9 to 5 The Musical - Review

I love the film, I'm a big fan of Dolly Parton and musicals - goes without saying that I was going to see this and love it! I wasn't going to miss my chance to see this, I had to go on my own.
I had been waiting with cautious optimism that I would get the chance to see this, since its Broadway run in 2009; I first thought if it ever came over here I'd have to make another trip to London to see it, then the tour was announced and there was no Cardiff date I was very disappointed... until a Cardiff run was added to the tour.

The cast was amazing! Jackie Clune seemed to be channeling Lily Tomlin, and Amy Lennox held her own in the role that is essentially Dolly Parton. Both of them had great voices but the real surprise was Natalie Casey, I watched all series of Two Pints of Lager... (yes, even the last few) and I never imagined she could sing like that. Her '11 o'clock number' Get Out and Stay Out blew me away. The other surprise was Bonnie Langford, I've never seen her in musical-action and her voice and legs are amazing!

The music was all written by Dolly Parton, which means there wasn't a weak number in the entire show (biased review?!).

The show was funny and watching it reminded me of Hairspray, which is still the funniest musical I've seen, although how much of that was due to Michael Ball's performance is impossible to say.
I loved the set also, that whole 70s thing going on framing the stage and as a curtain. The whole show made me want to live in the 1970s (a frequent fantasy) and buy a pet rock!

So, the end of last I joined the online voluntary review website, The Public Reviews (it's all good CV fodder... plus, free theatre tickets -woo!), which means that my amateur reviews might get read by more than the three (probably imaginary) people who read this blog. With the end of the year being quieter on the theatre front, with the exception of Pantos, I didn't have much chance to do my first review until February this year.

Typical of me, possibly lacking momentarily common sense, for my first semi-professional review that was going to be read by people, and seen by the actual theatres/companies, I decided to review a three and a half, German opera - Welsh National Opera's Lulu, directed by David Pountney, who even I had heard of!

The Public Reviews - WNO's Lulu

It was long, bum-numbing, German, Aria-less opera with artistic nudity; but also exciting, interesting and oddly enjoyable. I was sitting next to posh, proper reviewers with their pens and notepads - I did feel rather out of place! It was only my second opera, and first review for the site - jump in at the deep-end, don't I.

The second review was for another WNO opera - Madam Butterfly this time. If, in this analogy, Lulu is Sky Arts, then Butterfly is BBC Four - much more accessible and more people can get it. I enjoyed it much more, and Lulu was a different experience but I don't think I could sit through it again whereas I'd happily see Madam Butterfly again!

The Public Reviews - WNO's Madam Butterfly






The rest of the reviews were in my beloved Cardiff's New Theatre:

The Public Reviews - Soul Sister
Amazing performance from the actress playing Tina Turner, but the show was less of a musical/play and more of a Tina Turner tribute show with scenes and video clips in between songs. The audience were on their feet for the last lot of songs!
The Public Reviews - The Ladykillers
I thought that the funniest play I saw this year was One Man, Two Guvnors; but The Ladykillers was amazing! I love the film and am so glad that the play was just as good. And Clive Mantle in a dress was the funniest curtain call I've ever seen! 
The Public Reviews - Go Back For Murder
The Public Reviews - The Rocky Horror Show
My fourth time at a Rocky Horror show, and 3rd best production I've seen - if you're wondering they go, from the best: Jason Donovan, 1998 (with Nicolas Parsons as my favourite Narrator!); David Bedella, 2010; Oliver Thornton, 2013; and Jonathan Wilkes, 2003. A subdued audience, as it was a Monday night.

One Man, Two Guvnors; Wales Millennium Centre

One Man, Two Guvnors was lauded on its original London run and welcomed with open arms on Broadway even though its humor is (largely) British. It's probably safe to say that this is the most successful stage farce in recent years, so a tour would seem obvious.

The only farce I can think that I've seen is the sitcom Frasier, all eleven series, many episodes consisted of hilarious misunderstandings, lies and people hiding in rooms; all being said this is a classy farce whereas OM,TG is just out and out farce, but it was just as hilarious non stop hilarious at that.
Being a farce the plot is not exactly easy to explain, but I'll have a go: Francis Henshall works for both Roscoe Crabb and Stanley Stubbers; motivated by hunger Henshall has to keep his 'guvnors' from finding out about each other. Crabb is in fact Rachel, Roscoe's twin sister, whose fiance is actually Stubbers who's hiding out in Brighton after killing Roscoe Crabb - hilarity ensues... I don't think I've explained it very well, I definitely haven't done it justice!

Through all of this is the performance of Welshman Owain Arthur as Henshall, I now understand the meaning of phrase (comedic) tour de force! James Corden, who originated the role, won Olivier and Tony awards for his performance, but while watching Arthur I honestly couldn't imagine anyone else in the part! The rest of the cast certainly held their own in the comedy stakes and while I imagine 95% of the ad libs and audience interaction were scripted, they made them seem totally improvised.

