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Gone with the Wind to close
orlando1
02-06-2008
West End musical Gone with the Wind is to close later this month after only 79 performances. The show starring Pop Idol's Darius Danesh has been criticised for being too long but it's producer Aldo Scrotani says audiences have praised the show. The shows investors will be hoping it's not going going gone to their money but it looks like it's gone with the wind.
Airam
02-06-2008
Yes the star of the show is undoubtedly Darius Danesh.

He rose to the challenge of stepping into Clark Gable's shoes and impressed most of the UK's theatre critics. I've posted some of their remarks about Darius before in another thread so I'll re-post them in this thread.

There could not have been better casting for Rhett and Scarlett. Jill Paice is outstanding too.

Duplicated post below

GWTW came in for a drubbing from the critics but Darius Danesh got mainly great reviews, not that anyone would know given the write ups in the news sections of the papers.

Only a handful of critics weren't impressed. Mark Shenton of the Stage called him wooden and Michael Coveney of whatsonstage called him stiff and smarmy but praised his extraordinary bass baritone voice while Nicholas De Jongh of the Evening Standard was impressed by Darius's beautiful high vocals. He has a wonderful voice.

Most other critics were much more impressed with Darius.

Darius was outstanding - everything the critics said about his performance and more.

he has the sauntering suavity that Gable brought to the role of Rhett - The Times

Darius Danesh is a sturdy, manly Rhett, with a good, deep voice and bags of swaggering arrogance.
He is clearly talented - Daily Express

The diabolically dashing Darius Danesh (of Pop Idol fame) brings a seductively insolent charm, a dark velvet voice and a genuine, fugitive pathos to the cynical blockade runner - The Independent

Mr Danesh has a husky bass voice and is dashing, even if, with his mutton chop whiskers and long legs, he resembles a Victorian villain from a Monty Python sketch. - The Mail

Darius Danesh also endows the morally dubious Rhett Butler with a graceful virility and residual guilt.- The Guardian

the true star of the show is Darius Danesh, ....with a performance of subtlety and roguish charm as Rhett Butler - Metro

Darius Danesh, him off Pop Idol, scored a personal triumph as Rhett..... he commanded the stage, kept his accent together and even found a new way to say "I don't give a damn" - New Statesman

Darius Danesh’s Rhett has all that’s required, devilish eyes, a sonorous voice, a lot of slicked black hair and something extra too, the god-like swagger of a young Sean Connery. - Spectator

...Darius Danesh as the dashing daredevil Rhett Butler, whose voice could charm the birds from the trees.- Mail On Sunday

Darius Danesh's Rhett - growly and smugly disdainful - was dominating,- the Observer

Bestriding this shallow world like a colossus, and the only reason this gets two stars rather than one, is Darius Danesh, commanding and charismatic as that “insufferable peacock” Rhett Butler. - The Sunday Times

Darius Danesh cuts an imposing figure. His dark looks, deep voice and stature are apt for this roguish romantic hero - The Official London Theatre review

has a surprisingly authoritative and charming presence as Rhett - Bloomberg.com

Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler has more star power and several decent chances to show off his resonant bass voice.- Variety

Darius Danesh is something of a revelation. The former Pop Idol sings marvellously - The London Paper review

and so on.

This is a guy who could be a great musical theatre performer and actor but he gets no positivity or even fair coverage from the national media or from a large section of the UK public who are very vocal in dissing him although they have never personally seen him live on a stage.
Airam
02-06-2008
BTW the producer is Aldo Scrofani and he's right. The cast regularly got standing ovations. In fact they had a standing ovation on Friday night just before they were told the show was closing in less than a month.

On Saturday their troubles continued when an electrical fire broke out in the circle and the show had to stop.
Angel-Lover
06-06-2008
thanks for those reviews, Its nice to read that the media did rate his performance, regardless of their prejudiced commnets beforehand on his casting.
I have read a lot of really positive comments too on various theatre forums, it seems he impressed a lot of people who had never seen him on stage before.
Airam
08-06-2008
One more week.

I don't regret that Darius did Gone With The Wind. I do however resent that in their closure articles, the papers all made it sound like he was personally to blame - that he was the flop rather than the show. It's now Darius Danesh's Gone With The Wind but during all the marketing before the show, the posters didn't bear Darius's or Jill Paice's names just Sir Trevor Nunn's.

Darius took on his biggest acting and most challenging singing role to date and this time he has more than held his own in a vastly experienced company. He is magnificent as Rhett. He could have gone on getting standing ovations until September or longer.

