The Emerald City

ActingDude17 · Mr. Dude

Musicals You've Seen On Broadway, Tour, Professional

Broadwayprincess19 · Veteran Member

Broadway:

Rent
Wicked
Once upon a mattress

Professional:
Phantom of the opera

Tour
The Lion King

gelphaba · Moderator

Quick question...what do you mean by "professional"? Like how professional?

ActingDude17 · Mr. Dude

I guess I mean an Equity performance.

Mariphaba · Madame Maribel

Hmm.....my list is long. But keep in mind I lived in London for 7 years. An West End is basically what london has instead of broadway. But i think the west end is like 10 times better then broadway. wink

Broadway
The Lion King
Annie Get Your Gun
Hairspray
Wicked (twice)
Avenue Q
The Light in the Piazza
Spring Awakening

West End
Beauty and the Beast
Oliver!
Les Miserables (three times)
Blood Brothers
The Phantom of the Opera (three times)
Wicked (twice)
RENT
The Sound of Music
The Woman in White
The Mousetrap
Joseph
Chicago
Parade
Cats (twice)
Sunday in the park with george
Billy Elliot
Cabaret
The Lord of the Rings

Tour:
Wicked
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Les Miserables
Mamma Mia!

Professional:
I don't even know

one_short_day · Moderator

Wow! You have seen ALOT mariphaba!

Critter · Old Reg

ive never actually been to broadway as ive never been to america. but ive seen some musicals in the theatre in my town.

Cats
The Who's Tommy
As you like it - ( Even though its Shakespeare i consider this o ne a musical. it had three songs in it and lots of music and dance. The company who did it added a lot in themselves i think)
Rent
Spring Awakening
Bugsy Malone

and im seeing Wicked on opening night in one of the big theatres in Melbourne. thats on july 9th

one_short_day · Moderator

aww.. I wish I was seeing wicked that soon.. Gosh.. I cant wait till 2009!

gelphaba · Moderator

ActingDude17 wrote:

I guess I mean an Equity performance.

Does it have to be a popular theatre???

ActingDude17 · Mr. Dude

Not really, as long as it's Equity.

Starlene · Veteran Member

My list is not so long, yet...

Mamma Mia!, international tour. I've actually seen it twice, since MM! tour was in Finland in 2007 and 2008, and of course I had to see it both times, being a huge ABBA fan since I was nine years old. It was better the first time, though, maybe because I'd already seen the movie three times before I saw the show the second time. :D Still, I had really fun both times!

Cats, professional, the Lahti city theatre. I've seen Cats twice too, and this time it was even better the second time. I really liked it since I saw it the first time, though. (And jumped around and giggled the whole day when my mother said that she wanted to see it too, and she could get the tickets. :D) It was just so great, the costumes were very imaginative and colourful in that version. The choreography was very energetic, so much was happening every minute of the show. The music was so great, too. And the first time I was lucky enough to sit only five lines from the stage!

ActingDude17 · Mr. Dude

UPDATE

BROADWAY

Wicked (x2 come June)
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The Phantom of the Opera (come June)

TOUR

RENT (x2 as of tomorrow)
The Lion King
Mamma Mia! (as of 2.5.09)

Elphabatobe · Veteran Member

BROADWAY
Wicked
Hairspray
The Lion King
Chicago
Phantom of the Opera (Row 5, Center!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

OFF BROADWAY
The Altar Boyz

TOUR
Jesus Christ Superstar (/w Ted Neely)

A Wonderful Obsession · Old Reg

I got started very late. Wicked was really my first. I'd only seen local theatre before, and not too much of that.

I'm set to see Fiddler on the Roof when it comes to LA shortly. I chose to not see Phantom right now (since I don't like it), and thats good. Closing night tickets are 2,000 dollars for center orchestra now.

I'd really like to see Miss Saigon, but it never seems to be playing here. I think the consequences of the US defeat in Vietnam aren't too popular with the antiwar hippies who caused it.

Mariphaba · Madame Maribel

ooh i really really really want to see miss saigon! You're right though, it seems like it's hardly playing anywhere.

oh and add In the heights to my broadway list :D

Starlene · Veteran Member

Only three weeks left before winter holiday... Then I'll get three more things to add in my list: Grease, The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked. I simply can't wait!

