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- [00:00]
Grow Therapy Advertiser
Grief doesn't keep a calendar. Anxiety doesn't clock out after five, Depression doesn't care if it's your busy season, but support can still fit into your life. With Grow, you can find a therapist who meets you where you are. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance provider, specialty treatment methods and more to find a therapist who works for you. And if it's not the right fit, switching is easy. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Find therapy on your time, evenings, weekends and Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Whatever challenges you're facing, GrowTherapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's GrowTherapy. Do growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [01:11]
Mickey Jo
I could tell you in detail about why Paddington the Musical is as absolutely wonderful as it is. And don't worry, I am about to do just that. But perhaps the most important thing for me to convey to you is that both times I have seen this show I have sat in the theatre and felt so connected to, so reminded of what it to be. A small child, a young version of myself seeing magic on stage for the very first time. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo. I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media. If you're joining me for the very first time, it's wonderful to meet you. I'm very excited to be sat here today getting ready to talk to you all about Paddington the Musical. Undeniably the biggest opening in London' West End this year, potentially the entire world as far as I'm concerned. This is a hugely anticipated new show that has been generating buzz for some time now, but has been all anyone in the theatre industry has been talking about since its first preview performance around a month ago, which I was lucky enough to attend. The show has its official gala opening this afternoon. You will be seeing this later that night. I saw the show's final press preview performance last night and I am going to tell you all about it. We are going to talk about the material, how Paddington himself is brought to the stage and to life as it were. We are going to talk about the many other performances from this very talented cast. And I suppose we're also going to have a conversation about who exactly the Paddington musical is for, because within the fairly broad genre of family entertainment, does this skew more towards a child or adult audience? Is it possible to go and enjoy this without kids? Those are the kinds of questions which arise and we will talk a little bit about that today as well. But I will say if you are considering getting T they are already sold out for some time now and as you are hearing these words, this may be just a few minutes after the reviews have started to drop, which I do anticipate being quite positive. So if you are going to try and get tickets to the Paddington musical, I would suggest that you do so as soon as possible. And if you are lucky enough to have seen it already at the Savoy Theatre in London, then comment down below. Let us all know what you thought alongside my review. Finally, if you enjoy listening to my thoughts and would like to hear more of them about other shows opening soon, then make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on those notifications. It's button somewhere below my face. So YouTube lets you know every time I post a new video, which is basically daily, there's lots to talk about in the theater world. Or if you would prefer, you can go and listen to me by following on podcast platforms. For now though, slice yourself a Marmalade Sandwich it is finally time for us to talk about Paddington the Musical. Now I've said it before, I'll say it again. This could have been a relatively lacklustre show, a very commercial, sort of cheap enough version of Paddington Bear on stage and I think it would have sold really, really well for some amount of time. Regardless. Potentially sales would have dropped off after a certain point given possibly reviews, possibly word of mouth, but Paddington Bear. My point in all of this is that he is such a cultural icon at this point. If you have wandered the streets of London, you have seen little Paddington Bear plushes just like the ones they're selling at the show, for sale in the windows of various different shops. You may have seen the Paddington Bear experience. You may have seen Paddington Bear themed afternoon tea bus tours. Paddington is so culturally beloved within the UK that any version of a big splashy Paddington musical in the West End was always going to be a hot ticket for families. It is thrilling news then that the musical is as artistically rewarding as it is and the Paddington's inherent marketability and the brilliance of the show and the theatre fans and theatre goers finding out about that is, I think, going to result in an incredible long runner at the Savoy. I don't think we're going to see another show in that theatre for a decade at this point. I've already gone on ITV News and called this the best big new British musical since Matilda. I say big to separate it from the likes of the Brilliant Six and Operation Mincemeat. And we're going to talk about every individual who plays their part in helping to create that magic on stage. But it that it is magical. There's something of the Mary Poppins to it as well, as there kind of always has been. With Paddington. You find his stories, written originally, of course, by Michael Bond, very much at the intersection of Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins. I think, because you have this lovable, adorable bear with an extraordinary capacity for kindness, colliding in an initially very chaotic way with a central London nuclear family. With issues indicative, more broad, of people who we welcome into our lives, perhaps reluctantly, strangers who we meet who have the ability to change our lives for the better, expanding our understanding not only of what family is at this most basic and literal level, but also of what community is. The musical contends with that conversation as well, because it is, as always, a story about Paddington being discovered by the Brown family at Paddington Station, for which he is named, because his own original be name is impossible to