2000-03-10

NYC part 1

So I'm back from my little jaunt to the isle of Manhattan. It was a very enjoyable, albeit surreal, trip, starting with our running smack dab into a gaggle of crazed N Sync fans almost immediately upon our arrival, and ending with a crazed Russian named Oleg who wanted to snort coke in our hotel bathroom. I always have such interesting vacations, which is probably why I take them so infrequently.

Anyway, the two days in The Big Apple certainly have provided you all with enough sensational reading material, which will be doled out in bits and pieces.

Right now, I wish to issue a Very Serious Warning.

Do not see the stage adaptation of Saturday Night Fever.

Not even if you are offered center orchestra seats for 15 bucks.

Let it be said right away that I am a notorious snob when it comes to them what walk the boards. I am a snob, and I am mean. "Well, those who can't do, become critics," you might sniff, and you might be right at that. But I would rather have a rectal exam than lend whatever talent I have to the tripe that currently passes for a Broadway Musical these days.

About 12 years ago they tried to launch a musical production of Carrie. That's right -- the Stephen King novel-turned-movie starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. It is widely regarded as one of Broadway's most spectacular flops, running a mere five performances before closing.

12 years later, and Broadway is still the mama bird, regurgitating retooled screenplays into the proffered beaks of audiences stupid enough to shell out 80 bucks a ticket. For in addition to the usual fare (CATS, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera, plus a baffling musical treatment of Jeckyl & Hyde, starring Master Thespian Jack Wagner), one is also offered the twin abominations known as Footloose and Saturday Night Fever. Now, to be fair, I didn't see the former; I hated Footloose as a movie, and I wasn't about to sit through a live version.

I saw Saturday Night Fever.

The first act, anyway.

I could, given some time and few stiff drinks, come up with a valid reason for going to see this. The simple and awful truth of the matter is that it Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, which as you know, seldom bodes well for the protagonist.

Listening to fully orchestrated renditions of Bee Gees tunes sounded like a fun way to blow a few hours. How bad could it be?

I knew I was in for an Evening of Saccharine and Bile when I leafed through the cast biographies in the Playbill: "Thank you to my Miss Saigon peeps!" "I love you, Brittney!" Lovely to see such whimsical little blurbs in a professional program. Pardon me while I go vomit.

As we listened to an honest-to-God overture of the film's soundtrack, we studied the enormous scrim bearing the show's logo. The scrim, as was the case with most of the souvenirs being hawked out in the lobby, was an appropriate shade of bright orange: the color of Velveeta.

Like Velveeta, the show wasn't even real cheese, making it damn unpleasant to watch. Nothing was handled with any trace of irony. The soundtrack we all know and sometimes admit to loving was turned into a narrative so loosely woven it was in constant danger of slipping off and leaving the poor little show in the altogether. Worse still, the track I love the most, "If I Can't Have You," sung so simply and eloquently by the lovely Yvonne Elliman, was turned into the Big Showstopping Torch Song Vehicle for the scenery-chewing diva known merely as "Orfeh" (pronounced or-fay, as she kindly let us know in her playbill bio), who played the role of the oft-jilted Annette. Shades of the similar squawking tear-jerker role of Eponine in Les Miserables? Oh, I caught it, all right, and visions of 15 year old girls belting "If I Can't Have You" at high school Thespian Society competitions made me weep with joy at the fact that I no longer assist with those things.

We left after the first act.

lisamcc at 22:41:45

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