Starlene · Veteran Member

Correct that, four things! Sorry for the double posting, but I've been wanting to write a little review or something for days... So, there are the musicals I saw in London:

The first one was Grease. My absolute favourite movie when I was a kid, and I still love the music and thought it would be cool live. I thought there would be some great choreography and it would be awesome to hear the songs live.
Well, actually it was a waste of money. They played the songs so loud I couldn't even hear all the words, and all the instruments drowned in the noice. The acting was pretty poor (even more so than in the worst parts of the film ;D) and the dancing wasn't too good, neither. The stage was so small there wasn't even room for good choreography... Yeah. I recommend the movie for everyone and this version of the musical for no one.
Three points out of ten.

The second one: The Phantom of the Opera.
This was beyond awesome! Though I didn't catch the most of what they were singing, the music was beautiful, everything looked so beautiful too, and the mood was just wonderful. The story was so mysterious... I'm listening to the cd right now! (And from what I've heard this far, the guy I saw playing Phantom was somehow better that the one on the cd. He was great.)
Weird that I always find less to say about good movies, musicals and such than bad...
9/10

The third: Wicked. Now, here's the one you've been waiting for to read... ;D
Hmm... It was nice. Still, every part I've seen on Youtube, like Popular and Defying Gravity had this feeling "I've seen this already", since it seems Wicked is pretty much the same everywhere where it's played (not like Cats, for example, those who are familiar with the West End/Broadway Cats wouldn't probably have recognized the Finnish version to be the same show, it was so much more colourful...). And the music was, in my opinion, a bit better on the cd. They sung very nicely, though.
May seem very negative, but maybe it's just because a little while before the show started we got some bad news about a close relative of our family, so that might've affected how I felt at the show...
6½/10

The fourht: Les Misérables. Of course three wasn't enough for me, since one of them was so awful... So, me and my father went to the ticket stall at Leicester Square and got the tickets to Les Mis. Dad had been with me only in Grease, so I thought he should get a chance to see something worth seeing, too. And we both enjoyed this one very much! As with the Phantom, I did hardly get anything they sung, but this one, too, looked and sounded so beautiful!
8/10

And, to get the message extra long, some notes I made about differences between Finnish and English theatre behaviour, maybe someone's interested:

For a start, in Finland definately no one eats candy or ice cream in theatre. That's okay in the movies, but here going to the theatre is more, hard to find a word, dignified maybe. You can eat something, like a pastry, in the intermission, but not in the auditorium. And you definately can't drink beer out of a plastic cup during the show!
We also always dress in better clothes than normally (though I did wear my worn-out Mamma Mia! t-shirt when the show visited Finland the second time ;D). This was not possible now, for me, since I didn't have room for those nicer clothes in my bag. No one sits in the auditorium with their couts, they're always left in the cloakroom here.
And the third thing, you never see a standing ovation in Finland. There was one in Wicked and Les Mis. I thought it was odd, the only time I've seen that happen was in Mamma Mia! (where I was one of the first ones to stand up... I thought it belongs to the etiquette to dance around a bit at the end of that. I bet the actors would've been kinda freaked out if the audience had given the usual Finnish applause, no screaming/whistling/standing up/singing along/anything, just sitting there politely and clapping your hands...)
Yeah, that's another thing. My school's principal would've torn her hair out if she'd been there in the shows, the screaming was so loud... She always reminds us it's not polite to scream in the end of any show... :D

And since I know there's a lot of theatre fans on this forum, I'll end by asking one question: What's the difference between an understudy and an standby?

-- Edited by Starlene at 14:37, 2009-02-21

-- Edited by Starlene on Tuesday 14th of July 2009 02:03:43 PM

A Wonderful Obsession · Old Reg

Starlene wrote:

