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Are there too many musicals in concert? | The problem with musical concerts in West End theatres
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Mickey Jo
The thing is, I don't even think I would be complaining about this at all if the tickets were priced accordingly. But when you have a concert version of a show that is charging as much or in some cases more than a fully staged West End production, that's where I have a problem. West End theater. You in danger, girl. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back. My name is Mickey Jo and I'm obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic and a content creator here on social media. And today, after seeing this discussed extensively online for almost the last year or so, I posed to you the question, are there too many concert versions of musicals being produced in London's West End? And to quote Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita, the answer is yes and no. And that's because the quality of these productions, like anything else that we see on stage, can vary. This is likely something you will already know if you've seen multiple for yourself, or if you've seen my reviews of various different concert productions over the last few years here on my channel. But certainly of late, we are seeing more and more shows being produced in concert with less and less of an explanation. Because the other thing with these concert productions is it isn't just the quality of the end product to be considered, it's also the necessity of doing it that way in the first place. Why produce the thing in concert in a giant theater for one or two nights only in London, where previously you used to be a producer who would produce, you know, a limited run in a fringe space in an off West End space for a considerably more accessible ticket price? There's plenty to discuss about this topic. I'm going to talk about some of the upcoming concert productions, but I am not trying to lampoon any one particular concert or any one particular producer much. But let's get into it. Let's talk about all of these staged concerts. Are they ever a good enough alternative for an actual fully staged show? Which producers are bringing us the best consistent quality? What is the future of these productions? Should we be getting excited about them? And what are the details about them that are making me confused? Lots to talk about. But if you enjoy today's video and you want to stay connected to all of the latest theatre news, not only in the West End, but also on Broadway and occasionally worldwide, make sure to subscribe to me here on YouTube. If that's where you're seeing this video, feel free to follow me on podcast platforms as well and on other social media channels. You can find me as ickyjotheatre on TikTok, Instagram and the app formerly known as Twitter. I have strong opinions all over the Internet. For now though. Are there too many concert musicals in London? Let's find out. So to begin with, let's define what I'm actually talking about here and these concert versions of shows. Because this is something that has been happening for a while, but certainly is happening more and more recently. And yet when I say concert production, there is a tremendous variety within that as to what I'm even talking about because you have an entire spectrum of how stage the thing is going from something that is literally performed at music stands, with microphones, with script in hand, occasionally literally just being performed as the material that does not bear a resemblance to a fully staged show, all the way up to something that is entirely costumed, entirely staged, entirely choreographed, has a set, has, you know, a remarkable amount of infrastructure and plays for a week and then transfers to another venue and plays another week that barely resembles a concert anymore. It's just a sort of a teaser presentation of a yet to be fully produced show. And that's not even a good definition because it is being fully produced. It's just being fully produced for a very limited amount of time. By which I mean that those producers haven't yet found a theatre for that show to play an extended run in. And the Palladium or Drury Lane were the only houses that were available. Now, like I said, concert versions of book musicals have existed for as long as I have been going to the theatre. I fondly remember going to the Sondheim Theatre, then named the Queen's Theatre, to go and see Soho Cinders in concert. This was a presentation of a musical that had yet to rece full run or a full staging. And it was very much done in concert. There was choreography and there were fantastic performances and it was a killer cast, which is another component of these things because in terms of getting people to be available for a one night only or two night only commitment, you can usually get quite a starry cast. You don't have to guarantee their availability for months at a time. And this kind of a concert is something we still see. I'm reminded of youf Lie in April earlier this year, which had a sort of a little presentation version at Theatre Royal Drury Lane and subsequently has been mounted as a full production which is already open as of a few weeks ago at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. So that show kind of did its job in promoting the show, revealing it to an audience and launching it into the public consciousness, both for prospective audience members and potentially also for investors, interested parties. Just kind of birthing the show into the world, getting it on stage, also getting it in front of an audience and seeing what works. It's a way of doing kind of like a public workshop, really, but on a very large scale. Then by the time you come to produce the show in the West End, people already have a little bit of buzz about it. Maybe you got some reviewers into those first few performances. So you already have some