Am I the only London theatregoer left who thinks that a standing ovation should be reserved for only the very special — for time when you really have been blown away by a performer or cast — and not for West End productions which are the same day-in, day-out? Of course there will always be special cases, and everyone has a different opinion of what is good and what is astounding, but why is it increasingly the case that the whole audience feels the need to leap to their feet?
Monica and I went to two West End musicals last weekend as an Easter treat. First The Phantom of the Opera, and second Cats. Both very different, and both good professional productions, well executed and totally immersive. There is no doubt that we enjoyed them both and that the skills of all involved were excellent, but they weren’t, for me at least, anything groundbreaking.
That opinion was not, apparently, shared by the majority of the audience. As the curtain came down large swathes of the audience jumped up. More followed as leading actors took their curtain call. I suppose both audiences must have regarded the performances they had just seen as the best piece of theatre they had ever experienced. Or was it something else? [read more]
It may have recently closed on London’s West End, but I’ve just caught up with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s newest musical, Stephen Ward The Musical. At least the music. Having been to see the closing throws of Tim Rice’s version of From Here to Eternity recently, and having been quite impressed, I was hoping for much more from the Stephen Ward soundtrack.
I’ve listened through the musical a few times now on my daily cycle and just can’t get past how it sounds very much much like Lloyd Webber’s 1979 musical Tell Me on a Sunday. While this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing it does make what should be a fresh new piece feel tired and, at least as a stand-alone soundtrack, remarkably dated. While I appreciate that the subject of the show — the Profumo affair — happened at the start of the 1960s, and that the writers may well have been trying to reflect that in the sound of the musical numbers, at a time when musicals such as The Book of Mormon are commanding upwards of £150 for premium West End seats and selling out months in advance, Lloyd Webber’s score sounds as if it is aimed at audiences from another time. [read more]