Dusty Springfield musical West End bound...will Broadway ever see the lights of Dusty - The Original Pop Diva? Maybe

The show isn't doing well in Melbourne, maybe it would do better in Britain.

I'd imagine the best bet would be for a provincial tour.

The theatre was less than half full when I saw it last week. And Tamsin is missing a lot of shows through illness. It's not much more than a Vegas showroom piece. The script is desperately in need of a rethink.

BUMP

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Didn't this already have a UK tour with a planned West End berth that never happened? Didn't Mari Wilson star as Dusty?

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popcultureboy, that must be a completely different show. This is one that's been produced in Australia.

So all this talk of advance sales and recouping money comes from where then?

I don't doubt any of you, I'm just interested to know that if all this negativity is true (which it probably is), then why has it been given the West End go ahead?

Mind you, although it's an originally Australian production, I think it's much more suited to London audiences.

And as for the script, if Wildcat says he thinks it needs some re-working he's probably right. But THREE people wrote that book! How could they have got it so wrong? THREE people!

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Updated On: 2/7/06 at 12:18 AM

wilcat may not be prone to gossip bitterness or negativity, but....I AM
talissa...your blinkered view of ms tamsin carroll would lead one to belive that the one of the main sources for the dusty musical...lesbianism...would be quite close to your heart....it would seem that ms carroll could walk center stage hoik up her skirt and defecate and you would be front row centre giving her a standing ovation....such bias is probably better served on the dreadful self congratulatory WAYAKKA....and remember....IF YOU DONT HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY ABOUT SOMEBODY....COME AND SIT NEXT TO ME!

mc..x

The show was extensively workshopped last year, yet the script seems to have gone downhill since then. There are far too many songs, many repeated more than once, so much of the dialogue comes over as a succession of song cues. The cutting of large chunks just before previews could account for the skimpiness of the character development. The humour relies excessively on hoary old jokes (this one crops up twice):

DUSTY'S HAIRDRESSER: Dusty! You're on!
DUSTY: Am I? How am I doing?

And, as in "Shout!", a previous bio-musical by the same writing team, too many famous names from the sixties are dropped simply to evoke a laugh of recognition. Overall, the script seems to be cobbled together from the most cliched bits of other musicals. A scene depicting Dusty's funeral seems to go on longer than the real thing, with no less than three characters delivering eulogies containing information we've already heard. That two significant moments in Dusty's life are handled as one-sided phone conversations by the aforementioned hairdresser shows the paucity of creativity on display.
The show's star, the gifted Tamsin Carroll, bears much of the weight of the proceedings and acquits herself brilliantly, but I was actively discouraged from seeing the show during one of her absences by at least two members of "Dusty"'s own production team, which seems to indicate a lack of confidence in the piece without Tamsin to carry it.
The entire tour is pre-booked so there's no danger of it coming off early, and I enjoyed it as much as similar shows such as "Leader of the Pack". Certainly the design by Roger Kirk is worth the price of admission. I'm sure it will do very well in overseas markets. I just wish the creative team had set the bar a little higher for themselves.

I meant to ask; who is Tamsin's understudy?

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Updated On: 2/7/06 at 01:43 AM

I have yet to see it and I have to say I am feeling less and less confident to shell out the money.

i dont know much about Dusty...i just remember her song with the Pet Shop Boys, she was pretty fabulous, i would probably want to see the show of her life, even tho the juke box musical is not my favorite kind of theatre. But i would go to see this show.

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