The Adventures of Samantha & Paul

Liv­ing in St Albans I’ve recently taken the oppor­tu­nity to see as much the­atre as pos­si­ble, and now I have a cou­ple of spare min­utes between all the shows, hol­i­day and trav­el­ing, I’ll write a bit about them all.

Les Mis­er­ables

I’ve long been a great hater of musi­cals that sing every. sin­gle. word. ♫ I’m going to get the milk ♫, that sort of thing. By that logic I should absolutely despise Les Mis’, lis­ten­ing to the songs briefly before­hand cer­tainly sug­gested I would. Our seats were upper cir­cle front row, I’d bought them with my sis­ter for my mum’s birth­day; we had a good view and I sat back unsure what to expect, ‘Look Down and see’.

Ahead of me the sto­ries of Val­jean, Fan­tine, Javert, Cosette, Epo­nine et al unfolded; the repeat­ing musi­cal theme resounded deep and a phe­nom­e­nal per­for­mance by Drew Sarich coloured me impressed, with ‘On My Own’ heartrend­ingly sung by Epo­nine (Cassie Comp­ton) fully engross­ing me, for the first time, within a musi­cal love story. This was and still is the best musi­cal per­for­mance I have seen and until that point I had very lit­tle faith in the genre as a whole.

I left want­ing more.

Mar­guerite

I had already seen Miss Saigon, although I do believe it wasn’t one of the best per­for­mances, I didn’t overly enjoy it. It prob­a­bly deserves a sec­ond chance with my now renewed inter­est. Mar­guerite was a new musi­cal with songs by Michel Legrand (see Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg!) and the hook, lyrics by Alain Bou­blil and Claude-Michel Schonberg.

The show, music and per­for­mances were all bit­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the lead­ing singing male came across as an over zeal­ous stereo­typ­i­cal stage fella for which we did not emote. It was all a lit­tle lack­lus­ter, and no doubt oth­ers agreed — lead­ing to the shows pre­ma­ture end in Sep­tem­ber. Luck­ily an overly chirpy and enter­tain­ing train con­duc­tor kept us happy on the way home; if only they were all as happy as him.

Fat Pig

Jo, Sam and I saw Fat Pig in its first Eng­lish incar­na­tion at the Trafal­gar stu­dios with Kris Mar­shall and Robert Webb. The com­edy has a sim­ple premise; some guy begins dat­ing a fat girl and must face his work col­leagues and their taunts — the ‘obsessed with looks’ ex-date and the crude and wom­an­iz­ing buddy.

Big Spoil­ers now. The first half revolves around Tom and Helen, the librar­ian, meet­ing, laughs a plenty and smiles all around — an hilar­i­ous com­edy as billed. With the sec­ond half comes the to and fro of a rela­tion­ship, the ups and downs and inevitable ques­tions about the future which revolve around Helen meet­ing Tom’s work mates; the com­edy soft­ens you up and keeps you con­tent in the happy end­ing realm of pos­i­tive mes­sage sto­ry­telling — before a long and quiet con­ver­sa­tion on the beach punches you in the gut, rips out your heart and splat­ters it on the wall, bring­ing you straight back to real­ity and end­ing the show in dark­ness. Absolutely brilliant.

I heartily rec­om­mend this, though can­not vouch for the new lineup or venue.

39 Steps

Another com­edy, we got tick­ets cheap for this one in the stalls, and thought why not. None of us had actu­ally seen the movie, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, espe­cially with only four cast mem­bers play­ing the role of many. It turned out to be a slap­stick affair with very clever prop jokes, cos­tume changes and role switch­ing; a good laugh and another rec­om­mended night out.

Avenue Q

Sam and I saw this one on our week­end to the Hox­ton Hotel,

Mid­dle of the mid­dle in the stalls we watched the well praised Avenue Q as the Gary Cole­man ref­er­ences whisked over our heads and the ‘grab your dick and dou­ble click‘ line resounded. Though we enjoyed it, the abun­dant acclaim meant it did not meet our high expectations.

This adult pup­pet com­edy, although mak­ing us laugh, really didn’t grab us as we had thought and hoped it might. A tad dis­ap­point­ing, it might have been the under­stud­ies but prob­a­bly just all the hype sur­round­ing it.

Rain Man

Another per­for­mance caught on the Hox­ton week­end, lucky enough to get tick­ets on the day,

Nei­ther of us had seen the Dustin Hoff­man movie, we went in with­out any expec­ta­tions and with­out grounds for com­par­i­son. We left absolutely stunned — wow; the play was bril­liant with God­ley and Hart­nett supremely leav­ing us on ten­der hooks. This was the first straight up play we’d seen together and no doubt we’ll be back for more of the same.

It is very much a love story, a com­edy and a drama. I must remem­ber to now watch the movie (adding to my Love­Film list). I’m not sure how we would have reacted to it had we seen the movie. To no sur­prise, a large pro­por­tion of the audi­ence were female. I do agree that Hart­nett is a stud, even in The Black Dahlia with its stel­lar cast, which I caught last night, a poor attempt at a film noir.

Zorro

Zorro is the most recent of musi­cals I have seen after Sam grabbed four tick­ets for £40; this opened ear­lier in the year and Matt Rawle plays the lead and once again I had no expec­ta­tions or even a clue as to the story. The show is none too seri­ous (despite the bril­liant ‘Man behind the Mask’ num­ber) and comes accom­pa­nied with fla­menco gypsy danc­ing, heel stomp­ing, sword fights, fire and The Gypsy Kings (see Bam­boleo); ‘a fun filled romp’ some tabloid review might say and it cer­tainly was. With a dance and clap encore I left with danc­ing feet com­pletely sat­is­fied with my night out, bar the Gypsy King tracks that looped around my cra­nium for the remain­der of the night.

If you want some plain old fun in Lon­don, I rec­om­mend Zorro the musical!