A Little Night Music to Close July 25th

Damn! Doesn't look like I'll get to see this production before it closes. The show had been extended to stay open until September 5th, but this has since changed back to the original closing date of July 25th.
A Little Night Music will be opening on Broadway at some point in the 2009/2010 season, but I was looking forward to watching the show on home turf. I was also particularly interested to see and hear Jessie Buckley as Anne Egerman as she was one of my favourites in I'd Do Anything (minus her dodgy London accent!), but I have heard mixed reviews about her performance.
Ah well, another one for youtube!
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

Flis xx

Read the Playbill article here.

[title of show]

Just when I forgot how genius the people involved with this show are:

What is Title of Show?

So I bailed on my hometown and became a college theater dork.

Flis xx

"When people see me they will scream"

My least favourite thing about going to the theatre is having to share the experience with lots of other people!! Yes, I am talking about the audience! Some can be great and really make a performance and some can ruin it! I would like to share with you a few examples of this and in return would love to hear some of yours.
Firstly, a great audience! When I have been lucky enough to see RENT (seamless link to the previous post!), the audience has always been great. They have cheered really loudly in all the appropriate places and stayed quiet when they are supposed to. You could tell that a lot of people were avid fans of the show, but they knew to treat the performance with respect.
On the other hand, when I recently went to see Kerry Ellis Sings The Great British Songbook, the audience was not so great. And by audience I really mean 2 (seemingly drunk) men! They kept shouting "you're Wicked" at Kerry at every possible moment. Whilst this was really funny the first time and mildly amusing the second, by the fourth time it really had worn thin. This was especially annoying as I have since found out that this is the night they recorded the concert for a possible release. Here's hoping modern technology can remove all traces of them! There was also the annoyance of fans screaming throughout songs. A high note, a key change, no aspect of the show was safe. Now don't get me wrong, I am all for encouraging performers, but there is a time and a place!
Whilst at Wicked recently, I was disturbed to find that my seat was surrounded by small American children. Although they did surprise me with how well they behaved, they hadn't quite mastered their theatre voices and, in the Cornfield scene, one boy two seats from me turned to his friend and blurted "this is the bit from the movie" so loudly that it actually made me jump. Bless!
My best (and worst) moment has to be watching West Side Story at the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield with my sister. During the En'tract, the old lady behind us thought that it would be a really great idea to HUM ALONG TO THE MUSIC. Who does that?! Needless to say I was not impressed, but in my usual British way didn't say anything about it but instead moaned about it afterwards to anyone that would listen!
So, what really grates you when you are at the theatre?
Why couldn't you have stayed calm for once, instead of flying off the handle?!

