I'm going to publish this post I think as if it is to cover all my musical life it could well take a while to complete and I'll update as things go...
Just listening to Elaine Page on Sunday and she played 'Love Never Dies' for the first. It reminded me of something instantly and as the song went on I realised it was from 'The Beautiful Game'. I texted in saying so and she said when the song finished that 'before you all start texting in, yes it does sound very like this song from the Beautiful Game' and she played 'Our Kind of Love'. Go me I feel!!!
The first Musical I believe I went to see was Cats, when I was 5 with Mummy and Grandma. I remember sitting between then and Grandma and I used to listen to the tape when we would visit them and Mr Mistoffelees was my favourite. Later, Mum and I would dance to Jellicle Ball, dancing in the lounge jumping off the little stools. I saw it once or twice again when I was still at school at the New London Theatre, and then I saw it in Oxford while I was at uni. I bought Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats while at uni and totally loved it. I still have mega fun memories of the New London theatre and how part of the seating auditorium rotated round, I was always desperate to sit there.
Me and My Girl Double Bill
27/6/10 The next earliest memory is going to see My and My Girl. I saw it twice. I think the first time was with Dad, Grandma C and AS which I think at the time seemed a little odd combination! I have the same vague memory as at Cats of sitting and being small in the dark theatre. For some reason, my memory gives me a kinda birds eye view of us sitting... My hunch would be that for Cats we were in the stalls (is there even a circle at New London?) and for Me and My Girl we were in circle. Think when we went again it was the four of us. I loved it! Robert Lindsey and Emma Thompson were in the original production that I think opened in 1984. It was ______ (name blank at the moment - Graham somewhere in it?! - 19/1/13 Gary Wilmot!) at least one of the times I saw it. And my main memory is of him walking on to the set at one point having just been horse riding and his legs were all bent! I didn't really understand it, but mum explained!
And again we had the tape that would listen and dance to when visit Grandparents. Grandma and I did an awesome tap dance to Me and My Girl, I remember she was in her beige-y sandals. We would be in the kitchen pretending we were on the tables like Sally and Bill were in the show! My favourite songs at the time were Me and My Girl, Sun has got his hat on, and Leaning on a Lamp Post. A weird connection, for some reason I decided to take the very old casette tape we still had of it with me to Africa on my Gap Year in 2003. And it became very appropriate when we ended up going to Timbuktu. My only previous association with Timbuktu was in the Sun has got his hat on:
'The sun has got his hat on, out in Timbuktu
Now he's coming back to do the same to you'
So I remember sitting on the deck of the boat travelling up the Niger on my way there listening to it. There had also been this bit on both sides of the tape where it went all mumbled for 30 seconds or so and had kinda been like that for as long as I remembered. While on the boat, I realised that maybe the tape had turned over and at those points we were listening to the other side of the tape in reverse. After a fair bit of investigating I discovered that to be the case, and with an awful lot of care and worry that I would make it worse, I managed to swap it back over!! Hoorah!
I was very excited to discover in 2006 that Me and My Girl was touring and coming to Malvern. Despite it being just after going back to Uni I definitely made a date to go and see it with Ma and Grandma. It was fab and I was reintroduced to a load more of the songs I hadn't particularly taken notice of before, mainly Love Makes the World Go Round. I was eagerly devouring the programme and learning all about the previous productions. This production was produced by Alexander Armitage who was the son of Alistair Armitage who produced the production in the 80s. Alistair Armitage was the son of Noel Gay who wrote it originally in the 1930s - so it was quite a family thing. The most amazing bit of the whole thing was that after we'd been to it, we were talking to Lizzie who had just started her first term at uni. And it turned out in the room next to her was a girl who had worked on the touring production in the summer because she was Alex Armitage's daughter!!!! Wow - what lineage!!! I have been in awe of her ever since!!!
In October 2008 I was reading Baldy's Blog when they mentioned about a musical being held in London with half proceeds going to Anthony Nolan Trust and the musical turned out to be Me and My Girl!!!! I just couldn't believe it!! It all seemed to be made for me and I immediately went into research mode of how I might be able to get there. Absolutely perfectly for me, 3 of my best friends agreed to go with me as my birthday gift!! So so special for me.
1/12/10
Starlight Express: I have very vivid memories of standing in the stairwell at John Lewis on Oxford Street while Dad used the pay phone to call theatre – isn’t that a historical situation now! They must have booked spur of the moment tickets for us to see Starlight Express there and then and off we went, so I feel there wasn’t a big build up to it. Mum must have seen it before as I remember her saying that she didn’t realise till a long way through that the characters were supposed to be trains – so Lizzie and I had that knowledge from the outset. I feel we were probably around 9 at the time, through guess could be anywhere from 7-12. I remember a few bits from that show, but not a lot. None of the songs particularly stuck with me. I know I have looked into before trying to work out if we then saw the original version or the updated version, which if memory serves was done in 1994. Can’t remember what I decided but thinking about it, I feel I remember the old sleeping car – in white with curly white long hair, which would have been in the original production. I remember the different girl carriages from that show, but not a lot else!
Then in lower sixth we had our boy cousins staying at the October half-term and were going to be going to a West End show and I remember talking with mum that this would be a better one for the boys because of the roller-skates – none of them being musical fans! I was happy to go along, but don’t remember feeling over excited that it was Starlight, more so just that we were going to a musical. But oh my, what an evening it was. I’m not sure I actually cried but I made Auntie Sarah cry by looking at my face and seeing my enjoyment in it. I felt like I was living the whole thing leaning forward so involved in it. I loved songs, the slow ones, the powerful ones, the roller-skating, the action, the joy and celebration. All round filled me with happiness from the inside. What a show. And it totally affected me for a long time. I started star gazing and would lean against my bedroom window at night listening to the songs and loving it. This is going to sound corny, but it some ways it feels like a coming of age thing for me and I feel I grew up with it those months. I got the CD soundtrack for Christmas from the cousins and had a little cry myself on the evening the following January when it was closing in the West End after 18 years. That was hard to take. I never thought I would see it again, as how could you convert a theatre to perform it again? I loved the fact that in our book of London theatre seating plans there was a page for Apollo Victoria and one for Apollo Victoria - Starlight Express.
But would you believe it, while at uni there is appeared - a touring production. I had found out it was one of my friends favourites too, so I got tickets for us for her birthday. We were very anxious how it would turn out, how could they possibly do it? And admittedly it wasn't the same. The races were done as 3D videos. But oh well, at least we got all the good music! And they put Only He back in instead of Make up my Heart - result!
23/1/11 Good old Elaine Paige has just played Starlight Express followed by Shall We Dance. What a combo for me :-) I had written up about my King and I love here. I can't work out which version of Shall We Dance it is. It's not the film I believe. Will have to wait to end of song. 'Was like this'.
27/7/11 Thought it would be useful to have a link to the definitive list from here.
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