The View From Lower Down

Lockdown is an absolutely perfect opportunity to do one thing: Get creative and start on a project Watch Netflix. My brother is being boring and watching The Office (US) (Amazon Prime Video) again, despite my many attempts to broaden his horizons. So, below I have stated all the things I'm currently binging, along with a brief description and what they're available on for streaming (UK; other countries may vary) Frasier (Channel 4 mornings, not available on-demand that I know of. Record/TiVo. NOT on All4) Spinoff of Cheers . A radio psychiatrist moves in with his father and his physiotherapist. This is an accurate description of Season 1.  Cheers  (Channel 4 mornings, not available on-demand that I know of. Record/TiVo. NOT on All4) Sitcom based in a bar in Boston. Character-led and mostly standalone episodes. We started watching this because our TiVo box has stopped recording Frasier. If you know how to fix this, please let me know in the comments. Futurama (Di

Guess who's far too late to jump on the Bandwagon? Nevertheless, this is happening. I've been putting this off, but I'm putting it up now because this Friday, the original 1998 movie (a recording of the stage show) will be published on ALW's YouTube page for 48 hours . Too late, you missed it. OK, that was partially my fault  almost entirely my fault.  First of all, I need to address the elephant in the room  answer a few questions: Have I seen the movie? Yes. Have I seen the stage show? Yes. Is the movie objectively terrible? Yes . Is the movie subjectively  terrible ? Not in my opinion. And that's as close to a review as this post is going to get. Rant (Short Version) Well what did you expect? Rant (Long Version) Broadly speaking, the people who hate Cats fall into two categories. And they're both wrong. Here's why: The two groups are: People who enjoy musicals People who enjoy movies Musical-lovers The plot of the stage sh

As mentioned in my previous blog , Mischief Theatre released a TV show earlier this year, The Goes Wrong Show (TGWS).  Some of you (one of you; I know how many people read this blog) may have noticed that I make it my business to blog about Mischief projects as I see them (for more information see below) Anyway! Shameless self-promotion aside, this blog is supposed to be about TGWS, which I haven't reviewed properly. I saw a tweet  (You will never know how much research I did to find this) recently asking who received the most bumps, to which the official Mischief account replied that it was probably Vanessa. This intrigued me, and so I set about painstakingly counting every single time she got hit by a prop/setpiece/fellow actor. While I was doing that, I thought I'd check out some other things as well: Dennis forgets his line                         40 Sandra gives the camera a 'Hollywood Look'       15 Max plays to the camera/audience                29 Chris

Check out my previous two Lockdown Blog Posts, how to get your theatre fix and lockdown musical fix . UPDATE: I have published another post , this time detailing statistics about TGWS such as who got hit the most times and how many times the set broke. But this post isn't about them. This post is about what Mischief Theatre have been doing to combat the cabin fever (why do I keep thinking of that song? I've never even seen it!) On April 6th, Mischief announced that they were closing some of their productions . Fortunately, in early 2020 they released their TV series The Goes Wrong Show (Henceforth TGWS). The premise is similar to that of The Play That Goes Wrong (TPTGW) and Peter Pan Goes Wrong (PPGW), namely: The incompetent Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society (CPDS) are putting on a play, but everything that can go wrong, does. However, TPTGW and PPGW are performed on stage; whereas this is part of a fictional show called Play of the Week, in which a new play is per

As I mentioned in my previous blog post , basically the entire world has shut down, including the West End in London. However, many theatre folk are still doing stuff. Obviously, there's the NT Live shows on Thursdays and ALW musicals on Fridays, but there's also a load of lockdown singalongs going down: 70 West End stars sing Do You Hear The People Sing from Les Miserables Mamma Mia cast sing Mamma Mia Only Fools And Horses (Yes, that's a real musical) cast perform Hooky Street Dame Vera Lynn and West End Stars perform We’ll Meet Again Former stars perform Bring Him Home from Les Misérables (see also: Viral family lockdown parody of One Day More ) Sunny Afternoon stars perform Sunny Afternoon Dreamgirls cast perform One Night Only These are all the ones I could find; there may be more. If you find one, please put it in the comments. Remember when Elaine Paige sang I Know Him So Well in Chess? Ever fancied singing the other part? It's your lucky day! She&