Show Reviews: Kiss Me Kate

I'd never seen this one before. It's a musical about a group of actors putting on a musical version of Tha Taming of the Shrew, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The Shakespeare characters are somewhat mirrored in the personalitites of the actors. I enjoyed this show. The dancing was brilliant and there were some very funny and catchy songs, including Brush up your Shakespeare and I'm Always True To You in My Fashion. The costumes were also great and the actors were very good too. However, it is an old-fashioned musical and there are some bits that aren't palatable to a modern audience, such as the way the leading male treats his ex-wife, including spanking her on stage to teach her to respect him. The end is also a deus ex machina which I quite like, but I know some people think they're silly. Still, if you can think of the show as a product of its time rather than considering it from a modern point of view it's very enjoyable. 

Here's a clip

Show Reviews: Cabaret

For years my only knowledge of Cabaret came from the weird Lisa Minelli film which I didn't really like.   Then I saw half of it in the theatre volunteering for the Red Cross, and I really enjoyed what I saw.   It was happier and less weird and perverted than the film.   So when it came back to Edinburgh I was eager to go and see it properly.   I'm very glad I did.   It was great!   It's set in Berlin at the outbreak of World War II and features a host of colourful characters.   Most of the action centres around a Cabaret where Sally, the female protagonist, is a performer.   She was very ably played by Siobhan Dillon whose warm performance made me totally fall in love with her.   The real star of the show, though, is the narrator, with masses of stage presence, plenty of quirks and great songs, played by - wait for it - Will Young!   I remember him as a pretty wet singer off Pop Idol, not a creative and powerful performer.   The title song was very well done too.   I'd only ever heard it sung as a joyful, confident song, but in this production it was done more timidly, and a little manically.   A more fragile performance, which I think was much more appropriate, considering that Sally has just had an abortion when she sang it.   The real power of the show though, comes towards the end, with the rise of Nazism and the lives of the charactes being torn apart.   I cried my eyes out.   Well worth seeing!

            

Show Reviews: Rigoletto

As far as I'm concerned, the best way to see opera is outdoors, in the Roman arena in Verona.  As well as being guarantied a great show, it's also a really lovely atmosphere.   Imagine a warm Italian summer night, a magnificent stage, and you sitting on the ancient fossil-strewn stone steps, still warm from the sun.   People are drinking beer, eating sandwiches and relaxing.   My friend said he wasn't sure if he was at an opera or a football match.   The stage might be far away, but everthing is Big, so there's plenty to look at, a huge cast, magnificent costumes....   We saw Rigoletto, which was one I hadn't seen before.   It was very enjoybale, and of course has the very famous La Donna e Mobile, which everyone will recognise when they hear it.  

 Stage of Rigoletto

This one is actually Aida, but I think it shows what I'm trying to get across

Show Reviews: Matilda

Yes, I know there have been a lot of show reviews lately, sorry.   So today I'd like to talk about Matilda, which is quite a new show.   It's based on the book by the amazing Roald Dahl, and was written by the wonderful Tim Minchin.   It was a great show!   It's about a little girl called Matilda who has horrible parents and magical powers.   She uses them to help her lovely teacher get her inheritance off her horrible aunt, who is also the headmistress.   The headmistress, Miss Trunchball, is played by a man in drag, which works really well.   The cast includes a lot of children, and they were all very impressive!   Bruce Bogtrotter especially was a great little performer.   Matilda's family were also excellent.   Really ignorant and vapid.   The sets were great as well.   Really clever with lots of bits to climb.   I have to say though that I wasn't that much of a fan of the changes Tim Minchin made to the story.  For example he made Miss Honey the teacher's parents circus performers.   I don't get it.   As for the songs, there are some great ones.   The cleverest is the song when the kids start school.   The older kids sing about what a terrible place school is, and you don't realise until the final chorus when they start using props that the entire alphabet has been incorporated into the song!   Amazing!   And I love Naughty.   It's so empowering.

