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Post by Mark on Dec 13, 2022 22:29:23 GMT
If there is excess availability then yes. Obviously hope the show does well, but also hoping some sales happen then! cheers  Even Groundhog Day had dayseats last time when it was otherwise sold out, and All My Sons had lottery via todaytix. There’s always a way. |
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Post by ceebee on Jan 12, 2023 14:02:36 GMT
Ticket going for free on 6th Feb. See noticeboard - thanks.
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Post by gmoneyoutlaw on Jan 16, 2023 14:15:07 GMT
Obviously hope the show does well, but also hoping some sales happen then! cheers Even Groundhog Day had dayseats last time when it was otherwise sold out, and All My Sons had lottery via todaytix. There’s always a way. I was not aware before buying that the show could have a 3+ hour running time. I hope that’s not the case this time. |
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Post by A.Ham on Jan 16, 2023 21:11:51 GMT
I noticed yesterday that additional rows have been added in the stalls, with row B currently the front row. I emailed the box office and they’ve kindly moved me forward from E to B, but said it’s likely row A may also be added, albeit labelled as restricted view due to a high stage.
It was great to see Beverley on Graham Norton’s sofa plugging this on Friday, very much looking forward to seeing it!
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Post by musiqualetheater on Jan 18, 2023 14:02:33 GMT
Chances of this show going to TodayTix rush?
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Post by A.Ham on Jan 28, 2023 10:19:40 GMT
First preview last night… was anyone there?
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2,476 posts
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Post by zahidf on Jan 28, 2023 11:21:25 GMT
Chances of this show going to TodayTix rush? It's on it |
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Post by musiqualetheater on Jan 28, 2023 17:30:03 GMT
Chances of this show going to TodayTix rush? It's on it I checked it immediately yesterday, thrilled! |
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Post by mattnyc on Jan 29, 2023 15:19:21 GMT
Is this still running at over 3 hours?
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Post by bonnotonno on Jan 29, 2023 16:13:45 GMT
Is this still running at over 3 hours? No 2hrs 40mins inc interval according to old vic twotter |
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Post by Being Alive on Jan 29, 2023 18:32:34 GMT
First preview last night… was anyone there? Yes, and I still can't properly formulate my thoughts... |
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jan 29, 2023 19:01:41 GMT
Poll added.
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Post by southstreet on Jan 30, 2023 13:54:17 GMT
I saw the first preview and also saw one of the few full shows of the previous production.
For the positives, the cast is brilliant, standouts for me were Sharon Rose, who was incredible and I loved both Jay Perry's Churchill and Jade Hackett playing his mum. They have worked a lot on the story and the show's name of Sylvia is finally warranted, as the previous production should definitely have been called Pankhurst, seeing that way more time was spent on her mother than Sylvia herself. That has been rectified, even though Emmeline obviously still heavily features.
The sound was way better than previously, though a friend that sat under the overhang in the stalls still had issues making out a lot of the lyrics as the music was too loud. I hope they'll get that sorted, but I guess the theatre also wasn't built for musicals, so probably will always struggle a bit on the sound side.
I think the pacing is still waaaaaay off though, they spent a good two hours on about 13 years of Sylvia's life, up to the point where rich, older, married women were allowed to vote (Emmeline's goal), but then rushed through the next ten years that it took to get the vote for all women (Sylvia's goal) in like 7 minutes. And in those 7 minutes they still didn't tell you how she managed to get the vote for all women or what her involvement in that fight was, other than showing some placards and protests. Better than last time round, where that part was covered in about two short sentences by the narrator, but it's still not good enough. Certain parts of the story assume you know a fair bit about her and other suffragettes. The whole plot point about Emily Davison and how she died was clear to me, because I knew that part, but a friend of mine that didn't know about her story, didn't really understand what was going on at the race. They made a big deal of showing Sylvia's brother dying but gave no indication of what? And they still have Silvio's love song to Silvia in at the end, which is a gorgeous song and beautifully sung but doesn't add anything to the story and that time could have been spent on the 10 years mentioned above instead. So yes, the book is way better than last time around but still needs a lot of work.
