Theatre Breaks A couple of reposts from the theatre breaks blog published yesterday. Once, a new musical, and We Will Rock You a well established West End favourite.
Once, a Musical
Once is a new musical from the film of the same name that has been a big success on Broadway and is now coming to the Phoenix Theatre in London where Blood Bloothers ran for years until very recently. The interesting thing about Once the film, is that the actors who play the lead roles are also musicians who play the instruments and wrote the songs which feature in the film. This is possible because it’s a story about two musicians, male and female, who meet on the streets of Dublin. It’s an exciting prospect for me because one of the main characters is a busker, singing and playing guitar in the street. I was a full time busker myself for a couple of years when I first left home, not in Dublin but in Paris, and it’s with great anticipation and just a little apprehension that I await a early performance of Once in London.
Once a Busker meets a Girl
The plot begin when a woman stops to listen to the busker, then later it transpires that she is a musician too, and a complicated relationship unfolds. In due course they start writing songs for each other, and this is what makes the musical special. Remembering back to my own days, it is certainly true that sometimes people stop and listen to a few songs. Usually they just leave a contribution (or not) and carry on without saying anything, perhaps a grin or nod of the head, but sometimes they would want to say something or ask a question. The worst ones just take a photograph, which seems kind of rude, like they’re looking on and not taking part in the scene at all. So I had many encounters with strangers like that, some of which turned into friendships and not all of which were female as it happens. A french guy called Guy seemed to like what he heard and then out of the blue offered to buy me a beer at just the right time. I would have turned down most offers like that while I was working, but we ended up meeting up for a beer or a meal now and again over the months, and went on expeditions all over Paris and to Poitiers as well. He let me stay in his apartment when I was couch surfing for a short period, and when he went on a solo trip around England on a moped, dropped in on my parents house after I wrote and told them to expect a strange frenchman! After a few more moves of mine, we lost touch, like so many.
Other people who stopped and struck up conversation with me down in the metro would seldom lead to such lasting friendship, more often than not there were wild goose chases involved as people seemed to feel obliged to offer something that usually never materialises, I learned at quite a young age.
The Music – Acoustic originals
Anyway, back to this musical of a film, Once. Whoever is performing in the stage show is probably going to have to be a guitar player as well as a singer, actor and everything else, but what kind of genre are the songs in the show? You might want to know if it’s blues, folk, pop or musical theatre in genre before you decide to go and see the musical.
Once London
How much will the stage show differ from the film, musically, I wonder? There are some clues at least perhaps in the style of the publicity graphics for Once, depicting the machine head, tuning pegs and string ends of an acoustic guitar, drawn in a folky kind of style. So we can be fairly optimistic that there will be at least some acoustic guitar music involved, even if there is orchestral accompaniment – I’m not sure if there is or not – the Broadway version I think had quite a small cast. And being set in Dublin, you might expect an Irish flavour to the songs – but apart from that I’ll have to wait until there is some footage from the London version of Once online to watch as a preview, or until March 2013 when it opens in the Phoenix theatre Charing Cross, just down the road from We Will Rock You.
Once London: Broadway clips
Right I’ve seen the Broadway opening night youtube now and it looks like the ensemble are all musicians too, playing acoustic guitars, fiddle and accordion so a bit more like a wild night in an Irish music pub, or the 3rd class passengers of the Titanic having a party in that other film. Bring it on!
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We Will Rock You Breaks
We Will Rock You – Freddie celebrates Xmas
We Will Rock You breaks are still tremendously popular but why? It has been going for 11 years at the Dominion Theatre and is still putting bums on seats. That is over 4,000 performances! This show is just one of those perennial favourites that appeals to a very wide audience. You don’t even have to be a fan of Queen to enjoy it, although it probably helps. The funny thing about music is that the stuff that was around when you were young somehow becomes good, even though it might not have been your taste at the time. We catch a sort of nostalgia for it, as it can conjure up our lost youth. Noel Coward said it best when he had a character remark: “Strange how potent cheap music is.” (Private Lives) That is a slightly snobby way of putting it but he definitely had something there. I wouldn’t have been seen dead listening to Abba in my late teens/twenties but I adore Mamma Mia! and happily bop around to Dancing Queen. We Will Rock You has a similar effect. It is the power of the familiar, I think. This music was the soundtrack to an era, the much maligned late 1970s/early 80s. If you were alive then the music of We Will Rock You will speak to you. Songs like Radio Gaga or Bohemian Rhapsody are so engrained in our musical culture that we cannot help but enjoy them.
The story has a slightly flimsy, whimsical plot but it is witty and fun. Set in the far future the joy of many of the jokes centre around the strange misunderstandings that have grown up around the heroes of rock. It is a lot of fun and as the book (plot) was written by Ben Elton there are some real laugh out loud moment. I won’t spoil any of the jokes but there are some good ones! Just remember that recent(ish!) song about being a punk rocker with flowers in your hair and you’ll get the idea! The jokes are funniest when they show a total disregard for things as they really were.
The show is great to look at too with excellent costumes and sets, in a ‘Mad Maxish’ sort of way. There’s definitely been some Tina Turner influence in the design of The Killer Queen’s outfit!
Of course it is the music that really gets the audience going. As the familiar drum beat of We Will Rock You echoes through the theatre the atmosphere changes and before you know it everyone is joining in clapping and stamping their feet. And that is, I suppose part of the magic of the show.
It just sweeps you along, your disbelief totally suspended, so that it doesn’t matter if the plot is a bit silly at times. It is a lot like being at a big concert and the performances that work best are the ones where people really get into that mood. By the end everyone is on their feet, clapping to the beat with their arms raised. I can’t have been the only one who had an almost overwhelming urge to get out a cigarette lighter and hold it aloft! (Note – I haven’t smoked for over 25 years! 
) Here they are back in 2009 at West End Live – they always put on a tremendous show for that:
You cannot go and see the real Queen and Freddie Mercury in concert any more so We Will Rock You sort of fills that gap. We all saw the amazing bit in the otherwise dire closing ceremony of the Olympics where Freddie seemed to be back with us, interacting with the audience. Well, maybe one day, the technology that did that will be perfected to the point that we can actually see him ‘live’ on stage again. (That’s a whole other blog post!) Until then a show like We Will Rock You provides the next best thing. It is an ideal choice for a theatre break, giving you a real ‘feel good’ musical experience. There are lots of choices on our Readers Offer site - just click through to see what’s available.
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