Saturday, November 17, 2012

Once & We Will Rock You

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

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!

 

 

The post Once appeared first on Theatre Breaks.

We Will Rock You Breaks

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.

 

Killer Queen - We Will Rock You

The Killer Queen’s amazing costume, We Will Rock You

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.

The post We Will Rock You Breaks appeared first on Theatre Breaks.

Posted via email from London Theatre Breaks

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Viva Forever

Viva Forever

 

Viva Forever, the new Spice Girls musical starts previews on 27th November 2012 and opens on 11th December 2012 at the Piccadilly Theatre in London’s West End, promising to become one of the mainstay popular choices in 2013 for group theatre breaks to London.

Viva Forever itself, the song, was one of the Spice Girls big anthem hits. Refresh your memory by settling back and watching this footage from the SpiceWorld tour

‘The light that burns twice as bright burns only half as long, and you have burned very brightly”

“Hasta MaƱana, always be mine”

Viva forever, I’ll be waiting
Everlasting, like the sun
Live forever,
For the moment
Ever searching for the one

Viva Forever is the title song for the new Spice Girls musical, but if you thought this was going to be another semi-concert style jukebox musical then think again because there’s much more to it than that. For a start, the musical has been written by none other than Jennifer Saunders, the comedy genius behind Absolutely Fabulous. And the team who so cleverly wrought the international success of  Mamma Mia the musical and film out of  seemingly unconnected ABBA hits have worked the same magic on Viva Forever too.

Viva Forever

Viva Forever

They’ve taken 16 Spice Girls classic songs and created a musical extravaganza based on the story of a mother and daughter moving through the stages of a TV reality singing contest. All the favourite girl-power hits are a backdrop to this cheeky life-affirming Spice Girls musical, from Wannabe and Say You’ll Be There to Mama, Stop and the title track Viva Forever itself.

Lets see what we can piece together about the story from the full cast list, which has just been released:

Viva Forever Casting

The cast is led by Sally Ann Triplett and Hannah John-Kamen, who play  a mother and daughter called Lauren and Viva.

Lauren is the mother of daughter Viva, so “Viva” is a person OK?

Viva has a chorus comprised of three best friends, Luce, Diamond and Holly. These are played by Siobhan Athwal (Luce), Lucy Phelps (Diamond) and Dominique Provost-Chalkey (Holly).

Lauren, (the Mother remember!) – also has a best friend called Suzi, played by Lucy Montgomery  who was in Absolutely Fabulous and also  The IT Crowd amongst other things, and a character called Mitch is played by  Simon Slater.

The show is all about the modern culture of reality TV talent shows, and the show within the show has three judges, a musical director and    other roles. The judges are played by  Bill Ward , Sally Dexter and Tamara Wall from We Will Rock You, while Ben Cura is Angel, the musical director of the TV talent show, while Hatty Preston plays production assistant Minty. Simon Adkins is Leon the Stylist and Anthony Topham is Lance the presenter.

There’s an ensemble cast too,  which includes: Tom Kanavan, Zak Nemorin, Curtis Angus, Luke Jackson, Oliver Roll, David Rudin, Darren Carnall, Myles Brown, Charlotte Gorton, Rebecca McKinnis, Lucy Thatcher, Roxanne Palmer, Charlotte Walcott, Sophie Carmen-Jones, Carla Nella, Kirstie Skivington and Helen Ternent.

So we can surmise that the TV talent show probably takes up a substantial part of the storyline, whatever the result and effect it has on the life and family of Viva.

Viva Forever Theatre Breaks

Viva Forever theatre breaks are booking now for dates including the previews from November 27th but we think the show including a weekend out in London will be popular over the Christmas and New Year period in particular, appealing to both sexes from the generation who grew up in the eighties and nineties as well as musical theatre fans in general. I have a hunch that anyone who enjoyed Mamma Mia would want to see Viva Forever as soon as possible. Or anyone who has ever dreamed of entering a singing contest…

Viva Forever!

