← MickeyJoTheatre
MickeyJoTheatre
The worst shows Mickey-Jo saw in 2024 | Reviews of disappointing plays and musicals from the last year
00:34:54
Loading summary
Transcript47 lines
- [00:02]
Mickey Jo
Okay, here's the situation. I was just having a pre Christmas lunch with some friends and I'm gonna be honest with you, I had a couple glasses of Prosecco, I had a cocktail subsequently and I thought, you know, this is exactly the right time for me to tell you about some of my most disappointing shows of 2024. Listen, I'm feeling a little loose right now. I am feeling honest. I'm feeling like I want to let you know about some of the pieces of theater that I hated. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theater. Hello to you if you are watching on my theater themed YouTube channel and you if you are listening on podcast platforms. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media. I have seen upwards of 250 shows in the year 2024. I will shortly be revealing my favorite shows, the absolutely most exemplary, glorious, wonderful pieces of theatre that I saw this year. But before I do, because social media likes to see both sides of these things and because we value honesty and because often we can learn more from the flawed, problematic flop shows than we can from the stratospheric successes, I'm also going to be telling you right now here about the pieces of theatre I did not enjoy this year. By and large, these are shows which disappointed me. And I've probably used the word hate in the title of this video in the thumbnail. Hey, I've said the word hate already when I did my little introduction. But there's really only a couple of shows from this lineup that I would go as far as to say I actively hated. Only a couple of these really offended me. For many of the others, there was a lot to enjoy about them and you could see that they had potential. So many of these shows had and still have potential. The lifecycle of a piece of theatre being such that one bad production doesn't necessitate, you know, a bad future for the show or no future for the show. That being said, I stand by my responses to each of these pieces of theatre. They are also just that, my responses because theatre is subjective. But we're going to be glancing back at some of my previous reviews of my least favourite shows of this year. Everything on this list got a one or a two star review out of five from me and the through line with most of them is disappointment. This is kind of the worst thing I can experience in a theater is disappointment. When you're hoping something is going to be better than it actually is, it's at this time I will cautiously encourage you to share your own theatrical disappointments in the comments section down below. I would suggest avoid making them personal. Talk about the shows and not about the individuals, and let's all remember to respect each other's opinions. Now, if you're meeting me with this video for the first time, this is kind of a chaotic time for you to do so, but feel free to subscribe. Follow me here and elsewhere on the musical theatre Internet for more reviews. More theatrical coverage coming very soon. Much to discuss in the new year. In the meantime, here are the shows I didn't love in 2024. Now these are in no particular order because I didn't want to highlight like the worst of the absolute worst. I wanted to spare shows the indignity of ranking them right at the bottom of my list. But we're going to begin with the one that is on my T shirt right now. My least favorite Broadway show of the year, the who's Tommy? Here is what I had to say about it.
- [02:55]
C
I have a hard time getting to grips with the idea that people are going to this show for this narrative and for this story and taking something from it. What is this meant to make me feel outside of the impact of stirring rock music? Am I meant to feel empowered by this story? Am I meant to feel inspired by this? Am I meant to feel legitimately unnerved? The whole thing, in both its material and in this production, is so deliberately overblown and loud that you don't really feel those subtler emotional beats. But because Tommy is inaccessible to his parents, he's also inaccessible to us as the audience. By extension, none of these characters have any kind of depth. To them, this narrative doesn't have any kind of weight or impact. What is this show?
- [03:40]
Mickey Jo
Now, obnoxious as this sounds, the red flag for this one may have been the source material at the time that it was brought to the stage, like the circumstances under which this was created, or to have highlighted to me that this was at the very least not going to be a great show for me as an individual theater goer. And there were a lot of people at the Nederlander Theatre who enjoyed this show. None of the people who I knew in the building, but other others did. The silver lining of the whole thing was the wonderful vocal performance by Ali Lewis Borsgi. I thought he was fantastic and I went on to really enjoy him in We Live in Cairo later this year. Next up, a new musical which took place in a particularly unique setting. This was rehab quite early on in.
- [04:18]
B
This process, kid Pop, who is ideologically opposed to the idea of rehab, turns from being unrelatedly brash and self involved to completely self actualized and almost angelic in an instant. Not only is he newly determined to affect change within himself, having experienced about two minutes of withdrawal, but he becomes.
- [04:35]
Mickey Jo
The shining light by which everyone else.
