Never let it be said that I am unjust. I have to admit that Love Never Dies is not as bad as I expected, although my expectations were subterranean. I'm not saying that it wasn't absolutely awful, mind you. Just that watching it was not quite as bad as it might be, and it did have potential. Wasted potential. Still, I'm glad that I have seen it and can now be critical from a position of greater knowledge.

So in brief:

* Some of the music is really good, if you like that sort of ALW music, which I do.

* The broadcast was of the Australian version, which reworked the London production to an extent and remembered that the Phantom is in fact a baddie. It thus works better in parts, while still terribly in others, the problem being the fundamental premise.

* The child actor was very good indeed, especially given the significant demands of his role.

* The staging is excellent, and the filming was much better than you see in a lot of musicals.

* The ending goes on forever, features the Phantom as the world's worst hostage negotiator, and fully earns the Paint Never Dries sobriquet.

* RAOUL WOULD NEVER!!!!!

* Beneath A Moonless Sky (The One In Which They Remember the Sex) was exactly as excruciating as I expected, I was watching from behind the metaphorical sofa. It would probably have been helped if there had been any chemistry whatsoever between the leads.

* The real moral of the story is that if you lend/give somebody money you should ensure you have a proper contract that entitles you to a large share of the ownership of an profits from the assets of you theme park. Especially if that someone is a multiple murderer obsessed with someone who is not you.

*Ultimately, if one accepts the basic premise that The Phantom of the Opera is a musical in need of a sequel (which, as you can tell, I don't) then the music showed genuine potential at times. There was stuff here that could have been worked with. But it failed not simply because of the premise, but because the execution of an already flawed premise was so self-indulgent. It needed someone to take a long-hard look at what would work not for the creators, but for the majority audience with this story.

Today's viewing is the National Theatre Twelfth Night, which I expect to be rather better.

PSA: The ALW musicals streaming offer for this weekend is Phantom of the Opera, available from 6:30pm BST for 24 hours in the UK only, 48 elsewhere (rights issues, apparently...). It is here. It's the Albert Hall stage production, not the film, so hopefully the leads will be able to sing. I am shattered after returning to work this week. Yesterday I found I was rather enjoying myself, and did 4 1/2 hours, which was too much, and then today I started with an hour long meeting with someone, followed by a second meeting for 30 mins, and then I had to get a draft agenda out and now my head is exploding. Thank goodness it is the weekend! I have a date with the sofa and a jigsaw. And an Ocado delivery.

I have said elsewhere how much I like the 1991 Disney animated Beauty and the Beast. It is engaging, inventive, full of charm, with an excellent score, and in Belle, the Beast, and the villainous Gaston, excellent characters.*

So when the 'live action' version was on over Christmas I recorded it, and yesterday and today I watched it.

It was actually a lot better than I expected. It looks lovely** and a reasonable amount of visual energy, though there are places where it sags in comparison to the cartoon, which is not burdened by having to look 'real'. It develops Belle's father from a a pantomime figure to a more rounded one, and La Fou becomes if not three-dimensional, then at least two. The horror of the servants' situation, knowing they face being like this forever, is effectively enhanced. Emma Watson is fine, and frankly I was expecting the Auto-Tune to be much more of an issue than it was. Luke Evans as Gaston is very good.

Unfortunately, the good bits can't disguise that it has two big problems.

The first is Dan Stevens. He is really good in the first and last 5 minutes of the film as the human prince. You can see clearly why they cast him. He is handsome, charismatic, and at the end is instantly engaging and the final ballroom scene works because of it. Unfortunately, he spends the other 1 hour and 50 minutes in a fursuit, and his charisma in human form extends neither to his CGIed hairy face, nor to his singing voice. Nor does Watson have the kind of presence that can lend itself to her co-stars by proximity. It is hardly Stevens' fault that the CGI can't decide quite whether it wants to make him monstrous or human and appears scared to be too dramatic about it. But without a powerful voice to create the character, the Beast never seems well, sufficiently animated. The Beast's major solo from the musical, If I can't love her (here sung by Josh Groban) is replaced by a new one Evermore, and I assume that was at least partly that they couldn't audio process the former sufficiently to make it work. All the extra reverb in the world can only help up to a certain point. TL:DR They should have cast a singer, and if necessary had someone else be the human prince with his voice dubbed.

The other problem is that fairy tale, animation, and musical theatre all have that certain layer of artifice that allows us watch Belle fall in love with the Beast and not think "but, bestiality". Film that is trying to be realistic does not allow that distance. So there end up being moments in which it's just weird.

