Musicals and Stage

• Camp | DVD | (26/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  After a series of Broadway flops, songwriter Bert Hanley goes to work at a musical camp for young performers. Inspired by the kids, he finds an opportunity to regain success by staging an altogether new production.

• The Red Shoes (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (14/12/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• André Rieu: Wonderful World - Live In Maastricht | Blu Ray | (27/11/2015) from £16.29   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Phantom Tollbooth | DVD | (22/12/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Footloose/Flashdance/Grease (Triple Pack) | DVD | (14/11/2011) from £10.78   |  Saving you £5.21 (48.33%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Footloose:A city boy comes to a small town where rock music and dancing have been banned.Flashdance:A Pittsburgh woman with two jobs as a welder and an exotic dancer wants to get into ballet school.Grease:Good girl Sandy and greaser Danny fell in love over the summer. But when they unexpectedly discover they're now in the same high school, will they be able to rekindle their romance?

• The Wizard Of Oz | DVD | (07/11/2005) from £6.23   |  Saving you £3.76 (60.35%)   |  RRP £9.99

  "The Wizard of Oz" has charmed and thrilled audiences for seven decades with its timeless music and truly heart-warming story. The unforgettable songs and characters come to life in a sing-along extravaganza that all the family can enjoy time and again.

• The Sound Of Music/ South Pacific/ West Side Story | DVD | (13/04/2009) from £9.27   |  Saving you £0.72 (7.77%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Sound Of Music (Dir. Robert Wise 1965): Share the magical heartwarming true-life story that has become the most popular family film of all time - Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'The Sound Of Music'. Julie Andrews lights up the screen as Maria the spirited young woman who leaves the convent to become governess to the seven children of Captain von Trapp an autocratic widower whose strict household rules leave no room for music or merriment. Winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture this timeless classic features some of the world''s best-loved songs. South Pacific (Dir. Joshua Logan 1958): Blessed with a treasure of timeless songs South Pacific combines the passionate heartwarming romance of a naive young Navy nurse (Mitzi Gaynor) and an older French plantation owner (Rossano Brazzi) with South Seas splendour and a world at war while the breathtaking score is highlighted by some of the most romantic songs ever written. West Side Story (Dir. Robert Wise Jerome Robbins 1961): Garnering a total of ten Academy Awards - including Best Picture of 1961 - West Side Story set a brilliant standard for movie musicals that remains unsurpassed to this day. Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins from Ernest Lehman's spectacular screenplay the film combines the unforgettable score of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim with Robbins' exuberant choreography to create a transcendent fusion of realism and fantasy that will forever be a feast for the eye the ear and ultimately the heart. A triumph on every level this electrifying musical sets the ageless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of gang warfare in the slums of 1950's New York.

• Fred And Ginger | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £82.23   |  Saving you £-32.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  This mammoth of a box set contains eight discs and eight of the finest Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers features. Contains: 1. Top Hat 2. Shall We dance 3. Follow The Fleet 4. Carefree 5. The Gay Divorcee 6. Swing Time 7. Flying Down To Rio 8. The Story Of Vernon And Irene Castle For individual synopses please refer to the individual box sets.

• Ashton:Rhapsody & The Two Pigeons | DVD | (30/09/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Cinderella | Blu Ray | (21/06/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Mozart: Die Zauberflote | Blu Ray | (29/09/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Dreamgirls Collector's Edition | DVD | (28/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Based on the Broadway musical, a trio of black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960's.

• Calamity Jane / Seven Brides For Seven Brothers / My Fair Lady | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £22.95   |  Saving you £-3.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £18.99

  This 1953 musical is very much a vehicle for Doris Day, in the title role, as a wild cowgal who can out-shoot and out-sing any boy on the range. When an actress arrives in Deadwood and uses her feminine charms on Jane's secret love, Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel), Jane tries to mend her tomboy ways. Not exactly up to the feminist code of honour, this is still energetic and Day is very perky. Of course, one could almost detect a homosexual undercurrent with the cross-dressing Jane, but this was Hollywood in the 1950s, so we best not. Calamity Jane won an Oscar for Best Song--"Secret Love", by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• State Fair | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £3.85   |  Saving you £9.14 (237.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In this rousing celebration of love and laughter in America's heartland each member of the Frake family is up for a different prize when they attend their state fair: Father wants a blue ribbon for his favorite pig first prize (and only first prize) will do for Mom's entry in the pie-baking contest and for their son and daughter the hunt is on for true love...

