Friday 28th December matinee

[iain]

OK, I was going to save some money between Christmas and New Year and skip going to London but.......

A short review:-

The day before the show, I managed to get possibly the final ticket for what looked a sold out show, Circle E31, and my first Mamma Mia since August.

Lucy as Donna and Leanne as Rosie.

Having read people's views on Leanne, I wasn't really expecting a great deal but I enjoyed her performance, it was just fine.

Apart from that, it was a good show with a quiet audience. I could count the number of people dancing at the finale on the fingers of one, er, finger.....so congrats to Michaela anyway for trying to get the comatose crowd onto their feet

The relevant statistic, as always: Lucy's pause was timed at 9 seconds.

Mildly amusing bit: At the end of the finale, when Iain and Lucy are supposed to arrive at the front of the stage at the same time, Lucy seemed to get held up for a few seconds, leaving Iain impatiently tapping his watch when she did arrive in a "where've you been till now?" sort of way.

I think that was it. Good show, a few tired moments, maybe the Christmas schedule taking its toll. It's a 7/10 from me

[michaela]

The audience was absolutely crap, most probably still recovering from Christmas hangover! The worst in a long time! Cannot believe that I was the first one up in front block in stalls for Waterloo! a few got up during number but not a lot!
Oh well, not that I cared, I had fun. Had originally A21 but thanks to the lovely couple next to me, I ended up in my usual seat A23! ;D
Had nearly an heart attack before the show when picking up my ticket, as they still had the understudy list on from the night before and Ben had been off sick the two days before, but later found out he was in - most delighted about that.
Besides Jo being off and Leanne on for her, Lucy Tapp covering Leanne's part, Suzy Lucy, Marc on for David and Tim on for Adriano.

Agree with Iain on Leanne, I enjoyed her performance, she has a wonderful strong singing voice and her facial impressions and her acting were fantastic adding her own little bits and pieces to the role of Rosie - the only thing which slightly irritated me at the beginning was that her speaking voice sounds rather young.

The biggest surprise for me was Hannah's performance, I always thought she was just okay, but this show was the first one of her I loved - I hadn't seen her since end of September and she performed a lot more naiive, sweeter, a lot less emotional (in the other shows I always thought her Sophie was even more emotional than whoever played Donna which imho shouldn't be the case), just emotional enough when the character required it and a lot less arrogant as well (always felt that e.g. when she as Sophie asked Donna to help her getting dressed for the wedding).

Agree with Iain as well on the tired moments, the whole hen night party scene lacked a bit of energy (but quite a few seem still to suffer from colds etc., talking to Ben after the show, he was still not feeling well) - a smal technical glitch during "Gimme Gimme Gimme" didn't help either on not enjoying that part of the show as much as usually!

Well, not much else to say about the show - counting days now till next one on February 9!

[Jazz]

Too funny i was "contemplating" going to that show, alas London Heathrow doesn't really co-operate with "theatre plans"

oh well...glad you all had fun ;D

and that was funny about your Cover list scare