WhatsOnStage Awards Voting Reminder

As we reported earlier this month, The Light Princess is up for six WhatsOnStage Awards this year: Best Actress in a Musical, Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, Best Set Design, Best Choreographer, London Newcomer of the Year, and Best New Musical. The winners of these awards are decided by us, the public, so please cast your ballot to support The Light Princess by voting for it before the end of January!

Results are updated regularly so you can see how the cast and creatives are doing in each category they were nominated in. Currently, Rosalie Craig has a slim lead but the others have fallen behind. Please help out if you can!

The WhatsOnStage Awards Shortlists The Light Princess!

Hot on the heels of two more songs from The Light Princess, the nominations for the 14th annual WhatsOnStage Awards were announced today in an afternoon party at the Café de Paris in London and the musical find itself nominated in six categories of the only awards decided entirely be the theatre-going public:

1. Best Actress in a Musical for Rosalie Craig
2. Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for Amy Booth-Steel
3. Best Set Design for Rae Smith
4. Best Choreographer for Steven Hoggett
5. London Newcomer of the Year for Tori Amos
6. Best New Musical

The full shortlist can be found on WhatsOnStage.com.

Voting opens today at 2:00 PM GMT and continues through to Midnight on January 31, 2014. Anyone can vote, though you can only vote once.

The winners will be announced during a ceremony at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London’s West End on Sunday, February 23, 2014.

Congratulations to all for the nominations and best of luck to you all!

Celebrate Friday With Two More Songs From The Light Princess!

The National Theatre has posted two more songs from The Light Princess, “My Fairy Story” and “Amphibiava,” on Soundcloud. We can’t think of a better way to kick off the end of the week! (Well, there probably are some ways but this is certainly up there…)

Check ‘em out below:

Listen To Two Songs From The Light Princess!

Lest we forget amongst all the tour and ticket hub-bub, The Light Princess is still going on!

After a wee break, performances resume this weekend and tickets are still available for the shows on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and Monday evening.

And if you are wondering what all the fuss is about — or have been wondering since the beginning what the heck a musical written by Tori Amos might sound like — you can now listen to two songs courtesy of The National Theatre! They are Althea and Better Than Good. Check ‘em out on SoundCloud or in the widget below…

Hopefully this bodes well for the possibility of a recording being made available soon!

This Week In The Light Princess

After a few days off, The Light Princess returns to the Lyttelton Theatre’s stage this weekend with shows Friday evening through Tuesday evening, including weekend matinees and an audio-described performance on Saturday afternoon for those on the National Theatre’s Access List. Tickets are still available for all performances. After Tuesday, there are no performances until the end of November so this will be a good chance to catch the show this month!

Kicking off this weekend’s stint, actress Rosalie Craig will be doing a Twitter Q&A on the National Theatre’s Twitter account at 3:00 PM GMT. If you have a burning question for the Crown Princess of Lagobel, tomorrow will be your chance to ask her about it!

The 3rd in our series of live Twitter Q&As to celebrate #nt50 is with Rosalie Craig. Join in Thurs at 3pm #AskanActor pic.twitter.com/xTzjEwYvcK

— National Theatre (@NationalTheatre) November 5, 2013

Additionally, it appears the musical’s run has been extended into February as the National’s overview indicates that the final performance is on February 2, 2014. The ticketing system does not list any performances beyond January 9th yet but it does have a tab for February so we expect these additional dates to be appear soon.

Update: The additional performances in January and February have been added and will go on sale on Monday, November 11th at 11:00 AM GMT. The dates added include performances from January 17th to 22nd and January 28th to February 2nd.

Finally, nominations for the 2014 WhatsOnStage Awards are now live. These awards are interesting as they are the only theatre awards decided entirely by the public. Throughout the month of November, anybody can nominate anyone or any show in any category. The shortlist for each award, based on all the nominations, will be announced on December 6th followed by voting through the end of January and the final awards ceremony on February 23rd.

If you’d like to participate in the process, swing by the Awards’ website and voice your thoughts in the nomination process.

