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Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers, and sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.
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I need a coffee.
- [00:10]
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And you need Lifelock because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com sponsored special offer terms apply.
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Acast powers the World's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
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Hello, Pablo Torre here, host of the Murrow Award winning and Peabody nominated show Pablo Torre Finds out from the Athletic, where we use journalism to investigate mysteries like whether the richest owner in sports helped fund a no show job or for his NBA superstar. In other words, Kawhi Leonard got from aspiration a $28 million no show job.
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Yeah, it's amazing.
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I'm honestly so jealous.
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Or how our friend Action Bronson feels about covering his calves. When was the last time you wore pants?
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I don't. Probably 15 to 20 years. The last time I put pants on I had an accident three times a week.
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Follow us down the rabbit hole on Pablo Torre finds out. Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your PODC.
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Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
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The stage musical adaptation of the romantic comedy film 50 First Dates is a lot like being on the perfect first date. It's engaging, it's charming. It might surprise you a little bit, however, just like somebody on a first date, it's not necessarily looking to explore that much hard hitting emotional depth. Oh my God. Hey Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media and today we are going to be talking about a brand new musical which recently premiered here in the UK at the other palace. This is 50 first dates of course based on the film of the same name which starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The conceit of which is that he meets her and then comes to find out after their first couple of encounters and a little bit of a discrepancy that she around a year previously had been in an accident rendering her now incapable of retaining short term memory. Meaning that every day her memory resets and she doesn't remember the day before. Nor does she remember the fact that she was in an accident, because the community and her family in the town where she lives love her so much and are protecting her from the harsh reality of her circumstances, which makes courting and falling in love with her very challenging. But it's also a hugely romantic notion, the idea of trying to make someone fall in love with you again, day after day after day. Now it has arrived in London as perhaps an unexpected new musical adaptation, largely because it sort of came out of nowhere. And it follows on the heels of countless other films turned into musicals. And amidst a little bit of perceived fatigue from a lot of audience members around, all of these films from the early 2000s now being turned into shows. Which prompts the did this need to be a musical in the first place? Is the material good enough to justify it now being a stage musical? Or is it just another cash grab? We will discuss that and more in today's full review. We're going to talk about the material material. We're going to talk about changes from the film, of which there are a handful, and we're going to talk, of course about performances, including the stars Georgina Castle and Josh Sinclair. These of course are just my own opinions, and I would love to hear yours as well. If you have seen 50 first dates already in London, let us all know what you thought in the comments section down below. And if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for more reviews and plenty of other content coming very soon. Or go follow me on podcast platforms. It's exactly the same review, only you don't see the lovely tourist hat that I'm currently wearing. Have an put this baby on in years. Perhaps you understand why. Anyway, with little further ado, let us answer the question. Is 50 first dates good date night material and also just a good musical? So let's begin, I think, with the capacity of this film and this story to become a decent musical. Because like I said, lots of films being turned into musicals. And I understand the fatigue, I really do. I also at the same time want to acknowledge that films have been turned into stage musicals for decades and the likes of A Little Nightmare Music and Sunset Boulevard and you know, a lot of gorgeous stage musicals, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the Producers, Hairspray, we don't often think as being like, oh, that's just a film put on stage. But when it's films within your own recent memory in your lifetime, like 50 first dates, then it might feel a Little bit more commercial. But because of the extraordinary capacity that the story has for romance, like I detailed in the explanation there, I think this actually deserves to be a musical. I think anything where you're playing with the idea of memory is intriguing on stage in how you can musicalize that story and theatricalize that story. This very bittersweet quality. There's something distinctly sorrowful about the realization of what's actually happening here, but at the same time extraordinarily romantic when viewed through this optimistic lens of this man trying to make her fall in love with him again every single day. That he has such an enormous capacity for love that he can do that and put himself through that pain. The pain being every new morning when, despite the beautiful connection they forged the night before, she has no idea who he is. And memory like this is something that has been explored thoroughly in musical theater. I'm thinking about shows like the Notebook recently, but also plenty of others that don't necessarily involve a quality of dementia. And one very interesting