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Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of The Worlds

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No-one would have believed, back in the early 80s when I first heard the album, that I’d be sat forty or more years later watching the hugely popular Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of The Worlds : the album is a classic piece of 1970s ensemble musical performers plus the gravitas of Richard Burton’s unmistakable voice. That the album is a classic meant little to me back then: that its running time was a bit more than you could fit on a 90 minute cassette was the big problem. So you listened on vinyl or you missed the rather important end… They’ve re-worked the piece, with some inserted commentary from HG Welles at the beginning of the 20th Century, then after the two world wars. It’s part of the show’s message about the arrogance of post-Victorian Empire being brought low by an overwhelmingly violent takeover from the alien red planet. We know that it’s not red weed that gives that world its colour, but almost everything else about the message of this piece rings very differently ...
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Evita

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Jamie Lloyd’s production of the Lloyd Webber/Rice musical fills the London Palladium on a hot evening, famously even spilling onto the balcony which has caused some newspaper pieces as well as social media ‘fuss’. Rachel Zegler, who has just been in the Snow White live action remake, takes the title role and genuinely she is the best thing in the show—not just with the sweet voice of a Disney alum, but raunchy in a production that sexualises almost every character including many of Peron’s military associates. The staging is limited to an ascending platform, like the seating at a sports arena, and otherwise all is darkness pierced by light. And the volume is set to loud. The story of Eva Peron’s rise, written in the seventies and sounding every bit like the Englishmen who wrote it, has somehow retained popularity because of the songs and the quality of the casting. Formerly a concept album it has gone as far as finding itself on film and the casting of Latino performers gives it more p...
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Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning

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Sweet Mother of all things preposterous, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is a long and enjoyable movie. The story follows on from the previous, with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt on the run from his own good guys with a key which will unlock some theoretical antidote to the AI which is taking over the world’s nuclear arsenal in every nation. The first hour or so is the set-up, and the opening titles occur quite a long time into the film. Why, even before the first scene we get Actual Tom Cruise thanking us all for coming to see the film on the big screen as the makers intended. Cruise’s commitment to the big-screen experience is laudable and Christopher McQuarrie knows how to put together a tense action scene. In this case there’s a set-piece underwater sequence where Hunt has to go to the stricken submarine from the previous movie. He has to recover a part which has the source code of the AI which can be used to destroy it. Meanwhile the establishment is suspicious. President Angela ...
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