Brilliant in the second half. The first half was much weaker.

The set just looks like the model. In the interval, we used the stage as a table. The orchestra is in one of the little structures on the right hand side of the stage.

Was Darius OK in the first half too?

He was OK - but none of them were as good in the first half as the second. It coluld be first night nerves but, I just thought the songs were weaker and if didn't have the zest of the second.

It will be interesting to find out on Monday/Tuesday how much they've managed to shave off the show.

 

One forum post spoke of Trevor Nunn making copious noted throughout. I wonder if they're rehearsing today.

 

Well there's not too much I can add to Meg's report.

 

But...

The theatre is even better than the photo shows.

The walkways are very close to the seats and the actors also walked infront of row I.

There are several times when they are on the 2 side walkways in the circle.

 

The orchestra is in a raised area to the right as you look at the stage.

 

Everyone starts the show....yes, Darius included....if I remember correctly he is the first person to speak.

They are setting the scene...time, place....but of course things may be altered.

 

The first half moved very quickly through the book.....there was the reel, just a small bit but no waltz as such....I thought Darius was going to sing when Scarlett asked about the song, but he didn't.

The songs he sang in the first half were finished as soon as he started....except one at the charity bazzar....and this wasn't fantastic...not Darius' fault just not a good song.

 

At the interval my reaction was....it's OK, shame about the songs.....

I wasn't bowled over by the men's war song and flag waving as Meg was.

 

I can't remember now when the ladies sang about the lost sons and husbands...that was moving.

 

Nor can I remember when Scarlett sang...'Gone with the Wind'.....which is sung again by everyone at the end........excellent song.

 

The second half was so different....full of emotion and good/great songs.

Darius showed his acting abilities....he was excellent.

His songs this time were longer and very good.

During his sad scenes I had to stop looking at him or I would have cried.....

 

I nearly ended up with a dead Yankee on my lap!....he slid across the stage and I thought he wasn't going to stop!

 

I was sat next to 2 Canadian ladies who had seen the film and read the book......they loved it....felt Darius was a good as Clark Gable.

 

If they manage to change the first half and make it as good as the second this will be fantastic.

 

Not sure what they can do.....but they need to do something.

 

Can't wait to go again.

 

Well I've just gone back a page to find Meg didn't do a review over here....or is it on another thread?

 

any way.....I thought I would just add....it didn't feel like 4 hours+....and by the end I could have continued watching to find out of they got back together again.....and had she really change!!!!?????

 

 

I must now finish reading the book........:D

It's on GWTW - first previews.

Edited April 6, 200817 yr by megham

Yes just read it....will take my report over :)

There should be morfe tomorrow. We know at least 3 going.

I had to laugh, someone is suggesting Darius is weaing a chest wig!!!

lol how misguided is that- what forum is that on

great report Pam, I really hope they condense act 1 - otherwise it sounds good!

Edited April 6, 200817 yr by prettyinpink

I think it's just a joke. is that the same post which mentions the tache too. I read one like that and just ignored it.

 

Men were men in the 19th century and in the 1930s, not the carefully cultured duplicate body images modelled on Action Man to match the real life Barbie dolls we have today. An alien dropping by might think mankind has perfected the art of cloning.

 

Darius is Rhett Butler on merit. His detractors can't attack him on competency so personal abuse is all that's left to them. They might convince a dozen or so over a period of a week or so but there will be thousands who know better, having seen GWTW.

Edited April 7, 200817 yr by Baytree

He is so good. Thinking about it, I'd better post what I was going to, on the reviews thread. I'll just get nagged otherwise.

Evening Epress, promo and photo

Evening express

stage debut?

Sorry. Fast reply playing up again.

Edited April 7, 200817 yr by Baytree

There was a little mention in Saturday's London Paper as well.

thanks to Rachel .net

 

Will Darius go with the wind?

By Nick Curtis

Evening Standard 07.04.08

 

In musical theatre, Trevor Nunn once told me, no one ever knows what will work. This was just after he’d directed Acorn Antiques the Musical, a palpable flop, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White, at best a partial success.

 

But, Nunn could quite rightly counter, he didn’t do too badly out of the unpromising material of singing felines and starving French people in Cats and Les Misérables. Which may explain why he has signed on as director and coadapter of the first stage musical of Gone With the Wind, a project where every advantage could just as easily prove a drawback.

 

Margaret Mitchell’s exploration of the American civil war through the romance of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler was a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Victor Fleming’s 1939 screen adaptation became arguably the most popular and successful film ever, thanks as much to the mythology surrounding it — the wrangles over script, director, casting and censorship, the old MGM sets burned to simulate blazing Atlanta, the awarding of the first Oscar to a black actress, Hattie McDaniel — as to the magic onscreen. Many of its most famous lines are engraved in the public memory.

 

Nunn has to cram all this baggage, and an awful lot of the Deep South, onto the stage of a concrete 1970s theatre. With tunes. What’s more, the show’s writer and composer Margaret Martin is an expert on maternal and child health with no theatrical track record, although the fact she persuaded Margaret Mitchell’s estate to let her adapt the book must count for something. The casting of the film was eclectic — David O Selznick wanted Gary Cooper as Rhett, Leslie Howard felt far too old for Ashley, no one had heard of Vivien Leigh. Nunn’s is similarly unusual with Pop Idol star Darius Danesh as Rhett and relative unknown Jill Paice — she played Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White — as Scarlett.

 

And yet, and yet ... nobody knows what will work. Gary Cooper, having turned down the part of Rhett, predicted that “Gone With the Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history”. I don’t think I’ll offer a similar hostage to fortune about Nunn’s production here.

 

Previewing now, opens 22 April. Information: 0870 890 0141; www.gwtwthemusical.com.

 

 

 

 

I can feel the tension mounting!!

I left a comment on that one. Saying that it was long and the second half better than the first but well worth seeing.