Latest news with #TrafalgarTheatre
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Peek behind the scenes of Clueless the Musical with lead Emma Flynn
Readers are being given the chance to take a look behind the curtain and even below the stage of Clueless the Musical at the Trafalgar Theatre. The Standard is taking viewers on a video tour behind the scenes with Emma Flynn, who plays the lead role of Cher Horowitz. She has previously had parts in Little Shop of Horrors and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. The tour starts off on stage with Flynn walking you through some of her favourite props and pieces from Cher's faux bedroom. The exploration doesn't stop there as it visits the depths of the Trafalgar Theatre, where Flynn has not yet been, and goes all the way up to her dressing room on the fifth floor. But, fortunately for viewers, they won't need to climb those steep flights. See also: The Standard launches new video series taking viewers behind the scenes of West End shows 'By the end of this year, my glutes are going to be rock hard!' joked Flynn as she climbs higher and higher through the theatre. Some fascinating details from the stage show that you can expect to see include Cher's costumes, like the red outfit that refers to the original movie, and the stunning Calvin Klein dress she wore on her date with Christian. Plus, get the inside scoop on how Flynn is fitted for wigs and how quick-change looks can still include hairstyling updates. There is even a wig for a character only portrayed as a portrait, as an extra peek behind the theatre magic that goes into creating a play for the West End. Clueless the Musical is directed by Rachel Kavanaugh and was written by Amy Heckerling, who wrote and directed the original Nineties chick-flick. Tickets are available for shows until September 27 via Future videos diving into the backstage areas of London theatre shows will explore the magical world of My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. The production is based on Hayao Miyazaki's 1988 Studio Ghibli film and was adapted by Tom Morton-Smith, who wrote the 2015 play Oppenheimer, and directed by Phelim McDermott. Plus, catch up on the first from the series, Stranger Things: The First Shadow here.
BBC News
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Horse McDonald takes the stage on Pavilion rooftop
The stage of Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre has been well-trodden for more than one hundred Billy Connolly and Charlie Chaplin to the man who gave the theatre its nickname as the Devine Shrine – Scottish country and western star Sydney no one had sung from the rooftop until Horse McDonald has her own concert at the theatre lined up for 18 April, she was still determined to carve out her own corner of this illustrious venue. "No-one has ever performed on the roof," she said. "So I decided I was going to be the first."But the performance wasn't without its challenges. It required a full health and safety briefing from Trafalgar Theatre which owns the Pavilion, a steep ladder to reach the space, and a minimum of six people there which meant she had to give multiple performances, including one streamed live online. One of the songs, Careful, seemed particularly apt for the her latest single Superpower also benefited from the rooftop location on Renfield Street."It feels symbolic," she said. "It's a song about resilience, strength and self-belief."I can't think of a better place to sing it than high above the city that has always supported me."A further challenge was the blazing sunshine which - combined with the asphalt roofing and Horse's black suit - meant iced water in plastic tumblers was a necessity."If I was to tell my teenage self that I'd be doing this, the one that got off the train at Central Station under the Irn Bru sign and walked up Renfield Street to the Apollo, she would not have believed it." Quirky detail Having achieved the heady heights of a rooftop performance, cheered on by onlookers in the hotel opposite, Horse is happy to return back down to earth with a concert in the main auditorium with her full band next she's intrigued by another little quirky detail in the Pavilion's design. Back in the early 1900s when it first opened as a music hall, the theatre had a roof panel which could be manually pushed to one side to allow the fug of audience smoke to the 1970s, it was replaced with an electrically-controlled panel which can be slid across for ventilation. It has since fallen out of use, and proved to be too expensive to repair. But after today's performance Horse McDonald believes anything is possible. The sky's the limit.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Do we really want Clueless updated to reflect our dark, digital age? Ugh! As if!
