Broadway! And things!
Sep. 21st, 2010 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
healingmirthTonight I passed up the opportunity to watch the first results show of Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars live on my TV, to go see a preview of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson live in person. I know, color yourself shocked that anyone could make such a choice. (also, dear Google: why is the the show's actual website way at the bottom of the first page of results? Is this because I have shunned Google Instant?)
Trips into the city always seem to bring the unexpected, even just going into Midtown, and today was no exception:
- Asian guy wearing a yarmulke
- Pop Tart World, which has made its hopefully temporary home on 42nd near Times Square
- My prospective employer, on my train, in my car, on the way to a Yankee game with his wife and father-in-law. Part two of job interview from Friday, conducted in the midst of a full car of grumpy commuters, with his wife providing peanut-gallery commentary. It's a really good thing I'm still interested in the job, because Wow, awkward.
- Someone in Times Square who was holding a sign detailing what I am sure is some sort of horrific tragedy, but the unfortunately-titled website that the sign referred to was something like helpthesituation.com. I wouldn't have even noticed if I wasn't so despairing about Mike, aka The Situation, being on Dancing with the Stars this season, but there you go.
Not unexpected, but still disconcerting:
- Really, really hot guy sitting in my row at the theater, who I suspect might have been (might still be, in fact!) one of the swings in the show. Like, seriously, truly, disconcertingly handsome, like people have no right being in real life, just walking around. As much as I profess to adore Michael Esper, at least he still looks like a person one might pass on the street.
I will spare you any attempt to legitimately review the show (and I will provide you with a link to a handy review of the production from earlier this year at the Public Theater from the New York Times (and also the review of the concert staging). Suffice it to say, if you missed that production, and you are on the fence about seeing it on Broadway, you can totally believe the hype.
There was music playing before the show started, while we were all sitting there in the fog-machine haze staring at the colored lights and stuffed-and-mounted animals scattered about the theater. I didn't recognize any of it, except in the sense that I felt like I *should* know who was singing, and then, after 7:00pm but before the show actually started, "Dance Dance" kicked in, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the rest of the songs were part of someone's emo playlist.
They appear not to have killed any of the magic of the production between breaking down the old set and recreating it for a new space. It is hilariously funny at times, has a lot of heart at others. I am not such a fan of the soundtrack that I'm ready to buy it, but mostly because it's sort of lyrically dense with narrative, and... I don't know. Most of the reason that I love the American Idiot cast recording is because he took Green Day's songs and expanded them for the stage and for a cast full of voices. I love the orchestration of it all. I like traditional Broadway, and it's nearly that. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, however, is a punk show (in the emo sense) and they are punk songs and it's just not my idea of what I want to listen to over and over and over.
I don't know how many of the actors are the same as were in the original, but Benjamin Walker is. And Benjamin Walker is hot. Really, really hot. Like, I am led to believe that people typically enjoy Jonathon Groff and Gavin Creel (not that I don't, but you know... Also, why aren't they still dating? I didn't even know about it until well after the fact, and it still makes me sort of sad. Also, heard from The Internet that Matt Doyle and... that guy in the Addams Family whose name I can't call up at the moment but I may go back and look up once I have internet access broke up. This makes me sad as well! This ties in to comments that I may make eventually about why I hate Brooke Burke on Dancing with the Stars, just in case anyone wants to imagine a throughline connecting my entries today.)
Er, anyway, yeah. He needs to be hot to sell the role, and sell it he does. The rest of the company is, without exception, excellent. Two thumbs up, would go see it again if someone needed me to, but it's such a compact production that I don't feel like I need to see it again, the way I felt like I needed to see American Idiot over and over. ETA: and when I got home just now, the only piece of mail in my box was a Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson mailer for discount tickets. You will not win, Broadway Marketing! *shakes fist*
Today was supposed to be a Clean ALL the Things day, which predictably devolved into Clean SOME of the things, then get distracted by many of the things I located while cleaning, including the Losers DVD that I ordered as soon as it was released, and then never took out of the shipping packaging, much less watched. I discovered that now that I know what happens, I'm not at all interested in watching Max's scenes, which makes me sad, because I usually continue to enjoy watching villains in movies that I like. (Hi, Alan Rickman and Timothy Olyphant!)