- [04:37]
B
In the facility is suddenly able to turn around the trajectory of their lives and their recovery. It does seem to commodify the experience of addiction in order to deliver cheap gags at the expense of the characters that it's portraying. Then come these unearned moments of sincerity when they're singing these meaningful ballads. You have all of the characters coming on at the end, all wearing white with jeans, and I'm thinking, you haven't earned a white with Je scenes finale. Not in this show. I find it ultimately deeply shallow, more than a little unsophisticated, and sadly lacking in heart.
- [05:09]
Mickey Jo
The red flag from this, I think, was the very unusual venue, this being a new theatrical space which hadn't exactly produced mainstream musical theatre before and interestingly enough, hasn't since. As I mentioned in my review, nothing about this space was conducive for a theatrical presentation. It would be more conducive for like a corporate Christmas party. The silver lining was some of the material within the show touching on really important themes. And, you know, there are ideas within this that ought to be explored. It was just the fact that, you know, juxtaposing them right up against such offensive material felt particularly crass. Here is one I have struggled with before, and I was hoping against hope that I would like this production more. And in truth I did. But in becoming a little less bizarre, it also became a little more bland. I am sadly talking about the UK tour of 101 Dalmatians. Here is what I had to say about it.
- [06:01]
C
This is a show that has become a lot more tame, a lot less crazed and out there than the original production was. And what that boils down to is something that is quite generic, something that is safer, something that's a little more juvenile, a little bit more pedestrian.
- [06:19]
Mickey Jo
It's better.
- [06:20]
C
I'm not going to say that like it's less creative. I don't think that's the thing. I think. I think it's just not insane like the last one was. It did feel a little bit like generic pantomime villainess. I do also still resent a lot of the need contemporary language that they have shoehorned into the thing. Like when she says at one point to her henchmen that she's feeling triggered.
- [06:43]
Mickey Jo
That's.
- [06:43]
C
That's an eye roll from me. We don't need to put that into 101 Dalmatians. Again, that makes it feel like a pantomime, that you're trying to pander to a modern audience and you don't trust your own material. Trust the material. Trust the puppies.
- [06:56]
Mickey Jo
So the red flag with this is the fact that it wasn't an entirely different show to the 101 Dalmatians I already really struggled with at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. They had changed plenty about this, but a of the material, disappointingly, had stayed the same. The silver lining. I really liked the new puppetry and a lot of the new design elements. And there are also a handful of fun supporting performances. So there was improvement. Let's, let's, let's be clear about that now. It isn't a year of London theatre if there isn't at least one disappointingly staged concert. Not necessarily because of what's happening on stage, but often because of the way that it's been brought to the stage. I'm talking in this instance about Made In Dagenham. Let's hear what I had to say.
- [07:36]
B
Every time I see one of these concerts at the Palladium, I am wondering if it's actually going to justify that space and fill that stage. And with a venue like this comes not only the possibility to sell a lot of tickets and make a lot of money, but also technical challenges because the sound was a huge, huge issue. We get to stand up and we have this complete car crash moment on stage where she is singing this song and as it gets higher, she is backing away from the microphone a little bit more. And she's a pop singer, she knows what she's doing. And we're left with the most important song in the show. This final speech, this call to action. And all we really hear is the band. It's this huge, awkward anti climax. It's a little bit contemptible how little seems to go into putting these things together before they arrive at charging an enormous ticket price for people to come and see them.
- [08:28]
Mickey Jo
The red flag here may have been the concept itself. The fact that this was happening at the London Palladium and not at the Adelphi. The fact that this was being brought to the stage by produce, who hadn't yet necessarily perfected this concert idea, the particular formula for it. It's a deceptively difficult thing to get right. And there are many producers who do a fantastic staged concert, but they are the ones who have done plenty of them in the past. And, you know, going straight for the London Palladium with a cast that wasn't necessarily quite right, with sound issues, the whole thing was more than a little bit disappointing. The silver lining There were some brilliant performances in the cast. In particular, the one that stays with me, Bonnie Langford belting out In An Ideal World in the second act. That was fant. Our next show takes us to the sadly closed venue, the Turbine Theatre in Battersea, for a revival of Closer to Heaven. Let's hear a snippet from the review.
