city of angels
Apr. 24th, 2002 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magid(Oops. First typed "city of angles." A mathematical musical?)
I hadn't heard of this musical before, but it turned out to be pretty impressive. I always like performances where layers of reality are mutable, where the characters in the show create/play other people, and later the line of who/what is "real" within the show blurs. (Especially when each character in the show has a parallel in the show within a show...).
It's set in the grand era of Hollywood, with a writer working on a movie script of his book, which is being made into a hard-boiled detective sort of mystery flick.
I had been a bit worried, since the last time I saw a musical at this theater, it had been weak. But this was very good. There were actual musicians down in the pit (which I h aven't seen used before)! And the actors' voices were pretty much up to the task, too.
The songs were cleverly done, some filled with innuendo, others more straightforward. And most of the time I didn't have that "why the hell would anyone burst into son g now?" feeling (as I did with "Sarafina!"), partly because it was so campy, partly b/c they fit pretty well.
I was also impressed with the set, which had multiple moving parts, screens, etc, including a very clever design for the "show within a show" sh ots that was framed with "film" on either side, allowed for "sets" to be slid (slided? slode? bleh.) in front of it, with a white screen between the "film" that allowed for slides to be projected on it. Very cool. There were some glitches in moving between sets, at times (it was the preview night), but things that were obviously fixable...
[Later addendum: another cool thing I'd forgotten to metion was how there were times that the writer in the outer story decided things would go differently than he'd originally written them, so the characters went in reverse back to the point he changed the script, making gobbledygook reversed-word sounds and hand motions... very funny.] Ø
I hadn't heard of this musical before, but it turned out to be pretty impressive. I always like performances where layers of reality are mutable, where the characters in the show create/play other people, and later the line of who/what is "real" within the show blurs. (Especially when each character in the show has a parallel in the show within a show...).
It's set in the grand era of Hollywood, with a writer working on a movie script of his book, which is being made into a hard-boiled detective sort of mystery flick.
I had been a bit worried, since the last time I saw a musical at this theater, it had been weak. But this was very good. There were actual musicians down in the pit (which I h aven't seen used before)! And the actors' voices were pretty much up to the task, too.
The songs were cleverly done, some filled with innuendo, others more straightforward. And most of the time I didn't have that "why the hell would anyone burst into son g now?" feeling (as I did with "Sarafina!"), partly because it was so campy, partly b/c they fit pretty well.
I was also impressed with the set, which had multiple moving parts, screens, etc, including a very clever design for the "show within a show" sh ots that was framed with "film" on either side, allowed for "sets" to be slid (slided? slode? bleh.) in front of it, with a white screen between the "film" that allowed for slides to be projected on it. Very cool. There were some glitches in moving between sets, at times (it was the preview night), but things that were obviously fixable...
[Later addendum: another cool thing I'd forgotten to metion was how there were times that the writer in the outer story decided things would go differently than he'd originally written them, so the characters went in reverse back to the point he changed the script, making gobbledygook reversed-word sounds and hand motions... very funny.] Ø
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-04-24 07:52 am (UTC)caps
Date: 2002-04-24 08:44 am (UTC)(My paper journal has always had appropriate caps (and pillboxes, and fedoras... :-))
no subject
Date: 2002-04-24 09:27 am (UTC)Tennis Song
Date: 2002-04-24 09:48 am (UTC)(The old guy sitting next to me was singing along with a lot of the songs.)?
if you want to hear it live....
Date: 2002-04-24 01:36 pm (UTC)