Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown I always think it's great when you see an actor perform a role that you never would have imagined them doing. One example is Hugh Grant who has thoroughly shaken his foppish persona in recent years taking on roles such as Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal , the baddie Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2 and probably my favourite, the tabloid journalist (who Grant is well known for detesting) called Fletcher in The Gentlemen . Another such performance for me was Benedict Cumberbatch in Frankenstein , this week's NT Live. I have always thought he was a good actor, but I've never seen him take such a physical role as that of the Creature in this production. He totally commits and is on stage for the majority of the 2 hour run time - it must have been exhausting! Catch it while you can: Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
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Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Easter Sunday 🥚 Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber's generosity, today I watched Jesus Christ Superstar - the 2012 arena tour. I was really excited to see this as I didn't get to at the time and I've never seen the musical - ever! And what a cast - a Spice Girl (Mel C) a radio legend (Chris Moyles who was HUGE at the time) and Tim Minchin as Judas who blew me away. I also loved Alexander Hanson as Pontius Pilate It definitely felt like a good choice for Easter Sunday! I'm sure they made some updates to it, but considering this musical is now 50 years old, it felt fresh and modern in it's telling of a story from 2000 years ago. It didn't have good reviews at the time, but I enjoyed it - maybe weirdly it works better on screen?
Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown One of the freebies available at the moment is from the National Theatre. This is a theatre I visit regularly and performing there is top of actor dream list. Watching theatre on screen is always a bit odd and as I settled down to watch the fantastic "One Man Two Guvnors" it did take a little while to adjust. Stage and screen are very different mediums and nothing shows this as starkly as watching a recording of a play. However, all the actors in this production have pretty notable screen careers as well, so it's not like they can't do both - we know they can and after a short time, I stopped "being aware" that I was watching a play. I saw the show when it transferred to the West End with Rufus Hound taking over from James Cordon in the lead role. I loved this production and watching the filmed version last night still elicited many, many laugh out loud moments, as it is, ...