A Musical Weekend

This weekend turned out to be rather musical, in a rather different way to usual.

On Saturday, we went down to London for the day, and I got to experience my first West End musical. The Producers was great fun; the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a rather impressive and ornate theatre, and the production itself was superb. Reece Shearsmith’s (of League of Gentlemen fame) cartoon-like spasms when as Leo Bloom he was deprived of his security blanket were inspired, and I loved Don Gallagher as the camp director, Roger De Bris and Nicolas Colicos as Fuhrer-loving Franz Liebkind.

Then on Sunday, the musicals continued. I went to see West Side Story at the Arts Picturehouse with Rebecca and her sister. It’s a firm favourite of theirs, and they’re word-perfect from repeated viewings from video and DVD, but neither had seen it on the big screen. I had never seen it, and I think I enjoyed it more seeing it at the cinema than I would watching it on TV, and the song-and-dance numbers only seemed to drag once or twice - which is better than I feared.

I’d like to assure you that this sudden interest in musicals is just a blip, but given that I’ll be seeing Blood Brothers at the Arts Theatre this coming weekend, I’m not sure I that’ll stand up to scrutiny. I’m not expecting to continue with the musicals immersion, but I think they have their place.