Well articulated as per but I am astonished to see such kind words for (1) HAIR, which is embarrassingly bad in this production - none of the cast has the slightest affinity for the period or the material, very few of them can sing it, and about as few can pronounce the text -- Navajo pronounced Nava / Joe and so on ..... and (2) ... JAMIE, which is one drearily derivative moment after another ranging from the obvious (KINKY BOOTS) to the improbable (GYPSY, BILLY ELLIOT) and it's not well enough performed to overlook lapses in the writing, which are evident at every turn. It's all (fake) heart and virtually no art.
On the other hand GIRL .... is gorgeous, and having just come from tonight's final performance of FOLLIES - a staging which has deepened each of the three times I have seen it - I am more than ever convinced that I will not see that show better served in my lifetime. But I could have killed the woman in front of me who chose Dame Josephine Barstow's opening segment of"One More Kiss" to open her bag of sweets. Grrrr. Imelda's "Losing My Mind" radically and totally different from the previous two times and scarily brilliant -- no doubt here that at that particular moment, the question posed by the lyric is rhetorical: this Sally HAS lost it. The performance was also Philip Quast's farewell from the theatre - he has said he will no longer perform after this, and certainly not in musicals. A great loss. |
