The show is good and a lot of fun but they have some huge problems with the book. If they had any sense they would have taken a year out to sort the book issues, a few songs and a bit of the staging in act 2 and then took it to London to be a really great British musical, now its a good British musical
The 2 shows are very different but i can see why people would think they are similar. If American Idiot goes up against it in London then Idiot will win.
I saw it in Yorkshire, and it had quite a lot of changes from the previous showing, which was basically a staging of the album on which it's based. The one I saw had some new songs written, and generally it was pretty good, although would benefit from another couple of new or re-written songs.
You could tell they were really keen to get it to the West End from what I was reading in advance, and following some of the team on twitter, and they were definitely getting great feedback from those who went, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I feel uncomfortable second guessing what another audience would think, but my friend and I both felt that it would need some changes to make it a bit more glossy to suit West End expectations, but I'm not sure how you'd do that without losing the charm that made it appealing. It felt like a show that perhaps shouldn't aim for the West End, but instead should do a bit of touring, swing via the Edinburgh Festival, and only then give the West End a go if there is a suitable theatre and they've built up sufficient word of mouth.
It's the kind of show that could develop a cult audience, and most of that audience would be many years younger than the typical West End audience or theatre critic.
IMO, It's biggest problem is going to convince people over the age of 23 to see a show set in high school about the invention of email. I think it can and does appeal to those who are older, so long as they like the pop-rock sound, but getting them to go won't be so easy. It may also be tricky to get the natural, younger audience of a show like this to go to an actual musical.
Good luck. I hope they work it out as what I saw was definitely worth developing, and I'd encourage people who think they might like that sort of thing to give it a go.
I think what's most important is whether a show is good or not rather than any particular audience demographic. And btw - I'm 60 and I'm really looking forward to this show!
However, at no point was I suggesting that no-one over the age of 25 would want to go. I am not in that age group, which is exactly why I know how many of my friends reacted. They thought it would be for kids.
Encouraging those people, the sort who aren't so eager to see new musicals, will be a challenge for the promoters.
lol this show has no publicity, no build up and has gone on sale very late.........yet on Broadway World it has the top 3 threads all pretty much saying the same thing lol
Oops, sorry, I forgot about this one. Just wanted to post that tickets have gone onsale but POL didn't get the name of the show right, so I started another.
I've only seen a few clips, but this looks like a fun show. It seems quite cheap to stage, which is why the tickets are slightly lower than some other shows.
I expect the show won't take too long to recoup, so maybe there'll be some good offers about to pull in more audience. I imagine that this show will be popular across a large range of ages and good for families (not only because of the show, because of the price)
joined:11/21/11
Posted: 8/10/12 at 04:27am