pronounce. Going with them to their home in Windsor Gardens, where after something of an initial challenging teething period, he manages not only to improve their lives and bring the entire family closer together and foster Greater understanding between Mr. And Mrs. Brown between the generations, but also really find the heart of this community and this neighborhood and, you know, all of London. Why not? And I'm talking about community and I'm talking about London, and I'm talking about welcoming strangers into your home and into your family. And the thing about Paddington is he is a immigrant Peruvian bear who arrives at London train terminal asking for help and asking for understanding. And it has always been, for decades now, a story about compassion and a story about this family in this city who would welcome in an immigrant. And it uses a small little fluffy bear in a hat and a trench coat in order to kind of soften that story. But that's what we're talking about here. And I give the writers, that is Jessica Swale, book writer Tom Fletcher on the score, as well as director Luke Shepard, an extraordinary amount of credit for committing to telling that story in a way that is authentic in the current socio political moment. You didn't think you'd hear the word socio political in a Paddington the Musical review, but guess what? You just did, because it would be very easy to do a commercial version of this that appeals more broadly across the political spectrum of the country to everyone without reminding them of the fact that what we're really talking about here is accepting and welcoming in strangers. But from the very beginnings of this show, there is a framing device which we'll talk about in some more detail, that makes it clear that what we're talking about is somebody who had to flee their home in tragic circumstances, travel to London and asked to be taken in there was, circa the first preview, a more explicit version of this conversation where some neighbors from Windsor Gardens, a woman named Tanya, played by Brenda Edwards, and her son, spoke to Paddington about their experiences of coming to London and not initially being accepted, but subsequently learning about the beautiful diversity of this mixing pot culture that is no longer in the show because it is still running a little bit on the long side. At 2 hours and 40 minutes. There is an awful lot of story to tell here and there are so many characters played by so many wonderful character actors. But my point in all this is if you, like me, were beginning to feel a little bit jaded by all of the Paddington Bear iconography around perhaps the time of the passing of Queen Elizabeth ii, when for some bizarre reason, Paddington Bear became this remarkable symbol of devotion to the late Queen and a country which is now sadly slipping steadily and scarily back towards far right politics. Rest assured that this Paddington story heart entirely in the right place. So I'm trying to offer you as few spoilers as possible, but we are in this section of the review going to talk about how they have brought Paddington Bear to the stage and it's this extraordinary creative collaboration which I've spoken about before with not only designers but also specific directors. Audrey Brisson, star of Amelie and a circus performer, has been brought in as bear movement consultant and some additional puppetry, I believe, with Tara Zafar being responsible for the design of Paddington Bear himself, as well as some other puppets which are predominantly a couple of pigeons in bins. And the version of Paddington Bear who walks onto the stage after the first few moments of music in this show is so breathtaking and so delightful, the audience members are instantly moved to tears. People applaud in shock and delight. They haven't gone for a realistic likeness. I say this about a talking bear, but it doesn't necessarily look like the computer generated version from the three part film series, the first of which the plot of this musical is largely based on FYI, but he looks more like a sort of a teddy bear come to life. But he is entirely believable because of the way that he is realized on stage, because he is actually inhabited and portrayed by a human performer on stage in conjunction with another performer offstage, who is providing Paddington's speaking and singing voice as well as puppeteering. His mouth and the actual movement thereof is very intricate because it's not just a sort of bog standard open, close, but there's some sort of movement in the cheeks. And so the opening and closing of the mouth, it doesn't make different sophisticated shapes that would be altogether too complicated. And if they were to be able to program that, I think it would be an incredibly complex endeav and they wouldn't be able to do it on the fly. A great thing about what they can do with this version of Paddington is that he's actually being puppeteered live, rather than some sort of preordained speech pattern that James would have to line up with all of this to say it does take the littlest bit of buy in from the audience because when he says something quickly, there aren't quite enough mouth movements to be able to line up with that. You begin to forget about it soon enough. And the moments that really work are not only like sustained notes when occasionally he will also close his eyes in conjunction and look, you know, one of the queens from six hitting a power pose. But also the moments of reaction. Paddington's neutral facial expression, that is to say, Paddington's resting face, is one of sort of slightly saddened shock. So anytime, and it happens a lot in this opening scene when we first meet him that he sort of is startled or has to move back out of somebody's way or something upsetting happens. It's so adorable to just watch him react to that and the scale of him alongside everybody else that it is, this little Paddington sized bear on stage is the first thing that is heartwarming. And then subsequently you see him start to move around. That's the next thing you can see him breathe. Then you see him blink. And then finally when he begins to talk, it's awe inspiring. You can spend, if you choose to the next few scenes just watching Paddington in delight as he gradually begins to do more and more. It's adorable watching him sit himself down on a be tuck himself into it. The