- [09:19]
B
There is plenty of good in this production and in this material. There's a lot that ought to work about this, but for whatever reason, it's misfiring on a bunch of fronts. There are good performances that aren't connecting together into believable chemistry. An example being Glenn Adamson, who plays the closest thing we might have to a protagonist. His name is Straight Dave. Consider this nickname, whatever the opposite of Chekhov's gun is, because he spends much of the show exploring the possibility that he isn't, while at the same time pursuing a disappointingly passionless relationship with Courtney Bowman, who is as funny and feisty and belty as ever, but also can't make this material work. It does have this intoxicating, inviting and seductive quality to it, but the whole thing needs far more energy, far more fuel. It needs to explode at the opening, and it doesn't. Francis Rafael has to usher us into this very cold beginning. The music lacks a certain amount of thrill and vitality throughout. I don't know if that is because they are pre recorded tracks rather than using a live band. I also don't think that this score from the Pet Shop Boys is particularly exciting.
- [10:16]
Mickey Jo
The red flag here is not dissimilar to the one with the who's Tommy. This feels very much like a product of its time that, you know, doesn't really function in a contemporary society. For a handful of different reasons, it doesn't really resonate and parts of it feel a little stereotypical, a little backwards. Now, the silver lining here, I think, was actually the way that they'd transformed the Turbine Theater space, which is really saddening to say now because this is a space that sadly is closed. It felt like they were just beginning to find their feet in terms of the capabilities of that venue and everything else that it could be beyond a, you know, traditional theatrical setup. And Lord knows there were many brilliant shows that came out of the Turbine during its short life. Next up, I've often said that the worst thing that a piece of theater can be is boring. And this next show certainly was. We are heading back to Broadway for Uncle Vanya at Lincoln Center Theatre. Studded cast that I was thrilled to go and see, but I was less thrilled when it came to watch the play. Here is what I had to say.
- [11:17]
B
This flippant, modernized, geographically nondescript new translation by Heidi Schreck seemed to be situating Chekhov's characters in a sitcom of their own. I was hoping that the whole thing would be a little darker. It didn't feel sullen, it didn't feel depressed enough, it didn't feel nearly claustrophobic enough. With all of these characters on a fairly expansive stage, you didn't get the sensation that they were constantly running into each other, unable to avoid each other's constant company. And if director Lila Neugebauer's intention was to create a more comic, a lighter Uncle Vanya, then lean all the way into that. Either give me this contemporary American sitcom style tone or let it actually be Russian, drench the whole thing in vodka and get back to me. This production unfortunately missed the mark for me, tonally and aesthetically. And in doing so, it didn't really present much of its own perspective on what it wanted the play to be, the result of which was a fairly challenging few hours in the theatre.
- [12:13]
Mickey Jo
The red flag here is hard to find because this was a brilliant cast at a brilliant theatre that I had been really excited to visit. And that's perhaps why the disappointment with this one was so acute. And though I know I ought not sound this prejudiced, but it's made me a little bit wary of the concept of American performers and creatives doing Chekov, because the sensibility felt so far from what I would recognize as a Chekhov play. The silver lining was probably William Jackson Harper's performance, or just getting to see a show in the Lincoln Center Theatre in the Vivienne Beaumont Auditorium. Here's one I can't believe happened this year. It's so long ago. We're going right back to the early, early days of January for the Enfield Haunting. I was glutton for punishment with this one because I went to see it after it opened and after a slew of very poor reviews came out, and it made me curious to go see it. That's the only reason I went to go see it. So here is a snippet from a video where I discussed some of those negative reviews.
- [13:11]
B
It's unclear what any of the characters believe is going on because they don't really talk about it. Anytime something baffling and terrifying happens, they move on from it very quickly. This was not a satisfying piece of theatre. It was neither scary enough nor incisive enough. For me, the enduring issues are the inconsistency in the writing of these characters, the lack of any kind of a focal point throughout, and the both uncomfortable and unnecessary sexual tension throughout. Do we think it would work better as a comedy if they actually leaned into spoofing the entire thing and playing it for laughs? I think you'd enjoy it more, certainly. It's more fun laughing at the theater than waiting for answers that never materialize while a play occasionally screams at you.
