"CELTIC
TIGER" FIRST PREVIEW AT
THE BIRMINGHAM NATIONAL INDOOR ARENA
REVIEW
BY
JAMES
STEVENS
PLEASE DO NOT USE
CONTENT FROM THIS
SITE ANYWHERE ELSE WITHOUT PERMISSION
PROLOGUE
It was a fairly ordinary Thursday evening, when an email plopped in my Inbox from the official Michael Flatley website. I opened it up and read :
"To
my loyal fans -
As you know, I am about to premiere my new show, Celtic Tiger,
in
Budapest on July 9 and in Prague on July 12. I am incredibly excited
about
this new show and would love for you all to be there with me.
I
will be making a secret video of the show on Friday, June 17, 2005 and
as a
thank you for your love and continued support I would like to
extend my personal
invitation to those who are able to attend but might
not be able to afford
the full ticket price!
The
filming will be at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, UK and
the performance
will start at 6:00pm.
I
have put aside tickets for the first 500 who send their name, contact
information
and favorite experience with me to: judy@ michaelflatley.com.
Love,
Michael"
HOLY FRICKIN' FLATLEY INDUCED HEART FAILURE, BATMAN! I nearly choked on my drink and broke my wrist in a frantic effort to hit the REPLY button in a world record time of 0.35 seconds! Wow! Free tickets to the FIRST preview of Michael Flatleys new show? Do I want to go? YES YES YES! I never thought I'd even see this show if it was touring in Europe or USA, as I didn't expect it to come to the UK, as the Feet of Flames didn't, but here I was, facing a chance to be among the very very first to see it, in Birmingham, which is about 30 minutes away from where I live! I had never been to a big Flathead event such as LOTD at the RDS, FOF in Hyde Park, FOF in Erfurt, Stormont, Grenville or Dallas, but there I was, on Friday 17th June, part of an extra special Flathead event.
PART 1 : JAMES TCT AND THE TICKET QUEUE OF DOOM
I drove to Birmingham's National Indoor Arena by 1pm and met up with visiting fans Annie, Shannah, Jeannie, Libby, Cleo, Heike, Linda, Belinda, Clare and a load of others whos name escapes me at the moment. After a pleasant meal by the venue, we started queuing up by the box office doors at around 4.15. The box office wasn't supposed to open till 5 but we figured we would get first in line to be sure of getting our tickets promptly. If only we knew the absolute FIASCO that awaited…! The NIA's organization of this event was an absolute shambles, they give new meaning to the word inept. They opened the box office at 5 and allowed us inside to queue. We waited… and waited… AND WAITED. 2 box office girls were sat in the booths, apparently doing nothing. After a long wait we heard two words that didn't fill us with confidence -
"NO TICKETS."
What??!?! That's right, those 500 tickets we had been promised hadn't even been printed. So the office staff apparently had to print each ticket out, one at a time, for all 500+ people, from A to Z. Obviously the idea of printing them out BEFORE the box office opened and hundred of fans started queuing up hadn't occurred to them. Sheesh! These people give inept a bad name.
The only highlight of the queue was spotting Daire Nolan outside the venue with his wife. He stopped to chat with a number of waiting fans and signed autographs and posed for pictures.
After
queing in the baking heat for well over an hour, we finally got word that "We
have A to F!" Whoopey doo! Sadly everyone in the queue in front of me didn't
have names ending in A to F. And my last name is Stevens. Curses! Why couldn't
I have been born into the Addams Family? At least I would have got my ticket straight
away and not have to endure THE QUEUE FROM HELL! Which is the only way to describe
it - standing completely still with 500+ others in sweltering heat (not helped
by the greenhouse effect beneath the glass of the waiting area) for nearly two
hours. Tempers were definitely fraying towards the end, and I felt sorry for those
at the very back of the queue.
FINALLY! After a 2 and a half hours wait I
had got my tickets! Not one, but three! Heaven knows why, but I wasn't going to
complain. I ended up giving my other 2 to some poor soul and his daughter, who
was cursed with the last name "Smith" - the Smith's had been put to
the very back of the queue because there were that many! Sorry for the long rant,
but if you experienced this queue from hell then you'd be cross too!
