, the musical based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book of the same name.

So I want to say that this isn’t the first time that I’d seen Matilda – I actually saw it in its original incarnation at the RSC in Stratford a decade ago, but it was the first time I’ve seen it in the West End. I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories of it – especially as I’ve got the CD (yes I know, it’s that long ago) and have sung along to it in the car a lot, but actually it really did. There are a few bits of staging that have definitely changed since that Christmas run, but that’s probably not a surprise given that the stage at Stratford was much more of a thrust stage than the Cambridge theatre is. We bought our tickets on the day (from the theatre) and were sat in the middle of the Dress Circle, which was really good value and a really good view. There is some running around in the aisles in the stalls that you can’t see, but for me it wasn’t worth paying an extra £50+ for.

In terms of the book vs the show, Matilda’s own story is fairly similar, but there’s a secondary plot strand added to tie in (that really works, don’t worry!) and you see less of the telekinises than you get in the book – but given that you have to try and make that work on stage, it’s not a surprise. I’ve always thought that picking Tim Minchen to do the music was inspired – he’s funny and clever and a little bit dark and sly. And like the book it’s funny but funny and suitable for children – there aren’t any jokes here that parents are going to get awkward questions about. And I know it’s a children’s show so you’d think that there wouldn’t be, but actually you’d be surprised!

Anyway, we had a blast, five out of five, would recommend, just maybe don’t go on a Saturday (or in the school holidays) if chatting children during the show are going to annoy you!