Cake - Tour / Lyric / The Other Palace

I enjoyed this tonight.

Zizi Strallen is marvellous, and Renée Lamb terrific too.

There's zero reason for it to have the subtitle 'the Marie Antoinette Playlist' - Marie isn't the storyteller constructing the evening for us. If she was waiting on death row and reliving what happened via club hits it would make sense.

I liked Jean softening towards the real(ish) woman she discovers beneath the wig and make-up, and the dilemmas that created. Also private revenge/reparations vs a bigger schemed revoluation was an interesting awakening. It gave some deeper story energy to what otherwise is a frothy Eurotrash-styled romp. I didn't quite follow why the conclusion of her story was a call to action for us - was Jean really the spark? That all got a bit woolly.

'Champagne Dreams' was the stand out song; they could do with reprising that and one or two others to really make them stick when you go home. Unfortunately I found that even if I'd enjoyed a song, the next one wiped it out immediately. This style of show is a natural for a megamix at the end to do that job.

It's so hard to do 'Club' on stage - they invested a fair bit in lighting, and video projection screens, and a cast of 10, but there's something inert about all that activity and an audience sitting safely in the dark. I think it could work better as an immersive club experience, where you could do it with a cast of 5. There are so many clubs that are dead before 10 or 11am, and have all the lighting rig, platforms and podiums you could want - and a dancing audience become their own crowd and dancers. Many would hate that, but now a sit-down version's been done I hope it will have a different life. Invite the audience to stay after the Musical to dance the night away to....the Marie Antoinette Playlist (of themed existing club classics).

Nobody commissions and invests in a show with even the vague thought they'll pull the plug so soon into its run. It's such a shame if it was misconceived in the way/scale/style it was produced and budgeted. To deny your own production the chance of publicity that a Press Night and Reviews bring is bizarre.

For the writers, I hope 'Cake' gets another bite of the cherry at some point.

How on EARTH has this not hit harder? Just out of tonight's performance and it was excellent.

Anything with Renée Lamb, Millie O'Connell or Zara MacIntosh is a guaranteed ticket buy for me so this was absolutely guaranteed to do it for me. That's without mentioning Zizi Strallen who is just about the best in the world at what she does here. Perfect comedy timing on top of everything else she has is like someone made a musical theatre performer in a lab.

Travis Ross absolutely stars in this too, he's so funny, but when called upon to sing, he's absolutely perfect. The entire cast work HARD, act, react, sing, move and look like they are having FUN.

We had a particularly good audience as everything was received with great appreciation and love, clearly the beginning of what would have been the 'regulars'.

I'm just a fan, no involvement in MT, so I couldn't begin to understand why this hasn't hit but I'm so glad I caught it before it bows out. Hopefully to return and be loved. That cast deserves it all.

You wouldn't close a show early as a publicity stunt especially since the cast and crew would have been contracted for 8 weeks and would not agree to such a thing.

Bill Kenwright Ltd co-produced this and say what you like about them, but I've never seen a London production of theirs close after a few weeks because they ran out of money. The whole thing with Cake is very odd.

Very odd indeed.  I wish there was some reason other than finance that they closed it early - though I can't think of anything credible.  

This sends a really worrying message re. new writing in Musicals (and potentially plays). As you say, Bill Kenwright Ltd co-produced, and it should be the dream for any writers to have the security that a large organisation will cross-subsidise within their financial columns to give the new show the chance to become the next earner.

Then again I suppose Bill Kenwright Ltd has an expectation of profit, where many smaller producers calling on their 'little black book' of smaller investors know that break-even or loss are the expected outcome, from the off, with no shock there.

When something's really rather good, backed by a major producer, in the home of new musical theatre development (owned by their producer), and can't get to Press night/reviews it sets a tone for even-more-extreme caution in producing than we already have.  

Going tonight for the final show after seeing it on its opening weekend. I do hope it will come back some time but as above I doubt it will be this cast as they will likely wash their hands at being involved again after the way they have been treated

Just saw the last performance. I think it’s lost something since the concerts, it felt less coherent. Jeanne controlling Marie with an Xbox controller stuck out as naff!

I caught the last show today and enjoyed it overall. A very enthusiastic audience which the cast clearly appreciated. Entrance applause etc for Renee and Zizi. As new musicals go, it wasn’t entirely my cup of tea (I would rate something like Babies a lot higher) but I’m glad I managed to see it. Given it has a Six-ish vibe and even two original cast members of Six, I’m surprised it didn’t sell better.

It’s on the scroll that they use as a prop - you can only really catch it from a few seats because of lighting/it being in red pen