Friday, August 19, 2011

London Visit

Hi,
On Tuesday I left for a 2 day visit to London to take in 2 musicals:  The Phantom of the Opera, and its sequel, Love Never Dies. We stayed in The Royal Trafalgar, which was positioned perfectly. Both Her Majesty’s Theatre and The Adelphi Theatre were walking distance, as were Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square.
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m & m men in m&m world, London
After finding the Hotel and settling in, we headed off to Regent Street to find stores such as Hamleys and Apple (that store was amazing!). After spending a few hours looking around we headed back to the hotel. Of course, you can’t go to London without getting a little lost. By a happy coincidence we found the M and M world. 4 floors of m&m products. Seriously, it was huge and one of the most surreal shops I have been in.
At around 6.45 we headed off to Her Majesty’s Theatre for Phantom. Although the theatre was small, it fitted the musical perfectly – being about a theatre. The story was amazing, the singing was fantastic, the music was brilliant, the effects and makeup were spell bounding, the whole thing was stupendously great!
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Buckingham Palace, London
The next day we went to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. It was really good.
We also went to Trafalgar Square and went to see Big Ben (well, the clock that houses the bell, Big Ben – Thank QI for that factoid!). London is really actually quite a pleasant place, and not anywhere near as stressful as some make it out to be.
At 1.30 we headed off to the Adelphi Theatre for the matinee performance of Love Never Dies.
Although very different from Phantom, and set 10 years later, the musical was, again, amazing. With a few rock pieces and an absolutely wonderful 10 year old singer playing Gustave, the whole show was a thrill to watch. The effects were astonishing and I still can’t work out how some of them were done. The ending was stunning and almost (almost:  as in it didn’t, but nearly did) brought a tear to my eye.
Sadly, Love Never Dies received little acclaim and is ending on the 27th of August. I seriously can’t see how any one wouldn’t love the show, but it seems I’m a minority there, and so it seems is the whole of the Adelphi Theatre when they gave it a standing ovation.
All in all I had a superb couple of days in London.

Thanks
Matt B

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