During this dreadful year there have been many of the best west end shows, available on live streaming. Some of those were put out free in the early stages of the Covid lockdown. After the strictest stage ended, a small fee for tickets started and that was fair enough to try and help the theatres who had been so badly hit business wise by the pandemic.
Steve and I watched as many of these special offers as we could fit in. Some recordings were from The Royal Opera House and the National Theatre and we found them a great treat night during this mainly miserable time of being shut in the house. A couple of weeks ago we jumped to book for the production from the ROH of Dances at a Gathering that was on offer streamed for a whole month and the ‘Ticket’ only cost £4.00 what a bargain that was, and how delightful to see that story-less dance production in simple costumes and with equally simple scenery with only ten superb dancers. I put the word out to my friends to splash out the next-to-no-money for an evening of the prettiest dances, we loved it and so did others.
Several weeks ago, I had an email from a theatre company to say that there were to be some concerts from the London Coliseum and that they would be streamed live. The message was from: Stream.theatre. They had a series of concerts that would be on Friday evenings, there was a list and a couple of trailers. The one that caught my eye was my favourite West End and Broadway star, Ramin Karimloo who was the original Phantom on the West End in the sequel production, Love Never Dies, that Steve and I went to see soon after it opened at that time. He has played several parts in the oh so long run of Les Miserables. He went on to play the lead in a new production of Les Mis in, first Toronto and then on Broadway where it was a huge success. He put on a load of muscle at that time for the Jean Valjean character.
Steve and I have been to see Ramin in concert, a half dozen times on various theatre tour dates. We have dragged along some of our friends who also enjoyed the concerts. On these tours he performs with his own Broad-grass Band that is a mixture of his stage show songs and his own love of country music and some of his own compositions that he has recorded. So I quickly booked our ticket to watch the live streaming of Ramin and his band for a concert in an empty theatre! I thought it would be a strange for them, as it was for us, sitting at home comfortably whilst they performed and each song ended in complete silence instead of the rapturous applause that they are used to.
Disaster struck when we tried to get the show set up on our nice big TV at home. Well, disaster may be a bit of a stretch but it was a major irritation when we could not connect the TV to the computer much as we tried. God only knows what we were doing wrong, but it seemed that it could not be just that we are a pair of idiots, because we have seen so many other shows in this way.
So, when the concert started, we gave up fiddling and watched it on my little laptop perched on the other side of my desk so that Steve could see from his chair. For me it was doubly annoying because, neither of my spectacles were suitable; the reading glasses had me hunched up close to the screen and my distance glasses only worked when there was close up camera work. No comfort either since I sat on my office chair.
I had printed off the instructions but it just did not work. I have emailed them at Stream.Theatre and had a good old mutter about it. It was such a shame for us both and Steve had enjoyed the musical side so much he wanted to see it all again. Me too I can tell you.
The TICKET in this case was a bit more than the rest of the shows shown in this way it was £15 with £3 handling fee. I know it is still way less than a good night out in town that costs a fortune, but not as good as it should have been and that had nothing to do with Ramin Karimloo, is never less that marvellous which is why we are such keen followers.
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