choice that this show has made is to tonally take a step away from the original film, because it's still a very sweet, very romantic, underrated film, I think, and one that, you know, would be remembered a little differently if it was a Nora Ephron and not an Adam Sandler. Originally written for the screen. I should say George Wing. But the musical lands us in a place that is still comedic and is light hearted, but is a touch more desperately romantic, a little bit more sincere. A big part of that is Josh Sinclair's performance as our leading character, the name of whom escapes me in this exact moment. I know that she's called Lucy. What the heck was his name? Gonna have to open my program here. Like a fool. Henry. Henry Roth. He's called Henry Roth. He is quite changed as a character. And Josh Sinclair is certainly not doing any kind of an Adam Sandler sort of a characterization. In fact, there are moments where in his zaniest comedy, he feels a little bit more Jim Carrey. And where in the film, I believe, Adam Sandler was a marine biologist on the precipice of doing some very exciting research. Henry Roth in the stage version. And I think this is a really smart choice that brings in all sorts of interesting parallels, is a travel blogger who has this sort of world famous travel blog in which he spends one per perfect day in a new city at a time which already instills this idea of him being sort of afraid of commitment or setting down roots and not really having a strong sense of family and community. Setting him up to be just as charmed and intoxicated by the community that he finds, as well as the girl that he finds. But obviously you also have his entire ethos being how to spend the perfect day. And Lucy, who at the time of his meeting her is only able to have one perfect day at a time because she forgets it by the next. And all of these people around her who are determined to give her that perfect day, where we get a sense of tension and a ticking clock creeping in here, is that he is about to sign a major deal that he has been excited about for some time in which he is able to take his travel blog series to Europe and have a series of perfect days in Italy and Germany and Spain and all of these exciting places. But before he can do that, it turns out that he has business to conclude in Key Largo. That's right, this is set in Florida. If you remember the film, you might recall that it was set in Hawaii, and for the handful of fairly straightforward reasons, they seem to have made the choice to transplant it to a different sort of similarly touristy, slightly tropical part of the United States. And it basically just means we still play ukuleles. The vibes are distinctly similar, but we're not encouraging Hawaiian tourism, nor are we casting it inappropriately. Everybody wins. Here's what else I can tell you about this adaptation, for which the book, music and lyrics have been written by David Rossmer and Steve Rosenberg. And it's been very many years since the couple of times that I saw the film. But it does seem that the majority of the dates that we see between Henry and Lucy tend towards the more romantic and the less comedic. There is less of a sense of him pursuing her, or at the very least if he is, he is recreating their initial meeting by encountering her in the diner and not trying to find her on her day to day around other parts of Key Largo and not really against the wishes of her family, there is still a strong reluctance from her father and brother to let all of this this take place because they're very protective of the way of life that they have now created for Lucy and this little bubble that they are keeping her in. But what I don't quite remember from the film, and perhaps I'm misremembering this, is the extent to which all of the other people in the community are so desperately rooting for Henry. They are so eager to see this love succeed and they get frustrated and upset with him when he considers giving up and moving away and Going on this trip to Europe. There's a lyric they sing during his repetitive courtship in they say I shouldn't like him, but I like him. And that's one of the many ways in which this musical version sort of moves the needle a little bit more towards the charming and the feel good and the romantic. It is still funny, but it's not the same kind of a zany, oddball comedy. We don't have the moment towards the end where he tries to go on a date with a different woman and then sort of can't get into it. It's really quite sincere and earnest after the two of them meet, which is also a little bit detrimental because he has this big character shift from this guy who can't commit to anything for more than 24 hours and who every day is going to a different city into someone who is staying put and driven to achieve this goal and make this woman fall in love with him. And it's sort of a sudden change and one that Josh doesn't really get to play all that steadily. And maybe there's an element of that that ought to rear its head in the structural third act of this 90 minute inter intermissionless show in which he suddenly starts to question everything and then moves away on that basis, and not just because she asks him to, when she realizes the pain that she must be causing him. There's a moment somewhere between halfway and two thirds into this show when it feels like there's just no source of tension whatsoever and everything is either going to work out happily or not. But because they have fairly early on devised this very successful system of reminding her each morning what had happened in her life up to that point and allowing her to carry on each day as though she can remember it. And she's keeping a diary and he's making videos for her, it does feel a little bit as though that would keep working. And the decision that they make to stop doing that is one that doesn't really make emotional sense. And what I think might help that is a little opening of the blinds, metaphorically speaking, and allowing some of the sorrow of her circumstances to come through just a little bit. There's one very striking, very impactful scene quite early on when she finds something she isn't supposed to and she sees a magazine or a comic in the garage and it tells her the date and things that ought not to have happened yet, because they're trying to persuade