Apparently Mr Good for Nothing Lloyd was adorably sweet to
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flatlanddan and
randommagic today - I may have to actually start calling him Gareth again! Oh and they (and their alarm clock!) got mentioned by him when he was asked what the best present he ever got was - awesome! Looks like the crazy obsessives were out in full force to meet him - he really does need to try and do more conventions rather than signing events - the up front ticket price with conventions tends to frighten off the creepy crazy kiddies.
As much as I love reading reviews of Torchwood filming I wish people wouldn't post pictures unless they're crystal clear - I clicked on the photos accompanying a recent report and was momentarily convinced that I'd gone completely blind. I had to navigate away to a different site just to convince myself that it was the photos and not my eyes.
So I saw Craig Chalmers in the Joseph tour yesterday. I have to admit I was always a big fan of Craig. Oh I didn't want him to win Any Dream Will Do - vocally he was nowhere near as strong as Lee and I'm still rather baffled at a universe which allowed him to remain in the contest longer than Daniel (who I'm seeing at two different events next month - I've had the misfortune to book to go and see his new musical on the same night as 10 of his very very young and very very demented fans - oh joy!) . But there was still something very appealing about Craig - he really wanted to learn and took every single note he was given. There was just no ego - he knew he'd been given a phenomenal chance and he was determined not to let people down - and I really responded to that.
For a 2:00 p.m. matinee the place was packed (and it was a surprisingly large theatre) and the audience was ironically far more genteel and well behaved than the West End audience (where I was surrounded by people singing the words and a woman in her 40's who wore one of those flashing glow light things that blinked on and off in my field of vision the entire time until I wanted to kill her!). They had managed to run out of programmes which wasn't exactly impressive so I had to buy a cheap and nasty looking generic programme which had obviously been produced for the tour - irrespective of who is playing Joseph at the time - so there wasn't a single picture of Craig to be found.
The production started and after being momentarily thrown at the fact that Craig seemed to be dressed as Luke Skywalker (white Tatooine get-up and boots) it became painfully clear that most school plays have a higher budget. The clothes were truly hideous - the girls were dressed in Primark's very best "ethnic", the Narrator for reasons I couldn't quite grasp was dressed in a black waistcoat and trousers which had brightly painted suns and moons all over them, Chris B seemed to be wearing a stripy cotton dressing gown with a bit of fur attached, Craig's loincloth for the first act was very clearly from the £10 or less range of Egyptian fancy dress costumes and the loincloth in the second act looked like some NHS bandages sewn together, and the coat...oh dear lord the coat! It looked like it was made from a pair of cheap and nasty psychedelic curtains! As for as the set went they'd painted a couple of palm trees either side of the stage and whenever a touch of atmosphere was called for the stage was filled with cloud after cloud of dry ice which caused me to have a coughing fit in Act II.
Non existent budget aside there were other problems which set the touring production apart from its slicker West End counterpart. The brothers all sang nicely but their acting skills (with the exception of Chris B who was putting his heart and soul into it) were pretty limited and they really didn't pull off the changes in musical style very well. Most of the humour in the West End version comes from the brothers but because their acting was so ropey pretty much every attempt at humour fell totally flat. It also hurtled along at a breakneck pace with no pause for breath - which certainly papered over the cracks but sometimes the occasional pause would have helped the audience to appreciate the changes in music and the scene changes a little more.
It was difficult to tell how strong any of the singers were as there were literally 5 massive speakers turned all the way up to 11 either side of the stage amplifying the singers voices. They were turned up so loud that the music was practically reverberating in my rib cage!
That being said I did think that the Narrator was a 1000 times better than Preeya. She had a fantastic clear voice and just seemed a much better fit for the role. The Pharoah (apparently a Grease reality contestant) was also really good.
And as for Craig - he really was very good. Everything they criticised him for- mugging shamelessly at the audience, his voice being too cabaret, his irritating habit of smacking his lips after every line - all gone. His Scottish accent crept in occasionally and he was nowhere near authoritative or scary enough at the end of the play where Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies but for the most part he acted well, sang well and really owned the stage. His rendition of Close Every Door was superb and heartfelt and a million miles removed from the crappy rendition he gave when he lost the competition. The audience adored him and he got a huge ovation at the end.
Chris B was also fantastic - the old couple next to me had never seen Any Dream Will Do and yet they picked Chris out straight away as being far better than the other brothers. Unfortunately he didn't get to sing solo but for some reason Benjamin in the touring version gets quite a few moments that the Benjamin in the West End version doesn't (for example Benjamin in the tour stands up to his brothers over throwing Joseph in the pit and is utterly heartbroken when he is sold as a slave) and Chris sold every one of them - he was seriously pouring his soul into his performance and he was great. He can also really really move - he's an absolutely fantastic dancer.
I waited at the stage door afterwards and thankfully they came out really quickly because the other people waiting were all ADWD fans who were upset that Lee had won as they were all Craig and Lewis supporters - I thought I was going to get lynched when I said that I'd seen the West End version and that Lee was amazing in it!
Craig was absolutely adorable - he said he was exhausted as he was doing all 12 shows that week and meeting with people on his day off to talk about his new album, but he was obviously delighted to be doing the tour and said he couldn't quite believe that he was lucky enough to be in the position of having the lead in the tour as well as an album coming out. I mentioned how it was really nice that Bill Kenwright was still supporting him as he'd clearly supported him from the beginning in the show and Craig had nothing but praise for him, said that he'd really been looking after him and that he was just thrilled to have his support. I was slightly worried that Chris was going to cry when I met him and told him that I thought he was fantastic in the show and that he really stood out from the other brothers. He thanked me profusely and I got called "babe", "sweetheart" and "darling" in the space of a minute!
So a good trip as I was slightly worried about what it was going to be like - especially as the tickets weren't particularly cheap for regional theatre - £25 each!
Oh and I'd love you all forever if you could read and comment on my latest story as I'm slightly terrified that because of the Jack/Master pairing that noone will read it.
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