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*UPDATE* – 7/19/2009
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Me Ol’ Bamboo and Posh were too slow. Posh is kind of understandable for the actor, but the only excuse for Bamboo is that they dont have enough offstage chorus people covering vocals for the exerting dancers. I mean I just saw the 83 year old Dick Van Dyke do it at tempo without the choreography, so do they really even have an excuse? And they modified the roll off choreography that Potts leads slightly (Laura noticed it and I agree with her).

Truly Scrumptious was too fast. They also didn’t do the talking intro for it (you’d had to be called somethig lovely like toot sweets).

I actually heard Lord Scrumptious (who is double cast as Baron Bombast) be angry at Potts for his invention ruining the factory with the dog whistle.

The kids steal the show everytime.

It’s still very cute (Hushabye Mountain is beautiful!). And the choral finale of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is still pompous.

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*UPDATE* – 7/13/2009
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Now that I’ve seen the movie, I can comment more thoroughly on what I like/dislike about the adaptation.

I appreciate the new songs (Teamwork and Samba) and appreciate being able to hear all the prettiness instead of being interruted by comedic dialogue. I mean I’ve got no problem with comedy, but “Doll On A Music Box/Truly Scrumptious” is very pretty and the movie only hints at it’s loveliness because Dick Van Dyke is hilarious. Same with Posh – with Grandpa using it as a time transition (but one that didn’t take nearly as long as the movie – observation, not complaint), you get to savor the lyrics ad enjoy his eccentricities. I also liked the extended Hushabye Mountain where Caractacus is energized and singing the song brimming with hope that he can raise the 30 bob and buy the children their car. I like Teamwork reprise, but I love the Hushabye Mountain duet.

I like the tweaked opening that has Caractacus defending his children from the junk dealer (albeit with his own eccentricities).

The movie draws a hard line (via special effects) between fantasy and reality that bends but never breaks while the musical chooses to never enter (leave?) the realm of fantasy which is a slightly better choice in my mind: everyoe wants to see the car fly, so why not just make that the reality of the show!

AND THE CAR FLIES!

It wasn’t clear to me that Caractacus didn’t make any money from Toot Sweets until I saw the movie…and it was a one line of dialogue fix! Just have Lord Scrumptious say, “Ring for the police!” and now we know he’s unhappy with a small pack of dogs runnig across his factory (obviously the best dog-related chaos you can show on stage, but I’m just saying it wasn’t completely clear).

The spies were very funny.

Chu-chi Face is much darker in the movie because the Baron really doesn’t like his wife…delightful fun in the movie but just kid of *meh* in the musical.

I love when new writers honor the old guard by taking instrumental music from the source material and turning it into a full blown song (the example here being The Vulgarian Anthem).

And I didn’t know this wasn’t a Disney film because it was the Sherman Brothers. But the Sherman Brothers are always charming and a brilliant songwriting team because they write for characters…it doesn’t matter if melodies are similar…the characters are all different.

And it’s much easier to have a toymaker be a deus ex machina than have the entire cast stage a full scale rebellion.

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Absolutely delightful. It brought Laura back to many happy memories of watching the movie and singing the title song over and driving her parents crazy…and we happily skipped downthe stairs singing “pretty chitty bang bang” and having a wonderful time. What can I say…her giddiness is infectious!

I wasn’t particularly fond of the Act 1 finale…I mean it was amazing to watch the car fly, but the chorale arrangement of the title song seemed rather pretentious (while Laura was overwhelmed with giddyness by the flying car, she does agree that it’s a little pompous).

What kind of toymaker can just repeal a royal decree and depose a baron just for being evil?

Very polished preview. Only one stop per act. Really good caliber performances from the leads…even by non-high school standards.

Obviously they can’t say f***. The big problem song obviously is La Vie Boheme: They can say masturbation but they can’t say erection? They can’t say dyke. They jumped a section with lyrics right before the talking interlude…marijuana?

