Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Little Trainwreck

I was lucky/unlucky enough to catch a performance of the newest Disney musical to tread the boards of the Great White Way, The Little Mermaid. Before I get into the nitty gritty, I would like to say that I went into this show knowing about the bad reviews, and I pushed them aside and went in with an open mind. That being said here goes . . .

A little back story, the show based on the Disney film of the same name, based on the most twisted Hans Christian Anderson morality story(it's how I would classify it), regards a young mermaid in this case Ariel, who is strong willed and adventurous, who seeks more for herself. She ends up saving a human, or a prince rather, and singing at him, he gets a boner for her voice and vows to marry her. Awwwwwww! Anyway, she trades her voice for a pair of legs, and tries to woo the price into kissing her before she turns back into seafood. Easy enough right? Wrong! Her Aunt the evil sea witch Ursula wants to teach Ariel's daddy King Triton a lesson, so she sabotages every chance Ariel has to make it with Prince Eric! Dun dun dun! Then some shit goes down, Ariel triumphs over evil and all is well with the world. The end! Now we can walk all day in the sun cos we're part of your world. Blah blah.

Okay this show is flawed on so many levels. The only things it has going for it are 1. It's Disney's most successful Princess property therefore translates well into profits from merchandising(they had a hairbrush that looked like a fork for christs sake!), and 2. The wonderful new additions to the already perfect score. Mainly "S
he's in Love" and "If Only(quartet)". The rest of the show is pure garbage.

The main problem with the show was the horrid staging, set design, costumes, choregraphy, special effects, oh everything. First off the staging, I get that you didn't want to use wire work to simulate swimming, I get that I do, but heely shoes, really? REALLY! Come on now! It looked retarded that the "mermaids" would run across the stage and then lean back on their heels and "glide" on the stage. It was the worst for Sierra Bogess, who played Ariel, she kept waving her arms to make it look like she was swimming, but she looked like she was trying to keep her balance. The rest of the staging was so random, like people would just kind of walk out and hang around then walk off stage. Uh what? Have a purpose with your directing Francesca Zambello, you're a hot tranny mess! All characters no matter how small or how non-speaking they are should have a purpose. And the wire work(when they had it), only worked once. The worst was when they had a double for Ariel's transformation into a human, and she/he? was about 15 lbs heavier than Sierra, and looked awkward kicking and flailing. And the big sea witch attack, when the tentacles burst out of the sides of the stage, that was so retarded! I think my reaction was something like "LOL what?"

The costumes! Yikes! Yikes! Yikes! The worst costume was Flounder's by far, a over sized yellow shirt with blue dots, and fins sewn on, and over sized shorts, and yellow underarmour. Yeah he looks like a fish? And Scuttle's costume, he looked so embarrassed, in fact all the cast members looked embarrassed. They would come onstage and be so self-aware that they looked retarded. I felt terrible for them. And the mermaid costumes, they were basically a tail sewn on to a skirt made to resemble seaweed or something? I don't know. And they all looked retarded. Like not just one mermaid, all of them! That is the one thing they should have redesigned from previews in Denver. They didn't even think about the bad notes they got, they were like "It's Ariel people will see it no matter how crappy it is" I guess.

The choreography, yikes! At least with The Lion King, Mary Poppins, and Beauty and the Beast you had some semblance of someone who knew what they were doing. Puke! The most exciting number in the movie "Under The Sea" turned into this lackluster weird movement exercise. I wouldn't even call it dancing, they kind of loafed around and sang. I was so disappointed. I don't really know what else to say, but that that song, had so much potential to be a showstopper, but it failed. And "Kiss The Girl" I wasn't sure where to put this, because it's failure is a combination of factors, direction, choregraphy and costumes, there was someone who had weird abnormal frog puppets that were so distracting, and the see through tops on a lot of the dancers was terrible. Another instance where I can tell the performers were just embarassed and felt horrible so they just kind of gave up. So sad.

The performances, at least this can be a somewhat positive section.

Sierra Bogess as Ariel is what she is meant to be, pretty, charming, decent actor, and acceptable singer. Was she fantastic, no, was she good, yes. She embodied what the little girls in the audience wanted, a pretty girl with a nice body who gets the boy by being herself. Awwwwww.

Sherie Rene Scott was fantastic as Ursula! I kept wanting them to have them do more evil scenes because she by far the most fun part of the show. Funny, and amazing. More Ursula, less Ariel!

Norm Lewis was kind of lackluster as Triton, he just kind of stood there and had a pretty voice that's it.

Alan Mingo, Jr. , stepping in for an injured Titus Burgess excelled at Sebastian. He was funny and charming, sweet without being condescending, and had an incredible voice.

