Showstoppers, 22nd February

What can a musical that is completely improvised from audience suggestions possibly be like? A lot of fun I can tell you.

We take our seats and three musicians come on stage, along with Dylan Emery who turns out to be our show’s director-cum-narrator. A red phone rings. The premise is thus set – on the other end of the line is the producer (ostensibly Cameron Mackintosh) wanting to know if Dylan has a new show up his sleeves. Well, of course he does! Oh, what is it? Um… well… and here is where the audience has a chance to suggest the direction the show takes. We are asked for some settings and we end up with The International Space Station, Battersea Dog’s Home, the Titanic and one other. We then vote by cheering for the one we like the most. Battersea Dogs Home wins. We’re then asked for some musical styles to incorporate and the audience proffers Seussical the Musical, Fiddler on the Roof and South Pacific. Finally, Emery asks us for a style of musical that can be played on guitar. Of course we give him flamenco, the hardest to play.

Dylan gets back on the phone and tells Cameron he’s definitely got something and he’ll send over the script in about… ooh… 45 minutes? Just enough time for the actors to make something up. And hilarity ensues.

It really does. It’s improv so it’s not completely polished and you shouldn’t expect it to be. There are moments where the ‘actors’ don’t quite pick up each other’s cues, or they overlap but this is incredibly rare. They mostly succeed in putting together a very funny show, with a real narrative arc, and real, actual songs, that may even get stuck in your head! They sing in harmony, they dance in synchronization (nothing too fancy, mind) and each show is different from the last. I can’t guarantee this, having been to only one, but there were people in the audience who had clearly been before which I took as a sign that it doesn’t get too samey.

Our director doesn’t get involved in the storyline himself but instead his role is to interject and move the story along when necessary, or to interrupt in order to, basically, mix things up and challenge the performers. So, in the first half, he stopped the action to say they needed to sing the next number in a fun, punny, rhyming kind of way a la Seussical the Musical, and in the second act, he made them all sing one in the style of ‘the fast one’ from Urinetown – very fast-paced and quite the challenge to the actors.

Audience participation didn’t end with the beginning of the show. In the interval we were asked to tweet our suggestions about what would happen, which lead to our main protagonist (a female dog who wanted to be adopted and just get away from Battersea Dogs Home at any cost, despite having an admirer) being adopted by Snoop Dogg, and realizing that living with a human isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Of course, the other Dogs Home inhabitants come and find her and they all live with Snoop in a happy ending.

As well as being fairly consistently funny, they managed to get a few touching moments in, as each couple had their own lovestory and sometimes even a backstory. It was so entertaining that the first half positively whizzed by, although I must admit the pace slowed a little in the second half. There were still plenty of laughs to be had throughout.

I had thought £19 was a little expensive for this, but considering it is practically a real, full-length show, I think that’s a pretty decent price. If you love musicals and like to laugh, this is for you. 

The Commitments, 22nd October

I was invited by the lovely people at Superbreak.com to attend a showing of the new musical The Commitments and review it. Having not seen the motion picture or read the book, I had few preconceptions, although I did know it involved soul music.

As far as musicals go, it was a good night out. It didn't really have to worry about not having any memorable songs, as all the songs are classic soul grooves that you'll probably already know and leave humming at the end. The storyline is basically your classic 'let's put on a show' that MGM milked so successfully for years, only this time they're gigging, not just putting on one show, and hope to make it to the big time. I gather in the movie this all goes very pear-shaped and I don't think I will be spoiling it if I say things don't run smoothly in the musical either, with plenty of upsets and in-fighting. However, in this version we do end on a positive note.

In this respect The Commitments is quite a warm, kinda cheesy all-singing all-dancing show and what with all the upbeat music I want to say it's a perfect show for a family. Although it is meant to be set in a run-down area from which the group is trying to escape through music, this isn't really emphasised and the sets they conjure to go with this are fun rather than depressing. But the cast swears constantly throughout the production with many a reference to sex and therefore even though it feels like a family musical, it really isn't.

The show itself is enjoyable enough. The first half felt more like a play than a musical - even though there were songs, there weren't any BIG numbers with synchronised dancing and the whole cast on stage. I expect musicals to be bigger than life, whereas this felt more life-sized. However, the second half stepped up a bit as The Commitments' gigs got progressively bigger. When they performed 'Satisfaction' the pace really picked up, with the lead singer mugging the Mick Jagger thing to great effect. 

Deco, the lead singer was by far my favourite character - bringing over-the-top humour to it without seeming too forced. His singing, however, was not the strongest of the cast's in my opinion. I'm not saying he didn't have a good voice but sometimes he overdid it. He sounded best when he hit the high sultry notes rather than rocking out... I much preferred the main backing girl's voice and it's kind of a shame the original story didn't have her taking over. I felt the lead character Jimmy was a little corny and innocent for my liking, but my liking does tend towards the morose. 