Flis xx

Everything is RENT

OK, so I take back when I said that every closing Broadway show (or West End for that matter) should record the final night for release on DVD. As amazing as it is to share the event with people all over the world who could not be there, I fear that I would not have the emotional strength to watch each one!
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a complete RENThead. I saw the show for the first time in the summer of 2007 and it is due to that night that I am sat here now writing this blog. It blew me away and I havn't looked back since. I have been lucky enough to see the show 3 more times since then, as well as an interesting production of RENT Remixed (hmmmmmm) in London last year. I know the show inside out and have geeked it up to the vary highest level with this show; watching as much stuff as I could on youtube, reading articles 'till my head exploded, buying even vaguely related books, even mentioning the musical in three of my degree essays. So when I heard that they were going to film the final night of this epic show on Broadway (September 7th 2008), I was very excited.
I managed to get my hands on the DVD today, almost a year on. I reckon it was worth the wait! Film adaptations can be cool, but nothing compares to seeing a show live on stage - this DVD is the closest that you can get to that, with the added bonus that you can watch it again and again!
There were some great things about watching the show through cameras. You could never dream of getting that close to the action of a Broadway show (except perhaps Spring Awakening) in a normal situation. Close-up shots of individuals sometimes really heightened some scenes; allowing you to really engross yourself in what was going on. Not so cool was watching flying spit; though I suppose you have to give a little in that situation!
The cast were superb. As great as I think Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascall were as Mark and Roger, it was really refreshing to see someone else tackle these great roles. Adam Kantor was an amazing Mark (especially considering he's just out of college!) and Will Chase was a very convincing Roger.
The stand-out performance, in my opinion, was Eden Espinosa as Maureen. I was lucky enough to see her play this role on Broadway and she was even better than I remember! She was so fiesty, as is soooo important to play a good Maureen, but was also fantastic during the emotional scenes; you could really feel her heartache.
Tracie Thoms was great as Joanne, and it was fab to see that she has grown into the part since making the film, it really felt like her own. That was what I think made the cast so great. The original cast for RENT are iconic and it would be so easy to copy their performances. Infact I'm sure many audiences expect/hope for that. But the closing cast really made the show their own, whilst of course staying faithful to what the musical is all about.
Justin Johnson was amazing as Angel; it was so clear that he cared for the role greatly. He has an amazing and versatile voice, which came through especially in "Contact". How he could sing AND move like that in "Today 4u" is anyone's guess!
The only performance that I did not massively enjoy was Renee Goldsberry as Mimi. I saw her in the show and liked her, though she was not my favourite by any stretch. I felt in this recording, that her emotions seemed somewhat forced and unnatural. It was heightened by the vast emotions shown by the rest of the cast. By the final scene she was of course "in the zone" but I just felt it took her a little time to get there. That being said, he voice was sensational. Maybe it was just, having seen the extraordinary Tamyra Gray play the role in 2007, I had set my bar too high??
The music came across beautifully and the ability for the camera to search out action meant that I spotted things that I had never seen before (no mean feat!). Scenes such as "Christmas Bells" really benefitted from this. With more than 4 melodic lines woven over eachother, it was impossible to pick out the details of many of them. Until now. The sound balance was wonderful and the camera moved from person-to-person, allowing you to tune in to each individual line. Wonderful!
I hope that the cameras did not interfere too much with the energy and motion of the show. It did not appear to when watching it. They captured fantastically the raw energy of watching this show live and I am sure I will be watching it again in the next day or so!! I loved that they also took time at a few moments in the show to pan to the band - making the most of them being visible on stage.
Ok, so the show isn't perfect. There are holes in the story and not all of the lyrics are genius. But I think that's part of its charm. It is raw and edgy and thats what so many fans love about it. There is always that thought in the back of my mind: "I wonder what Jonathan Larson would have changed about the show had he lived longer. Would it have made it better?" But then that brings up the question of "had Jonathan Larson lived longer, would the story of RENT have sold so well?" I fell in love with the show before knowing the story of it's creation. But there is no doubt that the situation into which RENT was born created a lot of publicity for the show and put many bums on seats over the years.
The extra features on the DVD were great; I mean, what musical theatre fan doesn't want to sneak a peek backstage and hear the actors talk about what the show and it's characters mean to them. I think especially with a piece like RENT, that has so much attatched to it, even besides the story, it was important to document the closing of the show so explicitly. You couldn't help but be moved by the amount of people that the production touched. Even the man who ran the ticket lottery system shed a few tears on the last day!
It is crazy to think that the man who made all of this happen never got to see any of it. What a sad story in the history of theatre. Jonathan Laron's legacy is a great one, but it is such a shame that this great talent's life was cut short, just as he was starting to get some recognition for his work.
RENT became an overnight phenomenon and stayed that way for 12 years on Broadway, which is more than an achievement. The musical shows no sign of going away either, with the newly released School Edition of the show ready to be performed and the sell-out national tour in full swing. I highly recommend watching the DVD, whether you have seen the show before or not. Make sure you have a tissue ready though, as tears are inevitable!
No Day But Today!

Flis xx

"I never quit, I follow through!"

Don't get me wrong, I am a complete advocate for respecting musical theatre as a genuine and significant art form, I just also enjoy finding funny (not always intentional) moments and running with it! My latest ridiculous mission is a hunt to find as many musicals as possible with the lyrics follow through in them!