So after finally regaining the use of my legs, I scrambled inside the venue to see where my seats were. I was in block 3, row Q, which was sort of halfway back but to the far right hand side of the stage. Not bad seats for distance from stage, but not brilliant seats either because I was unable to see all the fancy special effects that were being projected on a huge screen at the back of the set.
The stalls were filled up kids from dance schools from all over the country, along with a mixture of Irish dance celebrities. I spotted Bernadette Flynn, Damien O Kane, Ronan Hardiman, Martin Flitton, Lisa Murphy, Des Bailey, Kelly Hendry (er, Kelly Bailey) and John Carey.
The arena was pretty full, apart from the seats which had been kept empty because of the filming of the show. The place was also full of large camera cranes, because it was the night that the Celtic Tiger DVD was being filmed.
At
around 7.30 a guy came onstage with a microphone to warm up the crowd. He got
a Mexican wave going, and explained that the show was going to be filmed so we
had to be extra noisy and were allowed to dance and cheer all we wanted (Thanks
for the permission!)
There was a great atmosphere, a lot of clapping and screaming
going on beforehand. Then the lights dimmed and the show began…
PART 2: MICHAEL FLATLEYS CELTIC TIGER - THE SHOW!
For the benefit of those who are going to see the show soon and DON'T want to read plot spoilers, see photos or video from the new show, I have provided a short overview of the show. But if you're a spoiler junkie and demand every single shred of information you can possibly get on the show, then follow the link at the bottom of this page!
GENERAL "CELTIC TIGER" REVIEW - SPOILER FREE
Wow! This show rules! But then again, you knew that already, didn't you?
This show is very DIFFERENT to anything Michael has ever done before! It doesn't follow the RD/LOTD/FOF formula, there are no good guys/bad guys (at least not throughout the show, there are some scenes with the Irish vs the Brittish) and no lead dancers other than Michael. This is a way of breaking free from what he has already done and also from the copycat shows which have mimicked the basic formula. There are no Cry of the Celts/Reel around the Sun style dances in here, no good girl/bad girl solos, no all male acapella dances. He promised us something different and he delivered it. Some will love that, others will not. This may be his least accessible show in some ways, especially the first act, which is more serious and symbolic. There is less in your face explosive excitement that you may have come to expect from LOTD and FOF, however there is more of that in act 2. Michael once compared LOTD to "Terminator II". Celtic Tiger is more like "Braveheart" in its first act, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in the second. Remember when Michael said in the Making of FOF that he always wanted to do a tap show, or a modern Yankee Doodle Dandy? This is that show, or at least the second act is to an extent, as it follows the Irish in America. In some ways this parallels the basic idea of Riverdance, that the Irish go abroad, bounce of other cultures and end up stronger for it. This is a very patriotic show, both for the Irish and Americans. I can see what Michael meant now, when he said that this is the sort of show Americans need to see in a post 9/11 world. This will go down a STORM in America, and for sure in Ireland. How it will be received in the rest of Europe remains to be seen. Most will probably look past all the symbolism and political message and just enjoy the dancing and choreography - which is SPECTACLAR! The troupe is extremely tight, and contains a large amount of "new" dancers. The only ones I knew of were Leeanne McKenna from LOTD/FOF and Lisa Anderson and Zoltan Papp from Dance of Desire.
There is far too much to take in with this one viewing, I'm glad there will be a DVD of this show so I can watch and re-watch and perhaps grasp the deeper meaning of what is on display, because like FOF2000, this show is rich in symbolism, much of which isn't very clear. Maybe it will be explained in the programmes (which were not ready for this preview performance) or maybe he will just leave us guessing and allow us to put whatever meaning into it we want.
Hungry for more? Well click on the link at the bottom of the page to read the full account of my experience at the show. I will try to describe every scene and you will see photos and video clips! But if you are going to see the show soon, perhaps you should wait until after before reading that review, so that you can go into the show spoiler free and each scene will be a suprise. Can't wait that long? Well follow me...
"C'mon,
you know you want to read more!"