Fire, Fury & Flame

And then there are days when I love The Jungle. (Actually, I always do. It's the people that are sometimes stupid.) This particular time I love that we live in a town with great theaters and I get to see the just-on, just-off Broadway shows.
ATL and I went to see the out-of-town opening for Jekyll & Hyde last night. And it was spectacular.
Not really good, but definitely a spectacle.
It's a difficult musical to be sure. Who wants to go and see the main character die? (We were very early this time - which has never happened before - so we talked to the ushers about the show and one said it was depressing to have to watch Dr. Jekyll die every night and twice on Saturdays.)
I was hoping that this new iteration would have some redeeming quality to the story.
It almost did.
I really liked the journal entries being written across the screen to help us see it from Dr. Jekyll's point of view. I wanted there to be one last entry - just a line or something - to finish the show and bring it full circle but there wasn't and it left a depressing feeling as the curtain fell.
The songs are amazing though. I've listened to the CD from the original show's cast and I suppose I am a little bit spoiled by Robert Cuccioli's performance. That man was amazing. He even changed his voice when he sang as Mr. Hyde. Phenomenal skills.
I may or may not have gushed all over the screen about him here.
(If you want to see the whole show, it's still on YouTube, with David Hasselhoff as the main lead.)
But about the real performance and the real actors this time.
You may have heard of Constantine Maroulis - he was on American Idol:4 - and there's no question he has the voice. He's of slighter build than I expected him to be after all the promotions. But he has a really great voice and he sang well. I just felt he was too anxious to get to the angry, mean guy and didn't spend enough time on the calm, rational man. There were a lot of pyrotechnics, and video tricks which sometimes worked and were a little over the top. 'Confrontation,' which is possibly the hardest song in the show, just had too much fire and was MUCH too loud. The amplifiers could have gone down a few decibels (try 50) and been just fine.
True for most of the show actually. The whole good vs. bad thing plays better when the good guy is calm and in control and the bad guy is wild and crazy. Doesn't work as well when both of them are belting it to the ceiling and lights going off everywhere with smoke and strobes. Constantine needs to finesse the role a little but he could be great.
Deborah Cox, as Lucy, was outstanding. I liked the character better this time than any other before. She played it well, she sang it fantastic and she finessed it all over. Really marvelous performance.
I still think Emma is my favorite part in the show. She was a little more snobby than I wanted but Teal Wicks played her well enough. Obviously she can sing. (She was Elphaba on one of the Wicked tours through The Jungle. I saw her UNDERSTUDY. Oy.) Together, she and Deborah did a really phenomenal job on 'In His Eyes.' Brought down the house.
Laird MacKintosh played John Utterson, Jekyll's best friend, and he was good. He wasn't a bass, which I think works better sound wise but whatever.
And that is pretty much the cast. It's a small group and most actors play two or more parts because they are so limited. It's almost a one-man show.
ATL and I had an excellent time. We do love live performances and it's always a thrill to go to the theater. It might need some tweaking before Broadway but I got to see it before New York did!

This is me and it was a big show.

Celtic Thunder

Under normal circumstances I would writing about USC vs ASU in this post, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Because while I am crazy about Wicked, ATL is crazy about Celtic Thunder. (They are hot men in kilts who can sing real good.) And she managed to score tickets for tonight. Shortly we will be on our way - Tarzan is taking the crazy women to dinner first - for an evening of songs, music and hopefully some Celtic cheesecake:

Go George!

This is me and the football will have to wait.

Spamalot

So.
Spamalot.
Tarzan and I saw Spamalot last night. That, my friends, was an experience. Sooooo very different from Fiddler on the Roof, and yet, not any less enjoyable. Just different.
Really different.
There was a lot more audience participation than any other play I've ever been to. And there were parts I suspect were ad libbed. One scene in particular - with the Knights Who Say Ni - the actors were cracking up, on the stage and not in a rehearsed manner. I think that bit went farther than it had previously. It was hilarious. The whole show was. As the Playbill suggests the musical is - lovingly - ripped off of the movie but since the author is the same for both I suppose it's okay. A few bits went too far I think. The French scene was quite excessively crude and the female costumes were very Vegas-esque but the underlying point was there and it was very well put together. I've heard it said that comedy is harder than drama and I suspect that this sort of comedy - with a lot of non-sequiters - is even harder than that. The timing has to be spot on and I think this touring company managed it well.
That Eric Idle is a funky fellow. Some kind of crazy genius.

This is me, and I figure the African swallow came for the show and the coconut for a snack afterwards.

And That Was How It Was

This has been quite a week. Such a week that I did not even make mention of Tarzan's first AND second posts. Yay Tarzan! They were both well received and for that I thank you Internet peeps. From the nature of these first two I suspect Tarzan's posts will be heavily esoteric; thoughtful, well researched and insightful but for the day to day nonsense you will have to rely on me. Such is the way of the world.
As for the week's events; we have seen two shows - Tarzan and I saw his cousin in a very amature production of Beauty and the Beast last Friday night. It was darling; especially the tiny little kid who played Gaston, and played it to the hilt. If there were Tonys for amature, I would give it to him. He sold that role and he was about half the size of the girl playing Belle - Tarzan's cousin had that part and did excellently - and ATL and I saw Fiddler on the Roof with Topol. That man has to be nearing 80 but he was Tevye and it was awesome. He got nearly 5 minutes of applause when he first stepped on the stage and it was like coming home to watch him. No changing the role, no hamming it up, nothing to indicate he'd done this over 2,500 times before on stage and screen - you heard me, twenty-five HUNDRED times. That's a lot. He played it straight and so genuinely I totally believed him and wanted it to come out differently for his sake, though I knew it wouldn't. That's a good show.
AND THEN Tarzan and I will be seeing Spamalot tonight. so excited. (When am I not excited to see musical theater I ask you?) I am sure it will be very different from Fiddler on the Roof, but no less interesting and enjoyable.
What else did we do? Lessee, we visited Gamma and GOM - same ol' same ol' there - went to the beach - whole 'nother post there with the swimsuit story - groceries, cleaned the house, had some friends over for dinner, trimmed the bushes etc. back, fed the plants and the cats - I think Belle may have wandered off from our possession too - whoever is taking my cats needs to stop it already - did some laundry...oh yeah and trucked over 200 grapefruit out to my parents' house. Grapefruit from GOM's tree, which were just going to go bad since he can't eat that many and no one else around is either, and to my parents so my mom can bottle them up for my father to drink all year round.
You know, the usual.

This is me, summing it up.