Hi everyone, a week last Saturday I had one of the best days in my whole theatre going life. Strangely this didn't happen in London, rather I was at The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds watching the last performance of White Christmas. I had seen it once before, last year, so did know what it was all about, however, this time was extra special for reasons I'll get onto.
The show itself was very good and your classic type of musical, which is probably what you'd expect from a show originally written for film in 1954 by Irving Berlin. The story isn't overly deep, however, it's still very interesting, cute-sy, funny and extremely enjoyable and I strongly to suggest that you should either go and see a production the next time it's playing or buy the DVD. The music is, also, very quirky and funny, yet classic and jazzy with my top three songs being 'Snow', 'I Love a Piano' and 'Falling Out of Love Can Be Fun'. Overall, the show had a very classic and old-y world-y charm to it.
As for the West Yorkshire Playhouse production I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The set was incredibly detailed and had a certain wow to it with specific pieces such as the piano stairs that featured in the song 'I Love a Piano'. Everything flowed so freely and the show deserves true respect for showing that outstanding shows can happen anywhere across the UK and not just in the West End.
And then for the cast, Holly Dale Spencer and Emma Williams were just stunning and worked really well together as the leading ladies, the Haynes sisters. Darren Day suited the part of Bob Wallace down to a 'T', in addition to being a true gent after the show. Melanie La Barrie (Martha Wilson) had such a powerful voice and totally owned her song, 'Let Me Sing and I'm Happy'. Sion Tudor Owen was very comical as Ezekiel Foster and Andrew Jarvis (General Henry Waverly) commanded the stage with the respect him character deserved. My other favourites were Samuel Holmes (Mike) who was hilarious and Gaia Ottman who played the young Susan Waverly and with her voice and comic timing I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of her in years to come.
However, the main reason for going (and the true star of the show, in my opinion) was to see Oliver Tompsett as Phil Davis. Now in keeping with my New Year's Resolution I'm going to try and keep this short and not fan girl too much so... I have followed (or you could say stalked) Oliver since he was Fiyero in Wicked before he went on the play Drew in Rock of Ages and Galileo in We Will Rock You. I, also, had the pleasure of singing the We Will Rock You Medley with him at his concert in Birmingham in August when he asked for a member of the audience to come and help him on stage and I got picked...and breathe! Well, in White Christmas I was totally not disappointed as he was classy and charming and a true, gorgeous, superstar as always with his wow-ing tap number ('I Love a Piano') and comic fan routine ('Sisters (Reprise)').
To mark the occasion of it being the last performance my mum, myself and the rest of Team Tompsett (yes there is a fan club!) got our Christmas wear back out and truly went to town. Now I can't take too much credit for all the goings on as due to living a reasonable distance away from Leeds I arrived slightly later than everyone else so walked in to find that they'd taken over part of the bar with a Christmas tree, toys Santa's decorated with Olly's and Darren's faces, chocolates, lights, crackers and other festivities. Fans had, also, been made with Holly's, Emma's, Darren's and Olly's names on for us to wave in the finale number. What truly made the night though was that after the show, Olly came to our little area of fandom and spent ages taking photos with us including a massive group selfie (the man is seriously the king of selfies!) proving that not only is he super talented, he's, also, a super gentleman as well.
From Left to Right
Top: Darren's and Olly's Santa's / My Mum and I just about to set off / Me with Olly
Middle: Olly with his fan / Posters, programmes and tickets / The Christmas Tree
Bottom: Me with Darren / Me with Olly's fan / Our reserved sign
And just on it's own because I'm so happy with it...the Team Tompsett Selfie!
So, here's hoping I haven't gone on too much and hope you enjoyed reading about my trip to see White Christmas. If you want to ask me any questions about it, or happen to be an Olly fan yourself, please feel free to tweet me at @GreenGirlsRox and please follow this blog (by clicking the link towards the top on the right) and my Instagram.
Love you lots
Kat
xx
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