Musical Theatre Extravaganza

My mom, aunt wyona and uncle greg arrived for a week long "visit". I put "visit" in quotation marks because there must be some other name for the force of nature that they are! Between matinees and evening performances, i think the plan is to work through the entire list of productions in the west end!


Sunday Alex had a rugby game, so Alex and Steve headed off on one direction, but the rest of us followed the yellow brick road (aka "the Northern Line on the Tube") to Oxford Circus, to watch Andrew Lloyd Weber's new production of "The Wizard of Oz". Here is Arta's report on the show!

http://larchhaven.blogspot.com/2011/11/wizard-of-oz-musical.html

For those of you who didn't follow it, there was aBBC reality type TV show (musical sing-offs!) to find the girl to play Dorothy ("Over the Rainbow").  The day we went, we saw the woman who was the runner up in the series.  She was fabulous!   In the role of Oz was Michael Crawford (who had the originating role in The Phantom).

I will say, I loved it.   While it is full of the expected showpieces, there are also new numbers written for the show.  You can certainly hear the signature of their composer!   Some of the songs seemed to be riffing off melodies from either "Phantom of the Opera" or "Love Never Dies" (which i think I actually like BETTER than Phantom).  If you go to the website for the show, they have some videoclips.  It is worth looking at the one called "Red Shoe Blues" (written for the show).  Wyona brought home a copy of the CD, so we have spent the last few days re-listening to parts of the score.  It was like returning to the show (with a cheaper ticket!) :-)  I committed myself to buying the CD for any future musical I see!

And so, on Monday, I told the kids to pick up the CD from Wicked  ("the untold story of the Wizard of Oz"... where the wicked witch of the west is the hero).  Steve and I saw Wicked several years back, but the kids hadn't, so Arta and Wyona took them to see that show, while Greg Steve and I went to see "Driving Miss Daisy" [staring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones]. 

.... and this was only Sunday and Monday... there are still three days of the visit to go.  We will see how many more performances can be squeezed in!