littlest things that shouldn't be sweet are because it's Paddington Bear. It's this very well known and very well loved character finally Real before our eyes. It's this inexplicable thing that you dreamed of in childhood but learned as a jaded adult could never possibly be. So for those two hours and 40 minutes, something bigger than musical theater storytelling is happening. Everyone is a child again. You have adults, parents, grandparents, sat next to their kids, watching with exactly the same wide ey. Wonder and joy. Now, I mentioned a combination of performers who play Paddington Bear. Artie Shah is the principal Paddington Bear on stage performer with a couple of alternate performers. Artie is an actor of short stature who has worked prolifically on screen. And the mannerisms of Paddington are so well realised. The nervousness, the slightly meek quality that he has. One of the most charming things about this story for me has always been the fact that. That people are not astonished by seeing this bear character walking around London. They're just like, oh, there's a bear in the neighborhood. I wonder what that might be about. Or like, they meet him at the station and they're like, oh, that bear's by himself. Rather than being like a bear, they're like, why is that bear not with his bear parents? And I've always thought that's a very sweet way of approaching this story that could equally be about people, you know, being shocked that a bear is walking around in society or that he can talk. And the Paddington that is realized on stage is indisputably one that we recognize not just in his appearance and in his physicality, but in the entire personality of his, which is brought to the stage as well, which is such a wonderful one, because, like I said, this extraordinary capacity for kindness, for compassion, and this enormous care that he has for the family who he has only recently met, for everyone who he encounters, this sort of naive trust that he has in the people who he meets in the community that he discovers, but also an unfailing sense of justice and the belief that people ought not to be rude to each other, which motivates one moment when he has to pull out one of the tricks in his arsenal, which is Paddington's hard stare, which we do see, given to one character at one point in the show. It's accompanied by an entire song about it. Because this is Paddington the Musical. And of course, it is that song, like the rest of his song material, is performed offstage by James Hamid. Although it's on stage that we see James first and before we meet Padd Paddington. The setup for the entire thing, the framing device as well as the initial set that we see when we walk into the Savoy Theatre Auditorium, is Mr. Gruber's shop of Curiosities. And as he begins to sing to us about everything in his shop having a story, we see a young man walk in, played by James Hamid, instantly noticing and being seemingly quite affected by a small bear toy, hearing a little bit of sung music, like a whisper on the wind. And then continuing in that song. The song which will be the first thing that we hear Paddington sings when he arrives a few moments later. And there's a beautifully staged moment by director Luke Shepard where the two of them stand alongside each other, where James and Paddington just stare into each other's eyes before James leaves the stage to begin giving Paddington voice from afar. And it, to my mind, it's something that we see a lot in musicals when you are likening one version of a character to another and you are implying to an audience that these two are associ it theatre's answer to Bluetooth pairing. When you hold two devices next to each other and you're waiting for them to tell you that they're connected, that's what this is. He has the most fantastic voice. Audiences have heard this previously in shows like Be More Chill and Just For One Day. He has this crystal clear high tenor range. He also has a lovely Paddington Bear speaking voice. It's not quite the same accent and affectation that Ben Whishaw was doing, and it's still, in spite of being a little bit different, a Paddington Bear voice that you will quickly recognize. Eyes. Now, there are two or three moments in the show that have made me cry twice now. The first comes towards the end of act one, when unexpectedly, James actually walks back out on stage singing Paddington's near end of act one, I Want Song the Explorer and the Bear, when he has finally discovered the identity of the explorer, who was a great friend of his Aunt Lucy's and Uncle Pastuzo's, who he is hoping to meaningfully reconnect with now that he has made it to London. And with the plot fully in motion by this point, James returns to the stage, walks down a corridor in the center of it towards the audience, triumphantly singing this song. And twice I have simply burst into tears. But also, it's that thing again of making a very deliberate choice to honour the theatrical storytelling that's going on here and all of the performers who are playing Paddington, because you don't have to show him at all. And I'm sure that there was perhaps an argument to be made for not showing him, because there's a level of illusion that you want to be able to maintain kids in the etc. There is a great way that they do this at the very end of the show because, you know, Paddington bows as Paddington and then again out of costume, which again, not necessary, arguably, but important. And before that happens, when James and Paddington as the bear bow alongside, there is a little pre recorded vocal moment where Paddington's mouth continues to move, but we can see that James isn't singing. And I didn't understand that straight away, but then by the time I'd walked out of the theater, I realized not only for kids in the audience, so they can entirely suspend their disbelief. Or perhaps the slightly older kids, the ones who are starting to question the existence of certain other magical characters who we talk about can see it and go, oh wait, maybe I don't understand what's happening here. I also think it's a bit of a wink to the adults as well, to be like, maybe magic is real. There's something very, very sweet and sincere about it. But I have spoken about Paddington himself long enough and there is plenty more for us to discuss in this show. Let's carry on to a con about the material.
