Blog 4

I read in the paper that two more musicals are to be revived in London: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN and SWEET CHARITY. So how many musicals will be running and how many of them are revivals? Let’s take a look at the “Official London Theatre Guide”. First on the list at The Victoria Palace is BILLY ELLIOT. This Is followed by BLOOD BROTHERS (been running for ever and when I saw the very first performance in Liverpool all those years ago I thought it was not very good, in fact quite unbelievable and wouldn’t be going anywhere. I didn’t take Mister Bill Kenwright into account. How wrong can you be considering the length of its run?). LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (Revival), CAROUSEL (Revival), is CALENDER GIRLS a musical? I don’t know. Then there is CHICAGO, (another revival), DIRTY DANCING, GREASE (Revival) and HAIRSPRAY, JERSEY BOYS, THE LION KING and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (Revival), MAMMA MAI, something called MARILYN but I don’t know about that one, whether or not it’s a musical and LES MISERABLES (Been running forever). OLIVER(Revival), PETER PAN (Revival), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Been running forever), PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT, SISTER ACT, STOMP, THRILLER-LIVE, WE WILL ROCK YOU and finally WICKED. If all these are still running then, with the two newcomers, that makes 25 musicals in all of which nine are revivals. Once upon a time managements were extremely loathe to even contemplate a musical because of the costs involved so what changed that? Of course, if you analyse the titles you realise these are all bound to be sure-fire winners and with the cost of tickets in the West End these days, managements are, to coin a phrase, coining it!
The BBC was part of this morning’s discussion at the breakfast table, the fact that it seems to be employing schoolchildren and is Jonathan Ross worth six million? To which the answer was a resounding no.
One of the big three Greek television companies is to film THE ISLAND here over a period of ten months and Douglas put forward a proposal to the Beeb to cover the making of the series as a documentary to which the answer was no thanks because it wouldn’t be of interest to English audiences. A book that has sold millions and been translated into something like twenty languages and a heart-rending story set in the beautiful Med and it wouldn’t be of interest to English audiences? But English audiences switch on in droves I presume to watch RUSSIA by David Dimbleby. Like I said, the BBC is run by schoolchildren these days.