- [13:55]
Mickey Jo
Now, by the time I was going to see this, the red flags were clear in the coverage that it already had, in the criticism that it had already received. But even before critics came in, professional critics came in, there was plenty of criticism to be seen on social media, some of which was being removed by the show's official accounts, which is red flags aplenty. And even just something about the concept of Catherine Tate coming to the stage in a spooky play. This genre, particularly difficult to get right on stage and very often goes awry. So that's a red flag in and of itself. And as I mentioned in that review roundup video, the performance that I saw had this whole particularly uncomfortable curtain call sequence where the performers were visibly irate and the applause had to be started by someone backstage. You could hear where it was coming from because there was such a prolonged moment of silence at the end where nobody knew what was happening. I'm saying all this as I search for a silver lining. There were some memorable allusions. The set design was cool. I must have enjoyed some of the performances. It was such a long time ago, and honestly, I feel like I've blocked it out. Catherine Tate got paid very well. That's a. That's a silver lining for her. Back to Broadway for one of this year's most well documented flops, Tammy Faye at the Palace Theatre. Tammy Faye, a show which had done quite well, it seemed, at the Almeida Theatre in London, prompting many people to ask, why was it so successful in the West End and then such a failure on Broadway? Well, there's nuance here, because Tammy Faye had never made it to the West End proper. It was at the Almeida, which is an off West End venue in Islington with a much smaller capacity, where it played a very limited run, sold purely on the strength of Sorrelton John's name as a composer. Here is What I had to say about Tammy Faye on Broadway, one of the. The most egregious things to me is that we have this scene in the middle of the thing. She is facing criticism even from her own friends, one of whom, Jan Crouch, criticized her for interviewing a American pastor who had been diagnosed HIV positive, which is something that historically happened. However, in the show, Tammy stands up and goes over and hugs him, and everyone is scandalized by this. And it's seen as this completely outrageous thing that she did. And you would think watching this biographic show, that that actually happened. And it didn't, because that actual interview was conducted via satellite link or whatever the technology was. He was on a TV screen within her studio setup, and she was talking to a television set. We follow the arc of Jim Baker, his rise, his crime, his incarceration, his coming to terms with parts of his identity that he felt ashamed of. She deserves so much more of the thrust of her own narrative, and we didn't get that chapter of her life, she says offhand, right towards the end. I couldn't have got through it all if it wasn't for the gays. We don't see that three gay men have written this show, and they don't document and portray the period of her life where she became this beloved gay icon. The red flag here might be the departure of Andrew Rannells before the show had even started. This just sent everything in the wrong direction in terms of its press reception and its public reputation. But also the inherent confusion about the way that it was depicting Tammy Faye was kind of evident in the marketing material as well. I've said this before, if a show has an identity crisis, you can see it in the marketing. And that was also the case for this production. Silver lining, 1000% was the incredible performance from Katy Brabin. She deserved that Olivier Award that she got for playing this role back in London. I think she was just as remarkable on Broadway and deserves huge acclaim alongside the critical reception that the show endured. For our next theatrical disappointment, we are heading downtown Off Broadway for, I'm sorry to say, the Big Gay Jamboree. And disappointment is really the word here, because I was so ready to love this show. But to my shock, it was one of my biggest disappointments of the year. And not because I don't think that everyone involved with the show is incredibly talented. The people on stage, the people who brought it to the stage, Marla Mindel, I think, is wonderful. But this being the next show that she would bring to Off Broadway after Titanique, and that show's extraordinary success. It disappointingly just wasn't anywhere near as funny, and the concept didn't work as well. Here is what I had to say about it in a recent Off Broadway review roundup in this show, we don't know where we are for about 90 minutes. We recognize our surroundings, sure. We see the things that it's parodying and the things that it's making fun of. There's a discomfort to it as well, because we can't figure out what it is that we're looking at. This is a tool used in sketch comedy. You get this on things like snl, but it doesn't go on for so long. Even in the marketing, even in the branding, even with it being called the Big Gay Jamboree. I don't know that that tells you you what this is. I wonder if what this ought to have been, and this is a very different concept, is an evening of multiple different musical sketches. And for that to have been just one of them, I think. So fascinating is her brain and so extraordinary is her talent that she could do a whole bunch of different things rather than going all in on this one concept that doesn't allow her to shine either as a writer or as a performer as brightly as I know that she can. So the red flag here, again, I think, is the marketing material with the title the Big Gay Jamboree. Like, I'm happy to go and see something with Marlon Delin that's a musical and that has gay in the title, because I already know there's a lot of cultural things I'm going to enjoy about that. But I couldn't have told you what this show was, and it has an identity crisis as a piece that again, bleeds through into the marketing. No one, it seems, is entirely clear on how best to sell this show and how best to package this show because it inherently doesn't know what it wants to be. The silver lining for this one, I think, is going to be the incredible standout supporting performance from Natalie Walker. She is hysterically funny in this. Just so, so fantastic. Now, I often have misgivings about including Edinburgh Fringe shows on this lineup, and I am going to put a couple in here, one of which is this next one, a musical called you and It. Here is what I had to say about it while I was at the Fringe.
