Friday 30th September 2011 by Will Langdale
A quick pick of what’s hot in the TicketTree.com office
Going long, and still going strong
Birthdays seem to be like buses in the West End; they come all at once. This week sees two shows marking significant anniversaries. Phantom of the Opera, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about a secretive figure who stalks Paris Opera House, is 25 years old this week, having opened in 1986. To celebrate, a special production involving figures such as Ramin Karlimloo and Sierra Boggess opens for two nights at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend, the second of which will be broadcast to cinemas worldwide. And although there’s no special performance, Wicked has been celebrating its fifth anniversary in the West End this week.
So what makes these shows so enduring?
The simplest answer is the music. Both shows contain songs that are both brilliant in their own right, but have spawned multiple cast albums in their various iterations both here, Broadway, and all over the world. Both musicals have had songs released as singles.
But having a fantastic score to your show doesn’t simply keep your one-off customers hooked, it also helps generate the kind of fans who want to be a part of your show. These are the kind of fans who go back again and again, who perhaps aspire to one of the characters, try to sing the songs or be in an amateur performance. Both Wicked and Phantom of the Opera have some of the most dedicated fans in the world. These are the kind of fans that will sell the show for you, and this week Michael McCabe, Wicked’s executive producer in the UK, has openly admitted that the reason Wicked is still going while its contemporaries, like Evita, Dirty Dancing and Avenue Q have closed, is a young, vibrant audience who goes over and over again. Naturally, they don’t always go alone.
Encouraging this kind of audience is difficult without having a certain type of show, and it’s the source material you take and what you do with it that’s so important. Both Wicked and Phantom take established concepts and refresh them. At the heart of Phantom is a young woman who wants to be a famous singer, caught between two men she loves and who deeply love her back. Both motifs are powerful alone – see, for example, Crossroads or Glitter for the former and Twilight for the latter – but together it makes for a powerful draw. For Wicked, it’s the well-known Wizard of Oz turned into an aniti-bullying fable about someone disenfranchised but special. These are things that people want to be told about themselves and include in their lives, and as family shows these can be instilled at a very young age.
To answer the question, then, you can’t just make your show funny, or whimsical, or serious, or base it on a film. You need an arresting score and a story that is thrilling and universal, and you need to turn it into something that’s satisfying and rewarding whether you watch it once or one hundred times. This is demonstrably true of Phantom of the Opera, and maybe in another five years we’ll see just how true it is for Wicked.
Rockin’ on heaven’s door
This week saw Rock of Ages open in the West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Starring TV presenter Justin Lee Collins and X Factor winner Shayne Ward, it’s the story of a small town girl on the Sunset Strip in the classic rock culture of the late 80s. Although I suppose it wasn’t “classic” at the time.
It’s hard to know whether critics are showing their age, such as Whatsonstage’s Michael Coveney who needed to “lie down in a dark room”, or are simply too cool for dadrock, such as the Guardian’s Michael Hann, whose eyes appear to have rolled out of his head at the mild sexism, and whose 1* review contrasts starkly with a 4* album review of sludge/doom metal band Mastodon a few days beforehand.
There’s plenty of critics having a good time with it, however, and numerous, numerous jokes that involve whether or not the critic “Stopped Believin’”, but one standout seems to be The Independent’s Pierre Perrone, who had more fun than most. According to Perrone, it “wipes the floor with the Queen vehicle”, which is to say Rock Of Ages is better than We Will Rock You rather than that it’s a critique of the monarchy’s transport arrangements.
Deal of the week
Well, how could we not? It’s a birthday bonanza this week, so we’re giving you two birthday offers! Until next Friday use PHANTOMBLOG or WICKEDBLOG with either Phantom of the Opera or Wicked to give yourself a cool 5% off any package you book. Just add it at the voucher box at the end of your booking to get your money off.