By Jack
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6hXc2lzfsk
Available until: Sunday 25th October 2020.
I don’t usually like musicals. They’re too soppy and people
keep singing for no reason and when they’re in danger, instead of running away
like a normal person, they stand still and sing a song about running away. I
know some idiots panic in a crisis and do all kinds of stupid things but
standing still and singing a song? Not realistic. If you want to run away, just
run away. It’s a bit pathetic but at least it makes sense.
I liked this one but I’m not totally sure if it’s a good musical or not. Imogen says it’s not a proper musical because half of it is on film and some of the stuff that goes on on film probably couldn’t happen onstage and it can’t be a good musical if it doesn’t work. Imogen is very nearly as annoying when she does talk sense as when she doesn’t. If you judge this as a stage musical it isn’t very good because it can’t be done just onstage.
But who says we have to categorise everything anyway? Why
can’t The War of the Worlds just be its own thing? You get a bit of live
action on the stage but then all the clever stuff like spaceships and Martians
which can’t be done live so easily is shown on a screen. I don’t think this is
a case of The War of the Worlds not quite working as a film or as a
musical – it would definitely be possible to film the whole thing and you can
actually do quite a lot live onstage. It’s more that Jeff Wayne has got his
story together and thought about how he can tell the story and he’s come up with
something that works.
The show has been around for years in different forms. It
started off as a 1978 concept album by Jeff Wayne which tells the story of The
War of the Worlds, which is by H. G. Wells. It was first turned into a
stage show in 2006 and it’s revived quite regularly and tours around the
country. In 2012 Jeff decided to switch it up a bit and produced a new album
before sending that version on tour. I think it’s great that he’s having new
ideas all the time and always improving it. They should do the same with all
long running shows and right now with all the theatres closed they’ve got a
great opportunity to get off their butts and make their shows better. Mamma Mia is probably a lost cause but
they can’t all be that bad.
The 2012 version has got loads of epic special effects
onstage and onscreen. There’s fires, there’s gas, there’s explosions, there’s
homicidal Martians, what more could you want? The music (played by a live
orchestra) isn’t bad. It’s more like a film soundtrack than an actual musical.
It’s atmospheric and interesting but it doesn’t take over the story. Lots of
great shots of Mars too and the Martians are really good.
The lyrics aren’t great, they’re not exactly inspired and there
is a bit too much boring relationship stuff, Parson Nathaniel and George
Herbert both have partners and it is a bit pointless. If you want to have
female characters fair enough but ether make them proper characters or leave
them out.
Jason Donovan plays Parson Nathaniel and he’s always really
annoying but it’s also got Liam Neeson in as the Journalist so that kind of
levels things up, I can put up with Jason if there’s someone as good as Liam.
Jason appears in person on the stage and Liam appears as a 3D hologram which is
really interesting. I don’t need to tell you which one of them acted really
well and was great to watch and which one made me want to emit some gas of my
own. The Journalist’s thoughts were sung by Marti Pellow and that wasn’t ideal
as he’s just not anywhere near Liam’s level but it was interesting seeing how
the character was put together
Ricky Wilson plays the Artilleryman and I thought he was
good. He just got on with it and didn’t slow the story down with relationship
stuff. He’s probably the most interesting character. Will Stapleton played the
Voice of Humanity, I don’t really like the idea of humanity having one voice
because we’re all different and we should be allowed to be different, even the
annoying people like Jason Donovan and Imogen. He was okay but his voice and
stage presence didn’t really make him stand out.
The two women were really annoying as characters, they
didn’t really do anything except stress but Kerry Ellis (Nathaniel’s wife Beth)
and especially Anna-Marie Wynne (Carrie the Journalist’s fiancée) do act really
well and not many actors are going to look good when they’re sharing a stage
with a hologram of Liam Neeson. It would have been better if they’d had more
interesting stuff to do but at least you could see they were actually good.
No comments:
Post a Comment