I really liked the openly makeshift sets and the quirky way they achieved flashbacks and of course the music got your toes tapping and your fingers clicking. Knock on Wood, Satisfaction, Think and Grapevine all feature and put you in the mood to dance. 

I gather that the movie featured Mustang Sally but we had got to the end of the show and Mustang Sally hadn't appeared. But, this show knows which side its bread is buttered on. And keeping with the 'watching a band' motif, it seemed only right that the cast should do an 'encore'. Which of course included Mustang Sally. Everyone was encouraged to get out of their seats, clap their hands, and get down. And everyone did. I think the sole curmudgeons who didn't were me and Stephen - I didn't because I was full of cold, I don't know what Stephen's excuse was. They ended on Al Green's Try a little Tenderness and everyone came away with smiles on their faces. So I think this show will be a success for the duration of its run, although I don't think it will enter the annals of Musical classics shared by the likes of Les Miserables, Chicago and Cats. Yes - Cats! I love that show and I don't care who knows it.

West End Live, 23rd June

As 3 guys on a London Bus and Diamond Geezer pointed out, this weekend there was a glut of things to do, several of which were on my List. I knew, however, that it would be too much of a challenge, even for me, to fit in most of it, so I decided to concentrate on West End Live as it was central and I had some other things to do in town. After carefully planning my route in so that I would end up at Leicester Square, I arrived there to find it strangely empty. Where was West End Live? Wasn’t this the most obvious location to represent the West End? And, more to the point, wasn’t this where it always was? A quick check of twitter and I discovered that this year they were in Trafalgar Square. I quickly trotted over there to be met with a queue of people waiting to get into the West End Live area. This was a much bigger affair than I was expecting. I’m sure a few years ago I came across West End Live in its infancy, and it just took up a small corner of Leicester Square. I was not expecting all this, especially not the queuing.  The weather was changeable and I didn’t have an umbrella. I was beginning to think my W.E.L. journey was coming to an end. There were a lot of people around but it was still possible to just about see and hear what was going on on the stage, from the outskirts of Trafalgar Square. The big screens either side of the stage helped. I watched a couple of songs from Dreamboats and Petticoats and as the queue was still there, decided to walk around the Square.

Which is when I came across some of the cars from the movies. There was a bit of a queue to get into see them up close, but if you didn’t mind not touching them, then there was plenty of space at the barriers to take pictures.  I hadn’t even noticed these from the entrance barrier so I was thankful for the queue forcing me to walk around. I then went to the other side to see if there was anything similar over there. There wasn’t, but two of the decorated phone boxes were on the island so I went over to the them to have a look. 


And discovered a plaque saying that this was the spot from which all London distances are measured - I can’t believe I’d never seen that before.

I walked up to the top of the Square and discovered that on this side, there was no real queue, just a line of people steadily walking in. So I joined and went into the area. It wasn’t very crowded in there after all. Yes, there were people but there was also a lot of space and you could easily make your way quite close to the stage. Around the edges (inside) there were booths from places such as Madame Tussauds and the Film Museum, giving you a chance to have a picture taken with a couple of wax models or see some movie artefacts. And obviously to encourage you to go to the real thing and see the rest.

I got in and saw the Spamalot time slot. I really had not timed my visit very well. I wanted to see some snippets of shows I hadn’t seen but wanted to, and instead I got there to see Spamalot which I’d already seen, and then the children-oriented shows like Angeline Ballerina and Horrible Histories. (Actually, the latter was quite amusing.) I did also get to see a sneak preview of The In-Between, a sort of fantasy musical, but I wasn’t too impressed by the songs I heard.

Also, in between the sets, the hosts would chit chat amongst each other, trying to gee up the audience and there was often a few moments where the camera would cut to a 'reporter on the beat' who brought us news of what was happening in the surrounding tents. It all felt a little unnecessary, and I wished they would just get on with the songs. However, it did lead surprisingly to a highlight - they had one of the cast from War Horse in the crowd - with puppet horse. I managed to get quite a good picture.

I stayed about an hour, leaving just as The Big Dance was finishing. This was a dance troupe who came on and danced Zumba for a few songs. I think the audience was supposed to be encouraged into participating but this wasn’t very clear and there were very few people dancing along. If you were a few rows back you suspected that maybe the front was dancing, but the cameras stuck to the stage, not the audience so you couldn’t be sure. I think they missed an opportunity here to get a bit of a flash dance mob going. And the dancers on stage weren’t even very good. So, off I went in search of sustenance.