Thanks to Zac, here is a handy guide to where folks involved with The Light Princess fit into the categories:

New Musical – The Light Princess
Actress in a Musical – Rosalie Craig
Actor in a Musical – Nick Hendrix
Supporting Actress in a Musical – Amy Booth-Steel & Laura Pitt-Pullford
Supporting Actor in a Musical – Clive Rowe & Kane Oliver Parry
Director – Marianne Elliot
Set Designer – Rae Smith
Lighting Designer – Paulie Constable
Choreographer – Steven Hoggett
Original Music – Tori Amos – The Light Princess
London Newcomer of the Year – Tori Amos – The Light Princess
West End Production – The Light Princess

The Evening Standard Longlists The Light Princess

The longlist for the 59th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards has been announced and The Light Princess has been recognized in three categories: Rosalie Craig in the new category Best Musical Performance, Rae Smith in Best Design and the production itself in Best Musical.

The shortlist will be announced on November 8th and the awards presented during a November 17th ceremony at The Savoy.

Congratulations to all and good luck to all!

The Light Princess Platform Tonight

This evening, prior to tonight’s performance of The Light Princess, Paul Gambaccini will sit down with Tori and playwright Samuel Adamson to discuss the musical in a National Theatre platform. The conversation takes place at 6:00 PM and tickets in the circle are still available.

We’re hoping that audio or video of the platform will become available from the National Theatre via their podcasts or Youtube channel in the near future…but if you attend and want to let us know how it went, please let us know.

Update 2: Fan video of the platform has surfaced as well — thank you Stéphane!

Update: We’ve gotten a few summaries of the platform from folks who were in attendance.

read more...

The Light Princess Premieres!

Tonight was the first night of previews — the world premiere, as it were, though some might reserve that phrase for the press night on October 9th — for The Light Princess, the new musical penned by the creative team of Samuel Adamson and Tori Amos for The National Theatre in London.

Congratulations to them, the cast, musicians, crew,and everyone working behind the scenes for making the show a reality!

While press reviews won’t appear for some time to come (well, probably), the early accolades on the Internet are very positive! Dip your toes in the Twitter stream of Light Princess love to get a taste of what people are saying. And, lest we forget, Facebook has hashtags now too and, shockingly, some people are even using them! Check it, though you’ll only see public posts and anything from your friends.

Of course, we’d love to hear what those fortunate enough to attend any performance have to think about of the musical. If you would like to share (and we hope you do), please send us a review using the form at the bottom of that there page. We’ll be posting your reviews there as well — and a couple are already there, in fact. After all, early birds get the worm…or so they say. Whoever they are.

In any case, best wishes and heartfelt thanks to all who have worked to make this project a reality and may all who wish to be able to see it someday!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Previews!

It’s been over six years since the first rumors that Tori was working on a musical started to circulate but now, after reworkings, rewrites, and delays, The Light Princess is finally on the verge of being seen for the first time! Previews start this Wednesday and continue into early October with the big press night two weeks hence on Wednesday, October 9th. We wish the cast and crew the best of luck as all their hard work at last comes to fruition on the stage of the Lyttleton Theatre!

We’re also looking forward to reading the reviews and thoughts on the musical from both the media as well as fans, both new and old, who will be fortunate enough to attend a performance. Much like the tour pages, we’ll have a page set up for the musical so all of us can post and share our own thoughts on The Light Princess. Stay tuned for details on that…

In the meantime, word is that there was a significant feature on the musical in this past Saturday’s Telegraph supplement that included in-depth reporting on the cast and rehearsals. At this time, that article is not online though we hope it will be soon. If anyone can provide a report on this piece, we’d love to hear what it includes.

Update: The article is now online at The Telegraph’s website!

The National Adds More Light Princess Performances

Additional performances of The Light Princess have been added to The National’s schedule, spanning the dates from November 29th through December 23rd and adding a few more performances in January, from the 6th to the 9th.

Tickets for these added dates are on sale now to Supporting Cast members, and will go on sale to
Priority Members on September 12th, Advance Members on September 16th, and the general public on September 27th.