Profile for boyfromoz2

Obsessed with the song that was offered at the intermission on the screen - its this cast doing Old Friends. I don't know when they'll take down the free song page, but it is still up for me at merrilyonscreen.com ... It took a while for the email to come through after I'd put my details in though. There's a lot of background noise at the start of it which makes me think maybe it's from the cinema recording. Does anyone know if they're releasing a soundtrack recording?

Daniel Dae Kim was the King in the 2009 Royal Albert Hall Production, and he was pretty bad. Frequently off-tune, out of time and breath and just a whole lotta posing with his six-pack out. Great to look at, but not to listen to.

The matinee just finished ... and woah!! Big tunes, big emotions and big voices. No stops and curtain came down just over 3 hours from the top. Act I drags, but after interval the show trundles along for a good 75 minutes of honest lyracism and heart. Anton Berezin was in for Warlow, and boy did he do a good job. A standing ovation which was only cut off by the curtain and exit music. Go see this show!!

Doctor Zhivago is running 8 weeks in Sydney and then 8 weeks in Melbourne, so not really possible for Broadway before the Tony deadline.

Sorry to unfloat your boat, but there were not 54 musicians playing in that pit. Yes the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra has 54 players on contract, but not all play at every performance. If you had ever been in the pit of the Opera House, you would realise that there is barely room in there for 30 players. I saw this production twice, and didn't like it either time. Yes it was gorgeous to hear the full orchestration and to see Roger Kirk's extravagant designs, but there was no thought ...

The concept album has Ramin Karimloo, Sierra Boggess and Scarlett Strallen as the Phantom, Christine, and Meg respectively. John Barrowman sung Raoul on the disc, and Sally Dexter sung Madame Giry.

It definitely reads like a Brantley review. I really think there's a bit of an overload on comparing the '09 and the '98 productions in this review.

My school did Les Mis with a smaller than usual ensemble, and in the first act alone I had 8 changes - convict, farmer, inn guest, beggar, factory worker, sailor, imposter Valjean, inn guest again, student. Some of these were underdressed of course, but others involved very fast full changes of costume.

Bob Crowley had originally planned for the house to be a single four-storey scenic piece, with the kitchen in the cellar rising up from below the deck and the house lowering into the deck for the nursery scenes. However, no theatre in London or New York has the basement space to store the full house for the nursery scenes, and so the idea of the single house unit was abandoned. The basic house set in New York consists of 4 sections - three vertical pieces that form the foyer/sitting room/offi...

I've heard many rumours about the Watermill production, which played the Comedy Theatre in London earlier this year, coming to Broadway. It was an actor-musician production, completely barebones, and utterly enchanting. The production definitely demonstrated how strong the score is - without all the trappings of flying staircases and Glenn Close, the show became much darker and brooding. Norma was played by Kathryn Evans, definitely not an A-list star, and she was magical

Broadway has already had two of the four UK Marys - will Lisa O'Hare or Caroline Sheen be next?

Hanson was fantastic in the London production, and New York is very lucky to have him.

umm, he's joking. lighten up jacobtsf ... i'm pretty sure Scripps saw the show in London. I've been rooting for Alexander Hanson to win the Best Actor in a Musical Olivier Award for his portrayal ever since the show closed here, and I wish him all the luck in the world across the pond.

Is it a bit bizarre to anyone else that there are no Violins, only Viola and Cello?

The Sydney one is great :)

LMK was only in the first version of the show in London, before all the changes were implemented. The show as performed currently in New York (and, even more so, on tour) is very different to what opened in London five years ago.

Oh, please can the Tony Comittee bring back the Best Replacement Tony? LMK could easily win it.

Am I the only one annoyed at how many revisions there have been to this show, ever since it opened in Bristol in September 2004? Every new production seems to have something different about it, whether it would be new dialogue, new designs, new songs, entire new sections, etc., and in my opinion, the original London production was superior to everything seen since.

When the cast changes in October, with or without LMK, all the changes that were implemented for the US tour, including some different dialogue as well as Playing The Game, will be put into the Broadway production.

Schmerg - wouldn't it just be easier to say that Phantom's score is the only good thing about the show?