pull quotes, you already have some stars to put on the posters in the run up to your first preview at the venue. You're not waiting trying to sell tickets with nothing to utilize. You have imagery, you have music, you have video, you have all of the word of mouth from the many, many people who went to this very big theatre in London who went to go and see the show. So there's a smartness in that. Now youw Lie in April is a musical by Frank Wildhorn based on the manga and anime of the same name. Previously to this he also wrote Death Note. This also received a concert presentation in the UK last year. And the reason I'm using air quotes here is because this was scarcely a concert version of the show. It had several performances at the London Palladium and then a handful more performances, I believe, at the Apollo Theatre, I think is where it went afterwards. Either that or the lyric. I get them confused constantly. They're next to each other. But the extent to which director Nick Winston fully staged and realized this production, you had fully costumed characters. And these costumes are not like, you know, just going down the street and buying some clothes. These are elaborate Japane monster fantasy characters on this convoluted set with a huge amount of tech elements. The whole thing fully staged, a substantial cast. It was a significant undertaking. And nothing about this said to audiences. Concert version. What it is is a sort of a different thing that we're seeing kind of like youe Lie in April, where it's this sort of teaser presentation version of the show, but they don't want it to be eligible for awards yet. So it's, you know, it's framed as a concert, it's framed as a workshop, it's framed as a version to anticipate the full thing that's going to come later when we get Death Note in the West End. And I'm saying when because I do believe it's going to happen at some point. Are we anticipating it's going to look substantially different to that concert version? Or do we think they're just going to bring back that same staging because honestly, that worked. But launching a new musical isn't the only reason to produce a concert. One of the most compelling reasons that we often see is some kind of an anniversary. Earlier this year I went to see Maiden Dagenham in concert. This was being produced around the 10th anniversary of the show being in London. And if you want to go and see my full thoughts on that, you can go and watch the video. I didn't think that this was produced quite to the same standard that we have seen in other concert productions. And, you know, it was a little bit confusing because there wasn't much of an attachment of this concert version to the original version of the show. When you're doing a one night only concert and it's about the anniversary of a thing, it's nice to have some link to the thing that you're celebrating. But this wasn't a reunion of any original cast members. This was a new, mostly very good cast performing the show 10 years later at the Palladium without much of a set. That's not to say original cast members weren't involved, but I don't believe they were involved in an on stage capacity. One original cast member was involved in producing the show, which was also the case for Spring Awakening a few months later, which devastatingly, I did not get the chance to see. But I heard fantastic things about it. Now, this was a reunion of most of the show's original West End cast, joined by Jamie Moscato as Malk and rising star Jack Wolfe as the other one. Oh, God, I have seen this show. Moritz. Moritz Stiefel. There you go. And this was produced by the brilliant Jack Maple, who is also a rising star in the theatre industry and a fantastic producer who gave us the incredible Witches of Eastwick concert last year that I'll probably talk about again in this video alongside new producer Evelyn Hoskins, who also happens to have been an original company member of that West End production, who also appeared in the reunion concert. And this is something that concert presentations of shows can be really great for because principally they are about the material. And I've talked about staging and I've talked about costuming, but I'm of the opinion that if the material is performed well enough, those things don't really matter. And if you're going to see a concert version of the show, you're just going to see it and hear it performed well. And you won't mind in that setting that it's divorced from Its context just a little bit, and performers who played the roles 10, 20 years ago, who have possibly aged out of the ability to play them convincingly on stage, can play them once more and can sing them once more. I'm reminded of a carousel concert that happened a few years ago when Janie Dee and Joanna Riding reprised their roles from the 1990s Beloved National Theatre production directed by Nicholas Heitner. An incredibly special thing to bring back on stage, which I think was also Jack Maple and, you know, concert presentations give us the chance to do that. Another one which was celebrating an anniversary was the concert production of Pippin recently at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. That sort of surprised me in how incredibly well put together it was and how strong all of the elements were. That was. That was a really fantastic evening at the theater and it gave a handful of performers the opportunity to play roles that they're really perfect for. I mean, ZZ Stralin as Frastrada, Lucy Jones as Catherine, Jack Yarrow as Pippin. These were all, you know, great fits in these roles. And then you had the wonderful Patricia Hodge playing Bertha, a tribute to her performance in the original production as Catherine many, many years later. The other thing with some of these concerts is that they don't always stay as just a concert. I'm reminded of the Bonnie and Clyde concert that took same venue, Theatre Royal Drury Lane in January of 2022, which was originally going to be