Sweetbaby wrote:Thanks for the feedback from Cas and Carole. Perhaps the show can be tweaked to make Dusty a more comedic role - I do suspect the producers et al are wary of making Dusty too much of a figure of fun. And it's too too fab that Car and Cor got to chat with Katherine Kingsley!
donellac wrote:Thanks for your thoughts on the musical Carole. They are very insightful and you speak about many aspects that touched me more lightly. It is interesting to read what you have written. I hope you will send this to the production team,
This is my take on the show. I agree that there is much that is great about it and quite a lot that is bad.
Starting with the good – Katherine Kingsley is great as Dusty and Joanna Francis is fabulous as Lois. Both of them give excellent performances of some of Dusty’s iconic songs. The wigs, clothes and makeup are very authentic. The musicians are great too as are the dancers.
The music, Katherine and Joanna's performances and the glitz give the production a sheen and help us forget the source of the story. If the aim is, as Wally has said, to bring Dusty to the masses then the standing ovations at every performance show it succeeds.
I agree with Cas that the first act is mediocre. It introduces Dusty but it fails to present her properly. The audience aren’t shown her stellar rise to fame after the Springfields. They aren’t told of the heights she reached then. Neither do they see her sense of humour. Instead it focusses on her insecurity and stage fright. Where was Dusty the Star?
In this act we also discover Kay O’Brien and we are presented with an unkind, uncaring mother who constantly berates and undermines her daughter. But this is far from the truth. Kay O’Brien was a loving mother who was fiercely proud of her daughter and was always fully supportive of her. This representation of Kay diminishes both mother and daughter.
I agree with other reviewers who point out that the set was somewhat rudimentary and the way of signalling the passing of the years was clunky. I found the production values lower than I had come to expect from reading reviews of the show. But that may be my failing, this is only the second musical I have ever seen so it is difficult for me to judge.
I found the Pat and Ruby characters an annoying distraction. They were more like characters from AB Fab than the close friends and supporters they were meant to represent.
The second act shows Dusty’s descent but I struggle to understand why, with 35 years of her life to squeeze into a two and a half hour show, twenty minutes is spent on a sordid sex scene that is better left unsaid. I am sure her fall could have been represented without going to such depths. There was so much more to Dusty than that.
Back home from Manchester I have re-read parts of ‘that book’. I have also been reading the archived LTD discussion on the book from 2009.
These are Annie Randall’s words from that discussion:
My first problem with DWD is that it has the term "authorized biography" in its title. Everyone--from the publishers to the authors-- knew that this was misleading as it implied that Dusty herself had authorized it. When I first saw the book cover, I remember thinking "wow, Dusty gave someone the authority to write about her." I felt that I'd bought the book under false pretences when I learned later that the "authorization" came from the estate and that D most certainly knew nothing about it. It's rather telling that no one has ever said publicly that Dusty herself authorized or knew about this "biography."
My second problem (again, this repeats what's been said before by Carole G and others) is that it seems particularly criminal, given Dusty's own perfectionism, that the book should have been so incredibly sloppy. Though I would never pretend to speak for Dusty, I would imagine that she would not have objected to the book had it been done with some style or elegance or wit.
My third problem is the "tragic lesbian" subtext (not so sub, really). Penny and Vicki made D into a tired stereotype by leaving out so much (i.e. her MUSIC!!!) and dwelling on tabloid-ready episodes from her relationships. The disproportionate attention to some things and utter lack of attention to others really bothered me and revealed, sadly, the authors' impoverished worldview while producing for an unsuspecting public a wildly unbalanced "biography." The book does the most damage for readers who know nothing about D and pick it up expecting "a life." When regarded from that perspective, DWD's power to shape perceptions and influence D's legacy becomes obvious. I don't think Vicki and Penny did this maliciously. I think it's a result of rushing the book to press and their own limited skills. Is this really Dusty's life? Surely it's only small bits of her life magnified beyond comprehension, made even larger and more disturbing by the absence of anything else. Dusty deserves a real biographer with real credentials to write her life story comprehensively (and with some style for God's sake!). I cannot imagine any fan objecting to a treatment of both Dusty's personal life and her artistic life within the context of a solidly researched biography. BUT what's great about DWD it is that it provoked incredible backlash among fans and got us to focus even more clearly on why we think Dusty is so great. It seemed to motivate fans to tell, tell, and retell the full story (i.e. on fan forums like this).
I agree with virtually every word here and feel they apply equally to the musical.
Dusty once said ‘I'm the most misunderstood, misquoted person I know, honestly’. For me this production is a prime example of those words.
boztiggs wrote:Im not very up on theatre stuff, so does anyone know how it works if a show has a short run, how long after do you have to wait to find out if it will get any more outings, id hate to think I was only going to see it once, and given it was bums on seats all the time and standing ovations, I would have thought it made sense to carry on the success asap, im dying to know
Neil xx
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