Cake - Tour / Lyric / The Other Palace

[TallPaul]

Paul Taylor-Mills presents Cake - the Marie Antionette Playlist.

Cake combines rap and RnB with 18th century France to retell a story that sparked a revolution. When Marie Antoinette married King Louis, her reputation was already tarnished by gossip. But when she is implicated in a crime to defraud the crown jewellers of a diamond necklace, it is not just her reputation at stake, but the monarchy and France itself.

If you love shows like Six, Pride and Predujice* *(sort of) or Fantastically Great Women From Around the World – you will love this!

Previously part of MTFest at The Other Palace. Anybody already seen it?

[A.Ham]

Just had to search for this thread, as noticed it’s opening venue is just down the road from me in Southampton in a couple of weeks. Zizi was brilliant in Mary Poppins and I like the somewhat Six-sounding storyline so may well pay it a visit. Would be keen to hear if anyone’s seen it previously…

[andypandy]

I'm all for new work and musicals but CAKE seems to be just riding the wave of SIX and HAMILTON no? I mean why not but I'd rather more original shows. I hope I'm proved wrong. The artwork looks incredible.

[ruggerlad]

Saw this at Leicester last night and really enjoyed it.
A very swift 70 minutes.
No swing just the vocal cast of six, unsure why.
Thought it was an exciting piece of theatre, genuinely amazing vocals, great performances.
The cast looked to be having a blast.

[djdan14]

Playing a week at the Lyric - thought this would have taken up residence as the other palace.

[corblimey]

The preview on the 20th is £17.55 the date of Marie Antoinette birthday!
The rest of the week has top price of £60 maybe a little high for a 65 minute show!

[theatreliker]

Enjoyed this in Leicester, it felt really fresh and had some good songs. The whole cast was good and I imagine Strallen wanted to do something very different to Mary Poppins.

[capybara]

Bought a £17.55 ticket for opening night on the basis that I loved Zizi Strallen in Mary Poppins!

[A.Ham]

Saw this in Southampton back in March, and yes it’s a strange mix of Six and Hamilton with some other unidentified ingredients thrown in. An interesting show, some good performances and great the two leads will take it to the West End. Not sure I’d rush back but perhaps it’ll find fans amongst the Six-Queendom.

[A.Ham]

Aug 11, 2023 14:02:41 GMT capybara said:

Bought a £17.55 ticket for opening night on the basis that I loved Zizi Strallen in Mary Poppins!

I can assure you she’s very much not like Mary Poppins in this. Mary would blush, and reach into that carpet bag for a large towel to cover up with!

[theatregoer22]

I've also bought a ticket for the opening night, primarily because it seems very aimed at my demographic and for £17.55 for a good stall seat, why not.

[Sam]

Really enjoyed this last night. I'd certainly go and see it again in its next incarnation.

Zizzi was great, and clearly having a ball- to say it's a different role to Mary Poppins is an understatement- and Renee was great too.

I'm off to google Marie Antoinette and Jeanne.

[Sam]

Sept 21, 2023 8:40:32 GMT kit66 said:

Fun - although it does owe a lot to Hamilton and a touch of Six - but well worth the £17.55 for a "give it a go" evening and Zizi Strallen's performance was worth the price of the ticket alone although I notice the rest of the week isn't selling I would imagine due to the increase in the pricing.
Two things FYI the show is longer than advertised - i think it was more 1hr30mins than 65mins-and the seats in the Dress Circle are horrendous due to the almost non exsistant rake meaning everyones heads were in the way -unless you are sitting in Row A - blocking the sightlines.The curve of the circle also means part of the stage is blocked off.
Make a note for Hadestown!

Thanks for flagging! I was in the stalls which wasn't much better, but I will definitely take heed for Hadestown.

Running time was listed at 90 mins no interval.

[capybara]

Absolutely loved it. And for the £17.55 preview price, it was a complete steal.

I adore Zizi and she was so brilliant as Marie Antoinette. Hilarious, vocally stunning and incredibly flexible!

I’d only seen Renee Lamb in the Emojiland concert previously and thought she was great here too.