Musically it's very much trying to be the British Hamilton, it didn't have any big standout moments, it was all fairly samey, but I did enjoy the music (albeit not loved it as much as I had hoped to) and Sharon and Beverley definitely got to show off their vocals.
Definitely loved the choreo though, but then that is what Kate Prince excels in and this was no different. Also really liked what I think were influences of Jade Hackett's choreo in the show.
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Post by cavocado on Jan 30, 2023 14:53:45 GMT
It's somewhat minimising the achievements of Emmeline to describe the 8.5 million women over 30 who got the vote in 1918 as "rich, older, married women." They or their husband had to own a home or rent one with a rateable value over £5 a year. That excluded a lot of poorer women, but there was no requirement to be married, 30 wasn't 'old' (female life expectancy was 59), and it included some working class women. Of course it wasn't enough, but it is still something we should celebrate.
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Post by southstreet on Jan 30, 2023 15:42:59 GMT
It's somewhat minimising the achievements of Emmeline to describe the 8.5 million women over 30 who got the vote in 1918 as "rich, older, married women." They or their husband had to own a home or rent one with a rateable value over £5 a year. That excluded a lot of poorer women, but there was no requirement to be married, 30 wasn't 'old' (female life expectancy was 59), and it included some working class women. Of course it wasn't enough, but it is still something we should celebrate. I said older, not old and sorry if I got the married part wrong. :-) All this stems from is that one of my pet peeves with the previous production of this show was that it was called Sylvia and concentrated way more on Emmeline than on Sylvia and that show literally ended after three hours with only a portion of women having been given the vote and a sentence or two from the narrator saying 'Sylvia still had to wait ten years until her goal of all women having the right to vote was achieved', again showing how the show was concentrating more on Emmeline (and Christabel) than Sylvia. I would have expected the conclusion of the show to be at Sylvia's milestone, not her mother's. And whilst there is a little bit more now in the show, it still doesn't actually give any detail of what had to be done in those 10 years to give voting rights to all women and that was basically the point I was trying to make. Sorry if you felt it was mimimising Emmeline's achievements, as that wasn't my intention, being an older (though not OLD :-) ) woman over 40 myself, I am very much benefiting from her work, I was looking at it from a storyline/book perspective. |
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Post by MrBunbury on Jan 30, 2023 16:54:41 GMT
I saw it on Saturday night with two friends. Although it is not the kind of music I listen to normally, I liked the hip hop/funk sound score (I remember liking it also when I saw the doomed embryonic production at the Old Vic years ago). Sharon Rose and Beverly Knight are great and the choreography is amazing.
It still feels rather long and I guess they could cut something at the beginning to reduce the length because in that first part, the songs sound a bit the same and the story does not progress much. In the first part, I struggled to understand some of the lyrics (I was sitting in the grand circle).
But I loved the idea of the 'suffrajitsu' and it is now part of my vocabulary (although I don't know in what context I will be able to use the word...).
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Post by shownut on Jan 31, 2023 7:52:28 GMT
I was there last night and found it to be an incoherent mess with more false rhymes and cliches substituting as lyrics than one would think imaginable. It was a waste of enormous talent and a waste of my time.
The show could certainly benefit from losing at least 15 mins from each act but it won't solve the clunky book, derivative and unimaginative score, (they should aim for more than practically plagiarising HAMILTON), and characters that rarely are more than two dimensional.
I will credit it with a decent act one closer and act two opener but everything else at either end was subpar or less, despite how slickly it was delivered.
It didn't help that my experience as an audience member was ruined by a man in front of me who kept checking his phone by literally holding it up to his face for minutes at a time, his rather tall friend who couldn't sit still and blocked a fair amount of my view no matter how I tried to see around him, a child having a loud and long session with a bag of crips behind me for most of act two and a member of the creative team at the end of our row who kept taking notes on a very visible and distractingly bright computer.
