Despite not really being fans of the movie, we were really looking forward to this, having heard great things, and wanting to see one of the few musicals these days making it to the West End with an original score. (If you dont count Unchained Melody of course.) Some of the songs were lovely - With You induced tears in Tamsin (not a twitch from Karina - she`s proper hard), I Had A Life a good ending to the first half, and we loved the jolly numbers from Sharon D Clarke as Oda May despite them feeling a little crowbarred in at times. Though the song the hospital ghost sings is just...words do not describe. It doesn't forward the plot, it has no place in the line up of songs, is a bit of jazz hands and old Hollywood in a completely odd way and just left us with big question marks hanging over our heads, and not in a good way. And at such a potentially emotional point in the show, just, well, NOOOOOOO!
We had the good seats, thanks to TKTS, so were able to get the full impact of all the jiggery pokery and dissolving through doors. But overall, we were left feeling a bit underwhelmed. Its hard to explain why, but we'll give it a go.
The direction at times was really jarring, and took away from the scenes impact - bringing us straight back into the theatre with a WTF? sensation. If you cant grab a door handle because you are dead, Sam, how can you sit on the fridge? Slump down in frustration on an earthbound sofa? Why all the fuss about a lifesize Princess Leia poster which only draws attention to the empty frame standing conveniently in front of the door Sam dissolves through? Honestly, we are theatre people - just have the frame there all along and we'll accept it as a mirror.... or bit of Molly's artwork or something so its not so bleedin` obviously needed for special effects. Cos its only there for that scene. Its like a stagehand standing there . In the scene where Sam gets all poltergeisty in Carls office, did the boxfile he pushes off the shelf have to be made of sponge? Bouncy bouncy. Maybe its health and safety, but it was a small detail that simply whips you straight out of your suspended disbelief. The train scene was good if a little confusing and hard to define, and we really liked the deaths - all of them. The swapping of the bodies worked brilliantly - but we dont need horns and teeth to see where the baddies are headed in the afterlife - a red glow would have sufficed Mr Director (Karina thought these were just flames. She wasn't wearing her glasses. 'Nuff said). We would have happily had Sam gently take over from Oda May to dance with Molly at the end, we didn`t need half blinding, thanks. We felt the projected sex scene at the beginning was a tad cringey too. All the incessant Wall Street style marching around got on our wicks during the numerous scene changes. So you see, lots of little things which took away from the good stuff - and made it feel part amateurish, and part over-produced. We are hard to please....
Oh, and some of the lyrics, well..... we'll let you be judge:
You have to remember the love you guys knew
How much Sam cared, how much he loved you
Just think about Sam, and the times you shared
Open up that dam, and try not to be scared
Ahem. Thanks Carl. (Bleugh).
But our personal favourite was the cringefest station rap that had us biting our knuckles in order not to be thrown out of the theatre....
No hocus pocus, fix it on the locust
Focus like a laser, a taser, a fazer, razor
Comin across dimensions it’s about intention.
(Oh it gets worse....)
You’ve got to take all the hatred, take all the fear
Shove them in your gut, shove them down here
Your love and desire, it’s like your on fire
And let them implode like your ready to explode
Now feel the tension, that’s the key factor
Focus your attention like a nuclear reactor.
Seriously. Deluded X Factor "rappers" from da hood of Hampshire have better ryhming couplets.
We really wanted to like it. Sincerely. But song after song of overacting started grating in the end. We were reminded of the fact that we didn't like 'Love Never Dies' when it first came out, and felt it was because we saw the cover in the Phantom role that first viewing and subsequently realised it was so much better with Ramin. But although the cover was playing the lead in 'Ghost' that day and wasn't extraordinarily good, we felt he really didn't have that much to work with either. It was all a bit pants. Never a fan of the fake American accent, that didn't help us warm to the musical either. Neither did the fact that we happened to sit next to an extremely talkative gentleman whom we had to physically turn away from in the end as he just wouldn't stop telling us about his trip up the motorway and an amateur version of 'Footloose' he'd seen recently. Even when the lights went down, he carried on. Then he turned around to chat to the good folk on his other side. Jolly good.
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