Theatre 2025 (2 Viewers)

Ellie

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Just come back from Julian Clary’s Palladium Pantomime (Robin Hood).

First time going to one of these and it was absolutely brilliant. Definitely going to go again next year. And probably a good time to go in the first week of Jan - we saw Jennifer Saunders coming in as we arrived, and Judi Dench and Bill Nighy were sitting a few rows behind us! :o

Other than that, currently got quite a lot upcoming for 2025 so far:

Oliver!
MJ The Musical (going for Myles Frost’s last show)
The Mousetrap (never seen it!)
Operation Mincemeat
The Devil Wears Prada
The Tempest
Play On!
Mean Girls
Clueless The Musical
Son of a Bitch
The Comedy About Spies
The Frogs
Sing Street
 
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Are any NICHE THEATRE QUEENS seeing 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812'?



Whole parts of it are dirge and I only went coz a friend is weirdly obsessed with it, but I fucking loved it too. The cast are tremendous and I loved the staging and energy, and now I want to watch War & Peace (obvs not read it).

It's sold out at the Donmar so I hope for a transfer, although it would likely only be to that @SohoPlaceY2K@-@ or whatever it's modernly called
 
I saw the Palladium Pantomime last year (Jennifer Saunders in Peter Pan), and it was marvellous. This year I decided to save a few hundred quid (which I then spent on Mary Poppins tickets) and see Brian Conley and Brenda Edwards in Cinderella here instead.

Julian Clary and Nigel Havers really are a magnificent panto double act. And practically all of his costumes were amazing. It was all so lavish.
 
Anyway, I came to this thread just to mention that after months of talking myself out of it, I just got special offer tickets to & Juliet here in a few weeks. Is it any good?
 
I saw the Palladium Pantomime last year (Jennifer Saunders in Peter Pan), and it was marvellous. This year I decided to save a few hundred quid (which I then spent on Mary Poppins tickets) and see Brian Conley and Brenda Edwards in Cinderella here instead.

Julian Clary and Nigel Havers really are a magnificent panto double act. And practically all of his costumes were amazing. It was all so lavish.
Yes! The costume budget must have been insane. And we had Julian Clary flying over the audience in a fire engine, hosing us with water at one point. No expense spared at all. Honestly it was very VERY funny.

I particularly loved Jane McDonald being repeatedly introduced as “Channel 5’s Sultry Songstress”, with the inevitable jokes about going cruising.
 
As much as it was expensive when I went (but then I did book ages in advance to get good seats the Saturday before Christmas), when I saw the production, I couldn't resent it - everything looked SO sumptuous and expensive. And it was all kind of old fashioned in the best way possible. I remember feeling quite cheated by all the special effects and screens when I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for example - I want good old fashioned props. Perhaps panto just hasn't moved on it the same way, I hadn't seen one for many years. But I'm relieved if that is the case.
 
So far this year I've got:

Stranger Things on the West End (was a Xmas present - help!)
The Shark Is Broken (touring locally)
Inside No.9
4:48 Psychosis (in STRATFORD :TurtleTime:)

Hopefully will see Wicked again next month as well.
 
All I have lined up is & Juliet and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, both on tour here.

I do want to try and see a bit more fringe theatre. We've got quite a few of them where you can see productions for £10-£15 or so, so you can afford to take a punt on stuff without feeling like you've wasted a lot of money.
 
As much as it was expensive when I went (but then I did book ages in advance to get good seats the Saturday before Christmas), when I saw the production, I couldn't resent it - everything looked SO sumptuous and expensive. And it was all kind of old fashioned in the best way possible. I remember feeling quite cheated by all the special effects and screens when I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for example - I want good old fashioned props. Perhaps panto just hasn't moved on it the same way, I hadn't seen one for many years. But I'm relieved if that is the case.
You might already know this but a thing I love about the Palladium Panto is that they can and do spend millions more than they'd ever recoup in its five week run, because it's always the debut of a new panto that will then play annually in a different city for years.

i.e. The Palladium premiered a big spenny Peter Pan last year, and this year all the sets and costumes are in Birmingham (with ALISON HAMMOND no less), and will be in Southampton next year, then somewhere else for 2026/27.

I've seen three of the Palladium ones now. This year's was the first that felt tired (it didn't work so well with Julian as the outright lead; and a lot of the songs/gags/routines we'd had before) but it was still good. And I loved seeing Channel 5's sultry songstress Jane McDonald :disco:
 
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You might already know this but a thing I love about the Palladium Panto is that they can and do spend millions more than they'd ever recoup in its five week run, because it's always the debut of a new panto that will then play annually in a different city for years.

i.e. The Palladium premiered a big spenny Peter Pan last year, and this year all the sets and costumes are in Birmingham (with ALISON HAMMOND no less), and will be in Southampton next year, then somewhere else for 2026/27.

I've seen three of the Palladium ones now. This year's was the first that felt tired (it didn't work so well with Julian as the outright lead; and a lot of the songs/gags/routines we'd had before) but it was still good. And I loved seeing Channel 5's sultry songstress Jane McDonald :disco:
No, I didn't know that, although it makes perfect sense.

I've just checked to see if our Cinderella this season was related to the Palladium one from 2016, but it appears not.
 
