London Palladium- Ramin Karimloo Last Saturday

London Palladium 

Ramin Karimloo Saturday July 16th 2016 

As soon as a saw this show advertised I booked two tickets. It was to be on for one night only. The ticket sales opened months ago, the date on the receipt is February 10^th the booking was made through See Tickets and I would not use them again unless there was no choice because; although I had a home printed piece of paper confirming my booking the tickets did not actually arrive until three days before the show. Not good enough See Tickets. 

When I told my husband he turned his nose up and said that it would be very annoying and that you would not be able to hear your Ramin man sing because of whole bunch of women whooping and squealing and OOOing and shouting ‘We love you Ramin’. I told him that he didn’t have to come and that I had plenty of friends who would love to have that spare ticket, I didn’t want him to suffer a show he did not want to see. His response was a grudging ‘I’ll come, I want to come, but you see if I’m not right.’ 

I should add at this point that we had seen Ramin Karimloo in shows in the West End and thoroughly enjoyed his performances. He was a cracking Phantom in the Love Never Dies sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, creepy and desirable in equal measure. The next thing we heard though was that CamMac was doing a new production of Les Mis but we would not be going to Canada to see it, nor a year or so later would we go to see Ramin as Jean Val-Jean on Broadway. There are limits. 

We would go to the USA or Canada for our sport of Triathlon and had flown to Edmonton in 2014 for the World Triathlon Championships and to Chicago again for Worlds in September 2015 By which time I had all albums recorded by Ramin and his ‘Bestie’ friend/band member Hadley Fraser, who by the way, was recently su-bloody-perb as Aufidius to Tom Hiddleston’s Coriolanus. They are on my ‘Daf’s Best Boys’ playlist on my iPod. Although we do both get slightly cross with singers made famous by the musicals, then thinking that they are free to record whatever they like to sing or play; but still my boy Steve sings along to ‘Broken, broken’ and does actually like country music as much as me. All very contrary. 

 ‘Where are we staying?’ Was what came as Steve’s next question. And the first thing I did was check what restaurants were near and what else was there to do in the same area, so I booked us in to The Courthouse Hotel that is unique, in that it must be the only hotel in London not to  have a huge sign outside advertising itself. Instead there is a bronze plaque claiming it to be Great Marlborough St. Magistrates Court. The Breakfast room is a small courtroom and the bar is entered through prison doors to the Holding Cells where small groups can sip cocktails in a cell that is simply two benches and a tiled partition behind which there still is a toilet! All very interesting.  

We had a super room where for the last hour before we left for the theatre my husband would every now and then, squeal in a poor feminine impression ‘Ooooo Ramin.’ I went into the bathroom and asked what he was doing. ‘Practicing’ he said. I pointed out that I had offered to bring a friend, and that he did not have to go. He said he was looking forward to it and that he was only joking, and as I left the bathroom he squealed, ‘We Love You Ramin’! My return was with a serious look on my face. ‘We don’t LOVE Ramin but we do love to hear him sing and he sure ticks a lot of boxes.’ 

The hotel was actually overlooking the back of the London Palladium; That close. Our tickets were in the centre of the second row of the Dress Circle with a clear view of the stage. We didn’t like the warm up act, Balsamo Deighton and wondered why they would book a group of country singers, musicians who oddly, thought it proper to sit in a row at the front of the stage of the Freakin’ London Palladium as if they were in a corner of Rose and Crown singing for drinks. They looked totally unaware of the value of that spot; I was taken there as a 16th birthday treat by my boss and his wife, to see Johnny Ray (who I was in love with). Burned into my memory. 

However, once the curtain rose on the main event it was hugely enjoyable even if both Steve and I were agreed on one thing, that being, that we would have liked the balance to be closer to 50-50 in what was advertised as a Broadgrass show after all. We would prefer half the songs to be from the musicals and the other half whatever they wanted to sing which is very good and mostly very polished. However, they would have to be deaf and daft not to hear the difference in the applause. Show songs won! We liked the lady fiddle player very much and the pianist and the main accompanist Sergio Ortega, the guest singer Louise Dearman was lovely. Ramin and Hadley were utterly brilliant; we both thoroughly enjoyed the show. There was only one moment when as predicted by my husband a woman did shout out in just the right moment ‘We Love You Ramin’, that had to happen I suppose. It was an excellent show, good value for money, very long too after a half hour encore. I loved the final solo encore; a completely unaccompanied rendition of ‘And I wish all the wars were all over’. That was a perfect finish just two nights after the terror attack in Nice.