Some of the best songs:

     

Show Reviews: War Horse

I've seen this play twice in the past year: once in London and once in Edinburgh.   It's based on a Michael Morpurgo book about a horse called Joey.   Joey is raised and trained by a boy called Albert who is heartbroken when his father sells Joey to the army.   Albert joins up and goes to France to try and look for Joey.   Both the horse and the boy see horrible things, but eventually, miraculously, find each other again, though both are in bad shape.   Unlike a lot of other Micahel Morpurgo stories, this one has a happy ending.   What makes the play so special is that the horses in it are portrayed by the most incredible, complex, lifelike and beautiful puppets.   They take three people to operate them, and it's so well done that you forget that you're watching puppets at all.   I really enjoyed the singing in it as well.   It was bittersweet and beautiful.   It was interesting being able to compare the two performances too.   I thought I was going to enjoy the London show a lot more than the Edinburgh one because the London theatre was so much more intimate and I was much closer to the stage, which was also bigger, but actually it travelled surprisingly well.  Recommended.

Show Reviews: Wicked

I went to see Wicked in London last year.   I think it's one of favourite musicals of all time.   It's based on the character of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, giving her a background story, and presenting her as misunderstood, not wicked.   I love the soundtrack and I listen to it all the time.   So I already knew the music when I went, and I knew the story as well, from reading the book (stupid book, don't bother).   Happily they did change bits if the book though, taking out the more gruesome parts and changing the ending so that the witch doesn't die.   Anyway, I loved the performance I saw.   The sets and costumes were gorgeous!   As for the singing, I think I prefer the recording I have with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, but the singers in this one were still great.   I can't wait to see it again in a few months!

        

Some awesome Wicked songs:

Show Reviews: The 39 Steps

I saw this play a little while ago, and loved it!   It was so clever and funny.   It's based on the novel and Hitchcock film of the same title, about the ordinary man, who through a chance encounter, finds himself caught up in an espionage mystery.   What's so entertaining about this play is that's it's done with 4 actors, who play 130 roles between them!   The changes are very slick and well rehearsed and add to a lot of the comedy.   Without such a great cast, it would never have worked.   The sets are very simple, with the actors themselves making them convincing, for example everyone jiggling when they're sitting on benches to represent the train.   The Forth Bridge is just done with ladders and it looks great!   All in all, a very funny show, out on brilliantly, by great actors.  Well worth seeing.

Show Reviews: Patience

I was going to review Rocky Horror tonight, but I've left it so long I've found I can't remember a thing about it.   I know I enjoyed it, but just saying that doesn't make for much of a review.   So I thought I'd skip it and review Patience instead.   Patience is a Gilbert and Sullivan and it was put on by Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group.   It follows the story of Patience, the simple milkmaid, who has never been in love.   And she's very glad about that, because it seems to be making all the other ladies thoroughly miserable.   They're all madly in love with the poet Bunthorne, who doesn't return their love, because he's in love with Patience.   Then, Patience's childhood sweetheart Archibald arrives back in the area.   He and Patience fall in love, but Patience rapidly realises that she mustn't love him because he's perfect and therefore her loving him would be selfish, and not real love.   But she tells him to feel free to love her because she's plain ("Yes, that's true"), so his loving her wouldn't be selfish.   As soon as the other ladies see Archibald they immediately transfer their love from Bunthorne to him, and Patience decided to selflessly sacrifice herself and love Bunthorne.   However, she eventually confesses to Bunthorne that she really loves Archibald.   Angry Bunthorne tells Archibald to become an ordinary man or he'll curse him.   Archibald agrees, mostly to escape the cloying affections of the other ladies.   When he has done so, he loses some of his perfection in Patience's eyes, leaving her free to love him, and so the whole mess is resolved!   The ladies all go back to their old fiances, and Bunthorne ends up alone.   I do love a good ridiculous Gilbert and Sullivan plot!  

Interestingly this production had a shortage of women.   Usually it's men who are in short supply.   I enjoyed the sets and costumes and everyone's performances, though Patience was a bit serious.   I like my Gilbert and Sullivan done frivolously.   But great music, great songs, and a very enjoyable show.       

