Theatre News: Shrek, Les Mis, Sister Act, and the Young Vic

Here (a day late) is Thursday's Theatre News from the Visit London blog.

Hopefully, I'll be able to write more fully about yesterday's Young Vic 40th Anniversary Season launch over the weekend.

As with most things at the Young Vic, I found it really inspiring and interesting. I do love listening to David Lan talk, even when he's in front of a reasonably big audience, as he was yesterday morning.

Anyhoo, here's the rest of this week in theatre terms:

It's a long way off, but everyone's favourite green ogre will make his West End debut next summer.

Shrek The Musical opens at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in June 2011, and is a stage version of the familiar film, with an original score by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. You could pair this show with a matinee of Wicked, and have a green-themed day in the West End!

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Image: Brian Darcy James as Shrek, from the Broadway production

Arts Ahead 22-29 June from Londonist

The list of things I'm missing out on this week is running high:

• I said a firm no to Welcome To Thebes at the National earlier in the week
• I didn't go to Sister Act last night
• Or the londonist drinks
• I'm not being scared to death by Ghost Stories when it transfers on Friday
• I'm not seeing The Tempest as part of the Bridge Project on Monday
• Nor am I seeing Richard Fleeshman make his debut in Legally Blonde, also on Monday

And the reason?

It's wedding season. Between the Saturday just gone and the coming Friday, I'm attempting to conserve my energy for yet another stonkingly long day full of fun, excitement and ultimately knackering socialising. I've also spent time buying a hat. Cilla would be proud.

And on Monday, it's all about being a good daughter-in-law to-be with a trip to the Royal Albert Hall to see my future father-in-law sing. Hurrah.

If, unlike me, you're feeling adventurous this week, here's a list of what's happening in the coming week:

It's all kicking off in the art world this week. There's the BP Portrait Award opening on Thursday at the National Portrait Gallery, Wolfgang Tillmans' London-inspired art at the Serpentine Gallery from Saturday, and Fiona Banner's Duveens Commission will be unveiled at Tate Britain on Monday.

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Image: Harry by Michael Gaskell. One of the shortlisted works for the BP Portrait Award 2010

Round the Reviews: Sister Act The Musical

You'll remember, I was so excited about seeing this show.

But Sister Act The Musical failed to live up to expectations.

Sure it was fun. There were funny moments. Some of the songs were sweet. The blokes did a good job in their cameotyped(?!) roles.

But my overriding feeling about it was that it was just all a bit crass.

The supposed heart-string-pulling songs seemed manipulative; the set with the giant Jesus feet and the terrible glitterball Mary bordered on obscene. Some of the innuendo was truly awful (JC was most unimpressed when I told him about the bulging pockets line when I got home!) I tried to say as much in a hastily written review for londonist.

Part of me even wondered if anyone with a particularly religious outlook (and admittedly, a slightly out-of-place funny bone) might've actually found it offensive.

I was worried all this negativity might've been because I'd been lucky enough to see the wonderful Billy Elliot all too recently, so I've been round the reviews to see what everyone else was saying...

Charles Spencer has put together one of the most terrible pieces of reviewing I've seen for a while. Here's the opening:

What is it about Andrew Lloyd Webber and nuns?

There has always been something dark and brooding about Lloyd Webber. Could it be that he harbours dark erotic fantasies about nuns?

Jeez. It gets worse:

Among the support, Katie Rowley Jones makes a sweet novice, Claire Greenway is deliciously plump and funny as the over-enthusiastic Sister Mary Patrick, while Julia Sutton plays the oldest, toughest sister more like Jimmy Cagney than a nun.

I wonder if he's ever described a man as "deliciously plump". It's hardly a review of her performance, is it? Oh, and there's the inevitable pun at the end that no-one needs or cares about, but that makes sure the Torygraph gets on the posters:

I suspect this musical comedy about a nun on the run could prove habit-forming.

Good old Billington gave it an appropriate two stars:

What was originally a fairytale fantasy, however, makes little sense in its new, vulgarised incarnation. In the movie, the music arose naturally from the story: there was even a certain wit about seeing a group of wimpled warblers turned into a cohesive unit. But here, long before the heroine has got to work on their larynxes, they are leaping about the stage like showbiz pros telling us How I Got the Calling.

Over at the Times, Benedict Nightingale says:

a rather sweet, sentimental film has been hyped up, coarsened, given what — were the Palladium flown to Times Square — we'd call the big, brash Broadway treatment.

And while I hate to agree with the Daily Mail, I really think that their reviewer (Quentin Letts) is spot on:

I hated its artistic laziness, its predictability, its incuriosity, its idea that disco is divine and that spirituality can never be found in discreet and dignified worship... From the start there is basically one joke: namely, the spectacle of nuns grooving around on the dance floor. I know I may be taking it too seriously but I found myself recoiling sharply from this story's saccharine values and its bullying gaiety.