Trips into the city always seem to bring the unexpected, even just going into Midtown, and today was no exception:
- Asian guy wearing a yarmulke
- Pop Tart World, which has made its hopefully temporary home on 42nd near Times Square
- My prospective employer, on my train, in my car, on the way to a Yankee game with his wife and father-in-law. Part two of job interview from Friday, conducted in the midst of a full car of grumpy commuters, with his wife providing peanut-gallery commentary. It's a really good thing I'm still interested in the job, because Wow, awkward.
- Someone in Times Square who was holding a sign detailing what I am sure is some sort of horrific tragedy, but the unfortunately-titled website that the sign referred to was something like helpthesituation.com. I wouldn't have even noticed if I wasn't so despairing about Mike, aka The Situation, being on Dancing with the Stars this season, but there you go.
Not unexpected, but still disconcerting:
- Really, really hot guy sitting in my row at the theater, who I suspect might have been (might still be, in fact!) one of the swings in the show. Like, seriously, truly, disconcertingly handsome, like people have no right being in real life, just walking around. As much as I profess to adore Michael Esper, at least he still looks like a person one might pass on the street.
I will spare you any attempt to legitimately review the show (and I will provide you with a link to a handy review of the production from earlier this year at the Public Theater from the New York Times (and also the review of the concert staging). Suffice it to say, if you missed that production, and you are on the fence about seeing it on Broadway, you can totally believe the hype.
There was music playing before the show started, while we were all sitting there in the fog-machine haze staring at the colored lights and stuffed-and-mounted animals scattered about the theater. I didn't recognize any of it, except in the sense that I felt like I *should* know who was singing, and then, after 7:00pm but before the show actually started, "Dance Dance" kicked in, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the rest of the songs were part of someone's emo playlist.
They appear not to have killed any of the magic of the production between breaking down the old set and recreating it for a new space. It is hilariously funny at times, has a lot of heart at others. I am not such a fan of the soundtrack that I'm ready to buy it, but mostly because it's sort of lyrically dense with narrative, and... I don't know. Most of the reason that I love the American Idiot cast recording is because he took Green Day's songs and expanded them for the stage and for a cast full of voices. I love the orchestration of it all. I like traditional Broadway, and it's nearly that. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, however, is a punk show (in the emo sense) and they are punk songs and it's just not my idea of what I want to listen to over and over and over.
I don't know how many of the actors are the same as were in the original, but Benjamin Walker is. And Benjamin Walker is hot. Really, really hot. Like, I am led to believe that people typically enjoy Jonathon Groff and Gavin Creel (not that I don't, but you know... Also, why aren't they still dating? I didn't even know about it until well after the fact, and it still makes me sort of sad. Also, heard from The Internet that Matt Doyle and... that guy in the Addams Family whose name I can't call up at the moment but I may go back and look up once I have internet access broke up. This makes me sad as well! This ties in to comments that I may make eventually about why I hate Brooke Burke on Dancing with the Stars, just in case anyone wants to imagine a throughline connecting my entries today.)
Er, anyway, yeah. He needs to be hot to sell the role, and sell it he does. The rest of the company is, without exception, excellent. Two thumbs up, would go see it again if someone needed me to, but it's such a compact production that I don't feel like I need to see it again, the way I felt like I needed to see American Idiot over and over. ETA: and when I got home just now, the only piece of mail in my box was a Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson mailer for discount tickets. You will not win, Broadway Marketing! *shakes fist*
Today was supposed to be a Clean ALL the Things day, which predictably devolved into Clean SOME of the things, then get distracted by many of the things I located while cleaning, including the Losers DVD that I ordered as soon as it was released, and then never took out of the shipping packaging, much less watched. I discovered that now that I know what happens, I'm not at all interested in watching Max's scenes, which makes me sad, because I usually continue to enjoy watching villains in movies that I like. (Hi, Alan Rickman and Timothy Olyphant!)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 10:21 am (UTC)And now I can't even tell if I've worded that in a backhanded "I'm sorry you were offended by what I did" way, so I'm just going to go back to sleep. I feel like putting more words to explanation is just going to make whatever I stumbled into worse, but.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 02:46 pm (UTC)So yeah, that was it, it wasn't any kind of intense rage. Apology accepted.