- [19:31]
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- [21:24]
Mickey Jo
Real. So Book by Jessica Swale Score that is to say music and lyrics by Tom Fletcher. Based both on the book A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond and the film adaptation, the first film really from Studio Canal Paddington the Musical, like I said, tells the familiar story of this young bear traveling from Peru wearing a tag around his neck that has been placed there by his a Lucy, beseeching strangers of London to please look after him. He reminds us of an important story about kindness, acceptance, community and the book of the musical from Jessica Swale meaningfully, charmingly and accessibly articulates all of these ideas. I mentioned before that the musical reminds you of what the real meaning of this story is, but at no point does it feel particularly politicized. It feels like an honest story about these characters interacting with each other. There's a bit of a shift from the film, which I would say is predominantly sort of a platonic love story between Paddington and Mr. Brown himself, inarguably the most reluctant member of the Brown family to take in Paddington. He is very insistent that they should simply walk on by and leave him or take him to lost property, that he isn't their problem or their concern and they ought not to be responsible for him. Why should it fall to them? Why shouldn't he be somebody else's problems? We can hear what we're really talking about when we hear these kinds of ideas. His Mary, however, is extraordinarily compassionate and is instantly moved to accept him into their home. And so in the film it is Paddington and Mr. Brown, played by Hugh Bonneville, who come together and they have a lot of one on one scenes that don't really exist in the musical. Paddington and Mr. Brown have a little moment together of support in the show and he, just like he initially is the loudest voice in rejecting him, he comes to accept him by the end, which is perhaps a spoiler, but it's not really a surprise. A lot of the one on one material that he had with Paddington. Meanwhile, the two of them sitting down to have tea together, Paddington, obviously enjoying a marmalade sandwich, now passes to a different character, Mr. Curry, who we've seen on screen before. He is the local busybody. He's the head of the Neighborhood Watch association as well as a taxi driver. This being a combination of A couple of different characters he's portrayed by Ed and we'll talk about his fantastic scene stealing performance later. But all of this to say that the narrative has shifted somewhat and it's more about the Brown family as an entire unit. If there's one emerging member of that family, it is Mrs. Brown and not Mr. Brown. Because we have a few more one on one interactions between her and Paddington. The first of which actually blooms into an entire song when she talks about her passion and her career as a comic book creator and illustrator. And the superhero characters who she has conceiving since childhood. Her desire to save the world and be a great mother and feel connected to the young people that her children are turning into. Interestingly, in dialing back on Mr. Brown a little bit and having him be a risk analyst who is concerned about this possible promotion at work, who is very resistant to the idea of change and insists that his family have no problems at the beginning, which is absolutely untrue, the Browns have kind of started to look a little bit more like the Banks family from Mary Poppins. I said before that there is an awful lot of plot for us to get through. There are an awful lot of characters on stage, many of whom remind us of the important values of Paddington Bear. Like the lovely Mr. Gruber. Like the flashbacks we get to the kind hearted explorer who after encountering these Peruvian bears point blank, refused to bring them back to London or disclose their whereabouts to the malicious Geographers Guild. Speaking of whom, we also have a few characters in the show who remind us of the values that Paddington stands in opposition to. The bullies and the thieves and the evil people. One of whom is our principal antagonist, Millicent Clyde, portrayed on screen by Nicole Kidman and originated on stage by the glorious Victoria Hamilton Barrett. But everyone has charming and characterful dialogue that reminds us exactly who they are. All of these vivid characters and personalities. It flows effortlessly and seamlessly into song where we strike exactly the same tone in these original songs written by Tom Fletcher. Now, Tom has written for the stage in a couple of instances now, but largely for family shows. This is certainly his first big fully fledged West End musical. And I say fully fledged. That's a bird based metaphor, I believe. Fully fluffed. Is that better? Some of the songs you may have heard already as a couple of them have been released. The Explorer and the Bear is the biggest solo song that Paddington has. It may also be be the emerging sort of most memorable song from the show, the one that is likely to have the biggest external life. The majority Of Tom's career as an entertainer has been as frontman and songwriter for the pop band McFly. And he writes a banger of a melody that sort of has its feet in three different places at the same time, which is one more foot than most of us have. But it does, as you can hear in the Explorer and the Bear, continue a little bit of that ongoing Pasekin Paulified contemporary musical theater sound. There are moments that sound a little bit Greatest Showman, which is not necessarily a bad thing. That's the sound that family audiences are associating with musical theater these days. It does also have a