For a start, in Finland definately no one eats candy or ice cream in theatre. That's okay in the movies, but here going to the theatre is more, hard to find a word, dignified maybe. You can eat something, like a pastry, in the intermission, but not in the auditorium. And you definately can't drink beer out of a plastic cup during the show!
We also always dress in better clothes than normally (though I did wear my worn-out Mamma Mia! t-shirt when the show visited Finland the second time ;D). This was not possible now, for me, since I didn't have room for those nicer clothes in my bag. No one sits in the auditorium with their couts, they're always left in the cloakroom here.
And the third thing, you never see a standing ovation in Finland. There was one in Wicked and Les Mis. I thought it was odd, the only time I've seen that happen was in Mamma Mia! (where I was one of the first ones to stand up... I thought it belongs to the etiquette to dance around a bit at the end of that. I bet the actors would've been kinda freaked out if the audience had given the usual Finnish applause, no screaming/whistling/standing up/singing along/anything, just sitting there politely and clapping your hands...)
Yeah, that's another thing. My school's principal would've torn her hair out if she'd been there in the shows, the screaming was so loud... She always reminds us it's not polite to scream in the end of any show... :D

And since I know there's a lot of theatre fans on this forum, I'll end by asking one question: What's the difference between an understudy and an standby?

-- Edited by Starlene at 14:37, 2009-02-21

In the US we most definitely do not eat in the theater. Most of us dress nicely, though a few hip and trendy folks like to dress casually. We do not have a cloakroom, people would steal the coats. Standing ovations are not uncommon, but they generally signify some special event (ie a last performance or a first performance).

I believe an understudy is the planned replacement while the standby is the go-to in case of a short-term change.

Mariphaba · Madame Maribel

i thought it was more like, the understudy takes over if the actor gets sick and can't make a performance (and knows in advance). And a standby is one who takes over at a moments notice (i.e. when idina fell and cracked her ribs in wicked, her standby came on to finish the show).

A Wonderful Obsession · Old Reg

Yes, thats exactly what I though Mari.

Mariphaba · Madame Maribel

oh haha okay. i was confused

Starlene · Veteran Member

Okay, thanks for clarifying that for me! :)

Starlene · Veteran Member

Douple-posting away again, sorry...

Spring Awakening
I saw Helsinki's city theatre's version of Spring Awakening a couple of days ago.
It was very dark dealing with so many difficult subjects, but I still really liked it. Too bad they had a double cast, though: I was waiting to see an actor who was really good in Cats, but he wasn't in the cast I saw... Well, still awesome!
Can't say too much about the music, since I can't remember more than that I liked it.

The ovation wasn't enthusiastic at all, though. Maybe the whole audience didn't like it like I and my friend who was there with me did...

Mariphaba · Madame Maribel

Yeah Spring Awakening definitely only appeals to a certain type of audience i guess, teens definitely. I mean it's not something i'd ever take my mum to.

Starlene · Veteran Member

Back from London, I had so much fun and saw three musicals (sadly no Wicked, though):

Les Misérables
Looked and sounded so beautiful, still! Les Mis is my absolute favourite musical, at the moment. (I've been listening to the 10th anniversary recording the whole day, literally! :D) There was something wrong, though: Fantine was just awful. I don't know who the actress was, since I got the big souvenir program and not the smaller one with the actors. She sounded and acted like she was drunk from after I Dreamed a Dream to the end of the show, it was especially bad when she was hallucinating about Cosette... And her IDaD just sounded too loud, in my opinion.
But then again, Javert was just awesome and had a totally great, strong, powerful voice! So nice, and makes the Fantine thing up pretty nicely! Also, One Day More sounded even better live than I remembered, and the Thénardiers were very good.
9/10

Billy Elliott: The Musical
Not much songs that would stuck to your head, but awesome dancing! I could hardly understand what they were saying, though, since they talked in some weird North English accent... It was a bit depressing when everybody else was laughing away and I was still figuring out what the line meant... ;P I've never been to a show where audience laughed so much as in here, btw. But yeah, the Billys, since there were three of them, were all so good dancers!
6/10

The Lion King
I was there with my mum, and she paid a lot for the tickets, so we got to sit in some of the best seats in the whole auditorium, straight in front of the stage on the first balcony thing, Royal Circle or whatever it was called. And the show was very beautiful, great effects, costumes and such, and a couple of pretty catchy songs (but no more than a couple).
Then again, the hyenas were beyond annoying, a villain as cool as Scar should have some less maniacly laughing sidekicks, I think. And maybe the show's aimed to little kids, but there was hardly any in the auditorium, and the plot really suffered when they apparently felt they had to put in a joke after every serious minute so the kids won't get bored.
5½/10