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Is Sunday the New Monday?

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Is the West End changing tact, trying to emulate its cousin in New York?

Matt Lucas and Gwen Taylor will star in Prick Up Your Ears at the Comedy Theatre

Matt Lucas and Gwen Taylor will star in Prick Up Your Ears at the Comedy Theatre

At Discount Theatre, we’ve noticed that a number of shows are introducing a Sunday show (usually a matinee) and having a weeknight off in return. This makes perfect sense when you consider that theatre is a leisure pastime and most people do not work Saturday and Sunday.

Generally speaking, the West End had run a generic schedule of Monday to Saturday evening, a Saturday matinee and a weekday matinee, equalling eight performances a week with Sunday as a rest day.
On Broadway, you can guarantee that most shows will run on Sundays and traditionally Monday was the day of rest for the actors (although nowadays anything goes and quite often you will see Tuesday or Wednesday as the night off)

Personally, I don’t understand why West End producers haven’ t thought about this sooner. Tourists who take weekend trips to London usually stay for most of Sunday; leaving only Saturday to see the show. Saturdays are notoriously busy, with productions booked months in advance, so any hope of buying a ticket on the day goes out the window. To open up on Sundays as well, gives the paying public much more choice and if it is a matinee, the actors will still have the night off.

For years the staple of Sunday matinees in the West End were either Stomp or The Lion King. Desperate people milling around Leicester Square on a Sunday were left out as they didn’t realise that most theatres were dark. Now we are seeing Thriller, Jersey Boys, Hairspray, Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Prick Up your Ears already performing or introducing a Sunday show in the next few months, which is great news for the consumers.

The musical Hairspray will start Sunday performances in November

The musical Hairspray will start Sunday performances in November

Finally The West End seems to be thinking about the routines of punters. Now, if we could just get the government to revoke Sunday trading hours so we can go grocery shopping after 4pm, life would be bliss!

Check out the great shows with Sunday performances here.

Posted by Lisa Denton on Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 1:11 pm 
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Matt Lucas Pricks Up His Ears

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Matt Lucas will be the latest celeb to take on a West End role, as Simon Bent’s Prick Up Your Ears is staged at the Comedy Theatre in September. Lucas will play Kenneth Halliwell, who was the lover of playwright Joe Orton - and also his murderer. After Orton achieved success with great plays Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, Halliwell bludgeoned him to death in 1967 in the flat they shared and then killed himself by overdosing on drugs.

 

This sounds quite shocking, especially as these events occurred in 1967, but right up my street. I love dramatisations of historical events, even if it does involve killing with a blunt object, (I know… this is not the nicest of subjects). But the role of Halliwell certainly sounds like a change of image for Lucas who is probably better known as his character Dafydd from Little Britain (the only gay in the village).

 

Except maybe it’s not. Prick Up Your Ears is actually quite funny, with the exception of its rather macabre outcome. The characters of Orton and Halliwell attempt to cope with the stifling claustrophobia of their one room flat in Islington by throwing caustic comments at each other, providing a very dark, but humorous domestic combat that drips with sharp wit. The story is told from Halliwell’s perspective and his increasing dissatisfaction as Orton’s career takes off, leaving Halliwell relegated to life out of the limelight. Apparently his role as housewife eventually pushed Halliwell over the edge….however, I still have to use some imagination to envision Matt Lucas, creator of some of the funniest visual characters on television, morphing into a jealous killer. I’m half expecting him to appear on stage in a latex suit with a rum and coke in his hand!

Well, we will all have to go and see the funny man take a stab (no pun intended) at a character that seriously loses the plot. Prick Up Your Ears will be on a regional tour from the end of August and will then move into the Comedy Theatre from the 17th September until the 6th December. Book your Prick Up Your Ears Tickets here.

Matt Lucas stars as Daffyd in Little Britain

Matt Lucas stars as Daffyd in Little Britain

Posted by Lisa Denton on Monday, June 22, 2009 at 2:33 pm 
Filed under Featured, Uncategorized · Tagged with , , ,