Wicked
The Creative Arts team from GCC hopped a train to chicago today. Butch wanted us to spend some time team building so we pulled away for the day together, and it was really an amazing day. My former boss, Adam Callender, said he spent more time with me today than he did my entire internship with him. But it was great to spend a day with Jason, Dustin, Ben, Trace, and the boys (plus Kathy and Kelsey). We did a little shopping in the morning, although I don't think any of us actually bought anything. All of the die-hards headed off to "Mecca" as I call it, or the Michigan Ave. Apple Store. We had lunch together, then did a bit more shopping before we finally headed off to the Ford Oriental Theater to see "Wicked." And here comes the review...
That image is probably the best way to describe my reaction to the show. Now before anybody starts getting the lynch mob together. Please hear me out on this. The song, "All the Hype that Money Can Buy" really rang in my head while I was in the theater. The last two years or so I have been barraged with comments from people who said they just absolutely loved "Wicked." Between theater majors at school who can't stop singing the music, high school marching bands that were doing shows to the tunes, and friends who were out reading the book, I couldn't get away from people telling me how much they loved it. Especially lately, a lot of GCC staff have been going to see it, and they've all come home with these rave reviews about how amazing it is, and technically awe-inspiring, and so on. So, that being said, it was almost impossible for any show to live up to that kind of hype. Short of Jesus coming back at the end of the show, nothing probably could've meet all the expectations I was coming in with.
Secondly, nothing in that show really made me say, "Wow, I have no idea how they did that," or "Dang, that person has some amazing skills to pull that off." And after seeing a lot of the things that I get into, like Blast, Stomp, or Blue Man Group, which I know aren't technically theater, but still in the same realm of entertainment. It's probably pretty hard to wow me at this point. The technical things in the show were fantastically run, but again, I didn't see anything that was incomprehensible to me.
There were little things that bothered me, as well. I think since they tried so hard to hide the mic's on the actors, they couldn't really pump the volume on the girls, so because of that, the overall house volume was a bit low, so those intense moments were lacking a bit of "umph." It also made it hard to appreciate everything the orchestra was doing, because you could barely hear them. The girl who played Glinda was an understudy. She was a good actor, but vocally she may have struggled a bit on a few songs. And that dragon above the stage was distracting. I kept thinking it was going to do something cool, and I actually missed Elphaba's first show of her power because I was watching the stupid dragon.
In fairness though, it was a cute story, and a fun twist on the original. And after watching the actual wizard of oz the night before, it was nice to see something that actually made a little bit of sense. I enjoyed the costuming, the orchestrations were great, and I loved the pacing of it, if that makes any sense.
I've been really lucky to have a family who enjoys theater. So I have been lucky enough to have been exposed to a lot of really great shows from a really young age. I'm not saying that I am an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But maybe that just means my perspective and youthful awe of shows like this is a little jaded, or something to that effect. But never-the-less, it's a good show. I guess if I could say anything, don't go to see it expecting anything, then you can make your own judgements. I was expecting something mind boggling, and I didn't really get it.
On the bright side, I am glad I got to share that experience with the arts team. I'm so happy Butch took me along and let me experience that. I feel like I can properly function in society now that I've seen that show.
That image is probably the best way to describe my reaction to the show. Now before anybody starts getting the lynch mob together. Please hear me out on this. The song, "All the Hype that Money Can Buy" really rang in my head while I was in the theater. The last two years or so I have been barraged with comments from people who said they just absolutely loved "Wicked." Between theater majors at school who can't stop singing the music, high school marching bands that were doing shows to the tunes, and friends who were out reading the book, I couldn't get away from people telling me how much they loved it. Especially lately, a lot of GCC staff have been going to see it, and they've all come home with these rave reviews about how amazing it is, and technically awe-inspiring, and so on. So, that being said, it was almost impossible for any show to live up to that kind of hype. Short of Jesus coming back at the end of the show, nothing probably could've meet all the expectations I was coming in with.
Secondly, nothing in that show really made me say, "Wow, I have no idea how they did that," or "Dang, that person has some amazing skills to pull that off." And after seeing a lot of the things that I get into, like Blast, Stomp, or Blue Man Group, which I know aren't technically theater, but still in the same realm of entertainment. It's probably pretty hard to wow me at this point. The technical things in the show were fantastically run, but again, I didn't see anything that was incomprehensible to me.
There were little things that bothered me, as well. I think since they tried so hard to hide the mic's on the actors, they couldn't really pump the volume on the girls, so because of that, the overall house volume was a bit low, so those intense moments were lacking a bit of "umph." It also made it hard to appreciate everything the orchestra was doing, because you could barely hear them. The girl who played Glinda was an understudy. She was a good actor, but vocally she may have struggled a bit on a few songs. And that dragon above the stage was distracting. I kept thinking it was going to do something cool, and I actually missed Elphaba's first show of her power because I was watching the stupid dragon.
In fairness though, it was a cute story, and a fun twist on the original. And after watching the actual wizard of oz the night before, it was nice to see something that actually made a little bit of sense. I enjoyed the costuming, the orchestrations were great, and I loved the pacing of it, if that makes any sense.
I've been really lucky to have a family who enjoys theater. So I have been lucky enough to have been exposed to a lot of really great shows from a really young age. I'm not saying that I am an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But maybe that just means my perspective and youthful awe of shows like this is a little jaded, or something to that effect. But never-the-less, it's a good show. I guess if I could say anything, don't go to see it expecting anything, then you can make your own judgements. I was expecting something mind boggling, and I didn't really get it.
On the bright side, I am glad I got to share that experience with the arts team. I'm so happy Butch took me along and let me experience that. I feel like I can properly function in society now that I've seen that show.
posted by Jeff Myers at 11:38 PM
1 Comments:
I guess I still won't be able to function properly in society. Perhaps someday...
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