little bit of that pop sensibility that I think we are moving more and more towards with new Kind of Marlow and Moss, Jack Godfrey type scores and In Trouble Truth, some moments that I think are a little bit McFly esque, which probably delights a lot of people who have come to see the show who know his name, but not necessarily anybody else attached to it. And it's a little trendy and it's a little current. And I do think in general with the writing there is something of the classic Paddington quality that it's moved a little bit from. But it's a story about London now, which I think is an important one to tell. So if that has to be sacrificed to if we don't quite have the same sensibility, but we have the same values, then that's a decent enough trade off. The third area that we do find in moments of this score is delightful classic musical theatre, which is something that Tom Fletcher has always had some kind of a connection to. We hear that echoed more in the likes of Millicent Clyde's initial villain song, Pretty Little Dead Things, which, both in its composition and in its fabulous dramatic orchestrations by the wonderful Matt Brind, lives somewhere between campy Bond theme and delicious Disney villain song. You also have more sort of classic musical theater fodder like Marmalade, which opens the second act, which is this remarkable marmalade filled production number led by Paddington himself and Mr. Curry that eventually invokes an audience. Sing along. Don't worry, you don't need to be prepared beforehand. It's incredibly easy to learn Learn Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma Is the Geographer's Guild late in the second act, something of an 11 o' clock number. Perhaps it's staged with classic musical theater flair. There's even a kick line eventually from choreographer Ellen Kane. On the trendier side, there's a sort of a rock and roll kind of a vibe with the song Hard Stare in the first act, when Paddington is singing about his signature intimidating fac. There are moments in the lyrics throughout that give me a little pause. That's Pauce, not P A W S, though I understand if you'd be confused. And they perhaps still feel the littlest bit adolescent. The notion of Mrs. Brown singing about the strains within her family by singing zap, bam, pow, save the world as her triumphant lyric. Some of the ideas that we explored lyrically in some of these other songs, they're not necessarily the most sophisticated lyrics in the world. We rely perhaps a little bit too often on a handful of platitudes like it's time to spread love, not hate that. In a song called Never Too Late, which I do actually really appreciate, this is. This is what feels like an 11 o' clock number, but it comes a little bit earlier. And it's a song in which Bonnie Langford's character, Mrs. Bird, who is seen in the film but is here a lodger. I think in the film she might have been a maid. Instead she's a lodger. Now with the Brown family, who offers insights and advice on almost every topic based on her extraordinary and imaginary life experiences. Corrected almost immediately every single time by Mr. Brown, who insists you never actually did that. I wonder if that punchline would be a little slicker if he just kept saying every time that's not true or that isn't true, rather than always saying you were never. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is that she did just said, but it's never too late is this full production number with light bulbs behind her and her name appearing on them like it's the end of Gypsy or Chicago and an entire dance break as she leads Taryn Callander, who plays Grant, the sort of long suffering henchman of Millicent Clyde in a song which teaches him about taking control of his own destiny and how it's never taken too late at any age. I love that this is in the show. Not just because Bonnie Langford deserves a number like this in every single show that she is in, but also because you are going to have so many different generations coming to see this show. I think it's really nice for a song like this to exist in the musical theater canon. That is talking about embracing your dreams later in life. That's not something that we hear talked about an awful lot. I love that there is a lot of material in there for parents. We are talking. Talking about motherhood and its challenges. We're talking about that honestly in this show. There's also obviously so much in there for kids. There is something to sing to every single member of the family, I think. But we were talking about the lyrics and like I said, a couple I don't entirely love. When Paddington first goes to the Browns and is accidentally destroying their house and they're singing don't touch that, it feels a little bit basic. However. However, when it gets reprised almost immediately afterwards, the lyric takes on a new meaning as Mrs. Bird is trying to have an honest, emotional conversation with Mr. Brown about his relationship with his wife and his kids. And he says to her, don't touch that to mean let's not talk about that. Like don't, don't get on to that. It also gets reprised later in the second act meaningfully as well. And finally, a song which is unlike any of the others, but which is another sort of fun anthem of the musical, which is the rhythm of Life London. And it's a sort of a Latin American samba carnival kind of a feel, perhaps meant to invoke a little bit more of Paddington's own Peruvian heritage. But it's led by Tanya and it's a song of the neighborhood that evolves into this highly choreographed celebration of the joys of the city of London. The best and most aspirational understanding, beautiful version of which is portrayed almost as its own character within this music.
