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Post by newyorkcityboy on Jun 26, 2021 8:12:06 GMT
Though I’ve been moved from the spinning seats - I can’t wait for Wednesday. I’ve always said that the title should be BAD Cinderella. I think as per ALW they will open it but will close it in 8 month time and make changes. Either that or future productions will be hacked at with things added/cut. It's all about the fine tuning/endless tinkering with ALW shows! The raw material is usually fine, but it's the ongoing process that makes all the difference (and can even transform an almost-dud like Woman In White into a prestige show). Unfortunately his obsession with 'concept albums' means we rarely get a record of the finished piece, just a work in progress...for instance seeing Aspects of Love a year or so after it opened, I was surprised to find There Is More To Love was a (sublime) duet between Rose and Giulietta, rather than the rather stodgy ballad on the record. And that duet has never been recorded! The climax of Anything But Lonely falls flat on disc but ends with a huge high note on stage. The end of the London Sunset album just....ends, missing that final, shattering reprise of With One Look. And don't get me started on Love Never Dies - the Oz version, which is vastly improved (and has a lot more call backs to the original show) never got a CD release at all... |
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Post by ceebee on Jun 26, 2021 8:29:37 GMT
Anyone seen any pictured of merch/prices around? Very curious as I've managed to get a cheap ticket for next week There is a merchandise stand with stuff - didn't take a look but saw t shirts etc. Bought programme for £6. |
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Post by max on Jun 26, 2021 8:35:12 GMT
'Already Home' was in and out and in again during OZ Previews.
'Give Up Your Dreams' out for good in School Of Rock - leaving that character/actress with no featured moment at all. What a waste of a wicked song.
Must be quite tricky for the cast at this stage. Someone's role could still project forward in the mix, others fall back.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2021 8:35:39 GMT
Just wondering what are the set / costumes like? are they good/bad/ or indifferent . I believe ALW saw her designs in LND in Australia. And the designs won the Helpmann
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Post by partytentdown on Jun 26, 2021 8:43:07 GMT
Out of interest, how does the Prince's 'revelation' land with the audience? It all reads as a bit 80s "LOL he's ***"...
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Post by TallPaul on Jun 26, 2021 8:44:43 GMT
Do 'work in progress' previews normally have a properly printed programme? Will it become a collectors item if everything changes before opening night proper? Will it be worth £600 in a few years time...or 60p?
If you pause this clip between 6 and 8 seconds, it gives a very, very rough idea of what merchandise is available. Far too small to see prices, of course, but better than nothing. 🙂
And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions!
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Post by Someone in a tree on Jun 26, 2021 9:05:52 GMT
Do 'work in progress' previews normally have a properly printed programme? Will it become a collectors item if everything changes before opening night proper? Will it be worth £600 in a few years time...or 60p? If you pause this clip between 6 and 8 seconds, it gives a very, very rough idea of what merchandise is available. Far too small to see prices, of course, but better than nothing. 🙂 And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions! And why feature a person filming the performance on her phone? #nohope #classy |
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Post by musicalmarge on Jun 26, 2021 9:13:46 GMT
Do 'work in progress' previews normally have a properly printed programme? Will it become a collectors item if everything changes before opening night proper? Will it be worth £600 in a few years time...or 60p? If you pause this clip between 6 and 8 seconds, it gives a very, very rough idea of what merchandise is available. Far too small to see prices, of course, but better than nothing. 🙂 And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions! I have a few collectors items from show from decades ago. Sadly they will be just for musical cult collectors and a woman in white sweet tray sadly isn’t a Star Wars limited edition doll from 1985. Things like this often all sell under 100. Same with limited CDs. |
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Post by ceebee on Jun 26, 2021 9:47:36 GMT
Do 'work in progress' previews normally have a properly printed programme? Will it become a collectors item if everything changes before opening night proper? Will it be worth £600 in a few years time...or 60p? If you pause this clip between 6 and 8 seconds, it gives a very, very rough idea of what merchandise is available. Far too small to see prices, of course, but better than nothing. 🙂 And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions! And why feature a person filming the performance on her phone? #nohope #classy She was filming ALW intro not the show. |
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Post by HereForTheatre on Jun 26, 2021 9:49:30 GMT
Is there an excuse for a slack or thrown together seeming 2nd act though given that they had so much more time to work on this than originally planned? You might have thought they would have had the opportunity to go back over the show to make sure everything was as well developed and polished as possible already.
That said, I'm looking forward to seeing it myself maybe in maybe July/August when hopefully restrictions are lifted. I don't really feel ready to come into London for a trip yet.
