How a theatre trip turned into a Herculean effort amid ‘Groundhog Day’

THE BREAK A Leg column went a bit further afield for its musical theatre fix – in a different language. But Ian Cheeseman tells fans to expect something great coming to English stages with, hopefully, a bit less drama around it.


GROUNDHOG Day: The Musical opened at the Old Vic in London in 2016.

Tim Minchin wrote the lyrics and music to the 1993 film, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, about a TV weathercaster, Phil Connors, who is forced to relive the same day over and over again and not being able to leave Punxsutawney, in Pennsylvania.

I’ve not seen the musical, but I felt like I was living in it once the CrowdStrike software bug brought caused so much mayhem on Friday, July 19.

Ian stuck at the airport in Hamburg

I had travelled to Hamburg with my wife, who is a fan of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter. My son had arranged for her to have a meet and greet.

His show was great and with our extra day in the north German city we went to see Hercules, the Disney stage show based on the 1997 Disney animation.

It is yet to hit the stage on Broadway or in the West End so, despite being performed in German, we jumped at the chance. We also saw Die Eiskoenigin (Frozen) on the same day.

The theatres in Hamburg were wonderful, with those hosting Frozen and the Lion King being on the banks of the River Elbe and served from the main part of the city by ferries, which was exciting in itself.

On the day we were scheduled to fly home, CrowdStrike sent computers into meltdown all over the world and our flight was cancelled.

We weren’t the only ones affected and amid the chaos we were told to, ‘get home however you can.’

We booked flights home via Vienna for the following evening and booked into a nearby hotel.

The next morning, we squeezed in another trip to the theatre to see Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampire) with music by Jim Steinman.

It was brilliant, just like the other shows and performed in another beautiful, spacious venue. We expected to fly home that evening, but the flights were cancelled again.

The next day started like the last two, checking out of each different hotel with a flight back to Manchester (at 6.45am) booked.

On arrival at the airport, the flight was cancelled. We were rebooked, after a four-hour queue at the airline’s desk, on a flight via Munich, that evening.

By 6pm, those flights had been cancelled too and were again searching for another airport hotel, further and further away as they were all fully booked.

We woke up wondering where we were, after dream filled sleep, but we were still in Hamburg.

There were no flight options that day, the next would be on day seven of our three-day trip, this time via Amsterdam.

Frozen: The Musical

We returned to the airport to check our booking had been done correctly because we had been given no booking number. We went back into the city to eat before another early night ready for our next escape attempt at 6am the following day.

We woke up on day seven feeling like we’d been living there all our lives. Even after checking in at the airport and giving up our luggage, which we’d done for the Munich flights which never happened, we dared not expect to be flying.

We did though and flying out of Hamburg, humming the tune to The Great Escape, we finally waved goodbye, though we only managed to get our Manchester connection, in Schiphol, by seconds, despite it being the same plane we’d just got off.

We might have ended up staying in Amsterdam, but the nightmare was over. Getting home has never felt better – what drama!

In conclusion, Hamburg was an unexpected and excellent hub of musical theatre. The shows we saw were outstanding, the theatres were three of the best I’ve ever seen and make sure you see Hercules, when it opens at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, once Frozen has ended its run.

I recommend a trip to Hamburg for musical theatre, but I wonder if they’ll ever dare to show Groundhog Day: The Musical there.

I’m not sure I’d risk seeing it!

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