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Post by westendboy on Feb 23, 2022 16:31:08 GMT
Could anyone kindly list how similar/different this production is to the original one at the Dominion?
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343 posts
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Post by Figaro on Feb 23, 2022 17:57:51 GMT
I wonder if this will go into the Dominion after Grease?
Grease finishes on 29th October and the WWRY tour finishes on 10th September.
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Post by hannechalk on Mar 14, 2022 16:08:22 GMT
Tonight's performance at Liverpool Empire cancelled due to technical difficulties. / |
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Post by Seriously on Mar 14, 2022 18:30:33 GMT
Apparently the lift to get everything in broke.
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Post by david on Mar 19, 2022 0:41:28 GMT
Having spent the first half of the week in self isolation as I recovered from COVID, it was great end the week by finally getting out and about and rock the night away at the Liverpool Empire at tonight's performance which I had originally booked for way back in 2018. WWRY is one of my all time favourite musicals and having seen it both in the WE and on tour over the years and tonights show didn't disappoint. I was meant to be at Monday nights show but due to both COVID and the cancellatioon of that particular performance due to techical difficulties during the show set up, I was able to exchange my original Stalls ticket for a much cheaper one in the Circle.
While the set for this current tour isn't a patch on either the glorious Dominion theatre set or some of the subsequent earlier tours, the big video screen certainly got plenty of use in helping to set the different locations used within the show. I was happy to read in earlier posts that Ben Elton returned to direct this tour. The changes he has made to his original book for me were on the whole positive ones. The combining of the Rebel leader and Pop in this tour into one character worked better in my opinion as I felt that in the original book, both characters really didn't have alot to do / say so it made more sense to combine them. The biggest positive change for me was in the ending for Act 1. i always felt that in the original WE run, there should of been a song to close Act 1 rather than the Ogre Battle Instrumnetal that was used. Despite losing "Play the Game" in Act 1, using "The Show Must Go On" worked well as an Act 1 closing song and finally geting to have the full rendition of "Don't Stop Me Now" rather than just all snippet you had originally was very much welcomed.
Where this show is at its best is with both with the cast and band singing and playing those Queen classics. A fantastic cast and band has been assembled for this tour and all sounded great tonight and certainly got the Empire auditorium rocking by the end of the night. When you have 2000 people singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody that really is a special moment to be part of. Thankfully the audience was well behaved and respected the request at the start of the show to save the singing till the end.
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2,417 posts
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Post by robertb213 on Mar 27, 2022 19:29:29 GMT
Saw this twice this week through volunteering, having seen it twice in London previously.
I still think it's woefully written with a terrible story and shoehorned songs, but the music does sound great and this touring cast give great performances. Elena Skye and Jenny O'Leary belt their hearts out. We had Damien Walsh as Gallileo for one performance and Ian McIntosh for the other, both great although personally I thought Damien was marginally better.
The standard for touring sets continues to decline though - this is just a video screen and some platform scaffolding, with the odd prop wheeled on every now and again. Definitely not worth the top prices they're asking. But the cast made up for it and the audience seemed to love every minute.
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Post by LaLuPone on Apr 4, 2022 19:38:23 GMT
Seeing this tomorrow in Cardiff. The Wales Millennium Centre website says the runtime is 2 hours 20 minutes, but scrolling through the venues on the ATG site, they give a runtime of 2 hours 45 minutes. Quite a big difference! To those who’ve been, what is the actual approximate length?
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Post by david on Apr 4, 2022 19:48:12 GMT
Seeing this tomorrow in Cardiff. The Wales Millennium Centre website says the runtime is 2 hours 20 minutes, but scrolling through the venues on the ATG site, they give a runtime of 2 hours 45 minutes. Quite a big difference! To those who’ve been, what is the actual approximate length? - the run time was around the 2hr 45min mark when i saw it a few weeks ago. |
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Post by darvsplanet on Apr 4, 2022 19:48:21 GMT
Seeing this tomorrow in Cardiff. The Wales Millennium Centre website says the runtime is 2 hours 20 minutes, but scrolling through the venues on the ATG site, they give a runtime of 2 hours 45 minutes. Quite a big difference! To those who’ve been, what is the actual approximate length? I didn't take note of actual timings, but the notice outside the auditorium at Milton Keynes said: Act 1 - 72 minutes Interval - 20 minutes Act 2 - 64 minutes So 2hr 36min total. |
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Post by robertb213 on Apr 4, 2022 22:34:49 GMT
Yeah 2hr 35 approx when we had it in Northampton a couple of weeks ago 😁
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Post by danb on Apr 23, 2022 21:30:47 GMT
I have just got in from the first act of this in Bristol tonight. I had to leave at the interval in case I murdered the ignorant **** next to me with his constant commentary, unusual odour, whoops at the mention of ‘Ernie the fastest milkman’ and random singing at unusual places. Even the front row of the upper circle of the Hippodrome is quite unforgiving with its narrow, upright bench seating so there was precious little comfort to be had; God knows what its like further back. Throw in the gammon on the right and I wasn’t having fun.
