Aussies in London

Talissa Director Almighty cough evil cough moderator Posts: 2,324	Aussies in London Jul 30, 2006 12:20:48 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Talissa on Jul 30, 2006 12:20:48 GMT 11 tamsinann said: Considering it opens in September, I doubt it, silly I know that, silly And yes Like when I see people raving about Damian and other Aussies.
	~And when he saw her face In his heart there was space For none. No other but she~ Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

Sally Choreographer Posts: 801	Aussies in London Jul 30, 2006 12:39:35 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Sally on Jul 30, 2006 12:39:35 GMT 11 admin said: And yes Like when I see people raving about Damian and other Aussies. Yes! Because we saw them first! We knew first how wonderful they were! Aussies rock ;D
	Something's very wrong. I didn't get my way!

nadine
Stunning Show-stealer

Posts: 525

Aussies in London Jul 30, 2006 13:17:55 GMT 11

Post by nadine on Jul 30, 2006 13:17:55 GMT 11

Yes! Because we saw them first! We knew first how wonderful they were! Aussies rock

Ah yes those were the days... David, Hugh, Kane, Helen, Tamsin, Adam, Simon, I'll stop now.

tamsinann said:

And now, with half of the internet going Helen crazy, don't us Aussies just feel so smug?

Big WORD to that. I'm like um hello time to break out those old articles - now I'm just thinking this is a big payback for when Helen did Up for Grabs at the STC and it then went to West End where Madonna replaced her and was universally panned.

Speaking of Helen and Adam, etc does anyone know how long their contracts are for Wicked?

Last Edit: Jul 30, 2006 13:20:27 GMT 11 by nadine

"It's very cute actually... sometimes they do pretendy yelling at each other".
Helen Dallimore on Peter Carroll & his daughter Tamsin starring in "The Republic of Myopia" as father and daughter.

MotS - Oompa-pa from Oliver!

PoS character - Belle, from Beauty and the Beast

Talissa Director Almighty cough evil cough moderator Posts: 2,324	Aussies in London Aug 1, 2006 21:48:32 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Talissa on Aug 1, 2006 21:48:32 GMT 11 Jarrod Carland is playing Danny Zuko in the UK tour of Grease. The official website is www.greasethemusical.co.uk/ Also, there's a rumour Damian Humbley will be appearing in Fiddler on the Roof. This is yet to be confirmed, though.
	~And when he saw her face In his heart there was space For none. No other but she~ Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

Talissa
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Aussies in London Aug 6, 2006 10:53:26 GMT 11

Post by Talissa on Aug 6, 2006 10:53:26 GMT 11

Quoting this Variety review since I'm not certain people will be able to see it on the site.

The Last Five Years

(Menier Chocolate Factory; 160 seats; &POUND;20 top)

LONDON A Menier Chocolate Factory production of a musical in one act by Jason Robert Brown. Directed by Matthew White. Musical direction, Tom Murray.

Jamie - Damian Humbley
Cathy - Lara Pulver

By DAVID BENEDICT

Matthew White's spry, ideally cast Menier Chocolate Factory production is alive to every detail of Jason Robert Brown's mini-musical. His scrupulous, spare staging focuses attention on the two performers who embody the writer's ideas with physical and vocal ease. The trouble is, the impressive honesty of his approach not only reveals the show's enviable strengths but exposes its weaknesses.
Poised between a song-cycle and a musical, Brown's piece has a smart dramatic conceit. Across 14 songs, it describes the arc of a marriage (strongly based on Brown's first) from two perspectives, each heading in the opposite direction. Nice(ish) Jewish boy Jamie (Damian Humbley) tells the story forward, from the exuberant moment he falls in love with his "Shiksa Goddess." Cathy (Lara Pulver) simultaneously opens the show nursing the post-breakup pain "covered with scars I did nothing to earn."

She is revealed lying in fetal position on a bed in the middle of dark space. Only gradually does it become clear that designer David Farley has pulled off a quiet coup. Despite an off-West End budget, he has built a revolve into the stage floor, neatly underlining the contrary motion of the characters: Jamie sings of moving forward in his life as he walks against the direction of the revolve. Not only does this lend the piece fluidity, it literally adds to the momentum.

