Ever since watching the fourth series of the mighty ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ I’ve been hoping to catch the stage production of ‘The Producers’. Last Monday I finally got round to it when I travelled up to Manchester to watch the opening night of the show at the Palace Theatre. Cory English and John Gordon Sinclair will be playing the roles of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom for the stint up north but it seems no one is slightly interested in the choice of the lead actors. The appointment of Peter Kay as super camp choreographer Roger DeBris has monopolised any publicity surrounding the show. Driving into Manchester that morning I notice there are posters of Kay absolutely everywhere while flags of him hang from most of the lampposts in the city centre. Peter Kay is undoubtedly the face of this run. If you weren’t British you’d probably be wondering what all the fuss about as he’s only playing a supporting role, of course any one from this island would know the marketability of brand Kay. To be fair he didn’t disappoint, lucky really as most of the crowd are fans of him rather than the musical. This became obvious with the ovation Kay received when he walked on to the stage eclipsed anything the other actors got. One or two people in the audience were annoyingly over zealous. At one point right in the middle of a scene a drunken woman yelled “C’mon Peter!” Clearly this woman thought she’d come to see a pantomime. He coolly brushed her off replying “The name’s Roger darling”. Despite the attention he never broke character and was very impressive in the role. I’m not the biggest Peter Kay fan, I thought ‘Phoenix Nights’ was great but I went off him when he did the John Smith adverts. Digging up fucking Tony fucking Christie for that fucking song didn’t help matters. Seeing him on Monday has really got me into him again, I’d forgotten how funny he can be. I like to see him get away from “Garlic Bread!” bollocks and carry on taking these kind of roles for a while because I’m sure he’s up to it. The rest of the cast were great too. Cory English was amazing as Bialystock, a real force of nature.
Fair play, the show was highly entertaining. I knew it was going to be good but not like that. I strongly recommend anyone to catch ‘The Producers’ while it’s at Manchester. I’m even contemplating going to New York to watch it. Hang on, I think I’m building it up a bit too much. I think perhaps if I hadn’t become so familiar with the show through my love of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ I may have not enjoyed it as much. Maybe watch the original film to test the water before buying any tickets. I suppose the humour is quite specialist, anything with dancing Nazis could be considered specialist.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
Post a Comment