I ended up thinking that there really needs to be a modern romcom version in which everything ends up happily ever after because the young woman is really into what she assumes to be the Beast's commitment to his surprisingly realistic fursona.


*I really regret that I didn't see the musical in Oxford a few years ago - while I wasn't sure I could take someone in a teapot costume seriously, I should have got over myself and said I would shut my eyes if necessary!

**Except for Belle's ball dress, which was rightly condemned as naff by the internet.

French-Quebecois musical Notre-Dame de Paris made a flying visit to London last week, and antisoppist and I went to see it. I was a bit anxious in advance as to whether I would actually enjoy it as it sounded completely bonkers, but although it is indeed completely bonkers it was also thoroughly enjoyable, and very French*. You can tell it's French because it begins with a treatise on how this is the age of cathedrals, and also because the music just has that faint air of Eurovision, and because you wouldn't get a British show like it in a million years. It's not just the acrobats, or the way that it doesn't really care that much about the show as characters/plot very much (especially plot), but rather of Notre-Dame/Paris the community, or the way that people sing their soliloquies to a background of dancers expressing the singer's inner torment (some of them wearing very little), and that all the male characters except Clopin are basically terrible,** even Quasimodo at times, it's all of it together and somehow it works.

To be honest, skygiants sums it up better than I could:

Notre-Dame de Paris the musical does not care about plot. Notre-Dame de Paris the musical cares about FEELINGS and DIGRESSIONS. Gringoire and Frollo singing philosophically about architecture and the printing press gets four and a half minutes; the trial of Esmeralda takes ninety seconds.

It's actually the second musical adaptation of the same story that I have seen. The first was the American/German musical based on the Disney film, which I saw 2 years ago in Berlin. It's more batshit but I think also better. They are extremely different, this one being infinitely more batshit, but - and I say this as someone who hasn't read the book - I wonder if it isn't a more faithful adaptation of the story. Though the other version definitely has the winning song.

It is weird, it is French, it is immensely entertaining, I am very glad to have seen it, I'm not sure that I would need to see it again, and it made me want to read the book. Recommended.

Have the trailer:



And the best Hunchback song, the original Hellfire:



*As was the audience. They probably brought some new blood to a non-English language musical, but mostly they brought lots of people delighted to get have their favourite show accessible to them. Which is also excellent from my POV because I suspect that the powers that be in musical theatre funding are more likely to do short runs to be attended by everyone French/German/Russian in the area than to do a new production.

**Though even so not as terrible as in the book, in which, Wikipedia tells, me, Gringoire does not save the life of Esmeralda, but does save her pet goat, which he likes more than he does her. The mind boggles.

I am rubbish at writing reviews.

The answer to the poll was (4) Svetlana is also a KGB agent. Svetlana was not a KGB agent, though I'd like to see a production of the London version in which she is, because I think it could work in interesting ways, and at the end we would see her and Molokov shake hands before going off-stage.

As for the other options:

(1) One Night in Bangkok is not sung in Bangkok, but is a karaoke number. Sung by Freddie in a Merano bar. This was the moment when I knew that this was definitely not the Chess I was expecting, and it turned out that the whole action was set over four days in Merano. Apparently one Australian production set the entire thing in Bangkok

(2) Molokov has a solo about his manpain. Replacing, due to the significantly changed plot, The Soviet Machine. The title means Forget me if you can even though quite how much is true is also a question, and if it is he actually singing a song about how sad he is for having his wife sent to Siberia?

(3) Anatoly/the Russian deliberately throws the final chess match. Though the internet tells me this also happened in the Broadway version (one of the ones with Walter. Why is Walter necessary in any version, I ask myself. As far as I can see he only adds even more, and unhelpful, complexity to the plot). From the position of having seen them, I think I like the London and Swedish versions as the two extremes - in London, in which he will give in on everything else, but not on that, and in the Swedish one, when it symbolises how completely he is defeated by Soviet Oppression(TM) that despite his agony he has no choice. Doing it for a bargain for Florence's maybe-alive-Dad just feels sentimental.

(5) There is a comic play-within-a-play version of Romeo and Juliet, during which a swozzle can be heard. This opened the second act, as a "touristy thing happening in Merano, with irony". The swozzle wielder was a minstrel/fool of some sort. This does not appear to be in the original Swedish production, so might be an invention. It was bizarre (understatement), but entertaining, and served to set up a public embarrassing confrontation with Freddie.