Got back from the end of my run at MJ The Musical, as it was Myles Frost’s last performance. There’s definitely a reason he won that Tony award so young. He has such a lovely presence and captures that aura very well, that none of the alternates have been able to do.

Not expecting anything from the “we mostly hate musicals unless they’re not fun” Oliviers. It would generally be an absolute travesty if it got nothing for choreography, video design or lighting, as there’s nothing at all around that compares.
 
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I loved it. It's delightfully poofy. Ncuti is great, but they all are. HAVE FUN NANCY LOVE
I can't wait! I was so lucky to be able to buy a ticket yesterday slap bang in the middle of the front row of the stalls. I know the view is slightly restricted there, but to be that close to Ncuti is already making my FANNY FLUTTER.
 
I’ve heard great things about it, but I heard too late and just don’t have any time now :(

Going to Oliver! tonight, which had its press night yesterday and mostly opened to amazing reviews. Not that that means anything considering how much I disliked Benjamin Button.
 
Didn’t quite love Operation Mincemeat. The second act is so much better than the first, but it’s not quite as side splitting funny as I’d been led to believe. Could easily name 20 other shows that were funnier without hesitation, and a couple of the cast were a little smug looking and it just annoyed me :o

Really loved The Devil Wears Prada. Goes to show that reviews aren’t everything. Even the girl playing Andie was very very good, and I think she’s been shat on the most by the critics. Vanessa Williams was just wonderful, and not just doing a Meryl impression. But the whole show was so much better than expected.

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@Ellie or anyone else, do you have any plans for Sondheim's Here We Are at the National from April to June?


What a cast. I really am tempted to come up for a matinee.
 
I don't really know anything about it. I'm going to give the Broadway production soundtrack a listen now and make my mind up.
 
I don't really know anything about it. I'm going to give the Broadway production soundtrack a listen now and make my mind up.
Me neither, but yes I have booked to go at the end of May, just for the cast. Actually seeing it back to back with The Frogs at Southwark Playhouse, so will be Sondheimed out that week.
 
Me neither, but yes I have booked to go at the end of May, just for the cast. Actually seeing it back to back with The Frogs at Southwark Playhouse, so will be Sondheimed out that week.
It's a shame David Hyde Pierce didn't transfer with it, but it's hard to gripe with that cast.
 
Had to use ChatGPT to give me a rundown of what The Tempest was actually about during the interval, because despite doing it at school 30 years ago, I didn’t have the foggiest.

I did enjoy non-binary Lady Gaga as Ariel, a Zendaya lookalike as Miranda as well as some crazy gimp.
 

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@Ellie or anyone else, do you have any plans for Sondheim's Here We Are at the National from April to June?


What a cast. I really am tempted to come up for a matinee.
I'm seeing it in June. His last few shows really aren't all that great, but as you say, that cast alone should be worth it.

Jane Krakowski has got some non-performing dates, so check before you book if you want to see her.
 
Ooh! Everyone I know who’s seen it really enjoyed it. I’ve purposely avoided it because none of the songs were particularly appealing to me. What was so bad about it?
Most of the audience did. I was very definitely in a minority.

Not sure why I disliked it so much. The first half it was heading for a 6, but by the end I'd struggle to give it a 4.

I like most of the songs, but not in this context. It didn't help that I didn't like the voices of the two female leads - and particularly the performance of That's The Way It Is was so horribly overwrought I wanted to laugh.

I don't think it helped that Jay McGuinness clearly wasn't delivering his best - I know he had at least the opening night here last week off with throat issues, and seemed to me to still be holding back.

Lee Latchford-Evans was probably the highlight, although his part is essentially panto, he played it well.

It's quite shameless how some of it is clearly stolen quite heavily from Mamma Mia. And I realise that a lot of the criticism I could level at it could be levelled at Mamma Mia. Or indeed most jukebox musicals. I think essentially I'm over them. At least I didn't hate this one as much as the last one I saw, the SAW one. That one was a complete turd without any redeeming features.
 
And if course there was a degree of 'I'm missing The Traitors FOR THIS?!' about it. Perhaps that's particularly why the second half suffered.
 
Sounds like me when I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Whole audience up on their feet.

Me:

:doublechin:
I don't know what you're like, but I know I'm the kind of person to just push against it if everyone else is loving it and I just don't GET it. Then I struggle to recognise positives and focus on the negative.
 
Actually I will say that I appreciated the non-binary representation, even if it's pretty surface level inevitably in this setting, and the choice of song is a little on the nose, to say the least.
 
I've been holding back for a couple of weeks out of fear of upsetting some people, but I went to see Titanique on my birthday and I thought it was just FINE. I think my expectations had been set too high, and it didn't help that I've never seen Titanic (so I had no idea that there was another guy in the picture along with Jack :D). I think the highlights were when it was referencing Wicked, and casting shade on Dua Lipa's singing ability but I found some of the references quite tired (are we not all over Miss Vanjie by now?). I definitely felt like the minority within the audience, but I thought the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial musical that I saw at the Criterion a couple of months earlier was WAY funnier, and I got a lot more enjoyment out of 'Why Am I So Single?' as well.

I loved & Juliet when I saw it on the West End, and I'm tempted by the tour now, knowing that Jay from The Wanted is in it (I saw him in both Big, and Sleepless: The Musical)
 

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