- [32:46]
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- [33:55]
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- [34:32]
Mickey Jo
Next, I would like to talk to you about the rest of the company, those not playing Paddington Bear on stage. There are. There are so many fantastic actors in this cast who we need to talk about. So I am going to literally go through the program and try and streamline my praise for everybody. It's a fantastic company. It is a lineup that includes so many of our finest character actors who themselves would be like the supporting jewel in the crown of any other West End company. The fact that so many are assembled together on this stage, truly an embarrassment of riches here in Paddington. So you have the Brown family. Adrian DE Gregorian plays Mr. Brown very sweetly, very charmingly. He isn't quite as gruff as Hugh Bonneville makes him in the film. He is a little bit more hapless. He is not as imposing as Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. And he has a new backstory, I believe, for the stage show where he has this rocker past as bad boy Brad down, that being his Persona when he and Mary first met. He still has the electric guitar from those days, which he pulls out at one point in the show to try and reconnect to the version of himself that he was before they had kids. His softening and his connection to Paddington, but more so his re establishing of his connection to his wife and to his kids is the really lovely thing to watch in this show, as is the sort of comical way in which he does yoga. Amy Ellen Richardson, though, has a true emotional arc as Mrs. Brown. She has some really moving material when she's trying to get through to her daughter, who is in something of a surly teenage phase. The Brown children are played by Delilah Bennett Cardy as Judy Brown. She only gets one little vocal solo moment, but it's a really great sing from her and she's a fantastic young actress as well, and it's lovely to watch her Judy go from being being a annoyed and perpetually embarrassed teen to actually having a more honest and open conversation with her mum. Jonathan Brown, her younger brother, is played by multiple different performers in rotation. I have seen Stevie Hare play this role twice, who was terrific. Jonathan's whole thing is that he reads encyclopedias and he knows all of these different facts. Which means he is able to dispense knowledge at one point in a little musical patter song as he tells Mr. Curry all about the taxi driver driver's code. Very, very funny. Next we have their neighbors, played by Brenda Edwards as Tanya, who is very warm, very vibrant, just brings a lot of earnest joy to the stage. But her most meaningful work perhaps may be when she is invoking but not directly portraying Aunt Lucy. And she sings for Aunt Lucy as well. She doesn't put on a bear costume. At one point, she is surrounded by lights on a video backdrop to suggest the silhouette of a bear around her. Again, it's the theatrical Bluetooth pairing thing of being like, that's who this person is representing. So that she can later walk on wearing a pair of glasses and sing from a letter that Aunt Lucy has written to Mrs. Brown. Which is another of the moments in the show that makes me cry and I will cry if I tell you any more about it. Brenda does that so, so beautifully. It's. It's a really treasured part of this show. Her son Tony, who is an admirer of Judy Brown, is played by Timmy Akinyosade. I believe that this is a professional debut for him. It is certainly his West End debut. Very gifted singer is this young man. Another one who is just joyous to watch on stage. And the two of them have a very wonderful, believable rapport. Another friend of the brown families is Mr. Gruber, played by Teddy Kempner, who also plays the explorer who we meet in flashbacks and when they find all old footage of him talking about his new bear friends. Teddy Kempner is another West End veteran and deeply enchanting storyteller. He can sort of stitch magic in the air with his words and there's this very delicate, enchanting quality to everything that he says and does on this stage. Oh, and we've escaped the Brown household too soon because I forgot about their lodger, Mrs. Bird, who, as I told you, is played by Bonnie Langford, Bonafide West End legend Bonnie Langford. The qualifications for which she reminds you of in this show, not only is she she hysterically funny in a broad Scottish accent, she is also affecting and heartwarming. She has this heart to heart with Mr. Brown towards the start of the second act when she reminds him of what's really important and helps him understand that he needs to do better by his family. Her standout moment, though, is the one that I told you about, Never too Late, when not only is she singing this brassy old School vocal, but she's also also doing a high energy dance break, being lowered down into a split by Taryn Callender because it's Bonnie Langford on stage, so obviously she's going to do the splits at some point. She is really fantastic in this. It's as great a Bonnie Langford performance as I have ever seen and I've seen a lot of great performances of hers. Now those are all of the lovely friends of Paddington Bear. We also have to meet our adversaries. And like I told you, the big villain here is, is Millicent Clyde, played by Victoria Hamilton Barrett. Victoria has been for the last few years steadily entering her villain era with slightly similar character roles in shows like Bronco Billy and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella. Everything she does here to create her Millicent Clyde, the voice that she assumes and the very jagged sort of movements that she does with the occasional, occasional balletic flick with this little, I think it's like a jazz arabesque thing that she keeps doing with her back leg, kicking up her front leg in a very comical way at every opportunity. She is so evidently unhinged. It works so, so well. Victoria reminds you of what the phrase chewing the scenery actually means because if she got close enough to a bit of scenery, you imagine that she might. But her commitment to madness in this part is just fantastic. Her delivery of the song, Pretty Little Dead Things, when they put her in an empty museum display and they spin it round, it is camp, it is diva, it's really great. Alongside her is the wonderful Taryn Callender, who particularly comes into his own in the second act when he is acquainted with Mrs. Bird. He doesn't