July 2011 Archives

And as quickly as Lend Me a Tenor, “this summer’s new musical comedy hit” arrived, it will depart on August 6, 2011 having played a two month run and barely seeing any form of the summer mentioned in its tagline. Another new musical succumbs to what its producers have called no “growing sales”, despite largely positive notices from the press and some extremely keen audiences.

So where did Il Stupendo go wrong? Far be it from me to provide a musical post mortem, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the show a few weeks ago, but it would never survive a long run in its current package. The farcical plot causes the first half to concentrate on set up and introduction and in turn made me concentrate far more than I felt I should’ve done when watching a bright “musical comedy” - I don’t think I relaxed into my seat until 5 minutes into the second half.

Yet the second half whizzes along at breakneck speed with the pay off laughs from Act One’s somewhat clunky set up, held back only by a forgettable score and Matthew Kelly’s incessant shouting. What a pity.

After a somewhat heated post during The Stage’s excellent coverage of low pay/no pay work (catch up and have your say here), I’ve decided to keep things light hearted and jovial this week. But first, a confession:

My name’s David Grewcock and I have theatre guilt.

There, I said it. Phew. Theatre guilt is that feeling of having one day off a week and wanting to do anything but be in another dark theatre for two and a half hours watching an obscure European play featuring a band of merry players who know only too well you’d rather be somewhere else too.

So I set to make recompense with the Gods of the theatre and took myself off to see The Wizard of Oz, Shrek and Spring Awakening teamed with a double visit to Regent’s Park to see Pericles and The Beggar’s Opera on Sunday and Monday. A veritable theatrical feast and one that I won’t bore you with traipsing through the good, the bad and the unfortunate ugly — but it did go a long way to keep my theatre guilt at bay.