her that no time has passed from the day that she believes it is the day before her birthday, which I think is also a change from the film. And her response to that is this really visceral emotional breakdown in which she experiences this acute sense of betrayal from her family and this massive, sudden confusion about her circumstances and the world that she thought that she understood. It's a hugely disorientating concept, if you think about it, which is also the thing that prompts Henry to go about creating a video for her, because he realizes that the betrayal is worse than the realization of the truth. But that moment is sort of standalone in terms of real emotional grit and depth. And it's underscored by a little musical reprise in which one character, who was a friend of her mother's, who is also the proprietor of Ukulele Sue's, the diner where they meet, sings about what happens when Lucy has a bad day. A continuation of the song in which she explains to Henry what it is that they all do to make sure that doesn't happen. And I think that is a moment that we need a little bit more of in this show. I don't want to make it less feel good. I just think it'll feel even more good if we can also understand the darkness that exists there. And I think for something to go full romcom, we need to wade out a little bit further into the actual depth of these characters and into the difficult reality. I think for someone like Henry, there would come a moment where he realizes that he is investing all of himself in this relationship that may only be so fulfilling because she's going to forget him every day, and I think he may have something of a crisis about that, and then he might move away. This is a spoiler alert for something that happens way later in the show, but she decides to go to a memory institute and move away from her family. She encourages him to help her tear the pages out of her diary so that she forgets their relationship and he can move on with his life life and be spared of the pain of loving her and go to Europe. And so that happens. And it's a decent way of justifying the remaining 20, 30 minutes of the musical. But he gives a great recommendation, meanwhile, to Ukulele Suz on his blog post about Key Largo and what you should do if you want to spend the most perfect 24 hours there. The problem is, he comes back to Key Largo in order to tell them about it. They have a line out the door unexpectedly. They don't know why. They see his blog post. It's a nice, sweet moment. And then he turns up to be like, surprise. Are you happy? Happy? I just wanted to do something nice for you. He then gets sent a video message from Lucy's dad that shows her teaching art to other amnesiacs in the memory Institute and listening to one of them things that she likes, which includes the name Henry, though she can't quite understand why, prompting him to suddenly run to be by her side and see if she remembers him on some deeper emotional level, even though he is not retained in her short term memory. The realization that comes afterwards is that she has been painting him in all of these different pictures. Which is beautiful. And I'll tell about that in just a moment. But my problem with all of this is it would mean, I think, so much more if he hadn't come back from Europe yet. I think by the time he has already flown across the Atlantic from Germany or wherever he has been to come back to Key Largo, he's going to see her. He's already going to go and see her. He doesn't go back there without thinking about it. And so if he FaceTimed them on the morning of this big reveal at Ukulele Sue's to say, surprise. I put something in my blog. Is there a line outside? And that's a call. But he's far away. And we can have that entire scene still. But over FaceTime, there's even form for it in this show because there's another little funny scene between his agent and a potential business partner that happens over a zoom call. We see that represented on stage. He could then end this scene by saying, hold on, I'm getting another call. It's Lucy's dad. He's saying, take a look at this video I'm about to send you. He sees that. And then rather than just heading across town, he is running to an airport. He is running through the airport. We don't have to show all of that on stage, but we can imagine it. Not enough people. People run through airports anymore. That's what real romance is. Romance is a transatlantic flight at the last minute that you have to pay through the ass for. Romance is not getting an Uber across Key Largo. That's not the same to me. Anyway, with that as with the rest of the show, we just need the stakes to be that little bit higher. Now, I promised I would expand on the picture moment and it's actually a callback to something lovely that they have done. At the beginning of the show, which is in the preset on this set design, you see submitted photos of various real life couples, couples and their first dates. And if you sit there for long enough and watch this rotation of these hundreds of photos and this little slideshow thing with all of these snapshots, then you might see a familiar face. Myself and my stagey fiance, Aaron James, appear during the slideshow. What was I gonna do, not submit our picture to be part of a musical? That's the dream. That's the dream. Well, it's a dream. And I thought to begin with that that was just a nice thing that the producers were doing. It's a lovely evening. Imagine someone does that to surprise somebody and takes them to go and see the show and is like, look, there we are on the set. That's really sweet. I think that's a nice way of making this about a bigger story of love and first dates and that first moment igniting what will become a beautiful relationship. I think that's really meaningful, but I didn't realize how meaningful because it has an exact symmetry with how the moment, with all of the paintings and all the images of him is rendered, is visualized later on in the show. It's a callback to that slideshow, to that collage of all of these different images of love as his face, painted a dozen different ways, is plastered across the set as well, which is absolutely the defining emotional moment. Now let's talk a little bit more about the material. Let's talk about the book and the score, and also a couple of further successes and shortcomings.
