Sorry I've not been posting as much on here as I would like! I've started a new course and so the number of trips to the the theatre has rapidly decreased! Will try and make a special effort though to at least post the most recent news from the theatre world, as well as box office updates. I am planning on seeing a good few shows before Christmas too, so will get my reviews up! Here's just a few news worthy items I've seen these past few weeks!
Avenue Q closed on Broadway at the end of August - it will however be playing for a while in an off-Broadway theatre.
Shrek the Musical is due to close on January 4th 2010, just over a year after it opened. It wasn't selling particularly well, as you probably have seen from my weekly theatre updates!
Andrew Lloyd Webber has been diagnosed with a form of prostate cancer. It has been caught in the early stages and he is currently undergoing treatment, so we hope he will be ok! Andrew also premiered his new musical this month. Love Never Dies, the sequel to the Phantom of the Opera will open in February for previews in London's Adelphi theatre. The production will star London's current phantom, Ramin Karimloo and American Sierra Bogdess, and it is thought that the show will open on Broadway and in the far East not long after.
Legally Blonde is coming to London in December. It will star Benidorm's Sherridan Smith, Duncan James from Blue, Jill Halfpenny, and Aoife Mulholland!
Last night I watched a National Theatre production in Liverpool. The Black Album had received poor reviews on its London run, but I thought that with it being an NT production that it would still be quite good. I was quite wrong! Set in 1989, the story follows a young man with Pakistani origins who travels from Selly Oaks in Kent to London for university. There he falls into a crowd of radical muslims who want to stop the publication of The Satanic Verses. The young man doesn't believe in the radical nature of his friends and just wants to finish his course and to get together with his lecturer, but as time goes by he gets dragged more and more into their mess, with potentially fatal consequences. The acting was appauling, the story was dismal and dull, and the pace was all wrong. I wasn't suprised that more than 10% of the already small audience left during the interval. The only saving grace was the fabulous set - 3 walls which gave the illusion of a living room, which had images and words projected on it to give the illusion of different venues.
3/10
