I was surprised by the fact that reviews have been either really fantastic or really bad.  Why?  How can a show evoke such a contrast of opinion. I mean usually you get a bad review and sometimes a mixed review with the odd average one but not normally very good to very bad.  Uh oh, this may not be a good sign and given I have tickets, could I live to regret buying them?

When I first sat down and the show started, I thought, “oh I don’t think I’m going to like this”.  It’s a show about trains and I don’t even like trains, but worse than that it’s a show about trains and they are on roller skates.  I don’t know about you, but it hardly seems riveting to me and certainly not enough to have pulled me out of my warm and cosy living room on such a cold night.   I know it’s an Andrew Lloyd Webber masterpiece and that it was the second longest running musical in British Theatre, but still I just don’t know,  maybe it will be a fizzer.

But after the first ten minutes and I started to settle into the storyline to understand what it was all about, I realised this was really quite unique and like nothing I had ever seen before.  You get so engrossed that you forget they are on skates, which is incredible in itself when you see the moves they can do and this only adds to wonderment on the kids faces as they couldn’t take their eyes off the stage.  Re-written for his children, should give some of you a clue that this really is one for the kids as well as fun loving adults. I am really glad I went but more importantly that I took the girls, they absolutely loved it.

The show was held at the TSB Bank Arena on Queens Wharf in Wellington, which I might add is not the best venue I have been to.  It seems to lack a soul or an ambience, it certainly doesn’t add to the show at all and coupled with the fact it was so hot in there, it wasn’t my favourite place. It was so hot in fact that it resulted in everyone rushing off for water at intermission and people were seen to returning from the bathrooms with extra clothes they appear to have removed.  Surely a venue like this should be able keep the temperature at a comfortable level and doesn’t require us all to turn up in our togs.   So dress so you can undress as it gets warmer, strange advice I know.

If there are tickets still for sale and you are finding yourself at a loose end this week, go and see it.  It gets a 3 of of 5 for me largely due to the poor venue and how hot it was.  Also we sat upstairs and had great seats.

cost:

Tickets from $45 - $125 plus booking fees.

dates:

Wed 01 Jul 09, 7:30pm

Thu 02 Jul 09, 7:30pm

Fri 03 Jul 09, 7:30pm

Sat 04 Jul 09, 2:00pm

Sat 04 Jul 09, 7:30pm

Sun 05 Jul 09, 1:00pm

Sun 05 Jul 09, 6:00pm

Tue 07 Jul 09, 2:00pm

Tue 07 Jul 09, 6:30pm

venue:

TSB Bank Arena, Queens Wharf, Wellington

region:

Wellington, New Zealand

ticket outlets:

Book Tickets Online

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.