The set, if you can call it that, was a shameful shadow of the grandeur of the Dominion and the first tour. A giant screen, a scaffolding bridge and a couple of papier mache islands with bits of business on them…that’s it. Ben Eltons threadbare non-direction lingers clunkily over the worst bits of exposition, but somehow skips huge chunks of excellent tunes. The voices that I thought would save it didn’t. The only impressive vocal moment (in act one) was the addition of ‘The Show Must Go On’ which thankfully Jenny O Leary sang relatively straight. The rest was well below average. I’d even bought a program (for a pound) such was the hope I went in with. At least it has been a good measure of whether I can stand being mid-row (I can’t), and whether I should revisit stuff I didn’t really like the first time (I won’t again).
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Post by richey on Apr 24, 2022 11:51:29 GMT
I have just got in from the first act of this in Bristol tonight. I had to leave at the interval in case I murdered the ignorant **** next to me with his constant commentary, unusual odour, whoops at the mention of ‘Ernie the fastest milkman’ and random singing at unusual places. Even the front row of the upper circle of the Hippodrome is quite unforgiving with its narrow, upright bench seating so there was precious little comfort to be had. Throw in the gammon on the right and I wasn’t having fun. The set, if you can call it that, was a shameful shadow of the grandeur of the Dominion and the first tour. A giant screen, a bridge and a couple of papier mache islands with bits of business on them…that’s it. Ben Eltons threadbare non-direction lingers over the worst bits of exposition, yet somehow skips huge chunks of excellent tunes. The voices that I thought would save it didn’t. The only impressive vocal moment (in act one) was the addition of ‘The Show Must Go On’ which thankfully Jenny O Leary sang relatively straight. The rest was just below average. I even bought a program (for a pound?), such was the hope I went in with. It has been a good measure of whether I can stand being mid-row (I can’t), and whether I should revisit stuff I didn’t really like the first time (I won’t again). Thanks for this! I didn't enjoy it when it toured a few years ago, it was the only show I've walked out on in over 30 years of theatre going. I did wonder if I'd been overly harsh and was considering giving it another chance when it gets to Manchester in a few months but I think now I'll save my money. |
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Post by danb on Apr 24, 2022 12:17:42 GMT
Don’t do it!!! I’ve made excuses for it for its whole life, but no more. This latest cash grab is a pale imitation of anything that has gone before. They may as well do it ‘in concert’ there was so little to the staging. Ghastly.
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Post by Matt on Apr 25, 2022 3:10:17 GMT
WWRY is the show I’ve seen most in my life, close to 100, and this was in the first 3 years of its original Dominon run. I’ve toyed with the idea of seeing the tour, and after reading reviews on here, seeing what others on insta have said, and some slime tutorials on YouTube, I think I am gonna stay well clear 😅.
At first I thought I’d see it to make my own opinion, that then lead to seeing it to see if it really is THAT bad, now it’s gone to not seeing it at all.
WWRY was equally as hated by others as it was loved by the rest back in the day. Obviously back then I loved it, but the way people who hated it felt about it back then seems to be how I feel about it now. Ben Elton’s humour isn’t for everyone, and tbh it doesn’t stand up in the modern world at all, but the fact that they updated the cultural references to one’s even more cringe and already dated hasn’t done it any favours.
They ruined the set, they ruined the costumes, they ruined some characters names (I know this was done a while ago). I think I’m gonna keep those memories of 2004ish safe in the back of my mind and avoid this.
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Post by musicalcritical on Apr 26, 2022 2:36:20 GMT
Is this like Bat Out of Hell? Barebones plot and audiences not bothered by anything but the songs? Was deliberating seeing it
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Post by danb on Apr 26, 2022 6:05:12 GMT
Kind of, but with a much worse (how is that even possible!?!) outdated script, full of embarrassing pop culture references and cringe inducing ‘jokes’ that were never funny. Whilst the original West End production was all of this, it at least had a monster set and brilliant committed vocals from the likes of Kerry Ellis, Sharon D Clarke, Tony Vincent and the sublime Hannah J Fox. This current version is like a cheap parody of itself.