So far, my list is four musicals long:
1. RENT (Take Me or Leave Me)
2. Legally Blonde (Chip on My Shoulder)
3. The Last 5 Years (Moving Too Fast, A Part of That, The Schmuel Song)
4. Assassins (The Gun Song) - thanks Olly!

If anyone has any further discoveries that they would like to share with me, I would be most grateful :-) haha!

I will try to post something more constructive soon!
We can't win if we don't follow through.

Flis xx

Zanna, Don't!

Hello and welcome to my new blog, Musical Theatre Musings. Using this blog, I aim to relieve my friends and family of listening to me talk about geeky musical theatre gossip all the time!
I hope to review shows that I have seen and to discuss current strories in West End and Broadway musical theatre.

Starting as I mean to go on, I would like to talk about the production of Zanna, Don't! that I saw with Kieran last night (1st July 2009). It was playing at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate; a very small and fairly primitive theatre above a Wetherspoon's pub in the village. Needless to say, Kieran and I were a little anxious as we approached the venue that we had made an error spending time and money on the Northern Line to get there!
Once inside the theatre, the stiffling heat and small crowd did little to reduce our fears. The cast, however, did! As soon as the show started, I was hooked! Ok, so the sound design wasn't great; with lyrics often being lost, paricularly when an individual character was fighting against the rest of the ensemble and the band. It was not, however, a problem for the majority of the show and it did not detract from the overall performance enough for it to be an issue in my opinion.
The audience's proximity to the stage was the greatest aspect of the production in my eyes. Being in a crowd of fewer than 100, sat mere metres away from the cast, you were immediately drawn into the story; watching every subtle expression, every bead of sweat (and in this heat, that was plenty); everything was extremely exciting.
The young cast did a great job in selling the camp and heartwarming story. The plot, one of a topsy-turvey American highschool, is easy to dismiss as twee and nothing more than uplifting fluff. In a school where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is frowned upon, where the chess champion in the school heartthrob and the captain of the football team the lead in the school musical, there is plenty of room for predictable jokes, but there are also momements of genuine emotion and poignancy.
This lovable story was balanced beautifully by the vibrant cast of twelve, who I can only imagine (/hope!) are great friends; their on stage chemistry was unmistakable. The happy-go-lucky matchmaking fairy (he is much less sickening than it sounds!) was played wonderfully by Mike Shearer, who had such energy and really kept the show moving. The innitially heart-breaking final scene showed Shearer at his best; you couldn't help but feel for the clearly devestated Zanna.
The straight couple in the show, Steve and Kate, played by Michael Cotton and Kate Malyon, were so believable in their characters, you really felt their pain and confusion as the story unfolded. They were matched wondefully by Michael Stacey and Bonnie Hurst; playing Steve and Kate's original boyfriend and girlfriend. Bonnie Hurst and Kate Malyon deserve particular praise; the former's feisty and extremely lovable portrayal of Roberta was fantastic, whilst Kate's vunerability, paired with her beautiful voice, was so great to watch. Their on-stage partnership seemed incredibly authentic too.
Nadeem Crowe played Tank, the popular school DJ, in the production and was great at bringing all of the scenes together. Crowe has a fantastic voice, and a wonderful energy that made it almost impossible to watch anyone else when he was onstage. His crushing good looks didn't hurt anyone either!
The band were seamless and created a must richer sound that you would expect from a keyboard/drum/bass combo. It was nice to be able to see the band at the back of the stage too, instead of usually being tucked away under the stage somewhere!
The sets were very simple, with a few benches being used to create anything from a bar to a bed. The size of the stage did hold the production back in my opinion, with dance numbers such as Ride 'Em and Be a Man longing to spread out into a larger space. This, along with the sound issues, however, and a limited lighting design, are just the restrictions of playing in such an intimate off-West End theatre as Upstairs at The Gatehouse.
All in all, Zanna, Don't was well worth seeing! It was refreshing to see some theatre that didn't have any of the flashy sets and costumes that many West End smash hits rely upon. This production was all about the music, and with a score as lively and uplifting as Zanna, Don't, you couldn't help but leave the theatre with a smile on your face!

Rating: ****

Thanks for reading!
I think we got love.

Flis xx