As well as the acting each of the cast took part in the skiffle band's interludes in between scenes. The band, The Craze, added an entertaining change to the usual scene changes in a play, and also acted as pre-show and interval entertainment, with original songs written for the play.

I loved the set, it seemed to be both simple cardboard cutout backgrounds and at the same time effectively conveyed the 1960s Brighton seafront, they were how I imagined how the sets actually might have been like in the plays of the 1960s.

Slapstick is funny but clever slapstick is hilarious!

Medea (Sherman Cymru)

I admit that a Greek Tragedy about an abandoned wife who murders her child as revenge on her husband did not immediately appeal to me. The most serious piece of theatre I've seen is Hamlet, and Shakespeare is comparatively modern when put next to Euripides, who wrote Medea in the year 431 BC. For me all the appeal was in the actress playing the title role - Rachael Stirling, daughter of Diana Rigg who played the same role to great acclaim just twenty years earlier. I have been a fan of Stirling since she made her name on TV in 'Tipping the Velvet' (I was 18, of course that particular drama was going to make me a fan of both Stirling and Keeley Hawes!) so I couldn't miss the opportunity to see such a good actress perform at a local(ish) venue.


I imagine if Mike Leigh ever made a film of Euripides' Ancient Greek tragedy it would be something like this updated  version. The play deals with Medea, the wife of Jason (and the Argonauts), who is filled with anger towards her husband after he leaves her to marry a younger woman; in the original play Medea is a barbarian woman and the 'other woman' is daughter to a King.
Mike Bartlett moves this version of Medea from ancient Greece (Corinth) to a generic middle class suburbia, complete with an Ikea-style, dolls house-like set. Stirling's Medea is now a sweary, smoking city girl who the other characters, and audience, are slightly scared of. Her performance is brilliant, Medea goes from depressive to truly disturbing scene where she plunges her hand into a pan of boiling water, a scene made even more shocking by Medea's son watching in still silence; to pathetic, when she offers to have a baby for her childless male neighbour. Towards the end she becomes really worrying and scary, particularly when she pretends (as it turns out) to be amicable towards he ex-husband and his soon to be wife, these scenes are truly worrying because we know things are about to turn very dark. Even at the end the fact that I still felt some sympathy towards Medea was a testament to the performance of Rachael Stirling.
The majority of rest of the cast were just as good at their parts, Amelia Lowdell was instantly dis-likable as Medea's snobbish work colleague, Pam, as was Christopher Ettridge (Reg from Goodnight Sweetheart) as the landlord; Lu Corfield, as the put upon neighbour (and childminder), and Paul Shelly as the childless neighbour, Andrew were both suitably sympathetic in their performance. On the other hand Jason, I thought, was a little two-dimensional in the character of cheating husband. The only thing I didn't understand was who the builder character was supposed to be, was he a supposed to be in place of a Greek chorus?

After my initial reservations about about Ancient Greek tragedies, and after seeing this production I'd quite like to see a more classical version as well. And I'm never going to be able to listen to David Bowie's Aladdin Sane in the same way again!

Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap

So I've been waiting 60 years to see The Mousetrap... not really as I'm only 28, but I have wanted to see the play for quite a few years, ever since I was that geeky kid reading Agatha Christie books - I first read Murder on the Orient Express when I was in Junior School.
There's not much to say about the plot, the less known the better, but it's a archetypical drawing room whodunnit; nothing has been changed in the 60 years it's been going, even the set is almost unchanged. That being said I have, for some strange reason and I don't know how, have always known who dun it; I once went to see an Eddie Izzard show where he joked about doing his first gig in the London theatre next to The Mousetrap and he joked about the killer saying everyone's knows, I thought it was one of those things people just know without knowing how they knew. None of this though spoiled it for me, I know who-does-it in Murder On The Orient Express but that never takes away any of the delight I take in watching the film/TV-movie or reading the book again.

Tour cast. Photo from http://www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk/what%27s-on/mousetrap/

As with most Christie plays most of the action takes place in one room, this means that the cast is everything. I couldn't fault most of the cast. Corrie's Bruno Langley, at first appearance, seemed miscast; I'm not sure how much theatre he has done but he seemed to be shouting for the beginning of his performance (instead of projecting *sounding like I know what I'm talking about*) though he did seem to tone it down as the play went on, but I think that he was maybe too young for the part- or it I might just have a prejudice against soap stars in the theatre. The older cast, Graham Seed (Major Metcalf); Jan Waters (Mrs Boyle) and Karl Howman (Mr Paravicini), were clearly the more experienced theatre performers; playing pure Christie characters, and as Waters has played the same part serveral different times she fits the role like a glove (a black leather glove ;-). Steven France as Christopher Wren turns from screamingly camp (a bit too much) to the pathos and angst of what is clear but never stated. The standout performance was that of Thomas Howes as Sgt Trotter, with two series of Downton Abbey he should be comfortable wearing a period character and in some parts of the play he is, as the 'detective' character he has to carry some of the scenes and he does this well, as if he's been in theatre all his career.
The set, characters and plot - there's a reason why this has lasted so long. All the elements are present and correct: the black leather glove, the lights going out - murder, the red herrings; all that you would want from an Agatha Christie play, this will probably run for another 60 years!