Viva Forever poster at the Piccadilly Theatre

Theatre Breaks by Coach

     
    Theatre Breaks    
   
Theatre Breaks by Coach
September 30, 2012 at 10:01 AM
 

Theatre breaks by coach to London give you a chance to do more than just see a show. I’ve been looking at some 3 day breaks and one of those turns a theatre break into a mini-holiday.

How Coach Breaks Work

Theatre Breaks by Coach

You get a coach from a nearby town down to London. There are lots to choose from so you should be able to find something handy for you. I looked at a three day theatre break by coach from Doncaster. The coach picks you up on Friday and takes you down to London but not straight to your hotel. We stopped off at ‘a place of interest’ along the way. I won’t spoil the surprise but it was lovely & much nicer than stopping at the motorway services! Chatting to other people on the coach I soon discovered that many of them had been on these trips before and book their next one as soon as they get home. I think they must be addictive!

Now these breaks are great for couples, romantic weekends, anniversaries, that sort of thing, but I fancied a weekend break with a couple of our oldest friends. All four of us have been friends forever, watched our families grow up together, been on lots of holidays together and generally get on like a house on fire! All four of us off to see a show and hit the London shops just seemed like a great idea. The coach trip down is fun with everyone chatty and excited. The London traffic, even on the outskirts, is bad enough to make me glad we didn’t opt for the self drive break.

Hotels in London

The hotel  for these three day breaks is not in the centre of London so you can get much better value for money. It is a 4* hotel so it has everything you’d expect for that.

You have a nice evening meal in the hotel and settle in. Is it just me or are you a hotel bathroom fiend too? Once I’ve luxuriated in the en-suite bath and tried out the bubbles it’s time to dress up and off down for dinner. I love a night in a good hotel, don’t you? It’s partly the joy of knowing you can indulge in a nice meal and a glass (or 3!) of vino and not have to worry about getting home. No designated driver, no feeling left out because everyone else  can have a drink. The meal was just as good as expected and the staff were lovely. They even made sure my friend got her special meal and she assured us it was lovely too,

Then on Saturday morning after breakfast you are off into London by coach. Now I like to have a good mooch round somewhere like Covent Garden on a Saturday morning. There’s always something to look at or listen too. If you like a bit of light opera don’t miss the busking opera singer at the cafe. The singers vary, sometimes male, sometimes female but always of a very high standard.  It’s just inside the main building and has a great balcony where you can stand & listen if you are not ready for a coffee just yet. Then of course time for a little retail therapy before the show. Try to keep your purchases to a minimum as no one wants to lug lots of bags around, just little expensive trinkets maybe? There’s a lovely stall that does hand died silk scarves in the Apple market. Ooh and talking of bags, don’t miss the bag stalls but make sure you get real leather  ;-)

A Cornish pub in London! The Cove, Covent Garden,

I have to mention there’s an unexpected pleasure for the blokes in Covent Garden. The upstairs of the Cornish Pasty shop is a Cornish bar called The Cove, complete with real ale! It’s the perfect place for them to hang about for a pint or two while we have a quick wander round the market.  The pasties  also make quite a nice lunch and not too expensive at all! They do a good coffee too if you are not into real ale :-)

Jersey Boys is at the Prince Edward Theatre

 

 

 

The Jersey Boys

The 3 day theatre breaks include tickets to the Saturday matinee of West End musical of your choice. The one I looked at was offering a choice of 9 shows and I picked Jersey Boys just because it has the most amazing selection of songs. The matinee show on a Saturday is great fun and the cast are in good voice. You don’t need to worry about them holding back! This lot are professionals and if you don’t come out 2 and a half hours later singing “Sh, er, ree, Sherry babe,eee!” I’d be amazed! I found a video on Youtube to get you in the right mood:

Jersey Boys runs 2 hours 40 minutes, with a 20 minute interval. As it started at 3pm this means when we come out it is only late Saturday afternoon with lots still to look forward to! Time to meet up with your coach and driver. One of the really nice things about this break is that you have the same driver and coach so it’s not at all impersonal. Our driver was a lovely chap, polite and friendly. He really knew London well and I was glad it was him not me weaving through the London traffic! Everyone has been to see different shows and the coach is soon buzzing with everyone’s stories. We find ourselves thinking about what we’d like to see next time. I fancy Les Miz but our blokes surprise us (not!) by opting for We Will Rock You. We’ll see :-)