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Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers. And sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.
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I need a coffee.
- [17:58]
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And you need lifelock, because your info is an endless place. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply.
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Thanks. Now, I really had my concerns about this score because they were keeping so much of it private. It's very unusual that a new musical would launch and you would hear so little of it on social media. But we had truly heard none of this music before going to see this show, and so I was pleasantly surprised that it was entirely decent. It's very familiar of contemporary musical theatre. It's not particularly finding a bold new sound. There's moments that are quite pastiche. There is one supporting character who works at the diner, who, Lucy remarks is new there because he started working there after her accident, so she's not able to forge long term memories of him, even though there is a fondness between them, sort of indicating that maybe be she is emotionally recalling people without understanding why. But his entire thing, and I'll remind you this is taking place in Florida, is that he used to work as a skipper on the Jungle Cruise and is armed with a handful of puns. He also works with turtles at a turtle sanctuary or volunteers with them. Hilarious character, wonderfully portrayed. And he has this dream of going back to Walt Disney World and working at Epcot. And he makes a handful of fun Disney references. He is an unashamed Disney adult, which I think is a nice quality to bring into this sweet, uninformed, inhibited show. It's also very Casey Nicolor, who has obviously worked a lot with Disney Theatrical on stage. And there's a nice series of musical Easter eggs to that character's identity in the score as well. Because there's songs that he sings about Key Largo as he's explaining what a lovely idyllic place it is. And they often have the feel of Disney songs. There's a moment that sounds very the Little Mermaid. There's another moment that sounds very Beauty and the Beast. It's giving true and a bit alarming. It's one of those. There's obviously a lot of very romantic songs. We have Love Song, have duets. We have a really great 11 o' clock number performed by Georgina Castle as she is kind of exploring her feelings and talking about what painting means to her. This is around the realization that she has some recollection of him that she can't process or place. But it is all absolutely and entirely a decent enough score. The show being a one act structurally, I think is another part of its. I'll call it a problem. But it's also a show in development essentially. I think here that this could expand and grow to be something more substantial and we could bring in more weight and there could be a little more tension and there could be turning points and we could just kind of transition the whole thing into the two act musical that I think it wants to be. There's a quality of slightness in having it as a one act. And there's something very Casey Nicolor about it as well, who does great work and who does visually exciting work and who is a director and a choreographer who often finds a way to make everything very slick and very efficient, which serves many stories and a lot of Disney stuff very, very well. And with a show like this, you do want it to just find those moments where it's a little more messy, it's a little more raw and we can really stop and set down somewhere without kind of moving at a pace into the next thing. We need to find the real emotional honesty somewhere. And I think a lot of that is going to come with the tricky stuff, the likes of which we seem to gloss over in favor of getting to the finale within 90, 90 minutes. And I say 90 minutes, it might actually be closer to like 95, 100. Either way, I think this wants to have an interval and there's a lot of obvious places where you could put one. And it just wants to be a little bit longer. But it's not going to get longer without problems and challenges and that sort of uncomfortable sensation that people are making the wrong choices and moving apart from each other and you have to will them to get back together because then it's satisfying. If you know it's always going to happen, then it's sweet and it's lovely, lovely. But it's, it's not quite as fulfilling. It doesn't have that rom com movie ending. What I will say though is I think the book is actually really lovely. There's a lot of very witty moments. I like particularly the character of Lucy, that she isn't pushed into quite so naive a corner because she is smart and independent and creative and deeply caring about her family, her community, her students. And she has these great moments of wit as well. She has this wonderful sense of humor that they have written in. There's one line where she talks about having grown up in Key Largo and always lived there. And she says she learned to walk with this stool right here. And then Henry, who of course has moved all around and has no sense of home, says, don't you get bored? Or something like that? And she says, no, I love walking. Which is charming, funny, brilliantly delivered by Georgina Castle. It is almost every moment really very sweet, very charming, easy to enjoy. It goes down like a lovely rum based cocktail on a sunny day. And maybe I just want something more substantial than a first date can provide. But for what it's worth, I think this story does as well. I have a couple of other reservations about little things in the show because I told you about the character of sue, who was the best friend of Lucy's late mother, which is the sense of grief that already motivates a lot of the dynamics within her family and the way that they are trying to protect her. Only there's a little bit of an oddity here where we never see sue interact with Lucy. Lucy