Review: “The Lion King”, Manchester

Venue – The Palace Theatre, Manchester

Seats – M34 and M35, Grand Tier

Cost – £25 each

 

Wow. Where to start on this one? This is the first musical I’ve seen twice – I saw it for the first time in London in 2008 with my school, and then for the second time yesterday, and it affected me a lot more this time – I got quite emotional at some parts! With the exception of the people sitting around us – a woman behind who kept rustling packets constantly, and a horrendous family in front who couldn’t control their kids and ended up – during the most emotional part – all standing up so the daughter, who’d decided to sit as close to the middle as possible, could go to the toilet. As if that wasn’t bad enough (go in the interval or hold it in!), they couldn’t just get up and walk, they had to talk about it and keep shifting around. It didn’t ruin the song for me, although I’m worried that it may have done for my other half, whose birthday present it was.

The cast was incredible, but sitting so high up in the gods, it sounded a little quiet. Again, that’s not a fault of the cast or the theatre, it’s just a fact that we knew would happen when I booked the tickets. It doesn’t ruin the experience whatsoever, the only reason I’ve included this is just to say that if you want the best sound quality, I’d say go and sit in the stalls or even further towards the front of the grand tier.

My personal highlights of the cast were Meilyr Sion – a Welshman playing an African bird (originally portrayed as very English by Rowan Atkinson) with a Scottish accent! Those little bits of playing on the fact that Zazu was now from Glasgow were hilarious; I won’t say what they are in case anyone is reading this and plans to go and see it.

The songs were incredible; “He Lives In You” was just incredible and even made me shed a few tears. Harmonies were incredible and a couple of songs in there that I don’t recall seeing in the London production really added to it – I was a little disappointed at first about the omission of “The Morning Report”, but the musical doesn’t lose anything by not having it in there – that’s just a note that if you’ve seen it and loved it in other versions, it’s not in the tour version so don’t expect it! Music is fantastic.

Staging and costume… wow. I’m a theatre and performance student so although I am a techie at heart and prefer the technical side, I was looking at it more from a performance point of view this time, and I was blown away. My other half is the big techie and he can be quite hard to wow, but every so often as a new, intricate piece of costume was unveiled (his particular favourite were the giraffes, I think), or some of the set was brought on (Pride Rock and the elephant graveyard are incredible, but we were both amazed at the pools of water – if you go and see it, you’ll understand what I mean), all I’d hear from him was a breathless “Wow”. He was absolutely enthralled by the technical side, but I think the performance aspect wowed him too – the choreography was incredible, mixing dance with stage combat for some of the fight scenes which made it incredible.

Oh, and just another warning – we all know Mufasa dies. It happens in the film, it happens in the stage show, and we’re all aware of that fact, and if you weren’t, you need to be told now anyway. Mufasa’s death is like the “Bambi’s Mom dying” for our generation (or for me, anyway, because I always preferred lions to deer and never cared that much for Bambi), and it is done so well in the stage show that you may find yourself feeling a little emotional.

Some of the bits may be scary for younger kids, but I can guarantee they will love “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”, with the incredible costumes and puppets and dancing in it, and if what I saw when we left the theatre is an accurate representation of most kids, they’ll absolutely love it! It’s a fantastic family musical and I couldn’t recommend it more strongly! It’s at Manchester now until April 30th (not sure what availability is like on tickets), then it goes to (I think) Dublin and Birmingham. Tickets are fairly good prices – if you’ve got the cash, go for the stalls or the front of the circle, but if not, being in the dress circle (we were one row in front of the very back of the dress circle) doesn’t really have a  massive negative effect on the effect the performance will have on you. Leg room in the dress circle is very restricted, but it’s worth it to watch this show!

Mickey Mouse degree? Think again!

That’s a popular phrase being thrown around these days. Often mixed in with grumbles of, “too many kids going to university” and, “it wasn’t like this in my day, in my day you had to be clever to go to university!”, so many degrees are being called “Mickey Mouse”. Now then, if there was a Disney studies course, not only would I be the first one to sign up, but I’d also refer to it as a Mickey Mouse degree – not because it’s “easy”, but because it’s about Mickey Mouse. I’ve never studied Disney in Drama A Level, and I don’t think we will at degree level either, so I’m not sure where this idea of a “Mickey Mouse degree” has come from.

Of course, I know that people are referring to the idea that the course is easy – minimal contact hours, very little independent study required and very easy to get a degree. It’s usually used by the STEM students – the ones doing sciences, technologies, maths or engineering. A theme I’ve noticed in a few of these – but not all, because I’m living in a flat with three STEM students and they’re incredibly nice guys, all of them – is that they have this idea that they’re better than others – namely BA students. They have this idea that all we do is draw or prance around in leotards or write stories for a couple of hours, a few times a week, and then we get long weekends and nice lie-ins and very little independent study.