Who needs to learn to park? 'Everywhere you go has valet!' Cher Horowitz, teen heroine of 1995 cult movie Clueless, is one of the most spoilt and entitled characters ever to have appeared on screen. She is also, with her irrepressible urge to solve other people's problems and her coltish steps towards self-knowledge, one of the most endearing. Millennial women like me, who grew up watching the movie again at every sleepover, will defend her against all comers. Now, Clueless is the latest millennial coming-of-age movie to hit the West End as a stage musical, opening to critics last week at Trafalgar Theatre. It follows Mean Girls and The Devil Wears Prada, both of which opened in London last year, each built to replicate the success of the repeatedly revived Legally Blonde: The Musical. (Sadly, Jennifer Coolidge has yet to cameo.) All of this would normally be reason for me to get snippy about mindless trends in musical theatre. Instead, I took one of my oldest friends from school and we had a blast. My only regret is that neither of us had the energy to replicate Cher's yellow-and-black tweed miniskirt. Not since Shakespeare's Malvolio first burst on to the stage in yellow cross-garters has an erotomaniac wasp look-alike left such a cultural footprint. Yet it's not clear how long producers can keep pumping these familiar stories through the intellectual property reconfiguration mill. Teen life has changed since the turn of the millennium. The protagonists of Clueless and Mean Girls were always defined by their deft navigation of in-group/out-group bullying, but their real-life descendants now have to handle social media, online misogyny and seemingly constant requests for nudes. Even the heroines of Legally Blonde or The Devil Wears Prada represent young women now entering an increasingly fraught and fast-paced professional landscape. (Imagine Miranda Priestly's after-hours demands if she had access to WhatsApp, or Elle Woods and her law school tutor boyfriend filling out a post-#MeToo relationship-disclosure form.) Most notable, however, is the experience gap between high school pre and post social media. The smartphone shift turns Hollywood's teen movies from contemporary social commentary to retro relic. Of these stage musicals, Clueless has the advantage in incorporating adaptation and adaptability into its story DNA. As every true fan knows, Amy Heckerling's film was a step-by-step recreation of Jane Austen's Regency novel Emma, with the eponymous Surrey heiress reincarnated as the queen bee of a Beverly Hills high school. Austen's Emma had to learn that she couldn't make illegitimate charity girl Harriet Smith any happier by crafting her into a social climber; Cher, played by a glowingly blond Alicia Silverstone, learns the same lessons on awkward school newcomer Tai (Brittany Murphy). Heckerling's great success – alongside the zinging one-liners – was to hit each of Austen's narrative beats as her protagonist makes the same mistakes. Changes are modernising but not structurally significant. Where Cher's desirable classmate Christian turns out to be gay, his equivalent in Austen's novel, Frank Churchill, is unavailable to her because he is secretly engaged to another woman. In both cases, our heroine learns the hard way that not every man is hers for the taking. Clueless, The Musical has had mixed reviews. As critics have noted, the sets are underwhelming for a West End show; the songs, crafted by KT Tunstall to mimic the original soundtrack, don't always work. Yet for many millennials, Clueless, The Musical will deliver a reverie of 90s nostalgia so joyful, it has the power to distract us from worrying about our children's toxic schoolrooms. That's due in part to the perky central performance by Emma Flynn. It's also due to one essential production decision. At no point does anyone involved in this production try to kid us that the world has changed since the 1990s. Cher and best friend Dionne still speak on brick mobile phones; when someone brings a mobile to the dinner table, it's a shocking novelty, not a depressing norm. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion There's something profoundly comforting about this model for teenage life. Secondary school for me could be vicious, competitive and cruel, but each day when I came home I had the security of shutting the door behind me and leaving the social squabbling outside. For teenagers today, that bustling and bullying seems to seep into the domestic space, along with deepfake porn, medical misinformation and Andrew Tate. Clueless, The Musical opened in London just as Adolescence hit our TV screens, the darkly topical story of 13-year old Jamie lost in online misogyny. Next to damaged boys like Jamie, Cher's braggish suitor Elton is a pussycat. By contrast, when Mean Girls: The Musical opened in London last year, it tried to tell a 2004 story with 2024 technology. In Meet The Plastics, an introductory number for the story's frostiest girl-gang, anti-heroine Regina George boasts that 'the filters you use all look just like me'. We're in the world of Instagram and Snapchat and we're told these are the cruellest teenagers known to man. Yet, while they still construct a pen-and-paper 'burn book' of rumours about their classmates, not one Photoshops their victims into pornography. I do appreciate that delving fully into the world of digital sex crime might not make for the upbeat story most audiences have come to see in the West End. It does speak to the