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Post by Being Alive on Apr 11, 2024 13:55:31 GMT
I think we can all guess what'll fill the gap 👻
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Post by showtoones on Apr 11, 2024 13:58:14 GMT
I think we can all guess what'll fill the gap 👻 What?!? |
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Apr 11, 2024 13:59:45 GMT
It can’t be 👻 we haven’t got enough room in the thread title.
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Post by thedrowsychaperone on Apr 11, 2024 14:00:19 GMT
I think we can all guess what'll fill the gap 👻 About time for a Ghost revival ...or a musical adaptation of Ghosts?? (Now THAT'S something I wanna see... where's Stiles and Drewe??) |
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Post by Jon on Apr 11, 2024 14:11:22 GMT
I'm guessing Ibsen's Ghosts which recently was at the Wanamaker Playhouse.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Apr 11, 2024 14:16:48 GMT
I thought Being Alive meant 2:22. Tour finishes end of May |
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 11, 2024 14:28:29 GMT
I thought Being Alive meant 2:22. Tour finishes end of May If I was to have to make a bet, it would be this. |
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Post by greatauntedna on Apr 11, 2024 14:38:32 GMT
It looks like the tour finishes in Salford on 15th June?
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Post by MoreLife on Apr 11, 2024 14:41:02 GMT
Riiiight. It's the 'challenging financial landscape' we're blaming, is it? What nonsense. Well, there's really a lot of unsold tickets in the upcoming weeks and the divisive reviews and unfavourable word of mouth were not going to help fill them, so there certainly is a financial challenge that the producers are facing, which makes this statement an example of... trying to get people to look away from the other issues  Personally, while I did not love the show, I didn't hate it either and I thought the performances were generally strong enough for me to enjoy a definitely uncommon, avant-garde night at the theatre. However, I can also see why it struggles to have any sort of commercial success and why many people have expressed more decisively negative opinions about it. I hope it doesn't create too much of a precedent whereby the more daring and out there shows can't really find a space, but I'm not surprised they're pulling the plug on it much sooner than originally planned... |
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Post by ix on Apr 11, 2024 14:54:00 GMT
Riiiight. It's the 'challenging financial landscape' we're blaming, is it? What nonsense. Well, there's really a lot of unsold tickets in the upcoming weeks and the divisive reviews and unfavourable word of mouth were not going to help fill them, so there certainly is a financial challenge that the producers are facing, which makes this statement an example of... trying to get people to look away from the other issues Quite. They mean their challenging financial landscape, caused by… well goodness I have no idea. |
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 11, 2024 15:11:43 GMT
It looks like the tour finishes in Salford on 15th June? There's more than one set of this available. |
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Post by theatremiss on Apr 11, 2024 15:17:12 GMT
Empty theatre……upcoming Euros. Cmon Dear England would be great for 6-8 weeks
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Post by titan31 on Apr 11, 2024 15:35:29 GMT
I'm surprised it's even getting until May. It can't be drawing a crowd surely
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 11, 2024 15:48:44 GMT
I know it shocks people, but people are going, even if it's not in big numbers - it had an advance (not huge) because of Sheridan.
People are going because it's Sheridan, and some people are enjoying it (me included)
I'll be going at least once more to see it.
Very sad for the cast - I think they took a big risk with this by going to the West End with Sheridan - on reflection there would have been logic in somewhere like the Almeida to iron out the bits of it that needed work, and then bring it in, but they took a risk with a name like Sheridan and star creatives like Ivo and Rufus. On this occasion it hasn't paid off, but I'm still glad they did it. There has to be a place in theatre for stuff like this or we are doomed to endure musicals that sound like they were created by AI and have absolutely zero creativity (I say this as Heathers is about to return...!)
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Post by Rory on Apr 11, 2024 15:55:04 GMT
I thought Being Alive meant 2:22. Tour finishes end of May If I was to have to make a bet, it would be this. Please, God, no. Enough. That would be too depressing. I hope they transfer The Deep Blue Sea from the Ustinov with Tamsin Greig. |
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 11, 2024 16:26:28 GMT
If I was to have to make a bet, it would be this. Please, God, no. Enough. That would be too depressing. I hope they transfer The Deep Blue Sea from the Ustinov with Tamsin Greig. Okay now THIS I want. |
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Post by ix on Apr 11, 2024 17:09:00 GMT
Please, God, no. Enough. That would be too depressing. I hope they transfer The Deep Blue Sea from the Ustinov with Tamsin Greig. Okay now THIS I want. Me too. I would pay good money and buy a programme just to watch her folding teatowels for two hours, let alone acting in something. |
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Post by Rory on Apr 11, 2024 17:27:22 GMT
The closing date has even made the BBC Six O'Clock News! Madness.
