754 replies to this topic

[Titan]

mark shenton hated it based on his tweets. daily mail hated it to

[xanderl]

A bit more positive in the Guardian -

http://www.guardian....-forever-review

Interestingly they sent a pop critic rather than one of their usual theatre critics.

[freckles]

Charles Spencer in the Telegraph wasn't impressed:

Telegraph review

[Pharaoh's number 2]

xanderl, on 12 December 2012 - 06:57 AM, said:

A bit more positive in the Guardian -

http://www.guardian....-forever-review

Interestingly they sent a pop critic rather than one of their usual theatre critics.

Really disappointed by that. Was hoping for a grumpy rant by Billers.

[xanderl]

Out of interest how does this compare to reviews of wwry and mamma Mia?

[Steffi]

Has anyone done standing at the Piccadilly? Is the view ok?
I do want to see this just to make up my own mind but I can't bring myself to paying lots of money for it.

[chess]

I have most of the original reviews of Mamma Mia in print, they were very positive!

[freckles]

WWRY got terrible reviews.

Mark Shenton reminds us of some of them in his BLOG which is about Viva last night...

[wickedgrin]

freckles, on 12 December 2012 - 09:46 AM, said:

WWRY got terrible reviews.

Mark Shenton reminds us of some of them in his BLOG which is about Viva last night...

Yes WWRY did get terrible reviews and it is still running 10 years later! Will the same happen to Viva Forever? Sometimes a show like this has a life of its own appealing to a to a different audience who perhaps are not usual theatre goers and are immune to reviews and just want " a good night out with some tunes they know". Will it have a successful run despite the univeral bad reviews? ROA is transferring to the Garrick Theatre and that had poor reviews too, but has clearly found a market!

[Dragononmyback]

I was at the opening last night and have to say was very disappointed with the show.

I thought the only good bits came at the end (from Wannabe onwards) when they started to sing the songs as more of an ensemble/group. Too many of the songs were chopped up, stripped back to be sung by one person and split apart by dialogue that they lost a lot of what was actually good about them originally.

The script has some funny moments but it did not flow very well at all, needs quite a bit of smoothing out. The jump from London to Spain was quite odd. Although the Spainish section in terms of songs was probably one of the better bits.

In my view WWRY despite its slightly dodgy script is much better as they have kept the original feel to the songs and the story at least has a decent story arc. Both of which are lacking here.

I can't see Viva Forever lasting that long really, unless they make some big changes. It will do okay for a while on pre-sales etc but I can't see that many people rushing back for repeat visits. Although I guess time will tell. There are probably enough die hard Spice Girl fans to keep it going for a while.

The Highlight of the night for me was actually meeting Keith Lemon and Michael Caine outside afterwards..