This was a letter sent a few months ago to the Opera House in Manchester:
I am writing to express my thorough disappointment with a show I saw at the Opera House last night “The Songs of Sister Act’.
The description of the show advertised on your website was as follows:
‘This high energy concert is the must see show this season.
Starring The London Community Gospel Choir and Rowetta (X Factor & Happy Mondays). The Theatre will fill with the sound of those famous Gospel hits from the smash hit movies Sister Act.
This unforgettable show will have the audience dancing in the isles to songs that include: Oh Happy Day, Joyful Joyful, Shout, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Hail Holy Queen and many many more!
So get those habits on, dig out your dancing shoes and prepare for the night of your life!’
I was looking forward to seeing a quality, professional gospel choir, and after looking at their website was sure that is what I would see http://www.lcgc.org.uk/. So I bought a ticket for my boyfriend and I.
However the actual performance was dreadful. There was a small man in a white suit talking in a fake American accent leading the proceedings. I was very offended by the inappropriate gestures (thrusts) he was making on stage. None of his actions or his general attitude was very gospel-like in the slightest. For the most part he was prancing round the stage motioning a strip-tease to goad the middle-aged ladies in scant nun’s habits to scream louder and act lewder, as if conducting a raucous hen-party!
The ‘choir’ (which consisted of about 10 people) started off by doing some sort of medley, which was out of tune and dreadful.
I thought that it might get better but it didn’t.
To make matters worse they brought some children on stage from a local school to do the backing vocals- again absolutely dire. The children were uncoordinated and vocally inept. No where on the advertisement did it say that I would be paying to see children perform. I thought I was paying to see a professional performance not an amateur act? If I had known wouldn’t have paid money to see it. The children didn’t look as if they wanted to be there, and I wanted them there even less.
Then ‘Rowetta’ came on to do a performance. Her vocals left much to be desired. She was singing in a baritone which sounded far lower than her natural range, and trying to mask the caterwauling with an embarrassing amount of poorly executed tremolo and vibrato. I am aware that the American Evangelist gospel sound encourages this but Rowetta was completely incapable.
At the interval I was debating whether to just leave, but decided (against my better judgment) to stay as it might get better.
It did not. After a few more mediocre songs, the man in the white suit went round the audience looking for 3 people to go on stage. Ok fair enough, get on stage and get back on with the show. That did not happen. The next 15 minutes or so were spent asking the 3 ‘chosen nuns’ (one of which was a man in a nun’s outfit) from the audience, their name, where they were from etc etc, and then shockingly got them singing ‘My guy’. So up to this point I had spent approx ¼ of the ticket price paying to watch untalented children and some members of the public sporting Ann Summer’s own brand nuns outfits and attempting to sing.
At this point I could not take any more and left the building. I will never get back those 2 hours of my life.
I regularly see shows at the Opera House, but I am disgusted with the lack of professionalism of ‘Songs of Sister Act’
I would welcome your comments. I would welcome a refund even more.
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UPDATE!!!
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I did receive a letter back, a very angry one from the Director of the show. He was not very understanding to say the least,and didn’t seem to appreciate my comments. I didn’t get a refund!
