Seize the Stars

Watched a DVD of the 1980 New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Pirates of Penzance, and it was totally great! The rather crappy picture quality didn't matter at all, the production was so fun and energetic that that's all you noticed, and quite honestly it's a miracle to have it at all! It was much better than the movie version of the same production, which I saw some of years back but didn't make it through because it bored me so much. What a difference an audience makes! The cast was having splendid fun hamming it up for them, and the audience was having fun watching them, and I was having fun watching it all too! The cast was wonderful: Patricia Routledge is awesome and I wish she'd been in more musicals; Linda Ronstadt can genuinely sing operetta, she's no pop star just faking it; and even Kevin Kline's pomposity works to advantage for the Pirate King, and he actually comes off as rather charming. The whole production was delightful; even though the sets and scenery were rather minimal, the little pirate ship that they occasionally rode around in was so cute, and since it was filmed on an outdoor stage, the summer breeze was always blowing through, and added a pleasant ambiance of realism to the seaside scenes when it ruffled the actors' hair and fluttered the ladies' dresses. All in all it was a lovely, funny, silly, sweet romp from beginning to end. (I just wish more stage productions would get filmed; I would consider it a huge shame to have missed this simply because I hadn't been born yet when it was originally staged!)

Okay, on to less cute territory: Jekyll & Hyde. I think maybe Love Never Dies has given me a taste for train-wreck musicals, because I never thought it would be any good, and I was pretty much right. But it's the only thing by Frank Wildhorn my library actually has, and since one hears tell of his work often (usually rather disparagingly) I was curious to judge for myself. The only thing of his I've heard is the uber-cheesy ballad "This Is the Moment" which is from this show, so I was prepared for the worst, but I'd heard the 1994 studio cast album is the best version, so perhaps a glimmer of hope? Not really. Jekyll & Hyde is just one of those stories that genuinely shouldn't be a musical. But even so, there must be a way to do it better than this.

( Bad doesn't even begin to describe Jekyll & Hyde )

( But it had a redeeming feature in the fine cast, at least )

I think I now need to go listen to The Music Man or She Loves Me or something, just so I can reassure myself that genuinely excellent musicals do still exist somewhere out there. (Or at least to fortify me through the next train-wreck musical I venture to listen to! Heehee!) ;D

Here we go, the plot of Love Never Dies. I would call it an analysis, but at this point it's more a catalogue of it's crimes! ( Read it and weep! Contains spoilers, obviously! )

I could probably write a whole book on what's wrong with this plot, and another book on how to try and fix it (futile as that would surely be!) but somehow, despite everything, I'm probably as attracted as I am horrified by this show. It doesn't work storywise, but the score is so richly emotional and beautiful, even the recitative is melodious and never just filler. This work in no way lives up the magical, fantastic spirit of the original (I don't want these characters taken down off their pedastals, thank you, I like them there!) but in tiny moments, in beautiful songs, you do occasionally catch little glimpses of the characters you love, and getting to go there again, however imperfectly, is pretty cool. Do I wish it was better? Yes. Do I wish it had never been written? Actually, no. Yes, I would rather have this score in a good show, but at the end of the day, I'd rather have it here than not at all. It may be ugly, but the music is beautiful, and you can't help but love that about it, which in a way is strangely fitting for a show about the Phantom, because you could say the same for him.

Well, here goes my attempt to sort out my thoughts on Love Never Dies into a somewhat neat and intelligible review! (Haha- we'll see if that actually happens!)

So, firstly, having sat with it for a couple of weeks, my overall feelings toward LND are somewhat different than they were upon my initial listening. Since then I've been re-playing my favorite songs almost non-stop, and I can actually say that it's a truly beautiful score that I honestly love. The initial shock of the more preposterous plot points and out-of-character characters made me rather resistant to loving any part of it, but I think I'm finally at that point where I can be whole-hearted in my embrace of it's good parts, even if I still hate other parts of it. Having seen the Australian production helps a little too, since some of the tweaks softened it's fail to less epic proportions!

( The differences between the London and Melbourne productions )

( But I still prefer the London leads, and can't help raving about them! )

...To be contined in the next post! Yes, I have VERY mixed feelings and a VERY complex love/hate relationship with this show, and I'm gonna need another day and some more time to get it all out coherently!