Shows

Time to review some of the shows I've been to lately.  First up, The Phantom of the Opera.   I saw the touring production at Edinburgh Playhouse.   Despite knowing the music inside out and having seen the film version many times I'd never seen it on stage before, and I have to say it was utterly brilliant.   The music is, of course, wonderful, and the story is so strange and powerful.   I was very impressed with all the casts' performances too.   I wasn't too sure about Christine's voice to start with, but as the show progressed she really grew on me.   The sets and lighting were also fantastic.  Some of the effects they acheived were just spectacular.   The chandelier was covered in dust sheets during the first scene, but then for the next the dust sheets were suddenly sucked into the chandelier, quick as quick!   During the boat scene the stage was flooded with so much dry ice that you couldn't see the stage at all.   You could rally believe there was water there!   And the set was huge and multi-storied and could be spun round and had disappearing steps for the actors to walk down.   It was all so impressive.   So lavish!   I got so sucked in!   I hadn't enjoyed a show that much for a very long time.   Just wonderful.  

Next, that old Christmas favorite, The Nutcracker.   I saw the Scottish Ballet's production of it at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.   It was gorgeous, but not what I was expecting.   Other productions I have seen fairly light on story content, and just had lots of dancing, but this one incorporated lots of elements from the original Hoffmann story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.   It was very interesting, though I suspect many people who didn't know the original story were left rather confused as to what was going on.   The dancing was great and choreography was fresh and beautiful, with some unusual touches, for exampe the Arabian dance was performed almost entirely on the shoulders of other dancers.   There was also some very good use of masks, to emphasise the point of the transformations between dolls and real people, and the putting on and removing of masks was so slick that you couldn't see the changes at all until they'd happened.   Amazing!   The music from The Nutcracker remains to this day some of my favorite pieces of classical music.   I always leave humming all the tunes.

And finally, Cats.   Yes, another Andrew Lloyd Webber.   Cats has always been a firm favorite with me.   It's such an unusual and beautiful show.   I saw the touring show at the Playhouse, and really enjoyed it.   Having seen it in London, I have to say the West End production was better.   This show had a noticeably smaller cast, and the audience was further away from the action.   It was still awesome though!   the singing, sets and costumes were stunning, as usual, though I did think a couple of the characters weren't as good dancers as they should have been.   Skimbleshanks, for example, just couldn't jump as high as the Skimbleshanks I saw on the West End.   Mistoffolees was brilliant though!   The orchestra were also hidden!   The orchestra pit had been taken over by set, and I still have no idea where they actually were!   Though this show may not have been the best production I've ever seen, it was still excellent and I went home and immediately watched the whole thing through on my computer and listened to the songs many times over the next few days.  

       

More Fringe Shows

Time to review the other two Fringe shows I watched.   One of them was Panga, written by my friend Sam Siggs.   It had a very interesting concept.   It centres around a 20 something year old woman, Lucy, who's a bit of a mess, and her boyfriend.   One day her mother sends her a bunch of her old toys, and her cuddly panda, Panga (pronounced like that because she had adenoids) suddenly comes to life, as a full-sized talking, walking panda.   At first she's terrified, but very quickly warms to the idea of having her childhood playmate back.   The two of them spend their days playing wild games and getting incerasingly drunk.   The climax of the play comes when Panga tries to kill Lucy's boyfriend.   A fight ensues, and Panga gets his head cut off, whereupon he transforms back into a harmless cuddly toy.   I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this play.   It was staged very well, with plenty of little creative touches, and the acting was excellent.   As I've said before, I thought the concept was very interesting, and it was very funny, but I just feel like the play was missing a message of some kind.   A tangible effect Panga's visit had on Lucy.   Some sort of point to the play.   It just left me a bit confused really.   It was actually quite strongly reminiscent of the film Drop Dead Fred.   It had the same feeling of chaos and mischief and losing control.   Worth seeing, but not Sam's best.  