...

But oh, the clichés. In any comedy involving a large troupe there seems to be this recipe: one fat character (probably with glasses, looking like ex BBC weatherman Ian McCaskill); one old 'un, invariably a hell raiser; one young innocent. They duly turn up here.

I'm sure, along with the two critics I agree with, that it'll run and run. Can't wait til WEW get to see it...

Musical May

It's been a good month for musicals.

Alongside the preview we were lucky enough to catch of the new show, Sister Act The Musical, I've also finally been able to see Billy Elliot on stage.

People at work have recommended Billy Elliot to me before. (It comes up in LK's top 3 from time to time, I'm sure.) I was slightly unconvinced. I love the film, but I didn't really see how it would be any better on stage. I mean, how can anyone beat Jamie Bell and Julie Walters?

All I could see was a classic Sandy and Danny situ all over again.

I recently saw Wicked for the first time too (last month) and did really enjoy it. It's pretty silly, but that's not a bad thing! The opening was pretty unconvincing; not knowing anything about the show, I felt kind of lost for the whole of the first song or two. Once it got going, and I started to understand the tongue-in-cheek nature of the show, I really began to enjoy it. By the time Elphaba was flying, A and I were totally engrossed in the silliness of it all.

But back to Billy.

My word, it really is amazing. Lee Hall's story, made into a musical, becomes incredibly sophisticated, much more than a cheesy "show", layered, meaningful, upsetting, emotionally challenging, funnier, sadder, wittier, cleverer, and astonishingly for an already-great film, much more powerful.

I loved the costumes, the politics, the music (explaining in the interval that Elton John was behind it all sent A into a stammering confusion of buts and ands...), the set, the script and the dancing.

The juxtaposition of the police officers, miners and the young ballerinas was particularly memorable. I loved the way they used the theatre and the safety screen to such effect, bringing Billy's dad off the stage and into the audience, somehow, as Billy was auditioning for ballet school. Also memorable was Billy and the older dancer's duet. Indeed, anytime Billy was dancing solo I was thrilled to be in the audience. What a star performer.

(A and I were amused to learn that our Billy was being played by one Fox Jackson-Keen. There you are rooting for this poor deprived kid from a rough area of the north, and then you realise he's just a terribly nice ACKTOR from drama school.)

But the whole play has so much to it (the social comment, the politics, the humour, the aching sadness, the exploration of the questions of talent, class, poverty, gender roles and so on), I can't help but think that my recent enjoyment in the audience of Billy Elliot might've been what slightly marred Sister Act The Musical for me. Shallow is an understatement, but I'll review in due course, once press night's been and gone.

And of course, I'm not the only person to enjoy Billy Elliot: it's been nominated for 15 Tony awards on Broadway. Remarkable. Let's hope he wins!

Musical Excitement: Sister Act

Oh, it's been a long time a'coming, this one.

In fact, I wrote about Sister Act's arrival into the West End for londonist back in November last year.

Then came the marketing juggernaut. The show's producer, a little old lady called Whoopi Goldberg (you might've heard of her), appeared on BBC Breakfast, on the Chris Moyles Show, Loose Women, the Justin Lee Collins Show, (presumably) Jonathan Ross and the One Show. She talked about Sister Act the Musical in the metrolondonlitepaper, in magazines, online.

There was launch party invite (which I missed due to a damn last-minute HP crisis).

There's been wall-to-wall (in the pre-FB meaning of the word) advertising; from Tube station hoardings to animated MPUs on our site... It's been remarkable.

Brilliantly today I was offered a couple of comps to a preview next week. On a day when work wasn't going as well as it should. Little things like this make me a very, very happy bunny.

Yay. Musicals make life better.

Londonist: More Singing Nuns for the London Palladium

It seems the London Palladium just can't get out of the habit.

Currently occupied by the singing nuns and lively hills of The Sound of Music, today we hear Maria and co's residency at the Palladium will be followed by Sister Act The Musical next summer.

Whoopi Goldberg herself, the original wimple-wearing, gangster-fooling, singing competition-winning Delores is producing the divine new musical alongside Stage Entertainment.

New musicals derived from films haven't done all that well in the past year, with the failures of Gone With The Wind and Desperately Seeking Susan. But we're hoping Whoopi and co (the score and lyrics are by Disney's top duo Alan Menken and Glenn Slater) will wow the West End when the show opens in June next year.

Sister Act The Musical comes here following a US tour, but without a stint of Broadway.

But what do they know? This month's openings on New York's hottest theatre scene included Shrek the Musical. Yikes.

Sister Act The Musical opens at the London Palladium on 2 June 2009, with previews from 6 May.

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