Roger is phenomenal and this is his first onstage performance ever! He’s a sophmore varsity football player and he’s got a really good voice.

30 hi-quality cordless mics! Fancy LED footlights and high end lighting throughout!

Really good show! Check it out before the protests shut it down!

Yay!  We got Brian Benoit (the original Trekkie Monster, et al.)!  I was lucky enough to see him AND John Tartaglia when I first saw the show in Vegas (before it was trimmed down to 90 minutes), and it’s awesome that he loves doing the show so much that he’s now on the national tour.  Great production.  Obviously I can (and will) complain about things, but first and foremost, I had a great time!

Why didn’t the orchestra play the final hit of “My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada”? Rod was even sitting there waiting for it?!?!?!

Why were lyrics cut from “Schadenfreude”?

Straight-A students getting B’s? Ex-es getting STD’s? Watching tourists reading maps? Seeing doormen taking naps? CEO’s getting shackled? Watching actors never reach the endings of their Oscar speech?

Brian and Christmas Eve didn’t say that they sold all their wedding gifts for money…

Why didn’t the ensemble get a bow? I mean I can understand from a certain point of view how they’d essentially just be viewed as glorified techies that help the show run smoothly, handling puppets, etc.  But one of the ensemble members came up to the Third Tier with a Nicky puppet during “The Money Song” and I thought it was a really impressive and immersive thing to do (I suspect there was also a puppet/ensemble member on the Second and First Tiers).  So why didn’t they get a bow?  Because they’re glorified techies and techies don’t get bows.  But at least they’re also understudies and will probably get their chance in the spotlight.

Great individual performances, horrible combination.

Great sounding tracked orchestra. Oscar was a real piano player with bad hair (not period hair I mean), and also played weird interludes during the barfly scene. Speaking of that scene, Abner Dillon wasn’t heavyset with a handlebar mustache, so he was a cobra and a hick instead of cobra and a walrus….boo! Although the theatre was well used because they had a balcony set piece for Dorothy’s hotel room. And speaking of the balcony, they cut the doctor scene at the top of Act 2 and opened with Sunny Side (To Every Situation)…what the deuce! And the worstest part is after Sunny Side they ran up to the other balcony where they could have done the damn doctor scene!!!! WTFH!?!?!?!!!! Just doesn’t make any damn sense…

Oh! And they mixed up Shuffle Off To Buffalo! Traditionally, Bert Barry gets married to Anytime Annie and Maggie Jones plays the sarcastic older woman saying “Matrimony is baloney”, etc.  But for whatever reason, Bert marries Maggie and then Annie who doesn’t look like she has the age/experience to say marriage is crap, says marriage is crap!  It just doesn’t make any sense.

The tap dancing was good…Peggy Sawyer was good…Billy Lawler was good…

Billy’s character in “Pretty Lady” got shot which is the traditional ending which I heartily approve of…but there were just so many annoying things…

A+ for the cast, D- for the technical

Maybe it was that day’s performance…maybe the economy forced their hand…or maybe they shelled out way too much money for the cast (most of whom did the show on Broadway, in Las Vegas, or both) and had to hire a deficient tech crew that hobbled together a set out of spit and bailing wire (MacGyver they ain’t)* and forgot half their cues…I don’t know!

The most disappointing thing about this production is Ulla’s “tidy up” gag. Near the end of Act 1, Max and Leo hire a hot Swedish girl as their secretary/receptionist. They instruct her to tidy up the office. When everyone comes back for Act 2, the entire office and furnishings are painted white, and when asked when she did all this, Ulla says intermission. At least that’s what happened on Broadway, in the movie adaptation and every national tour…not here…Ulla hung new curtains and flowers…and that’s it!!!!! It’s like they didn’t even put any effort into it!!! And it was so disappointing after such a fantastic Act 1!

