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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:20:52 GMT
For me, I thought Drew McOnie's work as director and choreographer is outstanding in the way he has captured the feeling of life in Australia in the 1950s in the world of ballroom dancing, much as he gave us New York in the 1940s in 'On the Town' last year so brilliantly. I'm confused. Is this lastest version of Strictly Ballroom now set in the 1950s? It's been a while but, from what I remember, the film isn't, nor was the Leeds version. |
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:35:05 GMT
Firstly, it seems that some of the members who did not enjoy the show are not relating it to the original successful and much loved Baz Luhrmann film on which it is based. OK, I guess that punters going to see a West End show will not necessarily be familiar with the movie on which it is based, but in that case why is 'Brief Encounter' currently playing successfully in the West End, and why are other shows based on movies like 'An American in Paris' considered to be so good? I didn't enjoy the show and I've seen the movie several times (and it's great). The issue for me was that it has no real right to call itself a musical. It's half "Strictly Ballroom - The Play" and half a Will Young covers concert. That's not a musical. I enjoyed the aspects that bore some resemblance to the film, but the show isn't what it's selling itself to be. It's like me calling myself a chef when I can knock up a half decent risotto, but I'm an accountant! |
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:38:38 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting.  |
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:50:51 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting. Haha! Thank you  I just hide my accountant tendencies well! |
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 12:55:07 GMT
You can't be, surely? You're interesting. Haha! Thank you I just hide my accountant tendencies well!Bet you've got a very comprehensive ticket price spreadsheet though? |
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 13, 2018 12:59:24 GMT
Haha! Thank you I just hide my accountant tendencies well!Bet you've got a very comprehensive ticket price spreadsheet though? Ah, guilty. And an Access database!! 🤓 |
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 13:20:15 GMT
For me, I thought Drew McOnie's work as director and choreographer is outstanding in the way he has captured the feeling of life in Australia in the 1950s in the world of ballroom dancing, much as he gave us New York in the 1940s in 'On the Town' last year so brilliantly. TallPaul said: I'm confused. Is this lastest version of Strictly Ballroom now set in the 1950s? It's been a while but, from what I remember, the film isn't, nor was the Leeds version. Well, TallPaul, that's me scuppered totally. I have always assumed from the general atmosphere and the characters that the film of 'Strictly Ballroom' was set in the 1950s. The local Ballroom and Dance Studio where I lived in Sydney closed in about 1960 and I had assumed that the popularity of competitive ballroom dancing waned around that time. Looking now at Wikipedia it seems more likely that Baz Luhrmann probably set his original play in the early 1980s when it was written. If this is so then I have been talking rubbish. However, Wiki also says that Baz Lurhmann partly based Strictly Ballroom on the life of dancer and choreographer Keith Bain, whose time as a ballroom champion was in the early 1960s, so this might also be the setting of 'Strictly Ballroom' when the White Australia Policy was still effectively keeping the population white. But as showoff said earlier, does it really matter about two members of the ensemble in a comedy musical -- oops, I should say comedy play with a lot of incidental music! |
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 13:28:00 GMT
Oops again!
"Quote" obviously has views on this matter as well since it has totally sabotaged my latest post!
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Post by TallPaul on Apr 13, 2018 13:29:33 GMT
^ Over to our Board friends, then Tony, for their thoughts on the era.
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Post by showoff on Apr 13, 2018 13:36:00 GMT
I always thought it was set in the 80's.
It just felt like that era.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 14:21:26 GMT
Good god i cant stand will young anyway and now i'm going to see a will young concert set in the 50's with an 80s soundtrack.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 14:26:08 GMT
Good god i cant stand will young anyway and now i'm going to see a will young concert set in the 50's with an 80s soundtrack. Well if you can't stand Will Young you could.. and this is controversial.. not go? Miss Young does wear some rather lovely outfits though I'm reliably informed. |
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Post by Elle on Apr 13, 2018 14:26:55 GMT
It's not set in the 50's. Both the movie and the show are set in the 1980's and the outfits, hairstyles, make-up and overall styling make that very clear. The movie and the show are very similar. I can't say how many different ethnicities were in either because I don't pay attention to that and just enjoyed watching both. The story actually depicts how Australia became more multi-cultural in the 80's. This article explains it well and spoiler alert: australia-explained.com.au/films/strictly-ballroom |
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Post by Steve on Apr 13, 2018 15:28:16 GMT
One third Will Young covers concert, one third Drew McOnie dance show, one third lamebrained comedy, barely qualifying as a musical, I thought this a bit of a disjointed mess until Zizi Strallen glued those disparate parts together with a hugely appealing breakout, funny, dynamic, heartfelt central turn. Some spoilers follow. . . I've seen Zizi Strallen a ton of times, but she's never had a role as important as this one. The show's genre-bending might infuriate lovers of musicals, because the characters don't sing their emotions, they DANCE them. It might infuriate dance lovers, because there's just not enough dance: "Dancing with Myself" and Bizet's Habanera are two inspired Drew McOnie trademarked exceptions, but mostly characters stand around doing slightly offensive comedy of the "Aren't Aussies a bit simple" variety (this can be partially excused cos Baz Luhrman is making fun of himself, because the source material was the same, and because everybody in comedies are a bit simple). But this comedy falls flat hard, and often, I found, except vis a vis: Zizi Strallen: Not only is she a knockout dancer and a winning presence, as anyone who saw her play the warm, vulnerable, younger version of Janie Dee's ice-cold Phyllis, in the National's Follies, will attest, but she is full on funny, here, as well. Her Patsy-Ferran-reminiscent