The audience clearly loved it and I expect it will get a handful of ***** reviews since it didn't suck quite as bad as MANDELA but wow, what a rotten way to spend an evening in the theatre.
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Post by Being Alive on Jan 31, 2023 10:40:40 GMT
Book by Katie Prince Lyrics by Katie Prince Additional Music by Katie Prince Directed and Choreographed by Katie Prince Produced by the Katie Prince Company. I can't wait for the reviews! I was scrolling back through this thread whilst I pieced together my thoughts and honestly, I think the main issue is this. One person was in control of all of this, and it hasn't worked. They needed additional eyes on it with different perspectives. Performances are great, but the book is woeful and just far too long. Act 2 can easily lose 15 mins and I think they're working on that now, but the pacing is the issue. Perfectly fine night in the theatre, but it has a lot of problems stopping it soar. |
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Post by jamb0r on Jan 31, 2023 11:21:28 GMT
I was there last night and left just thinking it was...fine.
I saw one of the few full performances in the previous run so I mostly knew what to expect. One of the main things that I loved compared to the previous run was the use of projections, I thought they really worked well for this. The choreography and performances were all also excellent. There are maybe 2 great standout numbers, but for the rest of it I just felt a bit bored? As has been mentioned before the pacing is totally off. It feels like nothing really happens in the plot for ages, then all of a sudden a hundred things happen at once. It's also not doing itself any favours by being so obviously 'inspired' by Hamilton that it's impossible not to compare the two throughout.
I was in the middle of the front row of the first circle and struggled to hear a lot of lyrics in the group numbers. Churchill's Mum's number in the first act I guess was hilarious based on the audience reaction but I couldn't tell you a single lyric that was sung.
It's still far too long, ran at about 2hr 50 last night. I can't see how they are going to cut anything else at this stage though if they've been worshipping it for this long and haven't been able to up until now.
Definitely feel like I got my £10 worth seeing those performances (especially Beverley), but I won't be rushing back. There was a full standing ovation at the end and the audience seemed to love it however.
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Post by Dave B on Jan 31, 2023 11:42:23 GMT
There was a full standing ovation at the end and the audience seemed to love it however. My better half took her mom last night and they both report loving it. |
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Post by mrbarnaby on Jan 31, 2023 21:20:50 GMT
There was a full standing ovation at the end and the audience seemed to love it however. My better half took her mom last night and they both report loving it. People stand for any old sh*te nowadays |
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Post by jm25 on Feb 1, 2023 0:17:01 GMT
Watched this tonight and more or less agree with most of the criticisms outlined in this thread. It was okay but there were clear issues which I couldn't quite overlook. Slight spoilers ahead...
First and foremost, it felt lacking in narrative focus. It couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to focus on Sylvia herself or the wider movement, but in any case it felt very bloated and in need of trimming.
The pacing doesn't quite work either (for me at least). There are times where it just breezes through things at a million miles an hour, and as a result it never really finds a proper emotional grounding. Likewise, its emotional tone is very one note. The end of the first half ends on the same emotional beat as the actual ending - so you don't quite feel as though you've actually gotten anywhere.
Narrative-wise, I wasn't keen on how it seemed to be pitting Emmeline as the 'villain' (for want of a better word) towards the end. Whatever the historical differences between her and Sylvia may have been (and I confess I don't know anything about the actual historical facts), the narrative for the first 2/3 sets up 'the establishment' as the villain, typified by the Churchill character, so the painting of Emmeline as the foe towards the end felt a bit sudden and unearned. However, I really liked how this was portrayed through the use of costume and colour.
My friend and I both observed during the interval that it had been very difficult to make out a lot of the voices. The sound mixing seriously needs looking into. (We were in the stalls, row E, for reference). We both also noted the clear inspiration this took from Hamilton, as others here have also noted. Whilst I'm all for shows taking inspiration from other shows, this felt a bit too on the nose and the problem was that this simply wasn't as intelligent as Hamilton, especially in the lyrics department. The lyrics were borderline amateur at times but I got the idea that whoever wrote them thought they were brilliant.
