Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Ouch. Stephanie's friend...not a Lestat fan.

Stephanie sent me a review of the pre-Broadwaybound production of Lestat up in San Francsico, sent to her by a friend. Quite a vivid review!:
To sum it up, if Andrew Lloyd Weber had a bowel movement while reading an Anne Rice novel, you would have Lestat. Awful, bloody awful. I do mean bloody. We three went to the movie theatre, only two returned. The third exited during intermission, which was spent vomiting in the men's room. No joke.

Well, tonight Josh,Linda, and myself saw "Lestat, the Musical" Curran Theatre as part of the Best of Broadway in San Francisco series

(Sally Struthers mode on). Please, don't do what we did. Don't buy tickets. Don't see this musical. WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?!?!?(Sally Struthers mode off).

My approbation:

Fixed-media special effects were the highlight of Lestat. They were very well conceived, and very competently executed, with only one noticeable missed queue. Highly emotional scenes, usually around blood consumption or the spawning/forking of new vampires, were highlighted by very large projected effects. The best, though they had some sort of a malfunction, was with the dropping of a curtain in front of a character about to be set on fire, to project an image of her writhing in flames.. If they had waited 5 more seconds, this effect would have been wonderful.

Set design deserves much credit. Their attention to detail fell upon appreciative eyes. From the back row, for example, on an enlarged glass door, I could clearly make out the reflection of comparatively smaller actors.

The best singer, whose name I only remember as being Nicole from the playbill, only sang about three lines. The actor playing Marius, though I'm sure "in the know" Anne Rice fans would disagree, was funny, and the only actor worth watching.

My criticism:

Our endurance of this musical's entirety. Apparently the score was written by Sir Elton John. Sir Elton John, the poor man, has apparently become tone deaf, and lacking in new ideas. On at least one occasion, he resorted to mashing up a Bob Denver [sic-pretty sure they mean John] song in a thinly veiled attempt to create "music". The seats are uncomfortable and cramped. The cheap seats were all sold out, but no seat moving was allowed, even though 1/2 of the theatre was empty.

I cannot even comment on the rest of the musical, as it was so bad that I must now go listen to white noise at 130decibels for 20 hours, in order to plague the memory of this evening's aural and visual torture.


Stephanie's comments: How sad that good money and any "creative" energy was expended in the name of art.... (or actually no pretension of creating art....just money for the backers?)

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