planetdan

Friday, December 21, 2007 :::

The Sound of Bad Musical Theater

My friends and I like to gather for an annual holiday dinner and event every year. This year we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant in our beautiful capital city of St. Paul, and then see the Ordway Theater's awful production of The Sound of Music, the film version of which is one of my favorite movies of all time. Sure, the original movie is cheesy and a tad campy and altogether sickeningly-sweet, but the difference is that Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer could sell that shit like nobody's business, while the actors in last night's production were far less convincing. The production seemed straight out of a high school musical and they somehow shifted the sequencing around to where Mother Superior ended up singing "My Favorite Things", which is an utter travesty. I shouldn't even mention the absurdity of casting an Asian in the role of the Nazi-Sympathizing Baroness, but I just did anyway. All in all, it was quite bad indeed. And $75 a ticket.

There was a mentally-handicapped man in a wheelchair a few rows behind us. He would moan intermittently throughout the performance with innocent confusion, like many mentally-handicapped people tend to do. But his timing was impeccable. Every time one of the actors mumbled some horribly-delivered line of dialogue, or every time the on-stage ensemble completed one of their numerous off-key tunes (arms raised, awaiting applause), the mentally-handicapped man would groan questioningly into the deafening silence: "Aaaaaoooooaahhh?" It was almost as if he was thinking exactly what everyone else was thinking at the exact same moment. Something tells me that mentally-handicapped man is a lot smarter than people give him credit for.

And I got busted for taking a photograph inside the theater. One of the ushers caught me snapping a picture of my friends and came over to ask me to delete it. I knew it was forbidden to take pictures of the performance, but I didn't see any harm in taking pictures of my friends in their seats before the lights even dimmed, so I just said "Yes, I'll delete it," and put the camera into my pocket. But he looked at me all stern-faced and said "No, can you delete it now?" So I took the camera back out and pretended to fumble with its buttons until he walked away. This is the picture he caught me taking:

Can you imagine the damage that could be done if this picture ever got released to the public?!? The Ordway would never recover! It's a good thing they have such crackerjack security there.

::: posted by dan at 10:48 AM :: [ link ] :: (4) comments

Comments are Closed On this Post

4 previous comments:

ushers are the modern day "Sound of Music" nazis
8-)

did the nuns steal the distributorcap in the play or was it Liesl?

have a great holiday

By

Distributorcap, at 5:16 AM

Nobody stole the distributor cap. They changed the play so that Rolf catches them in the garden but then LETS THEM GO, which was yet another travesty.

By

dan, at 10:56 AM

Not be Debbie Downer but.....

They did not "change the play"...... The play came first you morons! I love the Sound of Music with Julie Andrews as much as the next person but the stage version existed long before she came along and yes, it was very different.

In the original stage version of Sound of Music, Mother Superior teaches Maria "My Favorite Things" to make her feel better before she sends her to work for Captain Von Trapp. And no, they do not steal the distributor cap in the play. All of these things were added for the movie.

Sheesh.

By

Anonymous, at 10:53 AM

Well, that doesn't change the fact that my movie version of The Sound of Music could kick your play version's ass.

By

dan, at 12:59 PM

< Back to Blog