• Poulenc - Stabat Mater | DVD | (27/03/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Francis Poulenc was a tantalising character, part-monk and part-rascal according to the critic Claude Rostand. As in Stabat mater his music reflects this Janus-like persona, tears never far beneath the surface of even his most jovial offerings. Early on he had renounced the devout Catholicism of his family but rediscovered his faith after the premature death of a close friend, the composer and patron Pierre-Octave Ferroud. It was this event that prompted Poulenc's pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, who nestles benevolently, high up in the rock face. An important body of sacred works ensued, not least his Stabat mater, a personal memorial to Ferroud. This is performed here by the combined Cambridge choirs of St John's, Clare and Gonville, and Caius; they're pleasingly mellifluous and disciplined but sound utterly un-French. The work can take it, but this is not the most tender performance. The strange and haunting Motets (Claire and Gonville and Caius Choirs) are dramatically the high point of this concert, while the otherworldly beauty of the ethereal (female-voice) Litanies tugs at the heart-strings. As a visual experience, we get two different locations but there's not a great deal you can do with a bunch of singers. The best things are the close-ups of a fabulous Chagall window (which comes from another church entirely, but who cares?). On the DVD: The remastering of these 1996 recordings has been reasonably well done though disconcertingly, picture and sound aren't always immaculately synchronised. Extra features are a virtual (four-and-a-half minute) visit to Rocamadour which has an appropriate sense of drama, if visually it's a bit crude; and a more substantial (18-minute) documentary on the phenomenon of Black Madonnas which is interesting but you may find the piety cloying, and more editing would have tidied up some of the rough edges that may irritate on repeated viewing. Sound is Dolby Digital 4.0, and picture is anamorphic 16:9 with both PAL and NTSC formats. The disc is region-free. The booklet is informative, though more for its madonnas than its music. --Harriet Smith

• Great Ballets From The Bolshoi (The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Flames of Paris) | DVD | (24/11/2014) from £20.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• On A Clear Day You Can See Forever | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £6.73   |  Saving you £9.26 (137.59%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Daisy Gamble an unusual woman who hears phones before they ring and does wonders with her flowers wants to quit smoking to please her fiance Warren. She goes to a doctor of hypnosis to do it. But once she's under her doctor finds out that she can regress into past lives and different personalities and he finds himself falling in love with one of them!

• 40th Anniversary Concert - Live In London | DVD | (02/10/2009) from £10.79   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Oklahoma! | DVD | (13/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When Mary Rodgers, daughter of the composer Richard Rodgers, was reported as saying she never wanted to see another Oklahoma!, it was her way of paying the highest tribute to Trevor Nunn's production at the Royal National Theatre which was subsequently taken into the studio and filmed. The camera follows the playgoers into the auditorium of the Olivier where in their company we watch the show and applaud the numbers as the real thing. Nunn treats Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration with the utmost seriousness restoring the full text, running to three-and-a-half hours, so that it comes across as a drama indebted to Eugene O'Neill. The documentary, viewed preferably as a preview, with Tim Piggott Smith the penny-plain narrator, allows one to relish in the smallest detail Nunn's scrupulous touch, which according to Maureen Lipman (Aunt Eller) included addressing the cast for two days at rehearsal, an approach that by her account paid off handsomely for the company. Although Oklahoma! unfolds at a leisurely pace, it is extraordinary how one is drawn into the drama under Nunn's direction. There's seldom a wish for true locations as the pace picks up and we move into the claustrophobic company of Judd Fry in his riveting encounter with the cowboy Curly. The close up camera work affords an experience the theatre can't bring and pays handsome dividends too in appreciating Susan Stroman's intricate and lively choreography that was dissipated somewhat on the big apron stage of the Olivier. Her dancers are a fine team, notably Jimmy Johnston who is outstanding as Will Parker leading the Kansas City ensemble. Hugh Jackman as Curly matches him in vocal prowess and looks, and Shuler Hensley sings the tricky role of Judd Fry very well. It's harder to place Peter Polycarpou's Pedlar, a considerably larger role than in the film version, whose accent strays from East End wideboy to the plains of Europe. Maureen Lipman, rightly deemed the lynchpin of the musical by Nunn, is a joy to watch. Laurey and Ado Annie are good but not special. Aside from an abrupt start to Act Two and the occasional voice off microphone, the production sounds good with a larger orchestra present than in the theatre. An Oklahoma! on an epic scale. --Adrian Edwards

• Andre Rieu - Live at the Royal Albert Hall | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A