The revolve also means that, with screens sliding across the stage to disguise scene changes, the production can keep revealing a variety of individually dressed new locations without slavishly having to divide the space into "his" and "hers."

White achieves nice moments of visual counterpoint, as when Cathy sits downstage arranging Jamie's books for a signing session while he sits upstage in profile, bathed in the nicely smug glow of David Howe's side-light.

Both thesps -- he's Australian, she's a Brit -- sport relaxed and impressive U.S. accents (a rarity in the U.K.), which frees them up to inhabit Brown's twisty lyrics. Leaping with excitement at galloping career success and easily scaling the role's demands, the compact Humbley is particularly strong on the determination and fierceness that dominate the writing.

Pulver, too, is at ease charting Cathy's route from disillusionment back to hope. As Jamie's career rockets, hers remains stagnant; Pulver amusingly delineates the degradations of an acting career that may have climaxed in summer stock in Ohio. Her best moments are when Brown allows the character to be witty as she ceaselessly and fruitlessly auditions to bored producers and deaf pianists.

Yet there's no escaping the fact that Cathy is significantly less interesting than Jamie. His character goes from wannabe novelist to critical darling, dealing with failure and success, grabbing what he wants -- a wife, an affair -- and then considering his choices and actions. She waits and whines.

While not actively misogynist, the sexual politics of the piece are depressingly one-sided. Jamie doesn't get off scot-free, but his affair is presented as an understandable reaction to Cathy's cramping neediness and lack of sympathy for his problems.

The characters sing their pain against an unusually wide harmonic palette with surprising modulations and moods that bring theatricality to the rock/pop genres the songs play with.

Brown is a highly impressive orchestrator of his own material, as is made plain by the excellent six-piece band superbly balanced by his longtime musical director Tom Murray.

Everything comes together in "The Schmuel Song," the strongest number. What starts off as Jamie's recital of a Christmas story turns into a open-hearted declaration of selfless love. It has humor, warmth and surprise; the ending is wholly unforeseen but completely dramatically logical.

But it makes you realize that for all their harmonic shifts and intelligent lyric summaries of feeling, most of all the other songs suffer from predictability.

Brown has so much talent at his disposal that it seems ungrateful to criticize, but there's an unattractive, earnest neuroticism to the piece. He overworks his material, never allowing a melody to relax and insinuate itself upon the audience.

There's a worrying irony at work here for a show that wears its heart so openly on its sleeve: The aud longs for moments of repose in which to warm to the characters, but the writer is too busy fashioning impressive, emotion-drenched flourishes of long-held high notes.

Despite first-rate performances, the characters remain invulnerable.

~*And when he saw her face
In his heart there was space
For none. No other but she*~

Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel
Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

Talissa
Director

Almighty *cough* evil *cough* moderator

Posts: 2,324

Aussies in London Aug 6, 2006 11:20:20 GMT 11

Post by Talissa on Aug 6, 2006 11:20:20 GMT 11

www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821154341571&PHPSESSID=5c6f64f4deb30751283cfcf28098562e

20 Questions with Damian Humbley.

And it confirms that Damian's next project after Last 5 Years will be Fiddler on the Roof as Perchik.

~*And when he saw her face
In his heart there was space
For none. No other but she*~

Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel
Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

musicalsfan Backyard Balladeer Posts: 14	Aussies in London Aug 29, 2006 11:54:42 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by musicalsfan on Aug 29, 2006 11:54:42 GMT 11 haha got any other questions for Damian? I can ask him for you if you like - and yes he will be doing 'Fiddler on th Roof' that is definately confirmed!
	'The prettier the flower, the further from the path' Don't Dream It, Be It Parade of Stars Character - 'Maggie' - A Chorus Line Medley of the Stars Song - 'Once Upon A Time' - Brooklyn The Musical