Cake is absolutely wild and makes Six look like a child’s tea party. Some banging tunes and, with a bit of finessing, this could be a big hit.

Unfortunately I agree about the Lyric though. I was sat in Row E of the stalls and the two tallest men I’ve ever seen at a theatre sat down in front of me just before lights down. It was like watching the show between two pillars and my neck is paying for it today…

I won’t get a chance to see it again in this short run but, if I could, I’d be booking at least one more visit.

Four stars.

[doornumberthree]

I hated it! I thought the cast were great though, especially Zizi and Renee, I’m happy I saw Zizi but am really struggling to find positives about it.

[backtothetheatre]

I saw this on its little UK tour at the start of the year and thought it was brilliant. I definitely prefer it to both Six and Hamilton. I did think it needed to be a bit longer though so I’m glad to hear they’ve extended it. I’m seeing it in a few days and excited to see what they’ve added and changed.

[theatregoer22]

Was also there last night and definitely enjoyed it overall. Zizi and Renee were great, the dialogue was for the most part compelling (and funny) and the songs were very catchy (in fact I've had one stuck in my head today).

If I had one critical comment, it's that I would have liked more singing instead of all the rapping, however I appreciate that's based on my personal taste and it didn't stop me leaving afterwards with a smile on my face.

Just under 4* for me, with the potential to be a slightly more than 4* when it's fully polished.

And to contribute to the poor rake discussion, I was sat in Row J of the Stall and had a very tall man just in front of me slightly blocking my view from my original seat. Thankfully the two seats next to me were empty so I was able to move over and have a largely clear view from there.

[ladidah]

Seeing this in a moment!

Ruthie Henshall is here

[ladidah]

Lots of famous people, Rob Madge nearly missed the start, I did wonder if he had auditioned for the Cardinal .... a few reality tv faces and MT stars.

The show was a real mixed bag for me. I felt like it was a huge mash up of Six, & Juliet and Hamilton. At one point I was almost humming 'who lives who dies, who tells your story'.

The voices and two leads were great, but the book needs some work, pad it more - build their relationship so we understand how dramatic the end is - and it needs an interval.

[Mark]

Found this to be ok. Zizi is the highlight. Some of the songs are good (especially one of her solos). Everything with the Cardinal character needs a rethink - awful.

[ladidah]

We're the audience laughing at him on your night?

On mine it was mixed

[Steve]

Saw the matinee and it probably needs to be more like "Six," not less, as Queen Zizi Strallen's Marie Antoinette is a five star camp smash in a story that gives lead character status to Renee Lamb's more uninteresting and confusing character.

More fabulous Queen, less of everything else, please.

Some spoilers follow. . .

In real life, Renee Lamb's Jeanne seems to have been a far greater villain than depicted here, an unrepentant thief who ruined the lives and reputations of everybody she came near, including Marie Antoinette. But the writers fictionalise and redeem her.

I don't mention that because I disapprove of historical revisionism, but because the writers seem to feel trapped by Marie Antoinette's downer of a historical fate. Why? Look at what "And Juliet" does with Juliet and consider a better sendoff for this glorious character.

Cos, embodied by a dazzling, camp and funny Zizi Strallen, she comes on with a shameless Madonna surface, elevating her fearless material girl status, with a hilarious new-wave-feminist sex-positive ode to her own "hot[ness]" and a winking comic riff on how she's thriving on spending our "taxes," and then suddenly, she reveals a deep empathetic bruised Lady Gaga heart, with her having been "married off at 15" and having to have sex with a man she's not attracted to.

And it's this combination of outrageous camp big fun action and sentimental big heart interior, combined with some amazingly infectious numbers that just make you want to jump up and cheer the character.

Roger Dipper's Jacobean style villain of a Cardinal, who molests girls and seemingly gets away with it, feels a bit icky, though Dipper does make you overlook that a bit by finding the comic caricature within.

