Tuesday 22nd September

I hate Musicals.  The West End is full of them; half the posters on the tube as you glide down the escalators are for Musicals; a new one seems to be opening every other week and they all promise to entertain us – the long-suffering public.  Mind you, I have only seen a very few.  My first was Evita.  I already had the album with the brilliant Julie Covington in the lead role.  I sat and watched the show in its first few weeks and was devastated.  Elaine Paige absolutely mullahed the show, belting out song after song, ignoring all the subtlety and sadness of Ms. Covington’s performance.  And seeing the people singing did nothing for me at all, I preferred the album.  Next up was Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers.  Boring and over-long and the songs weren’t that good either.  Stupidly I once went and saw “We Will Rock You” – awful versions of Queen’s great songs, and despite Ben Elton, a crap story.

I saw Chicago with my parents and actually liked it, but I had no pre-conceptions and the jazz band were great.  The only other one I have seen was “Mamma Mia”.  Why I went I have no idea as I hate Abba.  Yes, you can sing-along to most of the songs, but do you really want to pay a lot of money to just sing-along to a band you never rated in the first place.

I have no desire to see Kinks songs, or Madness’ music, or Buddy Holly or the Drifters or any other artist’s songs sung badly by other people.  And I actually love live theatre, it just seems a travesty to replace Drama with Karaoke.