- [20:00]
C
This is, I believe, a Korean musical that had been translated into English. I don't know if that translation bears some of the fault here. I immediately knew this was going to be very difficult to sit through when we started with the lines, this is a love story. This is a story about love. This is a story about love. Just very repetitive. The premise is interesting because this is about a man whose wife has died in a car accident, which is revealed to us via a comically loud car crash sound effect, which was probably not the desired intention. And she is replaced with a robot, a super realistic AI robot, who at first is learning how to mimic his wife's behavior. And she's feeling a little bit unsettled. She doesn't know that she's a robot and she's trying to come to terms with her return to her home, but then she starts to change things and she starts to try and optimize everything and make it more efficient. And this is not what he wants. He wants to just cling to the past. Interesting things said there about grief and some beauty in the composition, but it just has a massive words problem. The lyrics, the script, it wasn't good, I'm sad to say.
- [20:57]
Mickey Jo
Now, red flags are very hard at the Edinburgh fringe, especially because I do encourage people to take a punt on shows. There have been many things that I thought were going to be brilliant that turned out not to be. There have been many things I had no faith in that turned out to be wonderful surprises that can happen in Edinburgh. And there's been, by the time you're seeing these shows, less time for there to be a whole marketing machine behind it. So it's harder to get a sense without looking into the reviews and hearing word of mouth, of what is of quality or not, beyond the reputation of the artists, the producers, the people involved with you and it. In hindsight, the fact that so much of the plot was available as a synopsis beforehand might have been an indication, but I still went into this having every hope it was going to be great. Sadly, it was not. The silver lining here may have been the inherent passion and angst in the nature of the story that they were telling. And this is, you know, one of many shows exploring these themes, talking about robots and artificial intelligence and using that to explore grief. As it happens, I saw another show this year, which I loved, which did something very similar. Back to the Edinburgh fringe for another disappointing show, the House of Cleopatra. Here is what I had to say.
- [22:08]
C
About this immersive, nightclub, dance floor style musical. But who decided it was a good idea to make one of those about the final few days of Cleopatra's life? All of the plot within this, which mostly revolves around a love triangle between Cleopatra, who is fierce, and Mark Antony, who is hot. And Cleopatra's aide, who is a resentful lesbian who is in love with her. It's just all a downer the whole time. It plays into a lot of harmful bisexual tropes. Honestly, some of the music is fun, but it's not as fun as Oscar at the Crown. So it's hard for us to get into a show about all of these, like, political machinations between Egypt and Rome and all of this stuff going on. Too much of it was staged on the flat floor, so we couldn't even really see it. People weren't dancing. The atmosphere just wasn't there. And it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be powerfully sincere and serious or campy because there was a drag queen mc, but it. It had too much of each and it didn't have a good mixture of the two.
- [23:07]
Mickey Jo
Now, this had a red flag. The red flag here is the concept, this idea, and it's worked for some things in the past. I'm reminded of a show called Oscar at the Crown, which I loved last year at the Edinburgh Fringe. This one did not work in this nightclub setting. This immersive dance floor. Just. It was. Oh, it was. It was just wrong on so many levels, I am sorry to say. The story did not work for me. The music did not work for me, the staging did not work for me, and the performances did not work for me. I'm really struggling to find a silver lining here. I didn't hate the costumes. Is that really what we're gonna go with? River Medway came out more unscathed than much of the rest of the cast. I mean, there were some great vocals. Let's say that there were some brilliant vocal performances in House of Cleopatra as we all stood there looking a little confused. Now, this one does make me sad. And I want to clarify, I'm laying much of the blame at the foot of the material rather than the brilliant people who brought this to one of my favorite theaters. Upstairs at the Gatehouse. It's a little jewel of an off West End space. They're doing fantastic work and they're doing bold work, including Stephen Sondheim shows. This particular one being one of his most recent musicals written with John Weidman, Roadshow. Here is what I recently shared about this one.
