The world of (mostly musical) theatre
This week’s update includes news of 2 show openings, 1 piece of casting news and a couple of show announcements. I’d expect the number of announcements to increase in the coming weeks as shows confirm casts or finalise theatres.
In the meantime, here’s my round-up of what has happened this week.
Despite booking tickets months ago, I only actually got round to seeing Joseph last night. I blame ‘the Lee Mead effect’ for having to wait this long - the only performances with availability for a large group were those when Lee was on holiday. As you can imagine, no-one was happy with that option - why see the show without its star!
It was therefore with a great deal of anticipation that I entered the Adelphi last night, and in hindsight, I’d say that the show only partly met my expectations. When I reviewed the Mountview Showcase last week, I limited my post to highlights and lowlights, and I’m going to do something similar with last night’s show. If you want to read a more traditional review, you can see a positive one in the Times or a negative one in the Guardian.
Continue reading ‘Review: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Adelphi Theatre)’
I’ve already written my own revew of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of The Music Man, buit it’s always good to find out that I’m in agreement with the professional critics! In fact, the critics were so positive (and so much more in agreement than normal!), that I thought it was worth writing a round-up of their reviews.
Continue reading ‘Review round-up: The Music Man (Chichester Festival Theatre)’
I have to admit - I don’t often venture outside London to go to the theatre. This weekend I made an exception by making a trip to Chichester to watch the Festival Theatre’s new production of The Music Man.
Continue reading ‘Review: The Music Man (Chichester Festival Theatre)’
Soon after the series finished, I wrote a blog post about my predictions for what each of the girls is doing next. Exactly one month later, I thought it was worth taking a look to see what has happened in the meantime, and find out whether life really has changed for any of the finalists. So here’s the news…
Continue reading ‘I’d Do Anything finalists - where are they one month later?’
A slightly unusual trip for me this week, as I ventured over to the Criterion Theatre in Picadilly Circus to watch the Mountview showcase. It’s showcase time of year (see this week’s The Stage for reviews), but I was attending the show for Mountview’s one-year musical theatre programme.
I was hoping to spot the talent that will find their way to the West End stage before too long, but I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappoined at what I saw. Don’t get me wrong - there were definitely a number of performers who look likely to have a successful career in front of them, but there were an even larger number of people who looked out of their depth.
Continue reading ‘Review: Mountview Showcase (Criterion Theatre)’
Apologies for the fact that I haven’t written my friday round-up for a couple of weeks. I’ve covered a number of the big announcements elsewhere on my blog (e.g. They’re Playing Our Song coming to the Menier Chocolate Factory), so you haven’t missed too much of major excitement.
So, in this week’s musical theatre news…
I help to run a theatre group at the company I work for, which arranges trips every 3-4 weeks to shows on in London. It helps that we get cheaper tickets because of the group discounts that producers generally offer.
We arrange our programme 6 months at a time, and since it’s the start of July, we’re just finalising the list of shows for the rest of the year. After a couple of discussions and some email back-and-forth, we have agreed our selection. We think it’s a pretty well balanced programme, so read of if you want some ideas for what to see.
I’ve just returned from a short vacation to discover that All Bob’s Women has opened, and is promptly about to shut. To say it wasn’t a huge success would be an understatement.
Continue reading ‘All Bob’s Women closes after just 9 performances’
It has been reported this morning (What’s on Stage appear to have got there first) that this summer’s musical at the Menier Chocolate Factory is going to be a revival of Marvin Hamlisch’s They’re Playing Our Song.
Continue reading ‘‘They’re playing our song’ comes to the Menier’