directly. Not really. Lucy is almost always only in conversation with the men in her life. And what we really want to try and sidestep here, which they, for the most part, do a good job of, is the notion of her father and brother giving permission to this man to change her life and to take charge of her days because. And there's been a little criticism of the film to this end. It starts to feel like she is not able to really consent to this life and to this relationship without a demonstrable indication that this is really what she wants, which they managed to find. Well, in this. I just also, I really like the one moment that we get where she reconnects with her female friends and they get to tell her about how their lives have changed in the year since her accident. That's a lovely moment. I wish we had more of it. I need some Bechdel Test passing dialogue up here in 50 first dates. That's what we need. My other thing, and perhaps this is a little sensitive of me, is I wish there were one other character with dementia or Alzheimer's so that you could also explore that version of it. They keep teasing at this notion that maybe on some level she is remembering things. The very final image of the show, Spoiler alert. Is one in which she goes to snuff out a candle on a birthday cake, which is something she told Henry she did earlier. He was shocked by this and saying, you mean you don't blow it out? And she was like. And spit on the cake. That's crazy. But in the final moment, she has this sort of recollection and then blows out the candle. And you can see that it means a lot to he him. And I don't love the notion that we are suggesting that everything is eventually going to get better for people with memory loss or that that's the only solution. There's also a moment in the Memory Institute where there is a joke about unnamed memory loss character who does not remember who Lucy is despite the fact that she has just walked out of the room. And I don't think that we should be using that as a punchline. It might even be a little bit ableist. And I say all of this not because I don't realize that it's a romantic comedy, but because I'm thinking about some of the audience members and will be some, I promise you, who have some personal experience with the really devastating impact of dementia and Alzheimer's. And I think for them to See a story about how, you know, you can just find a workaround and it's eventually going to start healing and getting better. I think that's quite disingenuous and I would love for the show to find a way to also speak more honestly and truthfully to that experience and those audience members alongside. If there was a parent parallel with another character and we got to see some of the grit of Lucy's circumstances through that, that could even be the thing that motivates her to push him away. Because she sees an older couple, perhaps, who are really struggling to reconnect to each other. There is an older couple in the show. And spoiler alert once again, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. She randomly dies moments before the end of the thing, which is one of the two occasions on which I cried, which is a good thing. You know, I'm crying twice in 50 first dates. That's review enough. But they are so well situ to be a couple experiencing a parallel of the hardship of this relationship. One who Lucy sees and goes, I can't ask him to do this for the rest of his life. She will realize in that moment that that is what their future might look like. And then she pushes him away. Honestly, hire me as a dramaturg. I have all of the ideas to fix this show. Anyway, there is one more thing I need to tell you about, and that is the charming performances. Let's talk about the company of 50 first dates. Now. It is no secret that I'm a huge fan of Josh Sinclair and Georgina Castle. I think they are both wonderful in this. They are brilliant on stage together. And I love in particular that she is getting to play a role where she is really acting on stage. She is such a sunny and lovely person that it's sort of hilarious to see her playing these more nefarious and mean spirited roles. She was a great Regina George. She was a fun little standout in the original cast of Angela Webber's Cinderella Take a Shot. I mentioned the show. Her as Lucy is so much more familiar of who she is as a person. And she is still belting up there at the top of her range, sounding fantastic. And she still has these moments of sharp, biting wit. And it's as satisfying to watch her fall in love with him as it is to watch her openly reject him on the days that it doesn't work critically. The chemistry between the two of them is also super believable. And this initial spark and first meeting that I think is a deceptively difficult, difficult thing to really get right and they do it very well. But it's a really mature version of this character from her. Like I said, the quality of naivety is gone. She is just a lovely, selfless person, the way that she is presented, who deeply cares about her family and her community. And that I think helps as well because it starts to feel a little inappropriate perhaps that they are treating her as a child when she's so to close clearly isn't. Then we have the wonderful Josh Sinclair, who is a terrific leading man, like I said, not particularly Adam Sandlerish. She is not very Drew Barrymore esque for what it's worth either. And I think that's a choice that makes sense and that works. There's not quite enough in his material for him to really enjoy the full arc of transformation because like I said, he switches pretty quickly and then shows few signs of wanting to go back to that previous life. That's something that in the way his character is written, perhaps he ought to be able to grapple with a little bit more that he still does want to go to Europe, but also this. This girl that he just met, but also this exciting opportunity that he's always cared about. But also all of these people here, like we should see a little bit more of that. And he talks through it, but he just