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Post by stuartmcd on Jun 26, 2021 9:56:20 GMT
Just wondering what are the set / costumes like? are they good/bad/ or indifferent . I believe ALW saw her designs in LND in Australia. And the designs won the Helpmann I loved the design of the show. As you can see from the pictures there are these sort of 2D cutouts of houses but they mainly sit off to the sides of the stage. It’s generally kept quite simple but effective. A big fireplace and table to show you’re at the stepmothers house. Big red curtains and a chaise lounge to show you’re at the palace. There’s a couple of revolves on stage which were used really well. I thought the lighting design in the show was fantastic and the way the light hit that backdrop sometimes made for a really lovely image. For me I would say the design of the show is one of it’s most solid elements right now and I don’t think anything needs changing there. But that’s just my personal opinion and taste and others may think differently. |
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Post by TallPaul on Jun 26, 2021 9:59:28 GMT
And another thing, shouldn't it be thank you for bearing with us...rather than baring with us? BurlyBeaR would never make a schoolcub error like that! Not that I'm really in a position to criticise. I meant 'is' not 'us', obvs. I thought I'd got away with it until everyone started quoting me. Thanks guys. ☹ |
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Post by elibal on Jun 26, 2021 10:19:57 GMT
Were David Zippel and Emerald Fennell there yesterday?
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Post by stuartmcd on Jun 26, 2021 10:24:31 GMT
Were David Zippel and Emerald Fennell there yesterday? I saw ALW enter the auditorium after doing his speech and he went and sat down next to several other people but they all had their backs to me so I couldn't make out faces. I believe one of them was Emerald but I couldn't say for certain. |
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Post by FairyGodmother on Jun 26, 2021 10:27:18 GMT
And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions! I thought ALW could have put a shirt on! Or ironed his polo shirt. Was there an overture? And any romantic duets? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2021 10:29:35 GMT
sort of like hairspray? I mean the set
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Post by FairyGodmother on Jun 26, 2021 10:32:10 GMT
And another thing, shouldn't it be thank you for bearing with us...rather than baring with us? BurlyBeaR would never make a schoolcub error like that! That would definitely make it unsuitable for children.  |
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Post by theatre241 on Jun 26, 2021 10:33:39 GMT
And why us no one, apart from the ushers, wearing a tie? So many questions! I thought ALW could have put a shirt on! Or ironed his polo shirt. Was there an overture? And any romantic duets? There was a little overture at the start which was bad cinderella and there was a long entr'acte. There wasn't any romantic duets surprisingly, I wanted one but it never happened. |
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Post by singingbird on Jun 26, 2021 10:47:04 GMT
I was way too tired to write about this last night (curtain came down circa 10.20) but… hmmmm… this is a weird show. Seriously, what on earth?! What is this show trying to be? What tone are they going for? Because it’s all over the place. Well done to the cast and crew for getting this up and running. It went off with, at most, one visible hitch. The performances were, in the most part, really assured. But, honestly, I don’t really know what to make of it. I’m going to write the rest with a spoiler alert because it’s impossible to write about it without spoilers. BTW, I’m writing this before I read anyone else’s comments! {Spoiler - click to view}
So, firstly, all I could think was – are they trying to recreate Lionel Bart’s Twang? Because it has that same vibe – part Broadway musical, part English pantomime. All those hard to assimilate things we saw in the last few months - the mixed visual aesthetics, the ‘hot buns’ man, the music that veered wildly from 2021 pop to 80s power ballads to Richard Rodgers meets operetta romanticism… I’d been wondering how they would cohere in to a whole. The answer is they don’t. All the disparate ingredients jostle with each other and never gel.
Tonally, this show is half Monty Python/Blackadder-esque comic quasi-historical romp and half sincere operetta emotionalism and the two rub up against each other really badly, undercutting each other so neither has a chance to shine. It’s a bit like the Sydmonton version of Phantom.
The score is equally at odds. As well as the operetta and the contemporary pop, we get healthy doses of harpsicord-led quasi-classical, 1970s rock (with some properly Jethro Tull-esque flute playing), a splash of accordion-led faux-French chanson, some 1980s elctro-goth and a totally left-field eleven o’clock number in a Latin-America style (a kind of lesser Buenos Aires dance number). I know Joseph has a lot of disparate elements too but they are used knowingly and specifically, and are tied together by a consistent tone of the narration material all around them. Here they just jostle for space, not even being character-specific.
There are some really good tunes (a couple that echo brief moments from other ALW shows but, as far as I can tell, no wholesale re-using of any past melodies) but the score has absolutely no aural identity. It veers all over the place. In this, at least, it is consistent with the tone of what’s on stage!
The result of all this is that I couldn’t surrender to the piece and be swept away. I didn’t care about the characters very much, or rather I didn’t believe in them enough. I didn’t really know where or when we were, or what the show wanted me to feel.
