February theatre round-up

It’s been a busy, busy few weeks. And that includes the week I took off work earlier this month (which now feels like forever ago, by the way) and was supposed to be relaxing, but instead ending up running around. In between an evening of speed dating, a talk about the Guantánamo banned books list, a Michael Kenna photography exhibition and a trip to the zoo in the freezing cold, I’ve also been to the theatre. Quite a lot. Still smashing that ‘once a month’ new year’s resolution!

So, here’s the February round-up.

Di and Viv and Rose (Vaudeville Theatre)

I was really sad to hear that Di and Viv and Rose is going to be closing early. It’s a story of three friends, who meet at university, and examines whether it’s possible to remain close with the friends you make as a teenager, once you all go out into the real world. The play has a cast of just three – Tamsin Outhwaite, Samantha Spiro and Jenna Russell – although there are plenty of other characters just on the periphery of the story to keep things fresh. And it’s a comedy, but one that doesn’t try to steer round the bumps and shocks that happen in every friendship, and in life. It’s also great fun for any fans of the 80s. I really enjoyed Di and Viv and Rose, and it’s not closed yet, so there’s still time to check it out 🙂

Conclusion: emotional and thought-provoking; it’ll make you laugh and cry, and want to call up all your friends afterwards, just to say hello.

Made in Dagenham (Adelphi Theatre)

Another one that’s closing early. Made in Dagenham is based on the movie of the same name, which in turn was based on the real events of the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968. Gemma Arterton is great as strike leader Rita O’Grady, and the show itself is a lot of fun, even if it’s not the best musical I’ve ever seen. There were a few songs we could have done without (the one about America, which was completely superfluous and, well, just a bit odd), and it became clear very quickly that men are losers, women are awesome and politicians (the male ones, that is) are a waste of space. Not that I had too many problems with that, although I did feel Rita’s husband Eddie, on forgetting their tenth wedding anniversary, could have come up with a better defence than ‘I’m just a man, with a foolish brain’. Really, Eddie?

Conclusion: an entertaining evening, and worth seeing. It’s no Miss Saigon or Les Mis, but it does make you feel like a revolution might be quite a fun thing to do.

Miss Saigon (Prince Edward Theatre)

One of my favourite shows, ever since I first saw it fifteen years ago. This was my third visit overall, and it was just as amazing as I remember. The tragic story of Kim, a young Vietnamese girl who falls for American GI Chris in the days before the fall of Saigon, is based on Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, and contains a hard-hitting message about the horror and waste of war. On top of that, it’s an awe-inspiring production – the kind of show you need to see more than once just to take it all in. The cast, led by Eva Noblezada and Jon Jon Briones, are all sensational, and the entire audience left the theatre, once again, emotional wrecks. Oh – and did I mention the helicopter?

Conclusion: awesome. That is all.

Jersey Boys (Piccadilly Theatre)

This was one that I was aware of but it hadn’t really occurred to me to see, until suddenly it felt like everyone I knew was telling me I should. So I did. And it was great. Taking a new approach to the jukebox musical, in that it actually tells the story of the band rather than a random made-up tale, Jersey Boys charts the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, from their days singing in the street to the height of their fame – and then how it all fell apart. It’s a lot darker than I was expecting (I’d assumed it would be light relief after Miss Saigon – which, to be fair, it still was), but still really good fun, and this time we left the theatre singing rather than sobbing. The show contains a lot of classic songs, some of which I didn’t even realise were originally hits for the Four Seasons, performed by four amazing singers. There are also some highly questionable dance moves, but probably the less said about those the better.

Conclusion: definitely worth the hype, and I’m glad I saw it. Jersey Boys is a lot of fun, and if you don’t stand up and have a little boogie at the end, then frankly I’m a bit worried about you.

Once (Phoenix Theatre)

Another repeat visit – this was my third time seeing Once, and I was curious to see how current star Ronan Keating would stand up against former leading men Declan Bennett and David Hunter. And the answer? Not bad… not bad at all. Ronan’s Guy is different, and probably not my favourite, but still a very strong performance, especially considering it’s his West End debut (and, as far as I’m aware, his first time acting). It was also my first time seeing Jill Winternitz as Girl, and she was great, full of the energy and sparkle required for the role. It’s a shame Once is closing, but there’s still a couple of weeks to see it, if you haven’t had a chance yet. It’s not your typical musical, in the same way that the original movie was about as un-Hollywood as you can get, but that’s why we love it.

Conclusion: still great, and a confident performance from Ronan. Unfortunately my enjoyment was ruined a bit by people around me texting, talking, eating, filming, heckling, whistling… but the show itself is brilliant.

Yeh Shen (Polka Theatre)

And finally, something different – a Chinese Cinderella story; you may have seen my review of Yeh Shen the other day. It’s primarily aimed at children but lots of fun for adults as well, so worth checking out if they happen to be touring in your area. Yeh Shen has puppets, dancing, countless musical instruments and a talented and versatile cast. And it was lovely to see children enjoying the theatre, and staying behind for the Q&A with the writer, director and cast; they asked some great questions!

And that’s all for February. Bring on March!

Reviews for London Theatre Direct

Di and Viv and Rose

Made in Dagenham

Miss Saigon

Jersey Boys – coming soon

Once – coming soon

Saturday afternoon sobfest

Today’s happy thing involves war, death, betrayal, and a roomful of people crying their eyes out. Good times!

