Musical^2

West Side Story

For those who may never have seen the movie like me, you may have probably heard it was based off a 1960s musical with the same name.  That musical was loosely based off Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  And I can’t help you if you’ve never heard of Romeo and Juliet.

This 2009 revival was nominated for the Tony award “Best Revival” category but failed to win.  Oddly enough, it also never won the category in its previous 1980s revival attempt too.  It is currently on tour in the US and was in LA for the past month.  Go watch it to support the Arts.  I did.

I went to watch this with 3 other friends in the mezzanine area.  The location of the seats were pretty good.  Although it wasn’t as “centered” as I had hoped I think for the price and the location it was pretty decent.  The alternative seats would be down in back orchestra much further back relatively speaking than the mezzanine seats.

I thought the beginning of Act 1 was pretty boring.  I think all the dancing and choreography that was done to imitate street fights back during the 1960s was probably very unique and interesting to watch.  I think the “fight scenes” were well choreographed but just lasted a bit too long.  The acting was fun to watch since these types of “acting” musicals are a rarity.  Act 2 was a bit better.  I did find out where two songs come from: Oh So Pretty and Somewhere.  I never knew these two songs came from West Side Story.  In fact I thought Mel Brooks wrote the “oh so pretty” song since I recall him singing it in some movie musical in the past.  I also thought Barbara Streisand was the one who wrote/sung “Somewhere” and popularized it back when she was a star.

Next to Normal

The National Tour arrived in LA sometime last month.  I went to see it with a friend of mine.  We bought balcony seats which were pretty cheap.  Since we both have no expectations, the upper balcony seats were a good trade off for something that could be good or could be horrible.

From the first number, we both realized that mezzanine seats were a must.  The stage was a multi-story background that had the actors walking on all three levels.  Unfortunately We were sitting higher than the third level.  The scenes on the first level were sometimes cut off due to our viewing angle.  As the show progressed, I began to get annoyed at the female lead.  She was singing in a low octave or singing from the belly.  Whenever she sang, about 50% of her words that came out were really muffled.  Most of her songs or songs she participated in sounded like it was missing an alto or soprano voice.  At the end, it sounded as if she was either fighting a cold or trying to sing an octave too low.

Overall the show was very minimalistic... like Rent.  It featured only 5 actors.  The music also sounded very similar to Rent’s rock ballad fusion -- bits of rock, bits of classical, bits of pop.  There were definitely some songs that I liked much more.  I think I enjoyed Act 2’s music more than Act 1’s.  

I think for the price we paid, we were surprised by how good it was.  It might be worth it to pay for mezzanine and/or orchestra seats.  This musical definitely made use of the multi-story structure of the stage effectively which added more to the story.  However, if the female lead sang like she did, I probably wouldn’t want to watch it at all.