Sister Act

On Tuesday night I went out with my friends Cristin (a friend from elementary school that I lost touch with and she ended up living downstairs), Keelia, Ruth, and Drew to celebrate Drew's 20th birthday. We went to dinner at a surprisingly inexpensive gourmet Italian restaurant and then to see Sister Act, the musical. 

Now, this would not have been my first choice of show to go see, but it was entertaining none the less. If you feel that you will be going to see this musical you might not want to read further because I am going to spoil parts. However, I don't know that you would really be missing anything by not going...

It was in the Palladium Theatre near Oxford Circus, which was a very nice, old theater. (The whole spelling theater/theatre thing is getting to me) Our seats got upgraded unexpectedly, and had a really good view of the stage. 

So it's obviously based on the movie with Whoopi Goldberg (Which if you haven't seen it, stop reading and watch it. Seriously. It's awesome.) and Maggie Smith. But they change a lot of things, like Whoopi's character, Delores, is much younger, and it is set in 1970's Chicago instead of 1990's San Francisco. So there is disco instead of hip-hop. The cop is also a former class-mate 'Sweaty-Eddie' and there is a love story. Many of the scenes go in a similar order, but there is obviously more singing, and everyone sings not just the nuns. There is no helicopter ride to Reno. I miss the ride to Reno.

There are some good songs, a lot of so-so ones, some fantastic costume changes, some genuinely funny moments, a lot of forced jokes, sweet set changes, and a lot of nuns. 

This was a musical through and through. And while I love a good musical, this one was simply a musical. It's something that high schools will do, not something that will live on the stage forever and become musical theatre canon. It lost something vital from the film, it became hokey and conventionalized and prescriptive. It lost its message.

I kept hoping that they would do one of the songs from the movie or give the characters real personalities instead of just stereotypes. I was disappointed. But at the last moment the conductor had a costume of the Pope and stood up. That was awesome. 

The woman that played Delores had some pipes. She sang beautifully. And partly because I have been listening to my flatmates try to do my accent, I could hear the actors 'American accents' which absolutely cracked me up, especially when they were using 70's slang. 

End verdict, I was entertained and had a great night, but I wouldn't pay to go and see it again. Or buy the soundtrack. 

But as my first West End musical, it was fun. And it was fun to see it with friends. Although I couldn't dork out quite as much as I wanted to about the tech stuff. :)