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Post by musicalcritical on Apr 26, 2022 6:16:54 GMT
I'll avoid it then, the tour's coming to my city in the next few weeks. I'll put that £25 in the holiday fund
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Post by matty on Jun 1, 2022 22:21:35 GMT
I have held off from seeing this, but managed to get a relatively cheap ticket in Wimbledon (thank you ATG card).
The night didn't start well as it was delayed by about 20 minutes due to a technical issue. And when I got to my seat I discovered my bargain ticket was sat behind someone in a wheelchair, which is fine, but their chair was a lot higher than normal seats, so I had to do a bit of leaning - I did manage to move to get a better view in Act 2
With regards to the show itself, the songs in this sounded good and the cast gave great performances, but oh lord that story and those awful cultural references (I would love to see an analysis of how much of this script is actually original content, because it just felt like every other line was a name drop or song lyric) . This definitely seems like a show where people go for the music because they definitely ain't there for the story.
I'm glad I can tick this off the list, but I'm not sorry I held off for so long.
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Post by Rozzi Rainbow on Jun 12, 2022 18:32:19 GMT
I saw this again yesterday afternoon in Stockton, and had another brilliant time. I was pleasantly surprised at the announcement that Joseph Connor was playing Galileo, as I remember him from the Dominion days but hadn't realised he was a cover. He was absolutely amazing!! Acted and sang it brilliantly, and really went for the big notes. I couldn't believe it when he said afterwards that it was his first show, and he only found out about 10am as Ian was away and Damian (I think) who had been on was off sick. He posted some lovely messages on Twitter about how much it meant to him, I was so pleased to have been there. He is definitely up there as one of my favourite Galileos.
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Post by aingidh on Jun 16, 2022 8:22:38 GMT
I saw this again yesterday afternoon in Stockton, and had another brilliant time. I was pleasantly surprised at the announcement that Joseph Connor was playing Galileo, as I remember him from the Dominion days but hadn't realised he was a cover. He was absolutely amazing!! Acted and sang it brilliantly, and really went for the big notes. I couldn't believe it when he said afterwards that it was his first show, and he only found out about 10am as Ian was away and Damian (I think) who had been on was off sick. He posted some lovely messages on Twitter about how much it meant to him, I was so pleased to have been there. He is definitely up there as one of my favourite Galileos. I managed to catch him last night in Peterborough and competely agree, he was brilliant. His acting choices reminded me a lot of the early Dominion-style portrayals and he had great chemistry with Elena. Great that he's getting his chance in the spotlight |
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Post by anita on Jul 1, 2022 13:20:19 GMT
I saw this for the first time yesterday in Bromley. 5 [ out of 7] understudies were on. I wish I hadn't bothered.
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Post by xanady on Jul 9, 2022 17:03:55 GMT
Saw it in Northampton a few months ago and it all felt very flat…today in Brum,it was fantastic…same cast but today the audience were amazing compared to the lacklustre response in Northampton.
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Post by Rozzi Rainbow on Jul 25, 2022 12:34:53 GMT
I was in Birmingham yesterday to see family in a choir show, and travelled down on Saturday so as not to have to rely on an early train yesterday morning. So it was perfect timing to see this again on Saturday night! This is the third time I've seen this tour - the first time Ian was on as Galileo, the second time I saw Joseph and this time I got Damien! So that worked well, without any effort on my part. There were also covers on for Brit and Khashoggi, so it was great to see a fairly different cast.
I'd booked my ticket about a month ago, and wanted to sit on the end of the front row as there were two seats left there - but of course the system wouldn't let me only book one of those!! So I booked the second row where there were four seats free on the end. Just before the show started, no-one had turned up to sit on the end of the front row - so I moved there and sat where I'd wanted to originally! There was a lot of room between the front row and the stage - great for dancing along at the end.
We had a show stop, and not even for technical problems. Ironically, it was just after DSMN! Before I realised what was happening the cast had all walked off stage and the house lights had come on. There seemed to be some sort of hoo-haa going on at the back of the stalls - lots of people in the middle and the back were standing up to see what was going on, but I was safely away from it. I heard afterwards that a fight had broken out!!! Apparently one of the people involved was very intoxicated, and at one point had crashed into the sound booth! The show director, I think it was, was talking to us at the stage door afterwards, and he said that since the pandemic they'd noticed a change in audiences being more rowdy. It's like they've lost all notion of how to interact with each other!! The show stopped for about five minutes while it got sorted, and then the announcement said "The Show Must Go On" and it did!
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