          



Finally, the Blanks, also known as The Worthless Peons, Ted's band from Scrubs.   They're an a capella band.   I enjoyed seeing them.   The singing was really good, and they did all their famous ones.   It was interesting to see that Sam (Ted) was by far the worst singer amongst them.   The other three were all really talented.   Perhaps I just don't have very much patience, because the filler between songs really pissed me off.   It was just so American and tacky, unfunny and unnecessary.   They also performed a Hallowe'en song, which was very funny, but just gave me the impression that their repertoire is pretty small.   All in all, an enjoyable show, but could have been better.

    

More Shows

I'm back!   What did I miss?

Here's a review of the shows I've seen lately:   Up first, Chicago.   This is one I'd never seen on stage before and only really knew it from the film version.  I must say I really enjoyed it!   It had Ali Bastian playing Roxie, and I thought she did a really good job.   Her singing and dancing were impressive, though for me the real star of the show was Bernie Nolan playing Mama Morton.  What a voice!   Though I suppose that comes at no surprise.   I wished Mama Morton had more songs!   Velma, Billy and Roxie were all thoroughly unlikeable and Amos was very sad indeed.   The costumes were small and sexy and the staging was really interesting.   The band was onstage, which doesn't often work, but in this case I thought it really did.   They were placed right in the middle of the stage but they didn't seem to get in the way at all.   The cast just moved round them and even used them occasionally as extras, which I thought was a cool touch.   They also had ladders at the sides of the stage so some of the singing was done in midair.   The rest of the set was very minimal though.   Simple and sharp.   The Cell Block Tango was, of course powerful and really sexy.   All in all, a really good night out!

Next Oliver!   This was another one I only knew from the film version, which I saw about fifteen years ago.  I really don't remember it being so dark!   When I thought about Oliver! loveable cockney urchins and cheerful songs like Be Back Soon and Consider Yourself came to mind.   My memory seems to have glossed over the alcohol abuse, prostitution and domestic violence.   Nancy's murder really was a particularly nasty scene.   Despite the darkness it was a really good show.   Very funny, with excellent singing and dancing.  What really stood out for me were the kids.   They were amazing!   Not one single step was out of time, and some of the acrobatics were truly impressive.   They were tight.   Brian Conley was also excellent as Fagan.   Very slimy and very funny.   The scenary and lighting were also pretty spectacular with huge, detailed two storey sets creating lots of very clever optical illusions and lots of scene changes.   I particularly liked Fagan and the boys' den.   Very well done and exactly like I imagined it should look.   Bill Sykes was also suitably nasty and scary.   So not my favourite show, but this was a really good production of it.

And lastly Starlight Express.   I'm a big Lloyd Webber fan, but I didn't really know what to expect from this one.   Going in I knew precisely four things about it:

1. It's about trains
2. The cast is on rollerskates
3. There isn't really a plot, a bit like Cats
4. The song "Starlight Express"

And numbers 1 and 3 turned about to be wrong anyway.   It's not about trains, it's about toy trains, and a little boy playing with them in his bedroom late one night.   Yeah.   Surely this is the final proof we needed that you really can write a show about anything.   And there is a plot.   It's all about a race the toy trains are having.   Yep, just one race.   And they managed to make an entire musical about it.   The songs were great, with some really catchy tunes, though perhaps there weren't as many good ones as in some other Andrew Lloyd Webbers.   And the cast being on rollerskates there wasn't a lot of dancing in the conventional sense.   There were, however, plenty of impressive roller acrobatics and lots of nice skating formations.   And because the cast needed a lot of space the sets were pretty simple.   Just a few arches for the train sheds and a few other bits and pieces.  The best bits for me were the costumes and lighting.   The costumes were huge, shiny, over the top and very very eccentric.   The cast looked like something out of an acid trip, with big hair, bright colours, loads of glitter and even flashing lights on them.   The lighting team went all out too.   The lighting in itself would have been worth seeing as a show, even without all the rest of it going on.   They really showcased what lighting is capable of doing.   At a couple of points they lit the audience up with hundreds of tiny lights floating all around us.   It was like being surrounded by hundreds of shooting stars!   Oddly, there were very few female characters in it.   Just four ladies, playing coaches (Dina, the dining car, Buffy, the buffet car, Duvet, the sleeper, and Pearl, the first class carriage) but despite this the girls, in their tiny costumes and retro hairstyles, really made their voices heard.   Good job, ladies!