Brian D'Addario was cute as Flounder, showcasing his pipes on "She's In Love" recieving the loudest post song applause, I guess are always impressed with little kids can belt. Oh well. He's a kid so I am not going to say anything bad about his performance, and there wasn't really anything bad to say anyway.

Sean Palmer as Prince Eric was kind of generic, nothing special.

Eddie Korbich as Scuttle was fun, even if he did play him off to be kind of retarded. Scuttle isn't retarded he's just misinformed. That's all.

One more thing about the production, the ending, which is different from the movie, was so anticlimatic. In the movie there is a showdown, here, it is just kind of like "Okay well that's that, Ursula is gone" Uh what? No! Be cool, don't just Ariel be like "I'll break your shell" and then she does. Messed up. Yeah anyway, unless you can get a ticket for free, don't go see this show.

Monday, July 7, 2008

A Little Brains, A Little Talent . . .

If you are lucky enough to go see the NY stage debut of Sean Hayes in the City Center Summer Stage production of Damn Yankees, please do so right now!

There are so many wonderful things about this new production, but first a little background, Damn Yankees, is based on the novel The Year The Yankees Lost the Pennant, a Faustian tale of a die-hard baseball fanatic Joe Boyd who will do anything to see his beloved Washington Senators walk away with the Pennant. His pleas happen to be overheard by the devil aka Mr. Applegate, who is willing to make Joe a strapping 24 year old phenom and get him on the team to help lead them to the Pennant. Joe being the salesman that he is, says he won't make the deal unless there is an easy-out clause, something that Applegate doesn't normally do, but concedes this one small rider for Joe.


I would go into more plot detail but I think you should go see the show to see how it ends. Now onto the performances, Randy Graff was perfectly cast as Meg Boyd, Joe's ever strong wife who has some of the most touching moments in the show, I am familiar with her name, but not her work, and this being the first time I have seen her perform I was entranced by her stage presence and her lovely voice especially in her higher register.

I was sad to hear that Ana Gasteyer hurt herself prior to rehearsals because I was looking forward to her take on Gloria, but they did manage to find a replacement in Megan Lawrence, whom I found to be a little weak during the normally powerhouse number "Shoeless Joe" the song required more of a powerful voice and Ms. Lawrence managed to too small to fill out the role the way that Gasteyer could have. The one positive thing I must say about Ms. Lawrence is that she has great comic timing and her dry delivery and amazing comic ability fleshed out the part of Gloria and made up for her lack of a powerhouse voice.

Cheyenne Jackson as Joe Hardy was amazing, he brought a naivete to the role that I don't think previous Joe's have brought to the role. I have only heard Jackson sing in his legit voice once when I saw him go on as Trevor Graydon in Thoroughly Modern Millie, so to hear him sing in his amazing Baritenor was something that I won't soon forget. It also seemed that Jackson was as excited to be performing on stage as Joe was playing for his beloved Senators, which made him amazing to watch.

Jane Krakowski I felt would have been a better Lola had there been more rehearsal time. She had as Lola sings "All her aces, in all the right places" but there seemed to be something else lacking in her performance. It could just be that part is so iconically associated with Gwen Verdon who preserved her performance on film that it is hard to see anyone else tackle the role, or it could have been that Ms. Krakowski has to have some more time to get her stage legs back in proper shape. But she was still outstanding. For only three weeks rehearsal she managed to have most of the dances down(original Fosse choreography and all) and her singing was good, but like I stated before, for such a huge role with so much dancing I feel she would have succeed if she had a longer period of rehearsal, so if the show does transfer to Broadway, they would be wise to use the same cast and drill the hell out of the choreography.

Sean Hayes, Sean Hayes, Sean Hayes, he was perfection as Applegate, he brought the best comic timing to the role that I have seen so far. So he doesn't have the best singing voice, but he makes up for it everytime he has a line on stage. The best moment of the show is "Those Were The Good Ole Days" where Hayes accompanies himself on the piano(yes it was him playing, he majored in piano performance in college). I don't want to ruin anything, because it has to be seen to be believed. He would surely get a Tony nomination if the show transferred to Broadway.

A lot of the show is very dated, the choreography, some of the jokes, and some of the numbers. You can tell when watching it that Lola was created for one person the way that they structured the songs around Gwen Verdon's talents, and having a number that is not necessary("Who's Got The Pain"), it is just put in to show that Verdon was an amazing dancer. I am not sure that if this show were written today it would have survived amongst the Wicked's and Legally Blonde's of this world. But overall the show was fantastic and I hope it makes a commercial transfer to Broadway later this season.

(Photos copyright Broadwayworld.com 2008)

Friday, May 16, 2008

Ben, The Two of Us Need Look No More!



The above image pretty much sums up Ben at The Harry Warren Theater in Brooklyn. That is all.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Goodbye Glory Days

Glory Days has closed after one regular performance.