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Post by danb on Apr 11, 2024 17:36:28 GMT
Saddened by this news. Hopefully I can make it before it closes. I wonder what they have chosen to replace it. Starter for ten from Bath? Or more likely a touring show that has a gap or has recently ended its tour. ‘Starter for Ten’ from BRISTOL (ahem!) is a great shout and would sit beautifully in the Gielgud, but I fear too many of the cast have already moved on. |
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Post by Steve on Apr 11, 2024 18:17:26 GMT
I guess I won't be seeing it in June then. Should I make an effort to see it? Is there a show I might have seen before and either liked or hated that would be a good barometer? There really aren't any shows like this, and I'm certainly not one to listen to about this as I'm an outlier opinion. However. . . (Some spoilers follow) . . .the best comparisons I can make are with works where a creative individual is stuck in a rut and a frantic world whirls around them. Such shows are more introspective and static than dramatic and event-filled, though they turn to fantasies to provide an element of drama. The best such show is "Sunday in the Park with George," which gets into George Seurat's creative head, and is, in my opinion, better than this, a 5 star show, lifted by Sondheim's genius and a clever ending, which time jumps away from the static first act. Another show like this is "Preludes," which gets into Rachmaninoff's head, and all the zaniness in that head, and personally, I did not enjoy that as much as this show, and rated it 3 stars of passable at Southwark Playhouse. "A Strange Loop" is a bit like this too, but less so, as it's more an exploration of identity than creativity, but the similarity is being caught in the protagonist's head negotiating creative blocks. I liked that show more than "Preludes" but less than "Opening Night." The best scenes in this show all revolve around Sheridan's Smith's essentially static character, Myrtle, entering into extreme emotional states, lost in a creative block brought on by aging, while a threatening creative world threatens to eat her up. Like all the above plays (except the clever time jump in the Sondheim final section), there is little real drama going on. That's why this was never a good bet for the West End. I really don't think that "Preludes" or "A Strange Loop" could have done much better business than "Opening Night" at the Gielgud, though "Sunday" could have, as Sondheim is more universally loved than Rufus Wainwright, and Jake Gyllenhaal is a world famous actor, rather than a UK famous actor, so the tourists could prebook that from abroad for their holiday visits. Anyway, I think to enjoy this, you must prepare yourself for the stasis, not expect dynamic action, nor must you expect the misanthropic intensity of the movie. Wainwright isn't intense, he's a mournful sardonic observer of life more than a participant. Instead, just allow yourself to imbibe Sheridan Smith's Myrtle's lostness (has any actor ever cried more tears in a play?), and allow Wainwright's comforting wistful music to sweep you and her into a dreamland for each disconnected, strange moment of her suffering, redeemed by the music. In Myrtle's eleven o'clock number, "Ready for Battle," which I had thought might be called "The World is Broken," Myrtle, like Seurat in "Sunday," sings of finding "order in the disorder" of her creative life, which is what Seurat does with his painting. One of the reasons I preferred this to "Preludes" and "A Strange Loop" is the sheer emotionalism of Sheridan Smith's character in every scene. She reminds me of Tracie Bennett's Judy Garland in "End of the Rainbow." I voted 4 stars in the poll, making my opinion an outlier lol. |
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Post by fiyero on Apr 11, 2024 20:02:14 GMT
I guess I won't be seeing it in June then. Should I make an effort to see it? Is there a show I might have seen before and either liked or hated that would be a good barometer? There really aren't any shows like this, and I'm certainly not one to listen to about this as I'm an outlier opinion. ... Thank you so much I will have a good look at my diary for an opportunity! |
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Post by theatreliker on Apr 11, 2024 21:44:50 GMT
Looking forward to the Palladium concert in 10 years
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Post by Dave B on Apr 11, 2024 22:11:46 GMT
‘Starter for Ten’ from BRISTOL (ahem!) is a great shout and would sit beautifully in the Gielgud, but I fear too many of the cast have already moved on. Starter for Ten was originally 'hoping' to come to West End ( Guardian). Given the writing was on the wall for Opening Night before they closed in Bristol (March 30th), would they not have had some conversations? |
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Post by n1david on Apr 11, 2024 22:22:47 GMT
Starter for T'en got some mixed reviews and I found it disappointing, in part because I had high hopes for it. I'd hope that they would take the time to rework it a bit before it reached a West End stage. After all, who would bring something to the West End which hadn't fully evolved?
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Post by sph on Apr 12, 2024 0:08:49 GMT
While I didn't find this show totally unwatchable myself, and again I'm sorry for the loss of jobs with it closing, I don't particularly agree with the defence that at least it was trying something "bold and new/unusual" in the West End, as that does a discredit to the many other bold and new shows in the West End that quite frankly just did "bold and new" a lot better. SO MANY plays and musicals in recent years have been incredibly inventive and unusual in their staging and/or narrative structure, but they just did it better. Saying that the loss of shows like this is a slippery slope to a West End full of jukebox musicals is false. Jukebox musicals continue to come and go. There are still new and exciting works popping up without the clunky dialogue and lyrics and baffling directorial choices of Opening Night.
This idea that Opening Night has flopped entirely because people don't "get" inventive or avant garde theatre undermines the fact that there are many regular theatregoers who have seen and enjoyed ALL kinds of theatre who just thought this was badly done.
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