Ooooh, the old ones are the best!!! We just love a musical from the golden age, and they don`t come much more perfect than Singin' in the Rain.... great tunes, spectacular tapping and Gene Kelly. Perfection. A must see at least once a year, and never gets old. We were very excited about the Chichester revival moving to the Palace and so we time-stepped along to pick ourselves up a couple of dayseats. Don`t you love it when you get excited before even entering the theatre? The canopy of the theatre has been transformed, the sparkly stilletto of Priscilla has given way to a rainbow scattering of brollies, and it looks great - totally whetting our appetite (geddit? Sorry.)
We had got up at the crack of a sparrows fart to get to the box office and claim our prize...the £25 wet seats. To be honest, it is all about the price in fairyland in these times of austerity, but these seats are amazing for more reasons than that. Firstly, you can rest your feet on the stage. OUR FEET ON A WEST END STAGE. You can only imagine the squeals this brought out in us. Secondly, the view is fantastic. Often, the discounted seats come at a price (Phantom - an audio only show, Jersey Boys - neckache and a quiff / nostril view, Ich Noch Niemals - a lovely velvet pillar....) but here - the view was great. Purists may say that missing feet sometimes in a show packed with such amazing tapping is a shame, but as the dancers are incredible and dance with their whole bodies, we didn`t feel we missed out. The wetness we will discuss later - some may say a problem, we looooved it. And all for £25. Bar - gain.
The show was very faithful to the movie, or as much as it could be, and included all the big numbers - Moses Supposes, Good Mornin', Broadway Melody etc, and they have paid homage to the staging and costumes of the movie too. Performance-wise, there really wasnt a weak link and despite Adam Cooper having the showstopping numbers, the rest of the cast supported him admirably, especially Daniel Crossley as Cosmo, Scarlett Strallen as Cathy (she looks soooo period that girl!) and a great turn by Katherine Kingsley as prize bitch Lena Lamont. She got given her own song, and quite right too. She almost stole the show on a few occasions. And the tapping..... the TAPPING!!!! We loves a bit of tapping, as our previous posts on the TapGod Adam Garcia will bear out. We were very happy girls indeed.
And so to the soaking. The lovely lady in the Box Office told us we "might get wet" as we collected the tickets, and we knew the dayseats were likely to get a sprinkling, splashing off the stage & stuff, fair dos. Its Singin in the Flippin Rain! What we we weren`t quite prepared for was the gleeful mischievous way that Adam Cooper and later the whole bloody cast pick a row of victims, grin, and boot a gallon of water straight at your face! We should have been warned by the ominous rustling of pacamacs being unravelled all around us, but hell, we thought.... why the fuss? At TapDogs, the theatre provided a pacamac on the seat and we barely got a sniff of water. We`ll be fine, we thought.
Not so - by the end of the show we were totally drenched. We mean SOAKED. Face, hair, jeans, the lot. The water was probably hoofed back as far as about the 5th row, but it was hard to tell as we had a facefull at the time. We can safely say we haven`t laughed so much in the theatre in ages....hysteria, maybe - shock, certainly - but whatever. As we wrung out our dripping tresses and left the theatre dabbing at our Alice Cooper style eye make-up, we decided we wouldn`t have had it any other way. And we reckon those in the nice dry seats missed out just a little. It's all part of the experience. We'll be going again - but might time the wet seats for the hot summer months when we can go and dry off in the sun afterwards. But as for a fun musical? We left beaming from ear to ear. This is feel-good taken to the umpteenth level. We were doo be doo dooing for the next few days, and still do whenever we hear or talk about this show. Fab stuff.
So, we highly recommend you set your alarm early to get first in the queue, slap on your waterproof mascara, head down to the Palace theatre and join in the fun. Its a blast!!