I have to say though, I wish I'd seen this in London.   When the actual race parts were on they played a 3D movie, which worked very well, but apparently in London they have special tracks so that the cast can actually do the race and they come right out into the audience.   Seeing that would have been pretty sweet.   All in all, though, really good show.   A bit different and fantastic to look at, with some great tunes.

     

Shows!

Rather than do seperate entries for each show i've been to recently I thought I'd just combine them into one big glorious review post!   The three shows I've seen over the last couple of weeks are HMS Pinafore, put on by the Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group, the Beauty and the Beast ballet, by Northern Ballet, and Spamalot.

HMS Pinafore I found thoroughly enjoyable!   It's a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.   Having seen quite a few EUSOG performances over the past few years I have to say it compares favourably.   All the cast did a great job, sets, costumes and choreography were simple but effective, and the space onstage was used very well.   The orchestra had a couple of tiny slip ups towards the beginning, but these were barely noticeable.   The show was typical Gibert and Sullivan, full of colourful characters, incredibly catchy songs, with a suitably ridiculous twist at the end.   The script did lack some of the farcicality I have come to expect from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but I suspect this is due to it being one of their earlier shows and they had not yet fully found their style which we know and love.   All in all, though, a very enjoyable show!   Good work!

  

Beauty and the Beast was a new ballet and I think it was a little unusual, but it was unusual done right!   The dancing was very modern in lot of respects, but not modern in a naff way where the dancers just look like they're having a spazz attack on stage!   It was thoroughly beautiful, and drove the story forward at a pretty quick pace for ballet!   The costumes and sets were very creative and very pleasing to the eye and were used very well, and there were some genuinely funny moments!   The main issue I had with it was there were a couple of places towards the beginning where the stage hands had to nip behind bits of set and fiddle about and nip off again.   Pretty unprofessional if you ask me!   They could have found a different solution to that!   Even having a member of the cast duck behind for a couple of seconds would have looked better!  And the beast did slightly look as though he was wearing bondage gear...   Something that surprised me was that it did not have its own new music.   It used various pieces of French classical music.   That's not usual is it?   I've certainly never seen that before!   But despite a few little niggles I had, it was a brilliant evening!   Highly recommended!

Spamalot is the Monty Python musical, based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.   It was what you might expect, ie. very silly!   It was interesting for someone like me who knows Holy Grail inside out and back to front to see how they had adapted it for stage.   Most of the main elements from Holy Grail's plot were kept (it had a plot??), though I was slightly disappointed about the lack of Castle Anthrax!   But other old friends like the Black Knight, Dennis and Tim all had their bit to do.   They also added in a female character by giving the Lady of the Lake an actual part in the show rather than a passing reference.   They obviously used the songs from Holy Grail and added in a few new ones, along with a rather predictable appearence of a sing-along Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.   Musically my favourite part was The Song That Goes Like This, the Lady of the Lake and Sir Galahad's lovesong.   Or rather song about lovesongs!   It has a lovely tune and the lyrics are hilarious!   I was impressed with the cast both vocally and acting wise, despite a little corpsing during the Knights Who Say Ni! scene.   But who could blame them.   Costumes were great, and so were the sets, which looked distinctly Terry Gilliamesque, although there was not a lot of scene changing.   The stage did look a bit cramped though.   They were only using a small part of it and could have done with giving themselves some more room, in my opinion.   For me the funniest aspect of the show was that they subtly brought in a lot of jokes from Monty Python's Flying Circus that only real afficionados would spot.   The topical jokes were quite funny as well.   All in all, a very funny and silly night out, and I'm glad I went to see it, but quite honestly, I don't think I would go and see it again.