There are also random plot elements that just hang there. There is a song about the past history of the Queen and the Step-Mother, but the lyrics weren’t very audible and whatever it was referring to, it appeared to have no bearing on the plot. There’s an interesting twist ¾ of the way through where Cinderella and one of the step-sisters nearly join forces and share a moment, but that is never exploited properly. Prince Charming ‘comes back from the dead’ and no one really bats an eyelid and it’s never properly explained. It’s suggested that he did a disappearing act because he was gay and didn’t want to marry a woman he didn’t love, but you pretty much have to extrapolate that yourself in the final ten minutes. And there are real moments that make no proper sense. How can a random woman just walk in and have tea with the queen? Why does a town have a royal family all of its own anyway?! And why does Cinderella go for this space-age makeover, where the show suddenly morphs into Richard O’Briens’s Shock Treatment, only for the extent of it to be a new dress and a wig?!?
It started to come together for me in the ball scene, where the conflict onstage was musicalized properly for the first time. I actually really loved this seat and was temporarily gripped. The music, costumes and choreography were glorious. Up till then, the structure had felt very old-fashioned. There was a lot of music and singing, but it was still very clunky in its transition from dialogue to song, and many of the songs felt undramatic. It honestly felt like it had more in common with musicals of a hundred years ago, and often felt like the kind of thing ALW had reacted against when composing JCS. Oh, and the Vanquishing of the Sea Witch (or whatever it’s called) song has bitten the dust. I was looking forward to that and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how a song with that title would fit with the plot.
I won’t comment on individual performances (most of which I liked but a couple of which I felt weren’t quite strong enough). It’s very early days and finding its feet, which is fair enough. The design was lovely in parts, especially the ball, but also never enveloped me, and sometimes felt cheap. The lighting was great. The lyrics were great, too. Really witty in places and no obvious forced stresses or uncomfortable clichés. Some of the best for an ALW show in a long, long time.
My biggest bugbear was the orchestrations, and this doesn’t bode well for Phantom’s return. There were 9 live musicians, and an ominous credit for ‘original keyboard parts programmed by…’. All the drum and percussion parts were pre-programmed, which made everything feel mechanised. There were horrible synthesised trumpet parts that sounded like an 80s computer game. The string sounds (enhanced by 5 live string players) fared better. But it never felt live. It felt pre-recorded, cold and lifeless. You never felt that wonderful feeling of an orchestra launching into action and playing for us. It was most egregious in the Entr’acte. Why ALW was happy with the way this sounded I have no idea. Some shows - Hair, say, or even School of Rock – can work fine with a small band in the pit. But this show is trying to be big and lush and the reliance on pre-played synth parts sucks all the life out of it. I’m sure the recording, with a full orchestra, will sound fine but in the theatre it was pretty woeful.
I have no idea what others will make of this. A lot of the audience found it funnier than I did. But I never felt like I was in the hands of master storytellers who were confidently leading me on a journey. All ALW’s most successful shows start with a bang and go off like a juggernaut. You just hang on for the exhilarating ride. Not here, sadly. I really really wanted this to be good because it’s been diminishing returns from ALW for some time now, and he was a childhood hero of mine. But Cinderella, despite excellent individual parts, doesn’t know what it wants to be and it never comes together into a composite whole. I honestly can’t predict if this just wasn’t for me, and it’ll still be a hit show, or if it really is just a bit of a mess.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2021 10:55:42 GMT
And another thing, shouldn't it be thank you for bearing with us...rather than baring with us? BurlyBeaR would never make a schoolcub error like that! That would definitely make it unsuitable for children. If it was in the USA it would be. Seems everything there is unsuitable. Even toothpaste |
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Post by steve10086 on Jun 26, 2021 10:56:05 GMT
Starting to sound like Emerald Fenn-elle’s much hyped groundbreaking modern storyline for this is on a par with Ben Elton’s “unlocking” of the Phantom sequel 🙄
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jun 26, 2021 11:11:48 GMT
So a question for those in the know, the day after a first preview what will be happening? Lots of meetings presumably but would we expect any changes in the first couple of days or will they assimilate lots of notes over several performances before changing things?
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Post by ceebee on Jun 26, 2021 11:21:51 GMT
Out of interest, how does the Prince's 'revelation' land with the audience? It all reads as a bit 80s "LOL he's ***"... It was a cross between franknfurter and panto. Felt like producer/writer/director trying too hard to write in a flamboyant gay character. |
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Post by alece10 on Jun 26, 2021 11:29:58 GMT
2 questions.
1. Is there a lot of dialogue or is it mostly sung through? I am hoping it is the latter.
2. I wonder if any of the creatives read the theatre board as they could get some great feedback from the comments about last night and future ones.
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Post by Figaro on Jun 26, 2021 11:36:22 GMT
2 questions. 1. Is there a lot of dialogue or is it mostly sung through? I am hoping it is the latter. /quote] The latter |
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