Sweeney Todd! (Happy Birthday me)

Most years around my birthday my mother complains that she doesn't have a clue what to get me, not to mention my sister waiting only a few days before to ask what I want, so this year I let my mam and dad know well in advance what they could get me - a ticket for Sweeney Todd. Even when there were rumours of a West End transfer of the Chichester festival production, I wondered if I'd get to see it, so it was just my luck when the limited run included August.
For anyone who doesn't know the story, Sweeney Todd arrives back in London seeking revenge on the judge whose trumped up charges sent him to Australia so he could have his way with Todd's wife. Along the way on this course for revenge he slits a few customers' throats and sends them downstairs for Mrs Lovett to make into pies... You know, the usual jolly musical fare!
I've wanted to see Sweeney live for years, I own both the Patti LuPone cast recording and live NY Philharmonic concert CD (as well as watching the video of the original production starring Angela Lansbury) but as much a fan of LuPone that I am, her cockney accent is only a few syllables away from Dick Van Dyke's! So it made a good change to hear Sweeney Todd sung in convincing accents. Both Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton were brilliant, Staunton seemed to be channeling Julie Walters for her Mrs Lovett, but that's not to take anything away from her performance, it's fair to say she provided all the comedy. Ball was excellent as usual, scarily brilliant considering the last time (and first time) I saw him in a musical he was in a dress playing a working-class mother in Hairspray! Ball's performance was the best that I've heard this musical sung, Epiphany being the stand-out number of the show, with Ball's vocals and acting, and even the set which rolls out so close to the front of the stage that he could almost give the audience a shave with the razor he swings about! The rest of the cast were just as excellent but it's probably true to say that this is Ball & Staunton's show, I wouldn't mind betting on Oliviers for them next year!
The set is interesting to say the least, and with it being so big and the main actors and ensemble being spread around it it was sometimes slightly hard to know where to look. I thought the setting being moved to the 1930s instead of Victorian London was going to be the only part of the show wouldn't work but it didn't take anything away from the story or the music, and of course the first half of the 20th Century had its murderers too! A brilliant show even if you don't come out singing any of the numbers, but that probably has something to do with Sondheim being notoriously hard to sing along to!

Legally Blonde

Just as I was about to, begrudgingly, book three of the cheapest tickets for Legally Blonde at the Wales Millennium Centre (honestly, the actors look like ants it's so high up) I happened to notice a Facebook email telling me I had won 4 tickets. I'm never that lucky!

The musical, based on the 2001 film starring Reese Witherspoon, deals with a seemingly stereotypical blonde sorority girl who gets in to Harvard law school to follow her boyfriend who's dumped her for someone serious. While there she learns to use what she has (brains and fashion knowledge) to win a big murder case, and teaches others that old lesson of judging a book by its cover! That old stuff!

This musical is actually funny, funnier than I expected it to be, and not just dialogue, it's also lyrically funny. The actors having to be able to sing and show off their comedy chops was given a prime example in the performance of Rhona McGregor as Paulette (understudying for Jennifer Ellison who had to pull out temporarily). The other surprise being Iwan Lewis as Emmett who's voice reminded me of Christian Borle who I'd seen in 'Smash' (on Sky Atlantic) and I later found out originated the role on Broadway! As Elle Woods, Faye Brookes must have the toughest time with two sets of boots to fill - that of Reese Witherspoon and Sheridan Smith (I unfortunately didn't get to see her in the role but her comedy acting even comes through on the cast recording) who won an Olivier award for her West End performance in the role. Brooks more than filled these with her voice and comedy acting. Gareth Gates, the other 'big' name in the show was the weakest link, he just isn't good (my opinion) but he wasn't awful that he ruined the show and the other actors around him were just so much better, and his part isn't really that big, that you didn't really notice him that much.

The music and choreography were exceptional, especially the second act opener 'Whipped Into Shape' which must be really hard to sing and do what are essentially exerciser dance moves and skipping. For a touring set the set itself is pretty good, and anyone (me) who didn't see the West End production the it sets the scenes of a Harvard Law school and Paulette's salon really well.

It's camp, frothy fun and it was better than I expected. It's entertainment at its best!