I think they did expect the combination of "Gone With the Wind and Trevor Nunn" to do the business and I think that would have been enough - on Broadway!

 

GWTW doesn't have the same cult following here. How many people in the UK have read the book?

In fact it's seen as one of those films which gets trotted out on high days and holidays, something to amuse the ladies while the men wallow in sport.

 

 

 

They should have used Darius earlier. Maybe they just couldn't spare him from rehearsals.

It was such a short run up. Only 2wks 3 days of preview - and the previews started at a time they'd normally still be in rehearsals. I don't think they could spare anyone - even with 16hrs days.

I certainly think the shirt opening can be a great vote winner. It was used to great effect in the american version of strictly come dancing by an american football player who got to the final and it was used last night at the end in Eurovision by the russian entry who eventusally won. Regarding the adverts Baytree mentions I had both the express and the mail last week who have a section on entertainments with westend shows section and GWTW. was not mentioned in either.

The Express doesn't even have the tiny advert in their list of shows.

Never Forget had a great TV advert today.

I don't really fancy that - If I want to see Take that, I'd prefer to actually see them.

What a different story from GWTW.

 

Never Forget was being strongly marketed with stories in tabloids and celeb mags during its tour of the UK. it was easy to get the coverage because of the Take that/Robbie Williams connection and before they even had a theatre they were heralding it's WE opening and creating an appetite for it. Now that it's there, it's still being marketed aggressively.

 

In June 2007 a few theatre sites and Arts sections of papers ran the story that GWTW would open in the West End in April 2008 then other than occasional speculation about who would play Rhett and Scarlett, silence until December 2007 when Jill's casting was confirmed. No posters, no adverts yet. On 31st January Darius was announced as the new Rhett. Still no advertising. 13th February - a photocall with Jill and Darius but not in costume. And so it went on. No major advertising campaign - one radio advert not heard very often on Classic FM. We were scouring all possible sites and members in the South were on the alert but found it virtually impossible to find any reference whatsoever.

 

 

It would have been nice that a completely new musical could open to a buzz. Two ladies sitting next to me were really worried about seeing GWTW. They'd booked before the reviews went out and were wondering whether they wouldn't have been better off just not coming. They cheered up when they heard I liked it enough to come back and see it again. At the interval, they weren't that sure but had been pleasantly surprised at the fact they hadn't hated it. They then admitted the women's song was fantastic - as were all the cast especially Darius and Jill.

 

The next thing was that it wasn't like 'Guys and Dolls'. I said I'd seen Darius in G&D and that he was fantastic intit. The fact that he's starred as Sky made them understand why they thought he was so good in this one. I then explained that one was in a nightclub/gambling environment with laughs and the same kind og tratment would be totally wrong in a play about death and slavery. They saw my point and, by the end, were really glad they had come.

 

To get to the point, when all the buzz centres around a few people who are published bad reviews, it does make it so much more difficult for the play to take off.

 

Luckily, the majority of the people seem to love it - now they've seen it for themselves. I keep having to tell them that most of what they have loved was in the press night and to tgrust their own feelings instead of a bunch of critics opinions. I still can't understand how they could put those reviews out when the audience was so enthusiastic in it's approval.

 

Maybe it a buzz already existed, it'd have helped.

Without a preceding advertising campaign whipping up enthusiasm for the show, the only comments which could be widely reported were the critical reviews which made great play of damning the show by witty (/) plays on the famous phrase. It gave them easy negative headlines.

 

Afterwards the response from GWTW was a 10 minute(previously arranged) interview on This Morning on the following Friday by Darius and a newspaper article quoting Aldo Scrofani saying the show's running time would be cut.

Which gave the reviews credance to some people.

Then came the Newsnight review which went straight on to youtube, a review in which one of the reviewers IMHO clearly said he didn't agree with the politics of the book and it should not have been brought to the stage at all. How could he possibly give an impartial review? That was followed by the Sundays all jumping on the rolling bandwagon.

 

The majority of the reviews praised the cast, especially Darius and Jill, John Napier's set and the way Trevor Nunn staged the characters but that was always overshadowed by moans about the length and quibbles about some of the narration and the same few lines of lyrics.

 

It was negatives piling on negatives and being regurgitated selectively in news articles and still the posters displayed no positive comments and no inkling of scenes from the show, unlike other musicals.

 

I've said it all along. IMHO they were much too late getting posters of Jill and Darius out instead of the IMO duller logo ones with just Sir Trevor's name and GWTW.

Edited May 27, 200817 yr by Baytree

Basically, it was panned because an American woman , not from the theatre world, had the nerve to write it. And then that was made worse by her getting a good director and a West End theatre. It was never going to get good reviews from that set of people.

Audience expectation that GWTW would be a musical like e.g. Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls or South Pacific is something the creative team should have realised would happen when they called the show GWTW the musical. It could have been addressed long ago in the build up period before the cast was complete.

 

I simply don't know why the show didn't have some kind of press spokesman from the moment they got the theatre and knew it was definitely going to open in the West End. They should have got a buzz going in the tabloids. I think shunning the most popular papers (sales wise) was/is a major error.

I can't understand that either.

I get the impression that the creative team behind it apart from Margaret Martin and perhaps Colin Ingram have lived their lives immersed in the theatre world and haven't had much truck with the popular media, other than when they grant a few interviews to Arts programmes or culture sections of the broadsheets.

 

Considering the length of his career, there seem to be very very few interviews with Sir Trevor Nunn when you search online.

 

IMHO Darius is about the only one who is media savvy enough but he's under contract and probably would need official say so to talk to the tabloids etc.

 

 

He wouldn't want to make them think he doubted them - and I know he doesn't.

All I can say to whats been said above is that they must be very naive if they think they dont need all the pubicity they can get especially now that musical theatre is being given a high profile on tv under the ALW banner which is putting bums on seats for his shows with people who dont normally go to the theatre.

I went to see 'Lord of the Rings', I feel that it wouldn't be closing if it wasn't for 'Oliver' getting the theatre

I've read suggestions that LOTR would tour but wouldn't that be a very costly exercise and how many theatres have big enough stages to house such a complicated set? I think maybe the Edinburgh Playhouse but I don't think any of the Glasgow Theatres are big enough.

 

There's no doubt that HDYSAPLM had good and bad effects on the West End. It's said next year's show is Jesus Christ Superstar and the programme will be shown on ITV.

 

BTW Ray Quinn has joined the cast of Grease as Doody (Who? one of the T birds so they say) and WOS describe it as Ray Quinn headlines Grease.

It's going to be a cut back version - which'll be a shame. It's about the same length as GWTW at the moment but feels a lot longer.