feels so emotionally changed in an instant that it's sort of moot. It's like with him coming back at the end, we already know what he's going to do because he's already made the choice. Choice, really. He is deeply charismatic. However, he manages to sidestep seeming problematic or seeming controlling and manipulative at the very beginning, which I think is a very important thing. You could so easily go down the wrong path here with him being this non committal womanizer who sleeps with a different woman in every city, which it's still sort of implied that he does, and then turns up and pursues her. We don't want it to feel like the middle of Groundhog Day, which interestingly enough is a really astute comparison comparison for this show because in some ways it's the same thing with him being the one who is cognizant of the repeating of each day. In other ways it's a role reversal because she's the one sort of trapped inside of it. But he also sings like a dream, leads with confidence and is very easy to fall in love with. Which brings us to the delightful supporting cast. And there is too much talent on this stage for me to talk about every single individual, but I'm going to highlight the standout performances. Aisha Nomi Pease and Ricky Rojas do a lovely job as Ukulele sue and her partner Marco working looking at this diner. John Marquez and Charlie Toland play Lucy's father and her brother Doug who are deeply protective of her. Doug comically so. This was the role played by Sean Astin in the film version and they don't acknowledge that he has any kind of a steroid addiction in the stage show. Probably again a good choice, but the character is just as comic and when he is eventually won over to the idea of Head Henry being a decent guy and he invites him to play Settlers of Catan with him. Hilarious to me. He has a bunch of tattoos, he has tan lines painted onto his arms presumably, unless he's gone out and really committed to this characterization. And he has a couple of comedy lines that really slice these scenes apart with moments of such extended laughter that utterly take us by surprise. Brilliant characters, the two of them. I wish John Marquez had more moments because it's sort of like there's a quiet dignity in the extraordinary love that he has for his daughter. And there's a moment towards the end where he expresses this regret and this shame that he has been needlessly holding on to and there's some beautiful moments where the two of them come together. I wish he got to do a little bit more. I wish there was a more substantial song that he got to have about it. Again, two act version of the show we can explore all of these things, but the real scene stealers whose ascendancy in the world of musical theatre I have been rooting for for some time are Chad St. Louis and Natasha O'. Brien. I have known what a star Natasha O' Brien is for years and she doesn't even get to show off her full vocal chops in this show. Wait until you also hear her sing. But she is hysterically funny. She plays Henry's agent suffering from afar and Dean deeply showbiz and insincere in the way she calls him and pitches these deals and says how's my favorite client doing? Before hanging up the phone and struggling with her Siri and calling another person to say how's my favorite client doing? She's clearly fake. She's this fast talking entertainment cliche, but we hang on her every single word because she is such a well pitched character. Perfectly cast in this role. Natasha o' Brien is doing glorious things. I sort of resent that she bows with the first half of the ensemble rather than the featured characters of which I think she is one. And I have no idea how you write that character a song to go into the show, but I think she deserves one. I think she needs one. Either that or I just want to hear it. She's a star. I've known this for years and I'm not going to stop rooting for her. Then we have Chad St. Louis, who from my perspective has only really appeared within the last few years and is suddenly the most exciting person on stage in a bunch of different shows. Chad St. Louis is wonderful, utterly unique as a performer, brilliant, audacious vocal range, but so utterly lovable. Wonderful performance in this. He plays the character of Sandy, who the server I told you about at Ukulele Sues, who longs to return to Disney World and work at Epcot, who becomes very close with Henry. The two of them each catalyze moments of discovery for the other, but he takes such utter ownership of the moments which he is leading on stage. Whether it's a production number, whether it's a scene that he is in, whether it's dialogue with Henry or with Lucy, whether he's in the background slow dancing with a turtle. It's wonderful. Every single moment that Chad St. Louis is on stage is a gift which I hope speaks to what a charming and warm and delightful show 50 First Dates is. Yes, there are ways in which this could be extended. There are ways in which it could come to mean a little bit more. It could be a more substantial version. This is still the world premiere production. There's every possibility that it may grow into that, like a great first date. It could bloom into something more meaningful, more long lasting and really deeply special and emotionally connecting. And I hope that it does. But in the meantime, I encourage you to have a lovely date night and go and see it for yourselves at the other Palace Theatre in London. And do tell me if you see one of the earliest pictures of me and Erin James in the pre show. And of course, if you've already seen the show, I would love to know what you think in the comments section down below. I'm sure we all would. Please share all of your thoughts about 50 First Dates the Musical. And if you've enjoyed listening to mine, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on those notifications Notifications so you don't miss any upcoming videos or go follow me on podcast platforms. As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
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