musical
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The Last Five Years
The Last Five Years is a rare breed. It is an (off) Broadway Hit Musical that has been very successfully adapted as a movie and avoided the disastrous transition from stage to screen that usually ruins most of Broadway’s exports. The simple story explores a five-year relationship between Cathy, a struggling actress, and her boyfriend…
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Beyond The Lights
This rag to riches music industry drama starts off in a grubby Town Hall in Brixton one of London’s rougher areas where Nona a frizzy-haired schoolgirl is stunning the audience at this Talent Show with her capella rendition of Nina Simone’s classic song Blackbird. She wins second place which immediately enrages her potty-mouthed pushy stage…
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Into The Woods
Hollywood has a knack of bungling the adaption of hit Broadway musicals when it tries to capture the same magic for the silver screen. Just think of the turgid ‘Les Miserables’ in 2012, or the excruciatingly painful ‘Nine’ in 2009. However when they get it right as with Tim Burton’s take on ‘Sweeney Todd’, or discovering…
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Topsy Turvey
In 1884 when ‘Princess Ida’ their latest Operetta for the D’Oyle Carte Company fails to ignite audiences like their previous hits it looks like the celebrated duo Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert’s run of success may be finally over. Sullivan, although newly knighted by Queen Victoria, is depressed and ill decamps to Europe vowing never…