The closure is no reflection on him but once again the media have painted a different picture for the GBP
Angel-Lover
12-06-2008
I didnt think he could get any better, but satuday he WAS Rhett Butler, his vocals and acting were spot on, In fact everyone had upped their game if that was at all possible from the last time I saw it. The vocals and harmonies were stunning overall, the Slaves songs blew everyone away.
When I think of all the rubbish on in the WE now, it is sad such a good show is closing so quickly - other shows arent selling well yet seem to carry on. It makes me wonder if the critics reviews scuppered loans or more investor money, Its a shame no one has defended the show after the media mauling because it has changed so much since then - if it had had this time to fix the glitches, tweak scenes, props and some lyrics and cut out that extra hour or more(which has all been done successfully) before being put out to dry in front of the WE critics and audiences, like a lot of shows do, I am sure reviews would have been positive and it would still be running - unless they used the WE as that time, and will take it on in its finished state? That would be nice. I am sure the US would love it, the Americans at the shows I attended were lapping it up - some blaming UKs lack of appreciation of culture on the early closure from comments I heard on leaving the theatre last time!
Angel-Lover
12-06-2008
oh, I thought this said it all really. its a crying shame,
article in the Guardian, written by Ray Shell, who plays Pork in GWTW

Goodbye, cruel wind


Gone With the Wind was set to be the biggest show in town. Cast member Ray Shell gives the inside story as to why it flopped so badly

Thursday June 12, 2008
The Guardian


Every night, as I make my final entrance through the audience of Gone With the Wind, past rows and rows of empty seats, I think: this can't be right. Gone With the Wind was supposed to have been the theatrical event of the year - what happened?
Now that our closing date looms - this Saturday, after less than two months in the West End (we were originally booked until January next year) - it's a question that everyone has been asking. All 36 cast members have sat in their dressing rooms wondering what, exactly, strangled this production from the moment we moved into the theatre.


Article continues

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What happened was that we rehearsed, very happily, a script that was almost five hours long, starting in early February. The mood was upbeat and we were working with the don of British theatre, Sir Trevor Nunn - what could possibly go wrong? We were confident that Gone With the Wind would run and run, no matter what the critics said. Yes, we had doubts about the music and the length of the script, but we were confident that our director would make it all come good with a sprinkling of that Nunn magic. And then the cuts began.
Our producers had assembled a world-class cast, made up of members of hit shows such as Cats, Les Misérables, Starlight Express and My Fair Lady. But Gone With the Wind is really all about four people: Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and Ashley. If you haven't read the book and know only the film, Prissy and Mammy are in there, too, but that still leaves 30 other actors needing something to do. So we became narrators, Nicholas Nickleby-style. And when the cuts began, the obvious thing to go was the narrating. Nunn tried to cut as much as he could without igniting a mutiny, but I'm sure the grumblings must have reached him. When we previewed the show, it was still nearly four hours and 20 minutes long.

Previews are meant to be the point in a production's life where a show can be tried out before an audience, to see what works and what doesn't. They used to be an intimate affair, and there was a certain bond of trust between the performers and an audience who had paid less to see the unpolished version. But in the internet age, those days are over.

Before we had even left the theatre on the night of our first preview, our fate was sealed. I went home that night to read damning comments on a blog called the West End Whingers: the knives were already out, sharp and bloody. Still, I didn't lose any sleep; I knew that Nunn would fix it, and the following week he cut another 20 minutes out of the show. It wasn't enough. When we opened towards the end of April, the show ran at an incredible three hours and 40 minutes, with an interval. The critics buried us with one word: long.

Long is a word that scares a credit-crunch audience, who will think twice about paying £60 (top price) to see a production they may have to miss the end of if they want to catch their last (expensive) train home. It's also a word that scares an audience whose attention span has been frazzled and shrunk by the multimedia demands of the 21st century. If you're going to do long, then you'd better get in your explosions and helicopters and adrenaline rushes in the first three minutes: the days of a slow story build-up are gone.

A week ago, I tried to introduce my 19-year-old nephew to Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. I couldn't believe he'd never seen the greatest gangster film ever. But no bullet is fired or blood spilt until at least 30 minutes into the film; you've got to get through the wedding, the gradual introduction of Michael Corleone and the rest of the family before the guns go off. With a yawn, my nephew told me he was bored and asked if we could play Grand Theft Auto IV instead.

It's not that the necessary adrenaline rushes aren't in the script of Gone With the Wind. It's more that the cast had learned and discarded several versions of ever-decreasing scripts, so that the main thing on our minds on opening night was remembering to perform the correct, current version. Had we been able to delay opening for another two weeks, I'm certain we'd still be running. As in most things, practice makes perfect. It's only by owning a show completely that a cast can feel confident enough to transport an audience to another time and place, without the joins showing.

Gone With the Wind now runs at three hours 10 minutes, with an interval. We get standing ovations every night, but this will not save us, and that makes me sad. I am proud of our work and know that, given time, we could have found our audience and given Cats and Les Mis a run for their longest-running-musical titles. The show we're now performing is not the one the critics saw, but we're still damned by those terrible reviews. Just as the owners of the Titanic didn't anticipate the need for extra lifeboats - why, when their ship was deemed unsinkable? - nobody thought we'd need a money chest to keep Gone With the Wind afloat. We planned for every eventuality but failure.
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