Talissa Director Almighty cough evil cough moderator Posts: 2,324	Aussies in London Aug 29, 2006 12:43:23 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Talissa on Aug 29, 2006 12:43:23 GMT 11 Ask if he wants to do something - anything - in the second half of November ;-) I do have the most rotten luck, missing L5Y and leaving London two days before Fiddler! Does this mean you're in the Fiddler cast, then, musicalsfan?
	~And when he saw her face In his heart there was space For none. No other but she~ Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

musicalsfan Backyard Balladeer Posts: 14	Aussies in London Aug 30, 2006 12:27:12 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by musicalsfan on Aug 30, 2006 12:27:12 GMT 11 No I am not in 'Fiddler', just a friend also living and working in London:)
	'The prettier the flower, the further from the path' Don't Dream It, Be It Parade of Stars Character - 'Maggie' - A Chorus Line Medley of the Stars Song - 'Once Upon A Time' - Brooklyn The Musical

PQG Team
Backyard Balladeer

Posts: 1

Aussies in London Sept 1, 2006 20:29:05 GMT 11

Post by PQG Team on Sept 1, 2006 20:29:05 GMT 11

Hello there,

As you probably know, the wonderful Philip Quast is currently performing in the revival of Evita in London. A cast recording of the show has recently been released, but alas it’s only highlights and there’s very little left of Quast’s amazing performance as President Perón.

The Philip Quast Guide has been running a Petition in order to ask the production company of the CD to release a full recording of the show, which would allow people living overseas to enjoy this great revival production in all its beauty.

If you wish to support our initiative, please follow this link:

www.allthingsquast.info/interact/evitapetition.php

Thank you and fingers crossed!
The Philip Quast Guide Team

www.allthingsquast.info

Hannah Sleek Soloist Posts: 257	Aussies in London Sept 6, 2006 0:02:51 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Hannah on Sept 6, 2006 0:02:51 GMT 11 I saw Philip and he was fantastic!!
	Parade of Stars character: The Witch from Into The Woods Medley of stars song: "One Day More" from Les Miserables

nadine Stunning Show-stealer Posts: 525	Aussies in London Sept 7, 2006 21:10:02 GMT 11 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by nadine on Sept 7, 2006 21:10:02 GMT 11 Just wanted to say Chookahs to Helen Dallimore and Adam Garcia for Wicked which opens in previews tonight.
	"It's very cute actually... sometimes they do pretendy yelling at each other". Helen Dallimore on Peter Carroll & his daughter Tamsin starring in "The Republic of Myopia" as father and daughter. MotS - Oompa-pa from Oliver! PoS character - Belle, from Beauty and the Beast

Talissa
Director

Almighty *cough* evil *cough* moderator

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Aussies in London Sept 9, 2006 20:24:30 GMT 11

Post by Talissa on Sept 9, 2006 20:24:30 GMT 11

For anyone curious about London Wicked, the first reviews don't seem to be out yet, but from what I've heard the show's been anglicised. Helen's playing Glinda as a posh English girl, and Adam's Fiyero is an Estonian prince.

Hopefully we'll have reviews soon.

~*And when he saw her face
In his heart there was space
For none. No other but she*~

Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel
Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables

Sally
Choreographer

Posts: 801

Aussies in London Sept 9, 2006 22:15:02 GMT 11

Post by Sally on Sept 9, 2006 22:15:02 GMT 11

There are a TRUCKLOAD of personal reviews out there...if you know where to look

Nothing official yet though, of course, since it hasn't opened - and from what I'm reading, I hope the critics wait until opening night's passed to have their say, and not base their words on the previews...as we know some like to do

And poor Helen. Her bubble malfunctioned!

Something's very wrong. I didn't get my way!

Talissa
Director

Almighty *cough* evil *cough* moderator

Posts: 2,324

Aussies in London Sept 9, 2006 22:27:12 GMT 11

Post by Talissa on Sept 9, 2006 22:27:12 GMT 11

Yes! I heard about her bubble!

And I know there are personal reviews out there. That's where I saw it had been anglicised in the first place. But it'd still be nice to have an official verdict. Though I agree. Not that I can see reviewers being as cruel as in the example I'm fairly certain you're thinking of

~*And when he saw her face
In his heart there was space
For none. No other but she*~

Parade of Stars character - Marguerite, from The Scarlet Pimpernel
Medley of the Stars song - L'Un Vers L'Autre, from Les Miserables