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Great Britain: Theatre Challenge Review

Theatre Challenge round two!

It’s time for the Entry Pass! Entry Pass is a free scheme that sells £5 tickets to 16-25s- so this was always going to be one of my trips. I decided to use the Pass to see Great Britain, a National Theatre-turned-West-End show that has a gazillion ads on the tube. I roll past these ads everyday on the commute in, and when I saw they had cheap seats, I was suckered straight in.

It’s a satirical look at the dodgy dealings of  the News of the World  a fictional paper, the Free Press. Paige Britain, the cut throat, morality depraved News Editor leads you through the play in a defensive/accusatory tone of voice- that familiar cocky justification of tabloid misbehaviour “it’s what the reader wants!”. In a play that echoes real life, there is no embarrasment about the comparisons being drawn. The Guardianer, ahem, has a tagline “We think so you don’t have to”. The fictional kidnapped girls are the Mills twins, the real kidnapped girl is Milly Dowler. This is a no holds barred show.

We sit in on the editorial meets, follow Paige as she discovers how to hack phones, watch heads of the police departments get very cosy indeed with journalists. The wit is razor sharp and brash- “she suffers from dwarfism” – “You can’t say that!”- “…she enjoys her dwarfism.” and the headlines that emblazon the stage often got bigger laughs than the cast themselves did, a personal favourite being “Immigrants eat swans”. The show is a mesh of barely disguised real-life media scandals, and the whole energy and style is like living in the chaotic mind of a tabloid.

Now. I’m going to straight up come out with it- I wasn’t that impressed. While some of the show is delicious- “Since when did the Free Press publish obituaries?”- “Every day, Diana Princess of Wales”- there is an uglier side. A few racist jokes drop dead on their feet, leaving an awkward silence. Paige breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience it is their fault the go out and ruin lives. Many of what could’ve been big laughs were swallowed up by a near empty theatre and a couple of actors, ludacrisly, just weren’t that good (like the half hearted extra who wanted to get rid of ‘Page Seven girls’ and Kassam, the police commissioner who was exceedingly flat for such a juicy character). The whole cast was led by Paige’s energy, played by a perfect Lucy Punch, who seemed to dredge them up to her level with some difficulty. It’s not what you expect from a play that has been described as “raucously funny”.

One thing that really ground my gears was how empty the theatre was. The cheap seats were on the Upper Circle, but an interval snoop showed me that the auditorium was barely half full. It’s frustrating for us five pound ticketers to sit on the edge, with a chunk of the stage missing, knowing full well that all the good spots are empty, and it must’ve been frustrating for the people who spend small fortunes on the stalls to realise they could’ve bought something for a great deal less and picked a seat when they got here. I definitely think that if a show has massively undersold their night’s tickets, there should be some system to rejig the seating plan to make sure everyone’s getting a fair deal. This play needed either a filled theatre or a nice intimate one, not something halfway in between.

Overall rating is this: I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not bad, so if you have a spare fiver and you can use the Entry Pass, it’s worth an evening, but I wouldn’t bother paying full price. The editorial meetings were the highlight, but the bum notes and accusatory edge bottomed out for me.

 

THEATRE CHALLENGE TOT UP: 

  • Price: £5 using Entry Pass
  • Remaining: £43
  • Shows so far: Two!
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Cheap tickets for Matilda the Musical

My sister isn’t one for an early start. It runs in the family, for sure, but she’s especially hard to drag out of bed. And on a weekend? Good luck seeing her before lunch time.

So when I set my alarm for 7am on Saturday, I wasn’t expecting her to be be impressed, or even responsive. But the early bird gets the worm, or in this case, the cheap theatre tickets, and I was determined.

Various theatres in London offer cheap tickets for their shows for us cash-stricken 16-25s. The catch is you have to buy them in person from the theatre’s box office, and it’s first-come-first-served. In practice, this means there’s usually a queue forming up to an hour before the doors swing open at 10am, which means no lie in for me or my sister.

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Come 9am, Baby Kelly and I were running through Covent Garden, the Cambridge Theatre sparkling away in the distance. We wanted £5 tickets to see Matilda the Musical, but so did another twenty-odd twenty-somethings who had clearly got up earlier than us. Thankfully, we were in luck. The Cambridge Theatre reserves 16 tickets per show per day for young people, and we secured two matinee tickets without any problem.

I really, really recommend Matilda the Musical. It’s not as dark as the film or book- her parents are comically stupid rather than wilfully neglectful and the Trunchbull is a little bit panto villain rather than a hard nosed, disciplining demon. Understandable, really, as 80% of the audience were under ten years old. A kid’s musical is no place for in depth exploration of the effects on a neglected child’s imagination, amirite?

The show is amazing. It looks gorgeous and has brilliant wit throughout- Tim Minchin hits the sweet spot with lyrics that are the right mix of wink wink in-jokes for the adults and cute and cheeky lyrics for the kids- stand out lyrics including the gem “Ever since the day doc chopped the umbilical cord, It’s been clear there’s no peer for a miracle like me!”.

The choreography is smooth, fast, snappy and exciting. My personal highlight is the School Song, where letters of the alphabet appear shoved through school gates, with dancing pupils swinging from and jumping onto them, tap dancing and just generally having more physical coordination than I can ever dream of. Fast-paced, cheeky and sweet, if you’ve got to entertain some young’uns, it’s perfect, or if you’re just feeling pangs of nostalgia for the “ummway, umway I WOULD LIKE TO REACH OUT MY HAND” song, or for watching children shove giant chocolate cake in their face, then it’s a good day out for you too.

Anyone between 16 and 25 can get tickets- so if you have friends visiting or are going to be in the capital in the morning, it’s well worth getting out of bed for. With tickets for a measly £5 each, you really can’t argue with the early start. Details here.

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