I feel a little bad that it closed, but not totally surprised. All of the reviews were not very positive towards the production. They were encouraging for the creators, which was admirable. I wish the two young creators all the best of luck with their future creations and I hope they take Glory Days as a learning opportunity, and build on what didn't work in the production and make a good show the next time around. And maybe not take the first Broadway chance that jumps out at you, it's not bad to start off-Broadway and work out the kinks. Best of luck boys.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

"Other Human Beings" should stay away from this mess!



I don't really know what to say about Glory Days the new musical taking up residence in Circle in the Square. Well actually I do know what to say, it's not quite ready for Broadway. The show, about 4 friends returning from a year at college to pull a prank at their old high school, but end up pulling the biggest prank of all, on themselves.

The story and characters are cliched messes, using stereotypes of what the writers think the characters are instead of exploring the truth in them. The characters could be rich and full, instead we are left with a gay one(Jack), a jocky one(Andy), an intellectual one(Skip), and one that doesn't want to grow up(Will). And we only get one dimensional versions of those characters. I wonder if it's just because I was so far detached from the story itself, having been out of high school for more than a year, and not really giving a rats ass about trying to seek revenge on the people who were mean to me in HS, that I didn't care, or was it the characters stunted growth on stage that made me not care. I think probably equal parts apathy and growth.

The songs, the songs, the songs, there is potential there, young Nick Blaemire has written some charming songs, and some songs overwrought with youth cliches(I know I keep using the word cliche, but to be cliche there is no other word to describe it). What Diablo Cody managed to do successfully with Juno Blaemire, falters here. The worst song was "We Got Girls" which was about how Will and Andy know the secret to scoring with girls, and how they have girls "by the balls". Then there are songs that have the potential to be fantastic messages of tolerance, anthems of empowerment, "Other Human Beings," a song sung by Andy and Jack, after Jack finds out Andy isn't okay with him being gay, and Andy calls Jack a faggot, and how you can't call people names, and how Andy lost a friend for life and how those shoes totally don't go with those pants, and how The Wizard of Oz is the best movie ever, and oh yeah other human beings don't treat other human beings like that. Or something.

I have to give some credit to Jesse Vargas for putting together such tight harmonies, even if every song sounded like it had been cut from RENT. The whole time I was expecting the cast to walk up to the front of the stage holding hands and scream "No Day But Today" while panning a video projector out across the audience. I understand the void that the closing of RENT is going to leave in lots of people's lives, but I don't think we should try to fill that void with something that is kind of like it, but not as good, and just kind of treat RENT like that ex-girlfriend/boyfriend that helped you learn about yourself and your love of musical theater. Because if you spend your whole life trying to fill that void, you're going to end up alone, comparing every show to the one that made you love musical theater. Three words for you let, it, go.

The performances were okay, given the weak material they had to work with. I wouldn't really say that there was one stand out performance, each character had it's moments Jesse JP Johnson as Jack seemed to be the only character that managed to go on any kind of journey at all, growing as a person. Steven Booth as Will got annoying, always bringing things back to "What they did to us in HS was terrible" us being the football team, even though we never fund out what they did to them, and I was kind of over his character within the first 20 minutes of the show. Andrew C. Call as Andy the jock, seemed to be hiding something, and it would have made me like his character more if he would have opened up, they even sang a song about how no one really knew Andy at all, because he was guarded, and that is exactly what I got from him, the show would work better if he had reveled something, it would have made me understand why he was friends with them in the first place, Mr. Call's performance was made up of spouting catch phrases such as "totes" and saying fuck too much, oh and talking about getting laid, it was less of a character of a jock and more of a caricature of one. Finally the only person in the cast whom I felt actually believed in what his character was saying Adam Halpin as Skip, he embodied his character's philosophy, and made me somewhat care for him, I don't know if it was because he was the only realistic character in the whole show, or if he just exuded something the other actors lacked, but his performance was the best.

This show is a jumbled mess. Granted it was only the first preview that I saw, but there needs to be some major rewrites to fix consistency problems in the script, one of the biggest inconsistencies that my friends and I noticed was how Andy reacted to Jack being gay. He was freaked out at first, then Will calmed him down and said for his sake let it go, and then in the next scene during a song, they were singing and looking like nothing was wrong, later when there is a scene with Jack and Will alone, Will tells Jack that Andy thought Jack had been lying to him, that never happened, and then it was brought up again later in "Other Human Beings". Little things like that. The writers need to flesh out the characters more in order for the story to go anywhere. And something needs to be resolved, and Will needs to grow as a person, granted it all takes place in a night, but you can have a character at least learn something. Will learned nothing, and was still as annoying at the end as he was at the beginning. Overall I feel that this show would be more suited to an off-Broadway stage, because like it's characters, it isn't quite ready for the big time.