have all that much to do in this show, but the moments that he does have are very nice. They're very rewarding and you would think that all of that would be enough. You have Paddington, you have the Brown family, you have the kind nature, neighbors, you have the villains. In fact, there are two secret weapons in Paddington the Musical and their names are Tom Edden and Amy Booth Steele. And if you've seen either of them on stage before in just about anything, then their weaponry won't be a secret to you because you already know that they are brilliant. Tom Edden as Mr. Curry is so, so genius. And he is a theatrical comedic genius. I mean that quite sincerely, at the height of the word genius. He is a perpetually irritated busybody who does not want Paddington to be in the neighborhood, who likes to exact his authority over all of his neighbors at any given opportunity. Who is sort of deceived into a partnership with Millicent Clyde and who also at the start of the second act, becomes the only character on stage who can not only address the conductor, which he does on a couple of occasions, but who also can look out and acknowledge the audience. Now, when this begins to happen, right when we've come back from the interval, it feels the littlest bit pantomime. I think the thing that stops it going all the way there is that only he is allowed to do it. And he does it very well and quite inherently within his character as well. But also it's building towards something that he needs to be able to talk to us in order to be able to achieve, which is leading us in a sing along chorus of the Marmalade Song. He is absolutely terrific though. The way that he plays with his little card on, an extendable little piece of elastic, the way that he fidgets with his comb over wig that they've given him, the voice that he has, the affectation, it's great. Everything he does is great and true. Scene stealing is achieved by Amy Booth Steele, who I just love and always have. She plays a handful of different roles. She plays the, I guess, leader of the Geographer's Guild. She's working the front desk and refuses the Browns entry, initially when they're going to try and find out more about the explorer based on information discovered in Paddington's Red Hat. But she won't let them in because when she asks, are you a mamba? And she does say it like that, the only answer they can provide is no. Eventually, she's defeated by Paddington's hard stare. But she recurs as that character throughout the second act where, to the delight of the audience, she continues to talk about the Geographer's Guild and its members. It's sort of the posh British equivalent of a Moira Rose kind of a voice. She walks away with a scene in the first act when they actually go to the Savoy Hotel, funnily enough, for a work function of Mr. Brown's. It's a celebration of the best risk analysts, I guess, of the year. And she plays his employer called Mrs. Achoo. And she gets hugely excited, sort of inappropriately excited about his rock and roll musical performance and the physicality that she has as she's dancing along to it with these very hunched shoulders. It's absolutely great. I do think, per the rules of musical theatre, she ought to start doing that a little bit later into the song. It begins almost immediately and I think if we had Just a moment for him to do it and people to react, and then she starts to get involved and it all feels like it's building in a way that's at first exciting, then subsequently, perhaps even a little bit dangerous before it results in calamity, then that might give us just a slightly better sense of scale. I had a similar thought about Tom Edden in the Marmalade Song, actually, because he eats the Marmalade sandwich before the thing even begins. And per theatrical rules, I wonder about a version of the song in which Paddington starts it and we only need to get through, like, half a version or so before Tom Edden then takes a bite of the Marmalade sandwich, at which point he goes from being like, I don't know what all the fuss is about, to suddenly, I'm enlightened. And then he's going to start singing about Marmalade as well. And there's license for it to be musicalized, something like that. The version that they do is not bad. It just happens quite quickly. And if you thought that was all Amy Booth Steele does in this show, it is not. She also plays someone making train announcements at the beginning, which will always go over well with a British audience when you're making fun of train delays for obnoxious reasons. She also, at the end of the Marmalade song, arrives too late to cover a scene transition as a giant dancing sandwich, which is a great choice. I don't know if they were in tech and they were like, amy, we need you to do something here because we have to bring a house back on. Or if something went wrong one day in rehearsal and they were like, you know what? Keep that. But speaking of rehearsal and the choices made in Paddington, let us finish by talking about. About Luke Shepard, the director, and his creative team. Now, Luke is this rising star director, particularly in the world of British musical theatre. I've been saying that for a few years now, and at this point it feels moot to point it out because, you know, he's the director of Paddington, which is the greatest thing currently anyone can aspire to. He feels in many ways like the yin to Jamie Lloyd's yang. I will explain why the two of them have been simultaneously on meteoric creative rise. But while Jamie Lloyd's aesthetic is very stripped back and sort of dark and brooding and intense, Luke has been doing a lot of great work creating shows for family audiences, putting joy and silliness and camp on stage with shows like and Juliet and Starlight Express. The new production in Wembley at the Troubadour Theatre, and then now in Paddington. But he hasn't only worked on family show shows. And something that you can see in almost all of the work that he has done is this beautiful sentimentality and the ability for a meaningful message to emerge through the material and for the emotional connectivity of the whole thing to really exist in abundance. We felt that in the Little Big Things. We felt that, I think, in Just For One Day, the Live Aid musical, also in Rob Madge's beautiful show My Sons Are Queer, but what can you do? We certainly feel it in Paddington. It's obvious to me that there was no other director that could have brought this to the stage, I think, quite as beautifully as