I have sort of written a review, or at least I will have when I add that it was excellently staged, well acted, and had terrific singers. The women were much better than in London, where Florence was too much of a belter and not always quite on pitch, and Alexandra Burke had a good voice that was not well-matched with the rest of the production. They also made the Arbiter female, which worked well. The singer playing the Russian undoubtedly had the most difficult job of needing to be not Tommy Körberg*, which he achieved by being a very difficult physical type as well as direction choices. TL:DR should you be in Helsinki, I recommend it; if you don't know the musical at all, have a listen. As ever, much of it is on YouTube.

*Whereas Michael Ball was free to channel Tommy Körberg, and did.

Late review is late.... Now over a month ago I went to see the ENO production of Chess with antisoppist. Although I like musicals, I'd never seen Chess before and the extent of my knowledge of the tunes until recently was singing I Know Him So Well in karaoke with my sister*, so I acquired the CD before and listened to it in the car in preparation. Contrary to the reviews in the Guardian/Observer, which I can only assume to have been done by people who fundamentally hate musicals, it was excellent. Well-staged (although they should have projected the actors in the finale for those of us at the back), well-sung, and a pleasing lack of silly accents. Or rather, only American silly accents. Perhaps Tommy Körberg found it enough to sing in English without slapping a fake Russian accent on top**, but I get annoyed at Bad Russians singing with fake accents while the Good Russians don't. It's not as if there is any evidence that Svetlana has lived a life to provide her with extensive English pronunciation lessons. But I digress.

Chess is notorious as having multiple options for arranging the songs and various possible endings, but as far as I was concerned this one worked fine - indeed, given the plots of some musicals I'd definitely put Chess in the top half. It has multiple characters, it meshes its characters and politics reasonably well, and if the end isn't entirely clear cut - well, that's life. And I spend a lot of the next week thinking about it, which is always a good sign.*** You and I works just fine as an ending if you read it as Anatoly and Florence realising that they are not in fact one another's heart's desire, they are merely the among the things that the other has seen in the course of chasing their actual desire, whatever that might be.

Musically, it was fabulous to have a large orchestra. Modern amplification means that you can do a lot with a band of fifteen or so, but it's simply not the same as a full size opera house orchestra in again. I've always liked Michael Ball's voice and had never seen him live, so that was a pleasure, and I was delighted to see again last year's Caiaphas from JCS, Phillip Browne, as Molokov. A real bass voice is a fine thing. And I was utterly and absolutely convinced by Tim Howar as Freddie when he stepped out of the aeroplane looking exactly as if he'd modelled himself as an egomaniac sporting git on Petter Northug. I was less struck by the women's voices; Alexandra Burke sang beautifully, but her vocal style didn't quite mesh with the character for me though I could see it working in other pieces or in concert, and alas Cassidy Janson as Florence displayed the regrettable tendency one sometimes hears in sopranos to sacrifice accuracy of pitch for belting. But those were minor quibbles over all.

Two final points:

(1) Each game of chess means there's one less Variation left to be played

Not necessarily. There is a high probability that it does, but of all the games of chess played throughout history it is entirely possible that two were identical.

(2) Chess is not a sport. I don't care if Iceland says that it is.

* We did this recently sans backing track or reminder of the lyrics when she visited with the young nephews as a bedtime lullaby. It is fair to say that they were sceptical of our musical genius.

** Although this Norwegian singer's version of The Soviet Machine is pretty good, even if the Arctic Philharmonic evidently has a very low budget for computer graphics.

***And the next month thoroughly earwormed. I cannot say that singing finding myself "Oh Jeremy Thorpe" to the tune of Oh Mr Porter is an improvement.

When fandom fails to deliver, sometimes there's no option but to do it yourself. So here's the Elisabeth das Musical*/Discworld Death crossover that apparently no-one else felt the need for.

Beyond the Veil
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze, Discworld
Rating: General Audiences, CNTW
Summary: The Empress Elisabeth was dead and Death had come to claim her. But he wasn't quite the anthropomorphic personification that she had been expecting.

For those not familiar with the musical the other Death looks more or less like this. The major costume constant between different productions appears to be copious eyeliner.

*Another musical that has inexplicably failed to make it to the London stage.

I am back from a long weekend in Harrogate with my sisters in celebration of the fact that I have a significant birthday approaching.* I am feeling surprisingly less tired than I might have expected, probably helped by the fact that despite the time of year the trains were civilised so the journeys weren't tiring, even if last minute ticket purchase when I decided that driving wasn't a good idea made them expensive. There is something to be said for enforced sitting down and reading. Middle Sister had donated her work-flights-earned Air Miles to the cause so we had a very nice hotel and I had a bath this morning just because it was there. There was some delicious food, entertaining theatre, and large amounts of nostalgia.