with original Broadway stars Jeremy Jordan and Laura Osnes. And then she didn't end up doing it because of poor choices and was replaced with another rising star, Frances May McCann. This ended up being a launch pad for the UK arrival of a fully staged version of Bonnie and Clyde that, you know, it hadn't been produced in the West End prior to this concert that was reuniting original Broadway members of the cast and, you know, just on the strength of the show's enduring popularity and the Jeremy Jordan of it all, and the cast recording this brought it to the UK and then paved the way for a production at the Arts Theater, a production at the Garrick Theatre and a subsequent UK tour. But very much Bonnie and Clyde entered the UK musical theatre consciousness in a big way, initially because of that concert version, which incidentally was filmed and you can go and watch online. But what I've wondered since then is have other producers began to see the pathway that Bonnie and Clyde found and eyed it for themselves as a potentially more lucrative way of bringing a show back into the West End or putting a show back out on tour? That's Kind of what I thought was going to happen with Made in Dagenham. As of right now, nothing has been announced, but is that what they were trying to do with the Addams Family? So this was produced earlier this year, I think. Yeah, February at the London Palladium. I remember it was February because I thought, why on earth wouldn't you do it in October? Because that's the month to do all things Addams Family. Just ask any amateur theatre group around the country. That's when they. And do it. It's like doing Elf in July. It would just be strange, but when I saw the show, I realized that aside from the new casting, which featured Ramin Karimlu and Michelle Visage among a talented ensemble cast, this was ostensibly the same production that had toured the UK twice previously and had never managed to find a way into the West End. But rather than put it out on another tour, was this remounting as a concert version for a couple of nights at the London Palladium, a way of trying to, you know, recreate more interest in the show and get, I don't know, more producers, more investors interested in the project? I don't know, I have no insight into this. I'm just theorizing that it may have been a possibility because we are seeing more and more producers doing this kind of a format. We are seeing more producers entering the foray when it comes to producing concerts. And there are some that have been doing it for a long time and do it incredibly well. And there are others that are sort of taking more and more steps into this medium and not necessarily delivering the goods. Why didn't I sidestep then and tell you about some of the concert productions I've seen that haven't necessarily been fantastic? So I mentioned the maiden Dagenham one already and the issues for me around this were largely tech based in the first instance because. And this is the most important thing, if you are going to see a concert production or really anything on stage, the most important elements are that you can see it consistently, which means good, effective, consistent lighting. And also hear the thing, which is the number one biggest complaint I end up having. And I end up hearing from other people about concert productions. And generally a hallmark of this kind of a production is that the whole thing is put together a little bit faster. It is normally a rapid rehearsal process. Everything comes together quite quickly and it would seem as though. And again, I haven't been involved in any of these as a producer. I am just saying what I have heard in a couple of instances not in this one specifically. The theatre police are coming for me. They've heard what I've said. It would seem as though insufficient time is being allocated for technical rehearsal, for sound and for lighting, because we get into these spaces for these concerts and you just can't hear the thing. And there is nothing more frustrating than when fantastic talent is on stage and you can't hear them over a band, or you just can't hear anything and you have poor sound. And this has happened far too many times. This was one of my issues with Maiden Dagnan. The other issue I had is that it just didn't feel like it really fit the space and filled the space. And, you know, it was an anniversary production that retained none of the original cast members on that stage. From what I know, it had some fantastic cast members who, you know, really ought to be able to do a version of the show. So it gave them that opportunity. Bonnie Langford belting out that song I Will Never Forget in the second act. But wouldn't it have made more sense, rather than the Palladium, to do it at the Adelphi? You know, you're celebrating the anniversary of the West End show. The West End show, when it happened, was at the Adelphi, and there are nights off from Back to the Future, which is currently running there. I've seen, again, a new musical workshop presentation on, I think, a Monday or a Tuesday night at the Adelphi when Back to the Future didn't have a show when that theatre would be dark. It feels as though that would have been the most obvious fit for Made In Dagenham. So why does it end up at the Palladium instead? Does it have something to do with the fact that the Palladium is considerably larger as a venue and they can sell more tickets and they can make more money? This is the same conclusion that I arrived to with the concert production of Once that was done at the Palladium with Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jamie Moscato. Remember that one? That was last year, I think. Again, I reviewed it here on my channel and one of the things I talked about. I don't remember having issues with the tech, but that space is huge. And for a show like Once that is known for its intimacy and for its smallness, and I saw it a few months later at a really tiny regional venue, it