Posts

Showing posts with the label last chance

Featured Post

One hundred people’s ninth favourite thing: [title of show] @swkplay

Image
[title of show] takes you back to a time before the fast paced social media where word of mouth for a positive show came from chat boards, video diaries or (god forbid) blogs. A simple staging makes it an ideal (and economical piece to stage), but it’s sweet and earnest take on just putting on a show, and putting it out there and taking a chance gives this show its heart. With a strong and energetic cast and endless musical theatre references, it’s hard to resist and it’s currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse .  It opens with Hunter (Jacob Fowler) and Jeff (Thomas Oxley) as struggling young writers in New York City. An upcoming New York Musical Theatre festival, inspires them to write an original musical within three weeks to make the deadline. As they discuss ideas, writers block, distractions and endless other good and bad musicals, an idea for a show emerges. Which is about writing a show for a musical theatre festival.  Their friends Heidi (Abbie Budden) and Susan (Mary Moor
Read more...

Last chance legends: A Chorus Line

Image
Prior to it completing its run next weekend I finally caught A Chorus Line at the Palladium. It's a simple and slick fly on the wall show about dancers wondering if this is their last shot on stage as they progress from auditions to the opening night. It is hard not to like a show with such heart and thrilling performances. The cast are pretty good and the production is rarely dull, with its classic Broadway songs and classic theatrical set pieces. It is hard not to like Scarlett Strallen (one of the omnipresent Strallens and pictured opposite) dance and high kick her way through the Music and The Mirror as she desperately wants a job. Or see Olivier award-winning Leigh Zimmerman as Sheila, the very late twenty-something dancer who is wondering how long her run will last... At times it is exhausting to watch the cast as they are on stage for nearly two hours (without an interval). And if it looks like hard work, that is probably because it is .
Read more...

A frightfully fun afternoon: Lost Musicals and Words and Music

Image
I've never been to a Lost Musicals event before, but it is quite a treat, and an opportunity to catch rarely performed or obscure shows that may have been undeservedly ignored when first staged. The obscure show in question this time around was a 1932 Noel Coward revue called Words and Music. Coward's idea, following various successes in the early 1930s was to present a revue with no stars. The songs and sketches that explore Coward's usual fascination with stars, class and manners. The show  was not the success it was expected to be and quickly disappeared. A few years later it opened on Broadway but also was not a success. Of the sketches, one seemed particularly amusing in which children act like their parents, smoking and drinking martinis. Many of the songs have since become standards in their own right such as "Mad about the Boy." The song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" is also delivered with such freshness and energy by the cast that you feel
Read more...

Last Look: Les Troyens

Image
Tonight is the last chance to see Berlioz's Les Troyens at The Royal Opera . It is an event: an epic opera with some grand spectacle to match. However at nearly six hours (including two half hour intervals) you do need arrive prepared, which includes familiarising oneself with Berlioz's music. The piece is full of rousing choruses and delicate moments, but as a drama that hangs together like other Romantic operas it is not easy to take in at first listen. David McVicar's production makes things a little easier to appreciate with the spectacle and astonishing set designs by Es Devlin . Brush up on your Berlioz late Romantic period, refresh your knowledge of Virgil's Aeneid and go along for the ride... It may not come around too soon again...
Read more...