Once back at the hotel there’s time to freshen up. I’m back in that bath again :-) Then there’s a Dinner Dance to look forward to. It’s more of a disco than an old fashioned, stuffy dance but they’ve got the sense to play quite a few classics from the 60s and 70s and a good time is had by all, dancing the night away. I’m still singing “Sherry Baby” as we waft off to bed in the wee, small hours.

Sunday morning has a slow start, with  a little gentle packing before we wander down for breakfast. Some of us are delighted to see the full English. For some reason I opt for the continental 8-)

Tower Bridge from the river

After breakfast it’s back on the coach for a short hop into London. Sunday morning in London is a great time to do a little sightseeing. We’ve no bags with us so we can just relax and please ourselves where we go. We opt for a river cruise from Westminster. It’s a lovely way to see the city from the river and is surprisingly reasonable! It takes about an hour for the round trip, but you can get off and on again at various points. I am persuaded to get off at St Katherine Docks and we spend a happy  hour or more drinking coffee, eating in the sunshine and wandering round eyeing up the gorgeous boats in the marina there.  This sparks a discussion of cruises, but we decide they are a bit less of an affordable luxury than theatre breaks!

Back on the boat and off to meet our coach for the journey back to Doncaster. This does not take very long at all as traffic is quite gentle at this time on a Sunday. Even so, the drive out to the motorway  does make me glad that we didn’t bring the car. It’s been lovely not to have to think about driving all weekend.

Great Value Theatre Breaks by Coach

On the way back I can’t help but think about what good value for money this break has been. We’ve had travel to & from London, 3 nights in a 4* hotel, tickets for a smashing show, 2 evening meals and 2 full breakfasts for well under £250 each. Even with a bit of spending money that is still great value and means that we could afford to come down for a We Will Rock You1 theatre break, by coach again  in a few months time and still start saving for that cruise :-)

** Book theatre breaks by coach here **

Jersey Boys Jersey Boys is at the Prince Edward Theatre The coach is parked near the theatre so easy to find. Tower Bridge from the river The opera singer has a great voice The Apple Market always has interesting stalls At least we didn't get lost! Feeling smug because we have our tickets! Leicester Square has been smartened up since we were last here! A Cornish pub in London! The Cove, Covent Garden, Theatre Breaks by Coach Maybe I'm just strange but I love a hotel bathroom :-)

 

 

  1. did I mention I was over-ruled? LOL!
   
   


 

Thursday, June 14, 2012

French Theatre in London 5th BASTILLE WEEK 2012 8th to 15th July

July 2012 Press Release BASTILLE WEEK 5th Edition.doc Download this file

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Sweeney Todd Adelphi Theatre London

musical: Sweeney Todd
starring: Muchael Ball
Book Now: Sweeney Todd theatre breaks
opening night: 20/3/2012 booking until November 2012

http://tbil.co.uk/u/172

Thursday, March 15, 2012

London Theatre Breaks























Singin’ In The Rain Extended
March 14, 2012 at 11:50 AM
 

The West End run of Singin’ in the Rain has extended booking at London’s Palace Theatre until 23 February 2013 so there’s plenty of opportunity to pick up best seats as part of Theatre Breaks packages right through the most popular months of year if you book ahead.

 

musical: Singin’ in the Rain Singin In The Rain Extended Tbm
starring: songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, including “Make ‘em Laugh”, “Good Morning”, ”Moses Supposes” and the title song
Book Now: Singin’ in the Rain theatre breaks
opening night:15/02/2012 booking until 23/2/2013

Please note – theatregoers sitting in the front stalls at Singin’ In The Rain may get wet during the performance.

 

Singin In The Rain Extended Singing In The Rain Umbrellas

Singin’ In The Rain Extended was originally posted at London Theatre Breaks blog