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owlectomyLast night went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the first time I've been to a Broadway show in... well, a couple years at least. Saw the movie many years ago; saw a stage production in Raleigh a few years ago that was very good but definitely low-budget.
-A lot of the dialogue, especially the jokes, had been updated for this particular production: this particular theater, contemporary references (including an excerpt of the love theme from Hurt Locker: The Musical, which had reportedly opened the previous night and closed by intermission. It was HILARIOUS.) That was a choice that made sense in context, and the jokes worked, although it made it confusing to think too hard about the timeline; it makes more sense as a story that takes place in 1998, not so far removed from the fall of the Berlin Wall, than a story that takes place in 2014. But it wouldn't have worked to do it as a period piece with 1998 jokes, at all, so out of two not-great choices I think it was the better one.
-The one musical choice I disagreed with: "Sugar Daddy" had a radically different arrangement from the kind of rollicking rockabilly arrangement on the original cast recording. It set off my "This is DIFFERENT and therefore WRONG" alarm -- I don't know if I would have enjoyed it on its own merits otherwise. I may never know! If they do a new cast recording I doubt I'll buy it unless I can get that Hurt Locker: The Musical song.
-Neil Patrick Harris is definitely not the person I would have picked for Hedwig even though I think he is charming and a good actor and superbly talented at a lot of things, because I have never seen him in any context besides glib-and-charming-and-superficial, shields-up. Not only does he have the singing chops for the role, and the dancing chops for a role that has not just a lot of dancing but a lot of physicality, but... you start out with a Hedwig who is also shields-up, in a very different, brittle way, and then the layers get stripped away and stripped away until you're left with a performance that is so raw and so vulnerable. The end of the show takes you to a place that is LOW, just pure existential horror/despair.
-Lena Hall as Yitzhak was fantastic. It's a small part but so much of the heart of the show depends on the subtext between Yitzhak and Hedwig.
Anyway. It's a great story, great songs (the only cast recording of a musical that I'm happy to listen to all the way through!) and the way it all came together was really spectacular.
Then I was standing on the balcony, waiting for friends to get out of the bathroom, watching the guy with the vacuum cleaner come and vacuum up the flower petals from the final number. "The magic of Broadway," someone remarked to me. It was a weird and great moment at the end of a show that's so much about performativity and authenticity, where the lines are between what you are, what you choose to be, what you choose to show yourself as.
-A lot of the dialogue, especially the jokes, had been updated for this particular production: this particular theater, contemporary references (including an excerpt of the love theme from Hurt Locker: The Musical, which had reportedly opened the previous night and closed by intermission. It was HILARIOUS.) That was a choice that made sense in context, and the jokes worked, although it made it confusing to think too hard about the timeline; it makes more sense as a story that takes place in 1998, not so far removed from the fall of the Berlin Wall, than a story that takes place in 2014. But it wouldn't have worked to do it as a period piece with 1998 jokes, at all, so out of two not-great choices I think it was the better one.
-The one musical choice I disagreed with: "Sugar Daddy" had a radically different arrangement from the kind of rollicking rockabilly arrangement on the original cast recording. It set off my "This is DIFFERENT and therefore WRONG" alarm -- I don't know if I would have enjoyed it on its own merits otherwise. I may never know! If they do a new cast recording I doubt I'll buy it unless I can get that Hurt Locker: The Musical song.
-Neil Patrick Harris is definitely not the person I would have picked for Hedwig even though I think he is charming and a good actor and superbly talented at a lot of things, because I have never seen him in any context besides glib-and-charming-and-superficial, shields-up. Not only does he have the singing chops for the role, and the dancing chops for a role that has not just a lot of dancing but a lot of physicality, but... you start out with a Hedwig who is also shields-up, in a very different, brittle way, and then the layers get stripped away and stripped away until you're left with a performance that is so raw and so vulnerable. The end of the show takes you to a place that is LOW, just pure existential horror/despair.
-Lena Hall as Yitzhak was fantastic. It's a small part but so much of the heart of the show depends on the subtext between Yitzhak and Hedwig.
Anyway. It's a great story, great songs (the only cast recording of a musical that I'm happy to listen to all the way through!) and the way it all came together was really spectacular.
Then I was standing on the balcony, waiting for friends to get out of the bathroom, watching the guy with the vacuum cleaner come and vacuum up the flower petals from the final number. "The magic of Broadway," someone remarked to me. It was a weird and great moment at the end of a show that's so much about performativity and authenticity, where the lines are between what you are, what you choose to be, what you choose to show yourself as.
(no subject)
16/4/14 06:00 (UTC)