David Benedict: Last News

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‘Just for One Day — The Live Aid Musical’ Review: Musical Performances Make Up for an Earnest Retelling of the Famous 1980s Charity Event

David Benedict Enraged by the British government charging the standard 15% sales tax on tickets for Live Aid, Bob Geldof (Craige Els) bullies his way into a meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (sparky Julie Atherton). Ever intransigent, she responds with dialogue lifted from Bernie Taupin and Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” before they argue with each other unexpectedly as a rap.
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‘Romeo and Juliet’ Review: ‘Ted Lasso’ Star Toheeb Jimoh Is the Expressive Heart of Rebecca Frecknall’s Passionate Production
David Benedict Having the audacity to harness stabs and slashes of Prokofiev’s celebrated ballet score for “Romeo and Juliet” for a production of Shakespeare’s play suggests remarkable confidence on the part of white-hot director Rebecca Frecknall. It’s not misplaced. Her startlingly visceral production, with a cast led by Toheeb Jimoh of “Ted Lasso,” is not only lit up by the power of bodies leaping in space and dramatically alert even when in repose; it’s also alive to the detailed drama of Shakespeare’s language. The intensity she engenders in her actors is sometimes ramped-up too highly and everything boils over, but at its finest, the fiercely articulate passion is electrifying. The fact that the rulebook is being rewritten is made plain from the get-go. The famous opening address about “two houses alike in dignity” is not spoken: The text is lit up on the wall covering the entire front of the stage. Beneath Gareth Fry’s low growl of a soundscape, the company gathers one by one to claw against it before sending it crashing to the ground. But this is not just a shock tactic. Frecknall is illuminating the line about “taking the wall of any man” and using physical energy to punch into a vigorously staged fight between the warring Montagues and Capulets.
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‘Aspects of Love’ Review: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Torpid, Semi-Forgotten Musical Gets an Unconvincing West End Revival
David Benedict “Will someone kindly tell me what on Earth has happened?” Well, quite. That’s the that line Michael Ball’s George sings when surveying the absurdity before him, including the body of his passed-out partner Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford) who has just been shot by his jealous nephew Alec (Jamie Bogyo). Judging by the unexpected laughter that greeted it on opening night, others are framing his question more widely while witnessing this revival — that’s not the right term — of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1989 musical “Aspects of Love.” For that scene and the whole queasy, quasi-romantic story to work, you need emotional truth. But despite the cast’s sincere efforts there is scarcely a speck of that for them to work with. In the sung-through score (no bookwriter is credited; the text is the work of lyricists Don Black and Charles Hart) they are left to sing rambling expository dialogue at one another and emote, giving audiences little to connect with. Lloyd Webber can and does lace lines from the show’s two big tunes, “Love Changes Everything” and “Seeing Is Believing,” through his score all night, but it doesn’t compensate for the lack of believable drama. And that’s before you get to the sexual politics.
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