Songs: The Windy City

One from Calamity Jane, which I saw for the first time fairly recently. Reminds me quite a bit of the Kansas city song from Oklahoma.

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

Movie Reviews: Little Shop of Horrors

Why, oh why have I never seen this before? I really enjoyed it. It's a film based on an off-Broadway musical, based on an older film, about a man eating plant from outer space, all wrapped up in 80s gloriousness. It stars Rick Moranis with enjoyable brief appearances from Steve Martin, John Candy, Christopher Guest and Bill Murray. Steve Martin is particularly funny as an evil dentist who has posibly the weirdest death scene I've ever seen! Despite gruesome deaths, swearing, sadism and domestic abuse, the film still somehow manages to be warm and fuzzy. But what really made it for me was the music. I'll be singing "Little shop, little shop of horrors!" for weeks!

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: 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: 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:

Film Reviews: Les Misérables

Never having seen Les Mis on stage, I didn't really know what to expect from the film, but I have to say that I really enjoyed it.   It was a big film, with lots of big scenes, big stars and lots of big songs.   I especially enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baren Cohen as the nasty innkeepers.   They were hilarious!   Brilliant performances.   But what else could we expect from Helena Bonham Carter?   I enjoyed the little street urchin Gavroche as well.   Real talent there.   Everyone seems to have hated Russell Crowe's singing voice, but I didn't think he was that bad at all!   Not great, but passable.   There have definitely been worse!   Since watching this I've listened to the soundtrack a lot and there are so many brilliant songs in it and most of them really well performed.   My favorites were Eponine's song, On My Own, which is so beautifully sad and poignant, and Do You Hear the People Sing, which is so very stirring.   But there are loads of other good ones besides.   Some of it was a bit over-the-top melodramatic and drawn-out for me, but that's just because the original material is.   Not much the director (who by the way is Tom Hooper who directed one of my all time favorites, The King's Speech) could have done there without changing it dramatically.   And even as a smelly ragged prisoner I still found Hugh Jackman attractive!  

Film Reviews: My Fair Lady

I finally got round to watching My Fair Lady recently.   Yes, I know, how on Earth had I gone that long without watching it?   Especially considering how much I like musicals, and Audrey Hepburn, come to that.   Well, I'd seen bits of it before on Youtube, including The Rain in Spain and Wouldn't It Be Loverly, but I'd never bothered to sit down and watch the whole thing.   And I did enjoy it.   Rex Harrison was brilliant, and it was really funny.   Audrey Hepburn as a pretty unconvincing cockney was so annoying though!   I just wanted to slap her whenever she opened her mouth!   My only reaction when she learned the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain was thank fuck for that!   I did enjoy the costumes and the parties though, especially that incredible races hat!

  But the ending is wrong!!   Clearly the right ending is not that she goes back to him, it's that he goes looking for her and apologises!   Silly film makers!   But still, good film.  

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.  

       

Childhood Favorites

Recently I've been watching kids' films that I used to love but hadn't seen in a while.   I'd like to share my thoughts on them.   First up, The King and I.

This is one of those films that just about everyone watches at school, and then we all have to sing the songs from it.   I hadn't seen it since then.   It's the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which was based on the Margaret Landon novel, Anna and the King of Siam, which in turn was based on Anna Leonowens' memoirs.   The film stars Deborrah Kerr, as Anna Leonowens, the school teacher to the children of the King of Siam, and Yul Brynner as the King.   It's a good musical, the story is interesting and the portrait of the Siamese court is rich but what really made the film for me was Yul Brynner's performance.   His Oscar-winning portrayal of the King is so appealing.   I did find the ending a bit weak though.   Anna is mean to the King so he gets ill and dies, the end.   But a good film, all in all.

Next, Return to Oz.   Weird 80s kids' films are my favorites!   So I was always going to love this.   Rather than being a sequel to the 1939 film, it looks completely different.   It's based on an amalgamation of the later Oz books by L. Frank Baum, of which I was a fan when I was younger.  It sees Dorothy return to the land of Oz but everything has changed.   The Nome king has stolen the ruby slippers, taken over Oz and turned everyone to stone.   Dorothy has to defeat him and the evil witch Mombi and save the day, while making lots of new friends on the way.   It's a very imaginative and well-made film, with some genuinely scary characters and moments.   Love it!

And finally, Honey I Shrunk the Kids.    Is it just me, or were films far more imaginative back in the 80s?   It's about an eccentric inventor whose machine accidently shrinks his children to tiny sizes.   They get swept up and thrown away, and have to make their way back across the garden, dodging all sorts of obstacles that would have presented no problem at all if they were their normal size, such as ants, bees, the lawnmower and very small puddles or water.   The film is very well done and enjoyable and brings back fond memories of playing in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground at the MGM studios in Florida when I was little.  

    

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.