Here’s two samples of timetables.

Timetable 1

Monday – 10-1, Tuesday – 9-1, Wednesday – 9-1, Thursday – 9-12, Friday – 9-1

Timetable 2

Monday – 11-5, Tuesday – 9-5, Wednesday – 9-5, Thursday – 9-5, Friday – 11-4. 

 

So the first timetable looks pretty good, doesn’t it? And you sit there thinking “Wow, that must be an easy degree – that’s got to be the theatre one”. Actually, apparently that is the timetable for first year Maths at UCL. The second one is my timetable for Theatre, Television and Performance at Glyndwr University, which has been described as a Mickey Mouse course and a Mickey Mouse university by some people. However, it doesn’t just end there –  as well as independent study, writing essays and having to do all the reading, we also have rehearsals. We’re doing shows, we’re doing community projects, we’re putting our social lives on hold and sacrificing doing things we want to do, because that’s the only way we can get a good grade and earn a good degree. I’m not saying Maths is easy – I know I’d never be able to do it – but I often wonder if these STEM students, and anyone else who looks down their nose at the course I’m studying and others like it, would be able to do what we have to do – to spend all day rehearsing when you’re tired, busy, possibly slightly hungover. To get up onstage and perform to huge audiences, or to tiny, intimate groups of four or five.

You can learn how to do maths – yes, some have a natural aptitude, but you can learn how to balance equations and find ratios. You can’t be taught how to act – you can be given techniques and taught how to use them, but you need to have a fairly substantial natural talent for it first. So, before you see someone studying drama, or performance, or music, or media, or creative writing, and you scoff – “they don’t really need to put in any effort” -, think again. You could be on your way home after a day of work in the office, or back to your flat after a 2 hour statistics lecture – they’re having a five minute drink break in the middle of a gruelling 6 hour rehearsal where they’re being pushed to the very limit, or they’re working to an incredibly tight deadline to try and force the last few pages of a story, or an article, or a composition onto the paper.

Who really has the easy ride?

“Why Yes, I AM Procrastinating”

So, I have been doing essays and work, but I need some procrastination, so I’m going to post up the five videos that have been keeping me going through revision, in the hope that you might enjoy them and even find them useful whilst you’re writing/working/doing whatever else you’re doing/not doing anything even though you should be doing something (like me!).

1. Nick Pitera; the One Man Disney Movie

2. Mike Tompkins; “Forever” (Chris Brown cover with every sound you hear made by him!)

3. Train; “Drive By”. Train are just amazing anyway.

4. Tangled; “When Will My Life Begin”.

5. Brother Bear, “On My Way”

 

Revision Day (warning, may contain sweary gifs)

Today is going to be a revision day for me. Revision days are always a funny kind of day, because you start off really motivated like –

And then your revision comes at you and you’re like, “I’ll start in a bit” –

You drag yourself to your bag to get your revision notes for a different subject.

Then you look in your bag and realize just how much revision you have to do.

So, you start writing. You manage two minutes, three at the most, and feel like you’ve just climbed Everest, cured world hunger, brought about eternal peace and written a 10,000 word dissertation on the preservation of cute widdle hedgehogs in the Forest of Dean.

… then you realize how much more work you’ve got to do, and just how soon your exams are.

 

This cycle repeats itself throughout the day, and this will form my day in a nutshell. It will end like this.

Inspirational Post #2

Today’s “Inspirational Post” has a distinct Disney flavour to it! Enjoy…

  

And finally this one, which has cheered me up whenever I felt down, and may have been included in the first “Inspirational Post” but who cares – it’s amazing and TRUE!

Oh, and if you have Tumblr, follow disneyandquotes.tumblr.com . That’s where most of these pictures have come from, and it is probably the sweetest and most inspiring Tumblr I’ve found. There’s something about Disney that is just so wonderful and inspirational, and that Tumblr captures the essence of that perfectly.

Time for a light-hearted post!

I’m going to ease myself back into blogging with a couple of light-hearted posts. To be honest, I’m not feeling an awful lot better, which isn’t a good thing when I’m on the last day of my antibiotics, but I guess it’s going to take a while. So, for my first light-hearted blog, I’m going to basically just post pictures of things I really really like. Sounds a bit simplistic – that’s exactly what it is, and that’s why I like it so much. I’ve been posting all these “Moom’s Views”, which I will continue with eventually, I have a draft of a post about Samantha Brick floating around somewhere that needs finishing and posting, and it’s all well and good but it gets a bit upsetting and miserable after a while, because it seems like there’s not very much about the world to celebrate these days. So, I’m going to celebrate some of the things that I like about life. Obviously top of the list is my boyfriend, my family and my dog, but I’m not going to post pictures of them – I want to protect their privacy and not force them to have their pictures broadcast all over the internet by me!

