Musicals in London (December 2007)

I've always forgotten to write this post, shame on me :-)

The Musicals in London goes on!

This time I went to London with my good friends Alessia, Tommaso and Barbara, just for 3 days (two nights). We left on November 30th very early in the morning from the Florence airport, and got to London at about 10 o'clock; so we had the time to get to the hostel (yes, in order to save money for the musicals we chose the youth hostel :-)

Since we arrived from the airport to Victoria station, we could soon see the Wicked wonderful theatre


The musical tour started in the afternoon with our beloved Mamma Mia! Although we were in the very last rows we had a nice visual, and the show is always funny, even from there :-) The evening... Avenue Q! We had quite cheap tickets for the second row! That was the second time I saw Avenue Q, but for my friends it was the first time... we laughed, laughed, laughed til we cried! This show is sooooo funny :-D


Back to the hostel room... well... not so comfortable, but we were tired anyway


The second day! For the matinee we chose the classical Phantom of the Opera! No way I could get tired of that :-) And for the evening, the grand finale. I had seen this musical on August, and I really couldn't wait to see that again: Wicked! The seat was not bad (surely better than my previous time), and the house was full! Unfortunately, Kerry Ellis (Elphaba) was probably having some problems with her voice, but she was wonderful anyway, although she did not sing at her best; Dianne Pilkington (Glinda) was very good and funny as usual. A great show! One of the best currently!


Another night at the hostel, and then on Sunday back to the airport and back to Italy.


Another magical musical tour: 4 musicals in 2 days :-)

hope to get there back soon.

Tommy, thanks for the photos :-)

Musicals in London (August 2007) - Photos

Hi there! The musical tour is over, and I'm already missing it :-)

Here are the photos of the theaters of the musical I saw (in chronological order). Unfortunately, I can't find the one of Mamma Mia!

Mary Poppins

Les Miserables

Grease

Billy Elliot

Avenue Q

The Sound of Music

The Phantom of the Opera

Wicked

What fabulous days! Hope to get back there soon :-)

Musicals in London (August 2007) - Day 5

Here's the report of yesterday (14th August); my musical tour finished yesterday, since today I'm going back home.

For yesterday matinée I went at the opening of the box office of the Phantom of the Opera, to see if I could find a day ticket or any discount. Unfortunately, there was no day ticket, but they had a good price for the stalls: 30 pounds instead of 55, in row K! Since I had seen the phantom before (that was my 5th time) but never in a really good seat, I had no hesitation, and went for that ticket :-)

Ah! The phantom! it's always an emotion to see this show, and I guess I'll never get tired of that, never! Since the seat was really good, I could enjoy every minute of it. The phantom is now played by Earl Carpenter, who was great, with a very powerful voice! As for Christine, there are two alternates in this production; at this performance there was Robyn North. She's very young, but yet really good! Probably, she's not the best Christine I've ever seen, but she was very moving in singing and acting, trying to interpret the song, instead of just thinking about a perfect execution. Since this was not a recording, but a live show, I think this was for the best. Indeed, I noticed, that every one tried to think more about the interpretation, and that made the show very good.

Wendy Ferguson was playing as Carlotta, and she was very funny. Probably she missed some notes and went slightly out of tune in those high parts (the finale of Prima Donna), but she was great in the show. Also Raoul, Michael Xavier, was good, and he had a very powerful voice too. So, it was a very nice experience to enjoy the phantom once again :-)

By the way, after the show I went to the Stage Door, and got the autographs of Earl, Robyn, Michael and of Lindsey Wise (Meg) :-)

Basically, I had seen all the musicals I wanted to see, so for the evening I could pick up one of any choice. I was tempted to see The Little Shop of Horrors, but I had seen it in Italy (in Italian) and wanted to try something different.

I heard many good things about Wicked, so I though I'd give it a try. Since I had been at the box office of the phantom for the opening (10 am) when I arrived at the Wicked's theater, there already was a small queue, and could find any day tickets. Actually there were few seats (this musical seems to be a success), and only found a 15 pound seat, very far, but with a nice view of the stage.

Well, Wicked is basically an alternative version of The Wizard of Oz and it is based on the novel "Wicked" (1995) by Gregory Maguire. It is The Wizard of Oz, but viewed by the wicked witch of the west (who, as you'll see, probably was not so wicked) and it tells the story of her "career" as a which.

