Post by marion on Mar 13, 2024 19:08:20 GMT
To Wimbledon today to see this musical. I must admit I don’t like the film and wasn’t going to bother until I saw the Jason Manford Musicals show on TV, and as I had an empty week I booked it. I’ll start off with the main negative- it is deafening! To my mind the music and effects swallowed up the lyrics of a lot of the singing. The dancing was terrific though and the singing pitch was very good, just sometimes I didn’t know what they were singing about 😂. When they quietened down to more acceptable musical theatre levels, everything was fine.
It was delayed by a good ten minutes and then about 30minutes in we had a temporary pause because of a technical glitch, so another 20minutes. Luckily this was a matinée.
Dorothy was played by an unknown (to me) called I believe Aviva Tulley and she had a lovely voice which did full justice to Over The Rainbow. The Wizard was played by Gary Wilmot who has a big musicals career and was rather underused. The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion were very funny and crowd favourites. My favourite was Toto as he was a puppet and I do love a puppet. The big name draw here was The Vivienne playing The Wicked Witch. I haven’t seen Drag Race or DOI but do know who The Vivienne is and I wondered if this was her musical theatre debut. Well she has such stage presence! She reminds me of Craig Revel Horwood (who in fact plays this role in some venues, as Jason M also steps in as the lion) and would be in the same mould as Craig in panto I imagine. Anyhoo, she was a really big hit with the audience, and definitely added some oomph to the show.
I didn’t think it was fabulous but a very enjoyable outing. There were a few very young school parties in attendance, and they behaved very well and didn’t cause any uproar.
It was delayed by a good ten minutes and then about 30minutes in we had a temporary pause because of a technical glitch, so another 20minutes. Luckily this was a matinée.
Dorothy was played by an unknown (to me) called I believe Aviva Tulley and she had a lovely voice which did full justice to Over The Rainbow. The Wizard was played by Gary Wilmot who has a big musicals career and was rather underused. The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion were very funny and crowd favourites. My favourite was Toto as he was a puppet and I do love a puppet. The big name draw here was The Vivienne playing The Wicked Witch. I haven’t seen Drag Race or DOI but do know who The Vivienne is and I wondered if this was her musical theatre debut. Well she has such stage presence! She reminds me of Craig Revel Horwood (who in fact plays this role in some venues, as Jason M also steps in as the lion) and would be in the same mould as Craig in panto I imagine. Anyhoo, she was a really big hit with the audience, and definitely added some oomph to the show.
I didn’t think it was fabulous but a very enjoyable outing. There were a few very young school parties in attendance, and they behaved very well and didn’t cause any uproar.
Anymore to come?
