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Sensational show!!! A unique experience. Philip was in great form and seemed quite relaxed, cheerful and confidant, even though he did say at one point - I can't remember the exact circumstances, but he said something about "Saturday" in error for another day, and immediately quipped "I wish it WERE Saturday!" (meaning he wished the whole event was almost over) and everybody laughed, but I think it was an exaggeration, he seemed pretty cool and not nervous in any way.
About the songs - there were A LOT I didn't recognise. They certainly weren't your regular show songs. Good for our man to be innovative! But the problem with Divas is they never publish song lists in the programs, so there's nothing to work on. Knowing that songs had been written for him by Stephen Schwartz and Dana Rowe, even so there was nothing that jumped out and grabbed me as being by those 2 composers. The first 2 songs were GREAT, but I haven't a clue what they were, which was is help at all About the rock songs. 'I'm on Fire' segued into 'Every Breath You Take', Philip acted it out beautifully, was seated for the first part, rather intense and sensual, then stood for the second, becoming more sinister, threatening.
He sang 'The River' magnificently, I think anyone not familiar with the song would have thought it a piece of musical theatre, gosh it was gorgeous and - from my first visit - my favourite performance of the evening.
'King of the World' from Songs for a New World was, I think, the only JRB song I recognised. Great arrangement - anyone at the Bridewell last year please correct me, but this performance struck me as even more vibrant and sort of "funkier" somehow. Wonderful!
'I Was Here' from Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's upcoming The Glorious Ones is a powerfully dramatic song ideally suited to Philip's vocal style and it blew us all away when he sang it at the Lewisham Safe Kids charity concert. No disappointment, Philip performs it here as his "encore", so more of you will get to experience what we were "gushing" about! No Standing O last night btw - hope this will soon be remedied!!!
There was quite a lot of chat, esp in the first part - any of you who were disappointed last year when Michael Ball didn't speak to the audience won't have any such disappointment here! Philip spoke quite a bit about his childhood and father and referred to his wife a lot, in fact Carol was in the audience and there were plenty of shared moments, looks and smiles between them. Carol was obviously enjoying the show immensely and the look of pride on her face was lovely to see. Philip was lively, funny and chatty, seemed totally at ease and enjoying himself. Oh yes, he started off by referring to The Fix and said how great it was to be back at the Donmar. Great to have you back, Philip!!!
He threw himself into quite a few humorous songs with great enthusiasm, some of them ('The Emperor's New Clothes' springs to mind) he acted out in an almost Playschool type way, huge fun to watch!
There was a clever and interesting song (might have been Aznavour/Kretzmer???) about a wedding anniversary that started out amusing and rather bitter and angry but ended on a very touching note.
What else? Oh yes, there was a brilliant take on a song (songs?) from Sunday in the Park. I don't know the show or score well enough to really know, so hope someone can help out, but I think it might have started out as a pastiche of a Sondheim song in which PQ is panicking at the thought of having to perform this difficult work, coupled with events from his own life at that time - ie his wife expecting (Carol "the size of a truck" - that sort of thing) and ended as the actual song itself as he gradually got to grips with it. That's my "take" but probably completely wrong! Anyway, it was clever and hilarious, PQ literally got completely tangled up in the score which he pulled off the piano - it was ENORMOUSLY long, like a toilet roll.