I didn't NOT enjoy it and for the price of my £10 ticket it was certainly worth watching... but I'm afraid this production needs a lot of work. That said, the audience seemed to adore it! Different strokes for different folks.
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Post by drmaplewood on Feb 2, 2023 21:38:45 GMT
Left at the interval tonight, found it incoherent and left with a headache. Not for me.
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Post by Steve on Feb 2, 2023 23:44:44 GMT
I loved this show 5 years ago, and I still loved it tonight, though it's a very different show. It's completely refocused on Sylvia now, it's got a propulsive score, with propulsive dance, almost all the way through, which is exciting on the one hand but reduces the individual impact of any particular song on the other hand. What remains constant is that Beverley Knight is AMAZING, and Sharon Rose is wonderful as Sylvia too. Some spoilers follow. . . On the one hand, this is the revamp I expected: the show makes the eponymous Sylvia the focus of her own show. On the other hand, this is not the revamp I expected, as it doesn't focus on individuals, nor does it focus on individual moments and individual emotions, the way I expected it to. Instead, it is a battering ram of a show, a socialist war cry of a show about a socialist war cry of a movement, at least for the first half. Individualistic impulses to dwell on Sylvia's hopes and dreams, or indeed any other character's, as you would typically get in most musicals are resisted for the relentless charge of the women's movement forward in chronological time. Individualistic humour is sacrificed almost utterly, except in the case of the wonderful Jade Hackett as Winston Churchill's bolshy hilarious Jamaican patois singing mother. It's like the old argument between people that like singles, and people that like albums, and this show typically puts the album first at the expense of the singles. It's like WH Auden's poem, "The Night Mail," where you can't concentrate on any particular verse because the rhythm of every verse feels like the chugging of a speeding train, and all you feel and remember is the train. Luckily, Beverley Knight is no ordinary performer, and no amount of flowing hip hop drum beats, coupled with torrents of projected information, urgently pushing their way through every song, barraging towards women's suffrage, can slow her down or dent her impact. She's a phenomenon who swims against this torrent, creating massive individualistic moments of exhilaration: her exhortation to "March Women March," is one of the most impactful moments of the show because at that moment she is singing in concert, rather than against the communal tide, and her deep soulfulness speeds the march of the drums. One exception to the rule of everyone dancing and singing together, in socialist sync to the hip-hop drumbeat of the suffragist march, that proves the rule, is when the drumbeats stop, the music goes quiet, at the end of the first half, and Sharon Rose commands the stage as an individual, and softly and tenderly sings "Be the change that you want to be." Of course, by the end of the song, the propulsive and communal nature of the show restores itself, but the song is so powerful precisely because we stopped to be quiet, just for a moment. There are many more such quiet moments after the interval, thankfully, not least one involving Sweeney's Sylvio, which is amusing and fun, and one involving Sharon Rose's Sylvia, when she leads the standout song, "Stand up now," though it could have been even better had Beverley Knight joined in, which she couldn't, for story reasons. Maybe they should have disguised Knight as another character, lol, but they couldn't, cos she's too individual and exceptional to hide lol. There are many excellent performances among the ensemble, not least Sylvia's two Spice Girl style sisters, with a ferocious Ellena Vincent's Christabel ever up for a fight, like Mel B, and Kirstie Skivington's sweet calm Adela ever ameliorating like a people pleasing Emma Bunton. I normally prefer my musicals individualistic and emotional, and there are some touching moments of that, courtesy of Sharon Rose's excellent central turn and everything Beverley Knight, but mostly, we get a propulsive commune of socialist sync, in dance and in drumbeats, towards womens' destiny of universal suffrage. Probably marmite, but I loved it anyway. Four stars from me, duly entered into the poll. |
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Post by zahidf on Feb 3, 2023 0:27:55 GMT
Some of the songs are great and the performances are amazing
I did feel the worse thing in it was the weird relationship between Keir Hardie and Sylvia. Rhe age difference felt really pronounced, and I don't think it added much to the show.
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