just. It's never going to work. It's going to be swallowed by the enormous London Palladium space. Nothing about that show begets that kind of a theatre. It just doesn't work there. And the only reason, seemingly, that it was there is because that will allow them to sell as many tickets as possible, because they knew that the combination of Carrie, Hope Fletcher and Jamie Moscato and whatever show they were doing, it didn't matter what it was, was going to sell to a huge demographic of fans and make a lot of money. And I am not against producers making money. It's important in the theater industry for, you know, for theatre companies to be able to be solvent. However, there are better ways to make money in this world. I was recently told, no one is investing in a new musical to try and get rich. There are far better and more reliable ways to, you know, supplement your wealth and to augment your wealth. There are better investments than theatre. And the only reason people end up doing it is for the love of the thing. And I think people produce live entertainment and people produce theatre because they believe in it. And ultimately it's for the art. And there is better art to be produced than some of these concert productions. I am reminded of Diana at the event. Him, Apollo. That was, for all of the wrong reasons, one of the best nights of my life and just objectively, really poorly brought to the stage, I'm very sorry to say. And it's not just that the sound and the lighting were both abysmally executed. This is no shade on the sound or lighting designers. My understanding is that they were most likely not given nearly enough time to put all of this together. The whole thing seemed wildly under rehearsed. There was no choreographer listed. And in that kind of presentation, if you're going to have it staged and you're going to have moments of choreography and you're going to have your cast ending up doing a canon step click during one of the second act songs. You need to pay a choreographer, you need to pay for a technical rehearsal. You need to pay for these things, because guess what? That was a big, big space. And those were not cheap tickets. This is the thing. A profit is being turned on these shows, surely. And yet minus the cost of technical rehearsal time, minus the cost of a choreographer in many instances, minus the cost of the size of a band that you really ought to be able to afford for that kind of a presentation. If it is all about the score, if it is all about the material, minus the cost of an ensemble and the examples where you're utilizing drama school students who are doing it for experience, an awful lot of that profit is coming off of the top. So you have these shows that are getting more and more expensive while being produced in ways that feels increasingly cheap. And I used to love going to these because they felt really special. But the problem is now there are just too many. Too many people have seen the opportunities that concert productions can bring, and there are too many people now involved in this market. And I think this is detrimental to the ones that do it responsibly and dedicatedly and well, and put a lot of care and put a lot of money into it and do it for a reason. And there's an actual impetus. That Spring Awakening reunion concert that I told you about was being done originally in part to help raise funds for the medical efforts of one of the show's original producers following a cancer diagnosis. This in between the show being announced and the show being performed, she unfortunately passed away. So subsequently that then became a charity donation, as well as support to her three children. And in the face of something like that, it's really hard to get on board with these concerts that just start to look like inexpensively put together cash grabs. And, you know, it starts to feel even more egregious that they're happening at all, with no clear reason as to why. Meanwhile, while the likes of Southwark Playhouse used to be filled with interesting musical revivals from yesteryear, like Grey Gardens and Carrie and Dogfight and In the Heights, we don't see as many of those shows being revived there. It's all about new musicals, which is fantastic and which is brilliant and which deserve as much space. But is that in part because whenever the rights to these shows become available, they get snapped up by concert producers to do them for one night at a time and make as much money as possible without paying for all of the other things that would come with a limited off West End run, which is demonstrably less lucrative. And so with so many concert productions, people end up having to make difficult decisions and, you know, it becomes very difficult to go to all of them. I didn't go to the Carousel concert recently, which I heard good things about, but I didn't really understand. You know, we get Carousel a lot. I didn't know what this version was delivering that we hadn't already had, beyond an opportunity for Jamie Moscato to play this role, because it was kind of the branding of the whole thing was, Jamie Moscato is going to be in Carousel, and I'm sure he was terrific in it, and I'm sure this is a role that he has longed to play. However, I feel like he has another decade, perhaps two, to play this role, because if you look at most of the people who have played Billy Bigelow. They could still read on stage as his father. This is an actor who has just recently finished playing Christian in Moulin Rouge and Melchior in the Spring Awakening concert. So I don't think he needs to rush to play Billy Bigelow. Now I've been talking principally about the West End because we do have so many more of them here. This is also something that happens a little bit off Broadway. For the most part it seems to take place outside of Broadway theaters. The idea of producing a concert during a a dark night in a Broadway house is something that happens not never, but certainly less frequently. I went