This week I was offered two theatre tickets in exchange for a review. 'Would you like to see Wicked tomorrow night?' they asked. I'm sorry - what? I have to write a review for you and I get two tickets to go and see the best rated musical currently showing in London's oh-so famous West End? A review that I would undoubtedly write unprompted anyway? Are you kidding? YES, PLEASE!

So, yes, whilst this is not a sponsored post, the tickets were certainly gifted for a review published elsewhere.

We rushed off after work to the beautiful Victoria Apollo Theatre where we picked up our tickets and found our seats armed with a slushie (this is what we back home call a 'slush puppy'), beers (G) and chocolatey snacks (disappointingly, there weren't any hot snacks so we settled for Crunchie Nibbles and Pringles). The stage was spectacular and really raised my expectations for the quality of the production. After a quick internet search, I found an image to share with you:


Look! A dragon! And gears, cogs, and a sparkling Emerald City. Surprisingly, the stage crew manipulate the dragon which sways, roars and flashes with very bright lights.

My favourite aspect of the production was the sheer scale of the whole enterprise. Every stage drop was carefully thought out, the props were magnificent, the costumes were sparkling and apt, and the story was a considerable improvement on the novel it is based upon.

It tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the other side of the coin; Elphaba, the 'Wicked Witch of the West' and Glinda the Good are best friends in school (after a rocky start) and they soon discover that the Wizard and his cronies are plotting to overthrow a minority group within Oz. The Wizard plots against Elphaba, frames her as 'wicked' and each element of the story we all know is given an unusual twist. It all fits together rather well, although the storyline was certainly secondary to the performance and stage.
















Here's a quick look at the costumes for the Ozzians in the Emerald City. This photograph (from the official site) certainly doesn't do them all justice! They are spectacularly green with coordinated hats, shoes and glittering accessories.






















Glinda the Good wore a different dress in every scene, travelled through the story in a bubble, and kicked her pretty pink heels up at any given moment as she expressed how wonderful she was.






















Elphaba was cast beautifully, her outfits were definitely of the Wicked Witch variety, and she sang really very well. I was amazed that her 'green' stayed on for the whole performance, and I often wondered whether she was touched up with green dust whenever she stepped off stage.

On the whole, the performance was beautiful although I felt it was rather long - I distinctly remember wondering whether there was going to be an interval, or whether they had decided to skip it and get through the rest of the performance without a break. About ten minutes after that thought, they suddenly left the stage and the lights went on - - interval, followed by another thirty minutes of performance.

I'd recommend this production to anybody who wants to experience the glorious West End with an established performance that's been running in the same theatre for five years - and it shows! 

We've been living in London for just over a year now, so it was about time that we experienced the world-famous West End... and we were very lucky to be given two tickets to the hit musical Jersey Boys.


We've seen We Will Rock You and Chicago as performed by South Africans in the Cape Town theatres, so we were very keen to see how the famous West End stood up to our high levels of expectations!

Our tickets were for a work-day so we rushed there after work, grabbed a quick snack from Burger King (how very un-posh of us) and then made our way to the beautiful Edward Theatre. It's a lovely theatre lined with lush red carpets (on some of the walls as well - too absorb sound, perhaps?), red wallpapered panels, red and gold details and medallions, and velvety red curtains. The chairs were upholstered in (you guessed it!) red with some darker details, and you could rent teeny tiny binoculars for a non-refundable £1. Luckily, we didn't have to rent the binoculars because we had such a good view from the balcony. I did enjoy one theatre novelty: I got some theatre-box Maltesers - - a "theatre box" is a normal box with an added panel under the lid. In the panel is a small hole, just big enough for you to tip one Malteser out without spilling the rest of them all of the theatre floor, or yourself.

We didn't know much about the musical so we were both very pleasantly surprised by what we got. It started off very strangely with a french rapper singing one of Franki Valli's hits, but it soon became a thoroughly enjoyable sing-along that was brilliantly cast (the four men in the poster above) and really very well coordinated. It was engaging and spectacular - we loved it. I had no idea how prominent Franki Valli's influence is on my own musical knowledge, and, of course, on contemporary music too. In fact, I hate to admit it, 'Franki Valli' was a name that was for me synonymous only with the Grease soundtrack!

The musical worked its way brilliantly through Valli's career, his personal 'fall', and his later entrance into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame as a talented and successful musician. We clapped along to the fun songs and nearly cried with the sad ones... overall, we were really surprised at how many of the songs were familiar, and it was really interesting to get the 'behind the scenes' look at the history (and inspiration) behind the songs as well as the man himself. It was a lot more dramatic that the light-hearted We Will Rock You, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.

In all honesty, it was (for us) not a very big leap from our local theatres back home in South Africa to London's magical West End. I think that the most notable difference is of course that the productions here all have their own theatres, whereas ours are run in seasons in either the Baxter or Artscape halls. That means that there is always something on the go, any day of the week, so if you're looking for something to do in London - the West End is a safe bet. The choreography, set design and singing were all to a similar standard so we were quite pleased that it had lived up to our expectations! After having such a good experience, we're definitely going to go back... only now I'm trying to convince G to go see Mamma Mia! I can't even think of how they're going to recreate an entire Greek island on stage but I can't wait to see.