1. VW Campervans

  

If you’ve seen my Tumblr, you’ll have realized by now how much I love VW campervans. I don’t know what it is – maybe it’s the distinctly hippie air they all carry, which I do love, or just how amazing and rounded they look and how much they make me think of holidays and fun, and I love them! Personally my ideal one would be sunshine yellow like in the first picture, or sunset colour ❤

2. Disney

I love Disney, more than any other film genre (I think it’s possible to call Disney its own genre by now, because there’s nothing else that really applies to it. Animation could refer to anything and cartoons don’t quite cover it, so I’m gonna say that Disney is a genre of its own). There’s so many things about it – there’s always a happy ending and I love the fairytale ones. My particular favourite is “Tangled”, the Disney re-telling of Rapunzel, because of the amount of just plain beautiful scenes in it.

  

3. Gaming

I wouldn’t call myself a mad gamer, as in it’s not my whole life, but I am partial to the odd go on the PS3 every now and again – particularly Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m a violent person, but I love that game – mainly because you can get rocket launchers and blow things up, but also because I’m fairly good at it considering I don’t think I’ve ever been good at shooting games before. I’m not going to post any pictures of this because I think everyone knows what MW2 is, and if you don’t, try playing the game – it really is quite fun. Downside is, I’m one of those annoying girl-gamers, who puts her clantag as “Girl” so that all the guy n00bz playing know that they’re getting decimated by a girl. I’m not just a mindless killer, however – I do also like playing games like The Sims (the third is my favourite) and Spyro 🙂

4. Haribo

Yep, I love Haribo. Not going to lie, I prefer Haribo to chocolate. Yes, I am a disappointment to the entire female side of the species, but what can I say? Chocolate gets sickly, I’ve never known Haribo to. And the variety! With chocolate, you’ve got three types – milk, dark and white. Yeah, you can have your fillings or whatever, but with Haribo, there’s just so many different types! In just one bag you can have foamy eggs, little hearts, cola bottles, gummy bears, rings – *sigh* it’s amazing! And then you’ve got Tangfastics, Super Mix, all the seasonal variants, mini packs – it’s just wonderful. And it’s happy! It really is a happy world of Haribo ❤

  

5. Llamas & Alpacas

Yes, I think we’ve all ascertained by now that I like llamas. Perhaps not to the extent of my little April Fool’s Day escapade (not enough to dedicate my whole blog to, and certainly not more than life itself), but I do really like llamas. I’m not averse to their fluffier cousins, the alpacas, either – in fact, I might even be inclined to say that I prefer alpacas to llamas. But really, how can anyone dislike the fluffy long-necked goat things? I mean, just the description of them is amazing! And their faces! Look at their cute widdw faces!

  

 

Aaaand that concludes my light-hearted post. Normal miserable service will resume shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Extreme Makeover: Blog Edition!

So, as you may notice, I’ve spruced things up a little around here. I liked the old design, but it was a little big dark, the writing was a bit too small and.. I don’t know, it didn’t really seem to have the pizazz this new one has. I’m feeling really summery at the moment and the bright oranges and the big font and the funky letters that this one has really reflects my mood, so this theme should last the blog the whole summer! Unless everyone absolutely hates it and stops reading my blog because of it, that is.

Another thing that’s new is that I’ve added two new pages, across the top of the blog. The first one, titled “Christopher Maine”, basically means that I won’t be bombarding you with publicity in the future about him, but I’d love it if you could have a look if you haven’t already, follow his blog and consider purchasing/sharing the link to his book. The second is somewhere you can ask me questions (either about myself, my writing or whatever else within reason), make suggestions about the blog and just express your views on it in general. It’s all explained in the page itself, go check it out!

Last but not least, as well as being able to follow me on Twitter (@maddyleigh94), you can now also follow me on Tumblr! I warn you, I’m a lot less “delving into serious issues and giving my opinions” on there – today my posts have consisted of things related to Glee and alpacas (my first favourite animal, closely followed by Adelie penguins and red pandas, if you were wondering), and before that it was mostly Disney. Tumblr is where I let my “Maddy” side out – on here I’m Madison, I’m all business-like and blogging (pfft, yeah right!), on Tumblr I’m Maddy, where I’m 17 going on 7 and still obsessed with cute fluffy things, glitter and Winnie The Pooh!