to go see Ragtime staged by the Entertainment Community Fund at the Minsk Off Theatre where the Lion King is playing. That was a reason reunion of the show's original Broadway cast and it was stunning. But from a brief glance it would seem as though concert presentations when they happen in New York happen at different venues. Like the Follies concert that was staged at Carnegie Hall. Like the Little Night Music concert that I think was at the Kennedy center or do I mean Lincoln Center? It was at one of the centers. Usually they're very starry. I heard that Follies concert was amazing. I had tickets, but I didn't end up being in the country at that time. It was an impulse purchase. I'm devastated I couldn't be there. Please don't tell me how fantastic it was because I already know. Now with this star casting these concerts, concerts in New York also generally come with a fairly sizable ticket price. But there is also another way that the New York theatre industry has of paying tribute to shows from yesteryear rather than just concert presentations. They have encores, which is something that the West End sorely needs. Encores, which is based at New York City Centre have seasons of bringing back shows that would otherwise not be produced. At least that's their original mission statement. And they revive relics from yesteryear. And they perform them in usually very starry cast semi staged concert presentations. Increasingly lately it has become about finding ways to move shows to Broadway and they are aiming to transfer a certain number per season. The recent Tony Award winning revival of Parade came from encores. The long running revival of Chicago was originally an encores presentation. That into the woods revival with all of the rotating stars recently was an encores presentation. Once Upon a Mattress is like days away from starting previews at the not the Lyceum, the Hudson Theatre in New York. That was an encores presentation that I saw earlier this year and I heard Titanic was amazing. Again, I wasn't in the country. I'm very upset about it. But is this what we need in the uk? Do we need someone in London to put together some sort of an encores series? I think a lot of theatre goers would be very much in support of that. Let's take a look then, at some of the upcoming concert presentations that have been announced for London and also try and answer the question of what these ought to be and what we can do. And encores in the UK is just one answer to this question. But it wouldn't change the fact that we're having all of these many concerts being produced simultaneously at the moment, and not necessarily just titles that we haven't seen for a while, like Pippin that, you know, even that it hadn't been too long since we'd seen Pippin. And even something like A Maiden. Dagenham is produced by amateur groups all over the country. Like these shows that are being put on in concert. Usually they've happened quite recently. Like I said, we get a lot of carousels. Oklahoma is one of the ones being produced later this summer at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. We get a lot of Oklahoma's. However, the last time we had Oklahoma in the West End, it was that very different revival of the show by Daniel Fish that was very polarizing, very divisive. I enjoyed it very much, but not everyone did. And it made audience, I think, very eager to see traditional, lovely Oklahoma again, which is what this seems likely to be. The thing that has me excited for it, as always, is the casting. Phil Dunster from Ted Lasso, who revealed to the world that he could sing when appearing as a guest star at Hannah Waddingham's Christmas special at the London Coliseum alongside ZZ Stralin of Mary Poppins fame, of various other things, who is a goddess who can do just about anything on stage. Those two together as Curly and Laurie, alongside a very exciting supporting cast. Tosh is in this. Christina Bianco is in this. I think that's going to be very special. But again, it's not like we don't get a lot of Oklahoma's a few weeks before that. Something Rotten is being produced. Now this is interesting because this is its UK premiere. We have never had Something Rotten in the uk. It was meant to be produced at the Birmingham Rep, but that got scuppered due to Covid. So this is going to be be its final, like UK unveiling. And this again has some fantastic casting in it. Richard Fleeschman is going to be playing Shakespeare, which I think is brilliant. Jason Manford I think will be very funny and, you know, he does a great job in musical theater. I think this is a great role for him. He's going to be doing the Brian Darcy James part. Many other stars, that one. Sadly, I'm going to be in the Edinburgh fringe. If I was in town, I would be going to see that. Because, you know, UK people, unless they've flown somewhere else, haven't had the chance to see something rotten. It's been in America, it's been all around the us. It was in Brazil when I was there to see Wicked last summer, randomly. But this is the first time British audiences will get to see it in the uk, so that is exciting. As a note, I'm talking specifically about shows being staged in concert, like entire musicals. And I'm not talking about individuals like Bernadette Peters is coming to a concert in London. That's very exciting. Patti LuPone is Barrett Wilbert Weed is many exciting performers doing concerts. That's great. That's fantastic. Again, I hope the sound is good. And if I'm forgetting any upcoming concerts, it's purely because they've just fallen out of my head. And it's not that I am shading them by omission here, but the one that has me a little bit confused is the recently announced concert version of Ghost. And this is for a handful of reasons, because when we first heard rumblings that a concert version of Ghost was going to be announced, you know, it was getting teased all over social media. The first confusion was because there is an upcoming tour of the show