Luke Shepard has done. And he's also done a fantastic job of making the show feel simple when, in terms of the logistics of the whole thing, it absolutely isn't. We have all of these different numbers. We have so much subplot to wrap our heads around. We have these complicated sets that we move between. Only on, like, one or two occasions do we have to bring in a front, front cloth with, like a London skyline on it in order to cover a more complicated transition happening behind it. But for the most part, Paddington's adventure in this show is staged very slickly and seamlessly. Choreographer Ellen Kane is another one who is really on the rise, doing absolutely fantastic work over the last couple of years. I do really enjoy the variety that we get between more contemporary moments of choreography in this, as well as the more classic, the more traditional. I mentioned the Kick the Line in the Geographer's Guild, but I also like the villainous choreography in Pretty Little Dead Things. I also, I mean, Rhythm of London is definitely the huge production number of the show and the choreographic highlight. It's satisfying, it's athletic, it is high energy. It's the people who you're going to see when you leave the theatre or who you have seen on the way to the theatre explode into joyous dance. And they're doing all of this wearing costumes designed by Gabriella Slade, another one who is this rising star name who has recently become an Olivier Award winner, who was the costume designer not only for Starlight Express, but also for Six. And the designs in Paddington stand entirely apart from a lot of the work that she has done before with the peplums and with the kind of space age kind of style. And while for the most part it's more sort of everyday clothes, I love, love that it finds a style that feels sort of half contemporary, half vintage, nostalgic, especially in the way that like Mrs. Brown is stylized. It's so characterful. I love the yellow. I love the use of color in all of these costumes. Actually, you will often see an accent color in the opening when everyone's in the train station. It's a sort of a dark teal being echoed through various different non matching costumes. Everyone's wearing slightly different things in the rhythm of London. We're playing a lot with oranges and reds. There's a moment where there's a little bit of a neon yellow feature coming through. I love the tailoring of Millicent Clyde's costume. The skirt that she wears, I think is so intense and just inherently villainous. And because these are characters who are all slightly cartoonish, the costuming needs to convey that as well. Especially because. Because it's a family audience. Especially because we're telling this story to young audience members. And I think Gabriella's great work on this is a really big part of that. I also want to talk about Tom Pye scenic design, which is like classic West End set design with these different pieces coming on. I mean, it's a gorgeous space that we have at all times, which is sort of these very tall shelves, this blue sort of twinkling skyline extending out into the Savoy Theater auditorium, reminding me of how Mary Poppins was on the stage at the Prince Edward. But in all of these different boxes you have like different things that will emerge out or descend down or appear or open to create a museum space or Mr. Gruber's shop of curiosities. And it sort of always feels like we're in his shop because it's all these different things that tell different stories. But they also then are able to create different locations. They can take us to the Geographer's Guild and set pieces come on for the Brown family home, which can do an awful lot of clever things as Paddington sort of plays and investigates and brings a certain amount of chaos. There is a taxi that can be driven onto the stage and driven off. One of the most transporting parts of this set design is a rear video screen which has different designs on it. Video design animation has been created by Ash J. Woodward. But I want to tell you about a few more of these creatives because it really is a beautiful collaboration and it's one of those huge shows with so many moving pieces where none of this work would have come easily. So that's Gareth Owens exceptional sound design. Because of course it is. Because his work always, always is. That's Neil Austin's lighting design and that's Majid Adin for illustrations and additional animation. And there are a few more thrilling secrets of Paddington the Musical that I don't want to disclose to you at this time because I encourage everyone to go and see this for themselves. In answer to my earlier question about who this was going to be for, I have gone to see this twice. The first time with my partner, the second time by myself. I have been just as transported and overjoyed and profoundly moved on each occasion, as well as being inspired by someone who just loves great new musical theatre. This is truly a fantastic musical as well as being a great Paddington musical, as well as being a great family show. It fires on all cylinders, which is absolutely the best thing that we had hoped for when the show was announced. How brilliant that something seems set to be as successful as it is and also happens to be so, so well made, so well written and telling a story that is actually important as well. Bringing Paddington into conversation with the London of today, like I said, and reminding audiences of all ages not only what it feels like to be a a wide eyed child again, but also of the importance of community and family. And I think this is a huge thing to say, but I think Paddington the Musical has the ability to send everyone back out onto the streets of London slightly better people than when we all arrived. I can think of little higher praise I can offer this show than that. Whoever you are, you can go and enjoy this show, I promise. And if you already have, I would love to hear what you thought in the comments section down below. Those have been all of my thoughts about Paddington the Right now I need to rush to go and cover the gala opening where I will be seeing the show for the third time. I feel incredibly lucky, but it absolutely won't be the last. Thank you so much for listening to my thoughts. I hope that you enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe here on YouTube or go follow me on podcast platforms. And 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.
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