Huffington post

 

If the music in musicals is the criterion by which an enterprise is going to be judged, then From Here to Eternity with a Tim Rice-Stuart Brayson score would have to be declared solidly mediocre.

 

There are a couple of rousing numbers. A Nashville ditty called "Ain't Where I Want to Be Blues" could actually become a chart item in the right circumstances. Also lively are "Fight the Fight" and "G Company Blues" (what, another blues?) and a closer about "the men of '41," referring to the Armed Forces officers and enlisted men who died or just barely lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Most of the other songs are lackluster, and it's notable that Tim Rice still has great trouble writing a meaningful love song. This, of course, is a sizable problem in a situation where two torrid love stories unfold.

 

Yet, there's much to recommend in this From Here to Eternity, the first of which is that the Bill Oakes libretto is truer in tone to the 1951 James Jones novel than the 1953 film. The explanation: The limits on what could be filmed then and what can be depicted today have greatly changed. For instance, a sequence set in a gay bar where American soldiers rob the gay regulars during sexual encounters shows up here where it couldn't on Fred Zinnemann's '50s celluloid.

 

The basic story, sets and costumes by Soutra Gilmour, is the same, of course--the illicit love affair between officer-hating first sergeant MiIt Warden (Darius Campbell) and unhappy officer's wife Karen Holmes (Rebecca Thornhill), the romance between former-boxer-former-bugler private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Robert Lonsdale) and good-hearted but cynical prostitute Lorene (Siubhan Harrison), and the tribulations of plucky but eventually broken private Angelo Maggio (Ryan Sampson).

 

As directed by Tamara Harvey, all performers bring the requisite grit to their assignments--Campbell singing beautifully; Lonsdale not only singing but playing guitar and, as the story demands, eventually the bugle (he seemed to be playing it and not someone near him behind a scrim); Sampson warbling with gusto and conjuring much sympathy for Maggio; Thornhill and Garrison effectively playing the disillusion experienced by women in wartime.

 

The hero here, however, may be choreographer Javier De Frutos. He's decided that the frustration felt by soldiers waiting to get into combat affects their entire physicality. He's staged their movement accordingly, particularly when he gets to the boxing that's G Company's pride. And the men of the From Here to Eternity chorus are more than up to the demands De Frutos puts on them.

 

But back to the music: It's undoubtedly impossible to set a musical in Hawaii without putting show-tune-savvy listeners in mind of South Pacific. There's really no flattering comparison here, but if this From Here to Eternity isn't Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, it's very particularly James Jones, and that's not bad.

Darius really is game for anything.

 

FHTE have tweeted a great instagram pic of Darius hula-hooping with multiple hoops when the group of majorettes broke the Guiness World record at the Shaftesbury.

 

Aah - those hips! Still mesmerising.

Fast forward to 13:53

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01k0...heryl_Fergison/

Thanks Meg. Sue

http://www.50connect.co.uk/articles/from-here-to-eternity

 

I don't think we've seen this one before

 

 

 

the new trailer for FTE, really good - I so want to see the show again :heart:

That was fantastic! I long to see it again as well. Just wish I lived nearer. Sue

Steve Wright with Darius Campbell and Tim Rice

 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=652490261469138

ddint relaise this ws on, but caught it while waiting in the car for school pickup! really lovely to listen

Thanks Meg. Sue

A very different review. One I can relate to. If your looking for love in this show, there is much more hate

 

http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/...?reviewsID=1014

I hope this is wrong

 

http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre...tml?cid=rssfeed

:(

I hope this is wrong

 

http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre...tml?cid=rssfeed

 

From Musical Theatre News - Sir Tim Rice has confirmed that FHTE has to leave the Shaftesbury in April, but if houses keep improving they will find a new theatre! :D

 

 

Julie

Avril was saying that it could easily carry on in a new theatre

Oh I do hope that's the case. Sue

says pretty much the same but i thought id post. We knew D would only be in it till April but i thought it would keep running:( http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/production/...pril-next-year/

Once the cast has been given notice, it's less likely to continue straight away.

Stephen Fry ‏@stephenfry 47m

Really, really want to see From Here to Eternity @FHTEMusical - this first official single:

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http://blog.musicaltheatrenews.com/2013/12...-from-here.html

 

I'd like to see that