Renee Lamb is fierce and raps and sings well, but her character is just unconvincing as a heroine, even if you go along with the writers' revisions to her character of Jeanne. This means that you come out a bit blah, whereas you'd have been cheering like you just paid £600 to see a Madonna-Lady Gaga joint gig if only the writers had kept the focus on Strallen's Antoinette, and had her do a Jacobean plot twist of her own, swap out with somebody else, and ride off into the sunset the camp larger-than-life Queen she obviously is lol.

Anyway, the whole ensemble is great, with Ope Sowande dancing up such an absolute storm in the background that you wish he and Strallen's Antoinette could just have escaped the downer plot and partied off together lol.

A 5 star Madonna/Gaga combo characterisation of Marie Antoinette by Zizi Strallen combines with a 2 star rating for the confusing, uninspiring, frustrating plot, making for 3 and a half stars overall for me.

I wouldn't miss what Strallen was doing for the world.

[Mark]

Sept 23, 2023 16:05:56 GMT ladidah said:

We're the audience laughing at him on your night?

On mine it was mixed

Slight laughter I guess, although none from me.

[JJShaw]

Well... lets start with the positives.

If Zizi Strallen wasn't already an established performer, this performance would but you on the map as a breakout star. She was absolutely fantastic, pitch perfect comedy timing, gorgeous voice, and the unique (and valuable!) ability to elevate the material given to her.

What a fun lighting design, a suped-up proper big style concert feel, really really fun. SOME of the songs (mostly Zizi's in the middle section of the show) were pretty fun and nice. This is where the show actually succeeded and thrived when it was trying to be its own thing.

Where it absolutely crashed was when it was being derivative of Six and Halimton; to the point that even the rap style sounded like Lin, and by tieing itself so closely to those two shows which (for the most part) are fairly accurate (I know they're not completely!) however after leaving Cake to read that practically NOTHING happened in real life and that basically the entire show is near fabricated felt like an absolute rip off, as the plot was already a little wonky and weak but i forgave it thinking 'well it's probably how most of it happened', and the show even TELLS YOU that's what it's going for with the cringe 'you get to tell YOUR story' lines. The costuming I assume was also the spare rack from &Juliet? With all these 'inspirations' it seems like the kind of you should read bout in theatre history books where they say 'it was clearly a cash grab pulling together from recent shows of the time who did something original and was just reductive, lazy, and boring'.

The Cardinal also made no sense. He is portrayed as this huge womanizer yet is the campest thing since Rob Madge! (Not a bad thing! and considering Paul Taylor Mills' working relationship with Rob you would assume either Rob was busy for these dates of Paul was inspired by their success and thought 'people like Rob, let's cast someone like them!). A simple fix would have been to have him act overtly macho and ladies-man-like during dialogue and then in songs have this switch to being camp, at least the juxtaposition would have been funny, and when you cannot speak, you sing, so there's a justification for that.

Please tell me why we needed an elf vape, kabab shop drunk food, and a little mermaid reference? Sadly the overzealous audience on my night gave it faux whoops and cheers but none of them made sense and just confused the plot. They made a joke where Marie Antoinette has a chocolate croissant for the first time and expects that to be the next big thing and THATS funny because it makes sense time period-wise (please don't quiz me on the history of the humble croissant!!) if smarter jokes like that were made instead of cheap grabs to 'MoDeRniZe' it were made it would have been better. And the lyrics.... repeating that line 'and I take it from your tax!' is funny once, cute twice, and useless and lazy the third, fourth, and fifth time.

I enjoyed the staging, the little platform revolve was fun, Zizi making a star entrance draped over the audience box was fun. Truly Zizi made it not a waste of my time.

[anthony40]

Just got home from seeing this.

Lots of fun. Some terrific voices on that stage.

As all referred to above, references to Hamilton, Six- which I have never seen (don't hate on me), Wicked and The Little Mermaid.

What it lacked in set was made up for with some terrific lighting.

Zizi Strallen- I've seen her in a few things now ad there is something about this woman- the way she holds herself, her posture and poise. I don't know how old she is but give her about 20 years or so and I reckon she'll make a sensational Countess Charlotte Malcolm in a production of A Little Night Music.