Yesterday involved a walk to Harlow Carr, which we didn't actually go into because this is not really the time of year for a rather expensive garden, but spent much time in its excellent bookshop. My sisters bought various Christmas presents, I bought some lavender-flavoured white chocolate. We took it in terms to comment on the qualities of various cornus in the absence of our mother. Alas, we didn't eat at Betty's because it isn't the time of year you can do that without booking or lots of time, but I had a sausage roll and curd tart, and purchased biscuits of gratitude for a couple of colleagues who have been particularly helpful with big stressful project.**

The main event of the weekend was West Yorkshire Playhouse's production of Strictly Ballroom, which had opened on Wednesday and was enormous fun. Bring on the sequins! On the way back to the station we observed that the long-awaited John Lewis has finally arrived. Honestly, we'd been promised the bloody thing for decades, and then it turns up after my parents leave. The building is genuinely impressive, though; we even admired the car park. It looks like origami done in stone, and yet is strangely in keeping with the buildings around it. Also noted on the way to and from the theatre was the extraordinary extent to which the people of Leeds have embraced the Christmas jumper.

*According to my student self by this point in life I am supposed to have re-read Ulysses and have published a novel. I have decided that the former was a whim, not an obligation, and the second delayed by circumstances beyond my control.

**Technically they were just doing their jobs, but with an unfailing good humour and helpfulness that meant that at least I didn't also have to stress about the photocopying because I could fling it in someone's direction with ten minutes to spare. Material acknowledgement feels warranted.

It’s the end of term, which means great busyness at work, plus a hectic weekend as my father came to visit. On the downside, I’m tired, though that is partly my fault as I keep not going to bed early enough. On the upside I’ve done some very enjoyable things, and I’m a lot less shattered than I have been at the end of every term for the past umpteen years, on account of my new tablets. Alas their miracle effects don’t include keeping the rain off, but you can’t have everything. It took 48 hours for my shoes to dry after a walk on Saturday in wet grass.

Some things I have seen this week:

Show Boat. Dad came down on Friday night and we went to the Sheffield Crucible production, which has transferred to the New London Theatre. It was utterly fantastic, and it’s a great shame that a production that has been so well-reviewed, of a piece that is not done that often, is closing in August rather than January due to lack of ticket sales. Clearly London audiences are just unadventurous… I admit that I watched the whole thing through a haze of nostalgia for the Opera North/RSC production of the late 80s/early 90s and subsequent family listening to a recording in the car, but everyone else seemed to be having a good time, too. A good solid case saw stand-out performances from Ravenal (a young American singer), Julie and Joe – the latter two understudies, it would be hard to imagine the leads being better. In short, if you’re in London and can see it, do. Here's the trailer, and here's Willard White in concert.

When Marnie Was There To describe something as ‘charming’ often seems a double-edged compliment, with an implication that it may also be rather slight. WMWT is utterly charming on every front, but it is also a serious and thoughtful film. I’d not seen a Studio Ghibli film before and I’m regretting that now, as it looked absolutely gorgeous and was completely worth seeing at the cinema. It’s based on a British children’s story that I’d never read, and which follows a fairly standard ‘lonely girl goes to stay with people in the countryside and meets a mysterious child who lives in an old house’ trajectory, but the depiction of the children’s friendship and their lives is done with a wonderful sensitivity. We saw the subtitled version, trailer here.

Eddie Izzard: Force Majeure It’s not that I’m not accustomed to attending performances in a foreign language – I like opera, after all. It’s just that they often have surtitles, and even then you don’t need to know more than the plot. Whereas this was in German, on account of the titles for the English hour of the three-hour show being sold out.

It turns out that with a little preparation to drag ye olde GCSE more to the forefront of the mind, Eddie Izzard is surprisingly easy to understand in German. For a start, he’s British, so he speaks with the “British person talking foreign” accent that I’m used to. But also the nature of his comedy works well even if you don’t get every world. The conceit of taking a concept and drawing it out to ever-absurder lengths means that as long as you can grasp the concept you can go with it. I got completely lost only at one point when I had absolutely no idea what sort of frantically-digging animal he was on about. The options my brain tried included werewolves, my neighbour guessed crabs – if only I’d stopped trying to think “what does that word sound a bit like?” and gone instead with “which animals famously dig in the way he’s doing an impression of?”, since the answer was moles.

There clearly were more sophisticated jokes and references that the native-speaker portion of the audience was getting and people like me weren’t, but overall I was quite chuffed with my ability to follow what was going on. All I have to do now is spend the weekend reminding myself of such technical details pronoun declensions, verb conjugations, and where you put the second sodding verb before my course next week...