Musical - Once

John had been mentioning this musical as he had seen the film some years ago, but I didn't know anything about it.  I decided to get us tickets for it for our first wedding anniversary.

We went the night (Friday July 26th 2013) before John did the London Triathlon and we were staying in a hotel for the night near the Excel.  I had read that there was entertainment before hand on the stage so I was keen for us to get there early.  The set was an Irish pub and it was serving drinks which as we watched from our seats in the circle we realised members of the audience were buying and drinking on stage.  And meanwhile people were playing musical instruments and singing Irish songs on stage.  It later turned out that these singers and musicians were the cast.  As 7.30pm approached, they certainly removed the audience from the stage and after a few more songs, the show started.



I really liked the staging.  The cast were on stage almost the whole time, but when they weren't required for a scene, they moved to the side of the stage (still inside the 'pub') where they sat on chairs and watched the performance and then they became the musicians when needed and they played a whole host of instruments.  I enjoyed the music as it had a my kind of folksy feel to it.  The show was interesting, although I didn't think it would survive deep rationalising, and left you feeling upbeat.  I thought the two lead actors were really good as were the others.  I enjoyed the scenes when the characters were speaking Czech, but all that really happened was they put up the Czech subtitles, until a nice twist at the end!

 At the interval, the bar came out on to the stage again.  After lots of embarassed no's from me, we eventually went down the stairs and through the stalls up on to the stage - eeek!  I have stood on a West End Stage.  It was hard to take it all in and we weren't allowed to take photos.  We bought 2 J2Os for the most expensive price ever - £10!  We did get souvenir plastic glasses with lids that we are still enjoying using.

A very enjoyable evening.  Thank you John for the suggestion.