- [24:21]
B
Roadshow tells the story of two turn of the century personalities, the Meisner Brothers. We see each of them pursuing success and prosperity and wealth and the American dream with very different approaches. And if that sounds compelling, regrettably, it isn't, because the whole thing is just Sepia tone and this slightly threadbare aesthetic.
- [24:38]
Mickey Jo
With a lot of exposed scaffolding and.
- [24:40]
B
Unpainted plywood, makes it hard for us to discern the difference between the poverty with which the story begins and the affluent areas that we later travel to. Once the plot brings us to Florida, we start to move towards something resembling satire. But the conclusion of the entire show has nearly nothing to say for a Stephen Sondheim composed musical. It has a staggering lack of emotional capability.
- [25:04]
Mickey Jo
What is interesting is it seems like.
- [25:06]
B
It includes some of his most autobiographical notes. The show seems to struggle in its material for a lack of colour and excitement, and I'm sad to say that the audience struggled as a result.
- [25:17]
Mickey Jo
And the red flag here is entirely wrapped up in the fact that I've seen this show before, back at the Mini A chocolate factory just over a decade ago. And I knew that it was flawed, I knew that it was dispassionate and I knew that it was, when held up against many of his other shows, comparatively unremarkable and has a lot of problems and feels underwritten on many fronts. You know, there are things to enjoy about it, but it certainly doesn't belong alongside the best of Stephen Sondheim's work. And if there is any production that can actually go about fixing this show, it wasn't this one. I need some director to come in and really deliver this with some kind of a perspective, with some kind of a viewpoint. I've recently been hearing about a production that took place in New York that tried to do that and people enjoyed that a little more. So I'm curious to see whether future productions can find something else in this. The silver lining here. It was nice to have the opportunity to see Roadshow again and, you know, taking the risk and taking a chance and trying something is always important, is always worth, worth doing. Now, I told you I wasn't going to do these in any particular order, but I have reserved for the final three spots, three of the shows I really, really didn't like this year. Starting with one that will not surprise you, because I've. I've spoken about it a little bit. And even though I loved his production of Sunset Boulevard, we are talking about Jamie Lloyd's take on Romeo and Juliet. Here is what I had to say.
- [26:42]
C
For so much of this play, they're completely inhibited in their emotional capacity and we lose an entire dimension of Tom Holland's Romeo because he doesn't get to display that anger and the aggression of it all. He just stands there and snarls a little bit. We don't get to see the size and the scale of these emotions because everything is played very small, very whispered, very minimal facial expressions because we're playing to camera as though we're doing it for television, as though it's a radio play.
- [27:14]
Mickey Jo
And I know Jamie Lloyd likes the.
- [27:15]
C
Idea of blurring the lines between the two, but even if it were a radio play, you would get more of an emotional capacity in their voices. They wouldn't be whispering for the entire thing. And there are lines where the friar says, romeo's over there lying on the floor looking for Lord, and he's not.
- [27:30]
Mickey Jo
He's just standing at a microphone.
- [27:32]
C
I just don't think these choices were in service of the text. I just don't. They don't feel authentic enough. And what is Romeo and Juliet if not a play about enormous passions?
- [27:42]
Mickey Jo
And when you take all of the.
- [27:43]
C
Passion out of it, what the hell are you left with? The answer is a very bland PSA about the pointlessness of double suicides.
- [27:49]
Mickey Jo
That review has become one of my most popular this year. And the red flag, I think here was this coming so soon after the success of Sunset Boulevard. And as we would see, it would follow so many of the same conventions and utilize so many of the same tactics and creative affectations only on this occasion. Not whatsoever, in my opinion, in service of the text or the story or this particular production, whose mumbling, apathetic ambiguity I resented entirely. The silver lining was the performance by Freema Ajiman. I also enjoyed Francesca Amawood Rivers as Juliet, but I thought Frema was far and away the strongest performer on this stage, carrying on to an almost irredeemable piece of theatre which I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe. One of the last shows I saw at the Fringe and nearly just about made me lose all hope in the concept of theatre making. Again, some people involved in this whom I respect. But what the hell was this show? I am talking about Willy's Candy Spectacular. Willy's Candy Spectacular. Once I had collected myself, here is what I had to say.