I’m talking about the brilliant Miss Saigon, which has just returned to London’s West End after fifteen years away. We were very excited when we heard it was making a comeback, contributing to the record-breaking £4.4m taken on the first day of ticket sales back in September last year, and on Saturday my mum, sister and I finally got to see the new production.

The story is basically a re-write of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, but updated and moved to Vietnam in the final days before the fall of Saigon. Kim, a young girl forced into a life of prostitution after her family are killed, meets Chris, an American GI, and they have a brief but passionate love affair. Chris plans to take Kim home with him, but fate intervenes and she’s left behind, while he’s evacuated back to the USA. Funnily enough, it’s not a happy story, and if it weren’t for the comic relief provided by the Engineer, a wheeler-dealer and pimp obsessed with getting to America, I think it might all have been a bit too much.

Kim is played by Eva Noblezada, who’s only eighteen (seventeen when she was cast) and making her professional and West End debut in the role. This is insane, and if you saw her performance, you’d understand why. Seriously, someone of her age shouldn’t even be able to sing like that, let alone be able to convey such intense emotion. There were moments when I literally got chills, and that’s not something that I can say very often. You’d need to have a heart of stone not to feel Kim’s pain, and by the end of the show everyone in the theatre was in tears (the lady next to me was openly sobbing pretty much from the start). Of course, it didn’t help that they wheeled out a Comic Relief style video of abandoned Vietnamese children to accompany the opening number of the second act, ‘Bui Doi’. Shameless emotional manipulation, but effective in bringing home the fact that Miss Saigon isn’t just a story – although Kim and Chris are fictional, the show is based on real events, which shouldn’t be forgotten.

Quick mention for Jon Jon Briones, who’s played the Engineer many times before but is clearly still loving it. Despite his character’s willingness to use everything and everyone around him to get what he wants, he’s oddly loveable and his desperation to get to the USA, where he genuinely believes he’ll have a better life, is really poignant, particularly as it becomes increasingly clear that his American dream is just that – a dream. Hugh Maynard (John) and Kwang-Ho Hong (Thuy) were the two other stand-out performances for me, although that’s not to say the rest of the cast weren’t amazing, because they were.

If emotion isn’t your thing, there are also some pretty cool special effects, not least the famous evacuation scene, in which a full-size helicopter is lowered on to the stage. And there’s also a very cute little boy, who has no lines and is mostly there to be hugged and flung around a bit by various characters, but who bears it all with a solemnity that got some of the biggest laughs of the afternoon (although to be fair, laughs are quite few and far between).

I think Miss Saigon may be sold out for quite a while, but it’s booking until at least April 2015, so if you get a chance, I really recommend it. But remember to take tissues and wear waterproof mascara – don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Once is definitely not enough

Sorry to have a second theatre-related post in one week, but I was too excited to wait. Yesterday I finally got to see the latest hit West End show, Once – and it was a-mazing. But then I kind of knew it would be.

A lot of people don’t realise that the show is based on a film, which just happens to be one of my favourites of all time. I first discovered Once through my sister, who saw it in Canada and then proceeded to go on about how great it was for months. Unfortunately it’s quite a hard movie to describe, so I wasn’t completely convinced – although I probably should have known better, as she and I usually like the same kind of stuff. Anyway when the film arrived in the UK (as by this time had my sister) I agreed to go along to see it with her. And it turned out she was right, it was brilliant.

I’ll attempt to summarise: the movie’s set in Dublin, where a guy meets a girl while out busking. They’re both lonely and recently heartbroken; his ex cheated on him and moved to London, and she’s a single mother from the Czech Republic. She also has a broken hoover, which just seems like adding insult to injury, really. Fortunately, when he’s not writing songs he fixes vacuum cleaners, and this happy coincidence brings them together. In return, she convinces him that his songs are way too good for nobody to ever hear them, and the result is a life-changing few days, a love story with a difference, and a lot of fantastic music.

The movie was made on a tiny budget, and the two main characters, known only as Guy and Girl, were played not by actors, but by musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who also wrote all the music. After Once, they went on tour as The Swell Season; my sister and I saw them a couple of times in London and were distraught when they finally went their separate ways.

Luckily, around about then it was announced that a stage version would be hitting Broadway soon, so we waited impatiently for it to reach London, which it finally did earlier this year.

Of course there was always a risk that, loving the film as much as we do, the show would never be able to live up to our expectations. But the good news is it totally did. The cast, who are all musicians, came out on stage about 20 minutes before the show started and played a few songs; they looked like they were having a blast and it was certainly a lot more fun than sitting waiting for a curtain to go up. The set’s a bar (and there’s something pretty cool about it, but I don’t want to give everything away) and when cast members aren’t in a scene they just go and sit at the edge of the stage with their instruments, ready to join in as needed.

Just like the movie, the charm of the show is in its simplicity. The developing relationship between the Guy and Girl is the main focus, but the show also introduces some additional characters, who are all, in some way, affected by their meeting: a bank manager, a music shop owner, one of the Girl’s flatmates and others. Although this meant the story at times was a bit different to the one I know so well, that wasn’t a bad thing. And the big advantage to going in already knowing the film was that I could sit back, relax and enjoy the music.

Once is not just about amazing songs; it’s also about the brilliant cast, the clever staging and the moving story. And don’t just take my word for it: a standing ovation and three curtain calls should back me up.

I can’t recommend the show (and the film, and the CDs) enough – although if you’re the emotional type, you’ll probably end up in tears. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.