expressive over-eager saucer eyes bulge geekily with each desperately gawky romantic mistep her character Fran makes toward Jonny Labey's dreamy dance king, Scott Hastings. Yet, Strallen never goes so far as to caricature Fran such that we don't care about her. In fact, while I cared a little bit about Jonny Labey's Scott, and a little bit about Stephen Matthews' much put-upon Doug Hastings, it was ONLY Zizi Strallen's Fran I cared ALOT about. And it really made the show for me, seeing this gawky, geeky, funny girl clumsily set about attaining her ambitions. And to see the clumsiness of that Just-Fran character turn into graceful magic on the dance floor in a dream dance pairing with Jonny Labey was just magic! Apart from Strallen, the next most important ingredient to me enjoying this fluffy frothy confounding confection was Will Young. He is too self-effacing to make a great narrator of the story, I felt (I mean his bows lasted a millisecond, so much did the actor despise the spotlight), but as a mariachi-style accompaniment to the characters, serenading their cares from the sidelines, his voice is sweet, high-pitched, soft and beautiful, and he brings romance and tenderness to the proceedings, where otherwise there might be flat flailing comedy. To Strallen's and Young's invaluable contributions, add some lovely McOnie choreography (though not enough), some pretty primary colours (the costumes are always everywhere), and a blend of eighties (Time after Time, Dancing with Mysel, Let's Dance) and sixties (Perhaps Perhaps, Hound Dog, Tequila) jukebox, and you have a quirky quaint funny winner. Strallen is the key. 4 stars. |
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 13, 2018 15:47:22 GMT
It's not set in the 50's. Both the movie and the show are set in the 1980's and the outfits, hairstyles, make-up and overall styling make that very clear. The movie and the show are very similar. I can't say how many different ethnicities were in either because I don't pay attention to that and just enjoyed watching both. The story actually depicts how Australia became more multi-cultural in the 80's. This article explains it well and spoiler alert: australia-explained.com.au/films/strictly-ballroomThanks, elle. That seems to set out the background very fully, although I don't entirely agree with some of what is said about the waves of immigrants that did indeed change Australia's cultural and ethnic mix, but I don't want to get drawn into that discussion here. But I obviously have to accept that the show is set in the 1980s when Lurhmann first wrote his play although I am still influenced by the fact that he was partly inspired by the life of Keith Bain, whose ballroom championship days were in the early 1960s. I just didn't correctly get the references to the fashions and hair styles of the 1980s and thought they were from the earlier time. |
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Post by Phantom of London on Apr 13, 2018 22:19:02 GMT
So of Baz Luhrmann films, we get Strictly Ballroom, But it looks like Broadway going to get Moulin Rouge, so who got the rough deal? Of course Moulin Rouge would be out of this universe.
I am still recovering from the Australians sending us, that god damm awful camp hit with a bus, at least that had a stellar performance from Tony Sheldon, where this is just plain awful, cheap, tacky and forced. Do we need to see another show, where the husband is hen pecked by his wife, but manages to get assertive for the end? This had more end of the pier about it than West End.
Someone needs to step up to the plate and grab hold of Strictly Ballroom and stick it in the corner.
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Post by tonyloco on Apr 14, 2018 11:56:01 GMT
where this is just plain awful, cheap, tacky and forced. Phantom of London has obviously never seen suburban Australians of the 1980s in their natural domestic habitat! This show is actually reality TV at its most truthful! |
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Post by musicalmarge on Apr 16, 2018 23:06:19 GMT
Saw this tonight, what a load of RUBBISH!!! The staging was a total MESS! Not good and the worst set I’ve ever seen on the West End! 5/10
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Post by ensembleswings on Apr 16, 2018 23:15:58 GMT
Went and saw this tonight, I don’t really know what to say about it. It wasn’t awful but there’s definitely far better shows out there. Just not my thing at all, and that kind of hurts to say as I usually really enjoy watching ballroom dance
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2018 23:19:55 GMT
Saw this tonight, what a load of RUBBISH!!! The staging was a total MESS! Not good and the worst set I’ve ever seen on the West End! 5/10 Rubbish Mess And you still award 5/10 The board is too funny |
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Post by Being Alive on Apr 16, 2018 23:33:23 GMT
Yeah I’m with Parsley in that musicalmarge - if it’s as bad as you’re saying, why give it 5/10? That’s still 2.5-3 stars... Be interested to know some of your thoughts in more detail. I can’t stand Will Young, so I won’t be going to this unfortunately - a shame as a friend worked on it in Leeds and said it’s great and I love me a Strallen! |
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Post by shady23 on Apr 17, 2018 7:19:40 GMT
Baz Luhrmann is one of the guests on the BBC Radio Two breakfast show this Friday to discuss this show.
Isn't one of the points of reworking a show to create a part for a "star" that they will go on to do promo like this for you?
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Post by musicalmarge on Apr 17, 2018 7:32:50 GMT
Yeah I’m with Parsley in that musicalmarge - if it’s as bad as you’re saying, why give it 5/10? That’s still 2.5-3 stars... Be interested to know some of your thoughts in more detail. I can’t stand Will Young, so I won’t be going to this unfortunately - a shame as a friend worked on it in Leeds and said it’s great and I love me a Strallen! Maybe because there are still talented performers on stage, that some of the songs used are popular hits, because the costumes were good and the choreography effective? There’s even the odd line that made me laugh. That’s the reason why I gave it 5 out of 10. The musical is pretty hopeless and didn’t work for me (act 2 is a total mess and rushed) - but there are also some very talented people on the stage. It’s not good but I’ve seen worse - that’s why I scored it that. Just as a critic might give a show 2 stars. Rather simple. |
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Post by shady23 on Apr 17, 2018 7:36:22 GMT
They should put "it's not good but I've seen worse" on the posters ☺
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Post by richey on Apr 18, 2018 9:11:45 GMT
Well no-one can deny Will isn't taking his role seriously! |
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I just hide my accountant tendencies well!