- [28:58]
C
This was a. A musical parody of the actual events that unfolded a few months ago in Glasgow when there was this AI created Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory experience. But it was incredibly threadbare and disappointing and it became a huge thing on social media. And I really don't see the point in satirizing that with seemingly as little care as went into planning the event itself. Like it, you kind of puts you in no position to make fun of this event if the musical feels just as threadbare. They had a lot of actual writers involved. And the only real thing of value about this was some of the compositions were very catchy. The song, Willies Candy, Spectacular. They had the actual Oompa Loompa. Kirsty Patterson stood there aimlessly with this very terrible character arc. The whole thing just awful. I resented the very presence of this at the Edinburgh fringe and everything that it stood for. It was completely aimless.
- [29:51]
Mickey Jo
Now, the red flag here was bright red and waving violently because this was a piece of theatre hastily put together based on an actual event, based on this fiasco that had happened in Glasgow in Scotland when there was this Willy Wonka event that was. Yeah, but you've either heard about it or you haven't. And it was written using AI and the whole idea of spoofing that would require the thing that is parodying it, the thing that is making fun of it to have been put together with some sort of. Of care and creativity and sense and not feel like it was AI written itself in a way that was not ironic, in a way that didn't feel knowing, in a way that was just cheap and pointless and offered no entertainment value. I'm struggling for a silver lining here because we were throwing a whole host of random things together with this. A narrative that didn't make sense, performances that weren't coherent nor decent. I'm honestly a bunch of. Of random celebrity cameos, songs written by a bunch of different people. The only silver lining I can offer you is I don't hate that hook.
- [30:57]
C
That we kept hearing.
- [30:58]
Mickey Jo
Will he scared the spectacular that is, they say, is the end of the play. It sounds like a song that you would enjoy on a PlayStation game, but I liked it. And that was probably the best thing that happened during that hour of my life that I'm never going to get back. But it was not the worst show that I saw this year. And I know I said I wasn't ranking them, but this, I believe, is the only one on the list that I gave a one one star review because what the hell was this? I stand by my bafflement. Some people enjoyed this. I was not one of those people. And I was not alone. I am talking about the misfire that was the West End production of Opening Night. Here is what I had to say.
- [31:37]
B
I thought the whole thing was wildly misogynistic, for one. I thought the cameras did not work. I thought the tonal quality was manic throughout. I thought the dialogue was. Was awful. I thought the music was non functional. It's all amounting to. I just don't want audiences to see me as old because I'm not that old and I'm not going to tell anyone my age. And this can only be a man's interpretation of what sends an actress into hysteria, trying to live vicariously through this young ghost girl who is haunting her and just like fetishizing her youth. It's so bizarre, us to be told a story about her having a mental breakdown would require some level of sanity from everyone else. But everyone was so wildly, inconsistently written. Not only do they all but step over this 17 year old corpse to make their dinner reservation, but they convince her that she's a lunatic for giving a shit anyway. This makes her mania impossible for us to glimpse through the haze of their collective lunacy. Everything is just stated, nothing is explored, nobody has any particular depth that is attained. There is no emotional impact throughout. This is a key, huge problem.
- [32:48]
Mickey Jo
You don't feel anything.
- [32:50]
B
There is no moment of this show that I connect to emotionally. Are we just meant to be sitting back in our chairs smoking a cigarette and going, ah, yes, this is art, because A, you can't smoke at the theater and B, it's not.
- [33:00]
Mickey Jo
In this instance, the red flag was a man and his name was Ivo Van Hove and he deserves celebration for his contribution to contemporary theater. And much of what Jamie Lloyd is doing, Ivo was doing first and he wasn't the first person to do that in European theatre. But the whole idea of adapting this from film as a director with no writer involved, with no script writer involved, with Rufus Wainwright making some music for it, the whole thing seemed to have been brought to the stage with such relentless egotism and created a product which felt messy and misogynistic. It felt offensive. Its disregard for the talent of much of its cast felt offensive. This was truly a car crash at the Gielgud Theater that too many brilliant people were involved in and too many of us had to watch. The silver lining is that Sheridan Smith will always commit wholeheartedly to the role that she is playing on stage. I just wish that she had had better material. I wish that she'd had material. Honestly, to even call this a theatrical piece is an insult to the convention. Anyway, it's been, it's been in many ways a disappointing and stressful year. But I have also loved more theatre than I have hated this year. I have loved several productions, in fact, and if you stay tuned right here very soon, I'll be sharing with you my favourite shows of the year. So we can end 2024 on a positive note. In the meantime, thank you for listening to my thoughts today. Share yours in the comments down below, especially if you disagree with my take on any of the shows mentioned here or you want to share your own theatrical disappointments. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Micky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.