that is going to be going out very soon and it's, it seems very close together for a starry concert version of the show in London and a tour going around the UK for which casting has not yet been announced. Oh, my God. Hey, I'm editing this video. It's been pushed back a little bit, which is why I still had hair in this and I don't anymore. But the Ghost Tour cast has now been announced and it's fantastic. My goodness. Go and see the Ghost tour. Go and see the Ghost concert as well. If you want to like, go and go and see Ghost, go and see all of these casts. But the Ghost tour cast also really exciting as well as the Ghost concert cast being exciting. And make no mistake, these productions are not linked. These are being produced very separately. My next thought was, oh, this is going to be a reunion concert of the original London cast of Ghost. Casey Levy, who played Molly is in town right now doing next to normal. This timing is so perfect. Then the cast got announced and it wasn't that it was going to be Lucy Jones and Oliver Thompsett, who are both fantastic, brilliant performers with huge fan bases with fantastic vocal talents. They're going to sound amazing. Lucy Jones, I believe, did like a Japanese tour of Ghost, I think years ago. Oliver Thompsett was actually in the original workshop version of the show before its first West End run. So, you know, that's a nice opportunity for him to get to go back to that role. That's not something that happens very often and that would be really exciting if it didn't kind of fly in the face of this upcoming tour. Not to mention that Ghost is a show that is at its most successful when its material is combined with compelling visual effects. And a semi staged concert version of the show seems unlikely to be delivering those. All of which begs the question, why are they doing this in the first place if they're not utilizing the original West End cast? Is there some kind of an anniversary now? The press release for this, and I'm trying not to laugh, refers to the show having been away from the West End due to a 12 year hiatus. And I'm very sorry, but that's not what a hiatus is. It closed 12 years ago and now a concert is happening. It hasn't been biding its time and it hasn't been waiting for an inevitable return because this is not a continuation of the West End run. This is just a separate standalone concert that is happening. It's also playing the Adelphi, which is not the theatre that Ghost originally played when it was in London. It's the theatre that Made in Dagenham originally played. But they did their anniversary concert at the Palladium. Not one part of this makes sense. Is there enough demand for Ghost to sustain both a concert version and the UK tour happening very close to each other? What this might be is the original producers of the show, these are the ones who are producing the concert version, retaining the London specific rights because the rights to producing shows are geographically specific. You can have the London rights, you can have the touring rights. Are they retaining those rights by producing it? This happened not too long ago with a musical based on the film Sleepless in Seattle. They had to do a little semi staged weekend presentation of the show months before the full production was going to happen. And I think Covid ended up happening in the middle anyway. But they did this little preview at the Troubadour in Wembley park because the Rights were going to lapse and they had to produce the show in some capacity in order to hold on to the right to do it at all. Is this what's happening with the Ghost concert or was it going to be a reunion? And that fell through on? Did someone else want to do a concert and I don't know what's going on here. Thoroughly confused about the whole thing. And it's not just Ghost. Like I said, I don't want to single out any individual concerts with so many happening. For every brilliant, brilliant Witches of Eastwick that we get lately, we also get a Diana the Musical in concert. And I don't want a badly produced but wildly expensive concert. And I could tell you these ticket prices, but you're welcome to go look them up up for yourself because this Ghost concert is expensive. I don't want that experience to put people off of going to another West End show, of returning to the theater. And I don't think it's fair that that costs so much and someone could have gone to see three great West End shows for that price or a handful of off West End shows for that price. So producers, let us still do shows in concert, but let these be for a reason. Let these be with a view to launching a fuller version of the show to tour to carry on in London in a complete production. Let these be as staged as they need to be. Let us pay all of the necessary people, let us take the time to put these together conscientiously to guarantee that our audiences are going to have a satisfying time. Let us bring things of quality to the stage and let us not crawl all over each other to snap up the rights to any single project that's available and throw stars haphazardly into roles that don't necessarily work for them. Because you smell money and you smell the opportunity to do something that you think is going to be an easy success. Great theatre, I am sorry to say, has never been easy to produce. Anyway, those have just been my thoughts and of course they're also just my opinions. I am very intrigued to hear from all of you theatre fans as well. What are some fantastic concert productions you have seen recently and which upcoming concert productions are you looking forward to to in the meantime, thank you so much for watching this video. I hope that you have enjoyed. If you have, make sure to subscribe, make sure to follow me here and across other social media platforms to stay up to date with all of the exciting theatre news. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for ten more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.