difficulty of remaking analogue tales of adolescence in a digital world. This week, Mean Girls: The Musical announced closing notices. It's probably relevant that I couldn't remember a single catchy song, but it also seemed to fall irredeemably between two stools. Was it a tale of adolescence past, or present? The issue of social media isn't the only challenge that these teen comedies dodge. Both Mean Girls and Clueless excise any reference to a character offending a protected class, which means we lose the epic description of Christian as a 'disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding friend of Dorothy'. (Surely, what matters in the movie is that Cher immediately accepts him as a friend?) Cher's most shameful moment no longer includes an expression of racism towards her housekeeper, perhaps because a modern audience would find it harder to accept her atonement. The result is a rose-tinted, effervescent show that avoids any relationship with modern reality. Our nostalgia for 90s films is a nostalgia for a simpler teenage time. At some point, however, we can no longer keep rehashing the same teen stories. Some darker musicals have begun to explore growing up online: Dear Evan Hansen and Be More Chill come to mind. Are we ready for Euphoria: The Musical, in the spirit of the cult TV series about school-age pill-popping and sexual violence? I'd rather stay in the spirit of 1995. Kate Maltby writes about theatre, politics and culture
Telegraph
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Enter our prize draw for a chance to win two tickets to see Clueless the Musical
Win Premium Tickets to Clueless The Musical Experience the brand-new musical inspired by the iconic 90s cult classic film. Enter for a chance to win two premium tickets (Band A or above) to see Clueless The Musical at the Trafalgar Theatre on a date of your choice (Monday – Thursday) before April 30, 2025. To enter, simply fill out the form below. For an additional entry, opt in to receive the weekly Telegraph Ticket marketing newsletter on the form. The prize draw closes at 23:59 on April 4, 2025. Full terms and conditions are available on the entry form.
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The Independent
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Clueless the Musical – a cynical knockoff? As if!
Two main challenges face the makers of Clueless the musical, the latest in a long line of attempts to alchemise the vintage teen movie into box office gold. One is to make it a decent show in its own right, instead of a nostalgic retread with added jazz hands. And the second is to find something that rhymes with Clueless. Fortunately, the original film's writer Amy Heckerling has collaborated with Noughties singer-songwriter KT Tunstall and big-league lyricist Glenn Slater to create something that squeaks through on both tests. It's fun, totally fabulous – and pairs 'clueless' with 'socially IQ-less'. As if! At first, director Rachel Kavanaugh sticks to the original movie like chewing gum to the underside of a school desk. Besties Cher (Emma Flynn) and Dionne (Chyna-Rose Frederick) show up in slick recreations of the plaid outfits that spawned a thousand Halloween costumes. Then, they reel their way through the iconic debate scene where our blonde antihero glibly compares the Nineties Haitian refugee crisis to one of her Dad's high society garden parties: 'It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty!' Tunstall's effective if unimaginative songs spell out the themes: Cher's life is 'Perfect' – until she decides to give socially awkward 'New Girl' Tai (Romona Lewis-Malley) a makeover and discovers some uncomfortable truths about herself in the process. The tone here is heightened, wringing laughs from moments that felt more serious in the movie: as Cher, Flynn channels Kristin Chenoweth-era Galinda in Wicked with her whimsical flourishes and pratfalls, stripping all the pathos and vulnerability from the scene where she's held up at gunpoint. It's only in the second act that things start to look up, as Kavanaugh and Heckerling gain the confidence to part ways a bit from the movie's script, and to let the story's heart show. As schlubby love interest Josh, Keelan McAuley brings an impressive pop-punk vocal fire to his standout number 'Reasonable Doubts', his hidden love for Cher vaulting out in a dangerous-looking dive roll off a table. Christian (Isaac J Lewis) – already an unusually sensitively written gay character for 1995 – gets a beefed up role, and an endearingly drawn friendship with Cher. And Flynn really grows into her role, beautifully capturing Cher's gradual realisation that it's what's between the shoulder pads that counts. This production works wonders with its carefully chosen cast of newcomers who deliver performances that feel youthful but not exhaustingly peppy. And designers Mikoko Suzuki MacAdams (set) and Paloma Young (costume) go the extra mile to bring the aesthetic marvels of Nineties Beverly Hills to Trafalgar Theatre's smallish stage, too, having fun with couches that flip out into cars and extravagant outfits that erupt in puffs of tulle. Will Clueless be a success on the scale of hit teen movie-turned-musical Heathers? Perhaps not – it's a bit light on the catchy songs and easy-to-imitate dance routines that can pull in younger fandoms. Still, it's a welcome excuse to revisit a classic, sewn together just enough originality to make it feel like a stylish homage, not a cynical knock off.