The story is very nice and also the show was brilliant! In particular, the two main singers Kerry Ellis (Elphaba) and Dianne Pilkington (Glinda) were absolutely wonderful! I suggest to see this musical. I bought the book to be sure I got the plot right ;-)

By the way, the witch of the west has green skin, and she goes to Emerald, a green city and there was a lot of green in the show... well, green is my favorite color, so I might be biased? ;-)

Well, this musical tour is over :-)

Musicals in London!

Back on April 2002 (gosh already 5 years ago!), me and some friends of mine, we decided to do a so called musical tour de force in London, i.e., go to London and see as many musicals as possible. In particular we stayed in London 3 whole days, and some of us managed to attend 5 musicals :-)

Since we had to save money for the musicals we decided to stay at a hostel near the British museum: here's a morning photo of a musical day. Here's a photo of my mates for those wonderful days.


The tour started on thursday with a matinée of Les Miserables! What a musical, what a cast... what everything :-) but this is quite usual of West End musicals: you get astonished by the great shows, the great live performed music, the great voices. But Les Miserables also has a great score so it was a good way of starting our musical journey :-)

Here you can see some shots before and after the show.

The typical safety curtain during the break (with the logo of the show). And the orchestra! Yes, in London all the music is always performed live... In Italy almost never :-(

And also the goodbye of the cast.

The show has been running for 20 years now! No surprise it's still running.

As I said, besides the songs, also the show is astonishing, and everyone that saw that has always told me it's an amazing experience.

Well, yes, the show might be a little bit long, but you'll enjoy every minute!

That very evening, we then went to Mamma Mia! The songs of this show are the most famous ABBA songs. And the story is a kind of funny comedy. Since I love ABBA music, I had no doubt I'd enjoy the music of this musical. But you'll also have a lot of fun and you'll laugh a lot, since the comedy is really funny. Well... actually... we didn't get all the jokes, and it was kind of frustrating not laughing when all the audience was laughing, but it was funny anyway ;-)

Here you can see a shot of the stage with the safety curtain.

The next day, Friday, there were no matinées, so we spent the morning at Camden town (yes we did also some sightseeing in those days)...

But the evening we enjoyed another magical experience... Cats! The show was closing that very may so we were very lucky to see it before it closed (after more than 20 years!). Well, I had already seen that show in London in 2000, but each time it's magic!

The cast and the stage, besides music of course, make Cats one of the best musicals ever, and if you had a chance to see it you'll agree I guess. We had good sits (well, also very expensive sits :-) so we could see every bits of the show.

The cast consists not only of great singers and dancers but also of acrobats (e.g., Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer): seeing them sing while they dance that way is almost unbelievable!

Their make up is perfect (how long will it take to get that make up done?!) and they actually act like real cats...

It's a pity Cats closed in London... I hope it will reopen again :-)

On Saturday, as far as I know, all the West End musicals have a matinée and we decided to go and see the musical Taboo written by Boy George. Another funny show (well, no competition with the classical West End musicals, but still worth it!).

It's an autobiographic musical so there are many sad moments, but you'll also laugh a lot thanks to some characters and to their sketches that also involve the audience... also in this case, to fully enjoy all the jokes you need to be English, so we missed some of them (and luckily we were not involved in any direct jokes :-)

The audience is involved in the show also thanks to the stage and the theater itself... well, actually is not a real theater, as you can see from these photos. Indeed it's quite a small place but this lets you enjoy the show better since most sits were good sits.

You feel like you're part of the show! Another funny thing, that involves you in the show, is also the fact that the bar on the right side of the stage you can see in this last shot is actually part of the show itself, but you can drink there during the break :-)

Summarizing, I can't say it's the best show I've ever seen, but I truly enjoyed it. By the way, the songs of the show are not Culture Club's songs (in spite of a little part of Do you really want to hurt me and the final encore Karma Chameleon): they are brand new songs written for the show.

Alas, that was our last evening in the West End, and we couldn't choose a better final show than The Phantom of the Opera. That was the second time I saw that show in the West End, but, again, I enjoyed it anyway. Actually we did not have very good sits (well, they were quite bad indeed, since we were very far and the left corner of the stage was almost completely hidden to us. But we had a real good time anyway.

For those who, like me, love musicals, I guess there's no place like West End :-)

Of course, to fully enjoy musicals, it's better to be in good company and I cannot but thank my wonderful friends for this!


This last photo was shot by Alessia, who also shared with me the record setting of 5 musicals in 3 days! :-)