Also: weird jump cut during Heil Myself; the Keep It Gay scene was just a little too long for Laura’s and mine pace sensibilities; the cat sound FX in Never Say Good Luck On Opening Nifht was NOT Mel Brooks; the tilted-mirror-schwastika in Springtime for Hitler was an epic failure;

A fairly decent youth production (although it was Starlight’s first “audition only” show) of this delightful Menken-Ashman show.

Mushnik was a little over the top for me, but as Laira explained, you hve to balance over the top performances with high energy…don’t want the kid diluting his/her performance to catatonic when they’re asked to tone it down.

I know this is a youth production, but do we really need an announcement telling us that it’s intermission when the lights just came up? Or an announcement saying, “weren’t those kids great?” after we just gave them a standing ovation?!? Really???

Presented in the George Nakano Theatre at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center.

*starts choking on cough drop*

They destroyed it.  This was probably the worst college production I’ve seen to date.  Which is unfortunate when you actually know people in the cast….because at some point you know you’re going to have to talk to them.  My biggest problem is that the show is supposed to be a radio broadcast in the 1940′s (gee, hence the title?)…and there is no way on God’s green earth that what we saw was capable of going over the air in any manner of acclaim.  There was enough dead air to bring a corpse back to life, there were people 20 ft from a mike thinking they were being heard loud and clear, there was foley going on 30 ft from the mike…it was disastrous…absolutely nothing like the show I saw growing up.

Mic troubles.

I didn’t care about the main character’s arc.  Johnny the singer was going through tough times financially so he quits, but I didn’t really care.

My one consolation about knowing people in the show?  I didn’t know the director…and that’s where all these faults truly lie…the director.  It’s his/her job to guide the show with a vision and this director’s vision was horribly flawed.

Laura and I were so frustated and upset at the end of the show that we did a 20 minute rant against the show in the car….I’m still not sure what to do with the recording…

Delightful!

Based on the short story Ninotchka by Melchior Lengyel, adapted into a film of the same name (with Greta Garbo) and later adapted to a Broadway musical with music by Cole Porter (his last Broadway musical) and later adapted to film with Cyd Charrise and Fred Astaire (in his last dancing role), this is actually a reworking of the movie musical placing it in the 60′s to capitalize on US/USSR relations at the height of the Cold War.  Having seen the other film versions, it is still a delightful story that stays delightfully true to it’s source material while still being relevant and romantic.

Starring Stuart Pankin as one of the Russian Arts Commisars.  I didn’t recognize his name at first either, but his voice and face made me go wait a second….then I realized he was in Honey We Shrunk Ourselves as Wayne Szalinski’s brother Gordon and he was Earl on ABC’s Dinosaur (you know….”not the mamma!”).  So that was a delightful treat.

BOO!  They did a Sarah Palin dig!  It just doesn’t seem fair that because of the unequal and biased media coverage we can make fun of Palin saying you can see Siberia from parts of Alaska but not President-Elect Obama for saying he’s been to all 57 states.  But mine was a small boo in the audience’s laughter.  Sigh.

Took the Metro up to Hollywood and Vine because the Pantages teamed up with Metro to offer discount tickets on Tuesday night performances. We stand in a line thinking it’s the box office line. I go forward to investigate while Laura saves our place in line, and I find out that there’s no line for the box office. When I get back, Laura had learned that the line was for the Wicked Lottery, which picked half a dozen names and sold front row tickets that you can’t buy any other way. After the lottery they offer half off tickets. Laura suggests that we wait and I reluctantly agree. We get all the way through the line and fill out one lottery ticket for each of us. They make an announcement that you need cash on hand if you win, so we ask where the nearest ATM is (there’s one in the bar next door). A quick trip with cash in hand later and they’re starting the lotto drawing. One ticket drawn, two tickets drawn….Laura Greenlund? That’s right – we won the Wicked lottery. We were able to purchase two front row tickets that you can’t get any other way! Woohoo! Quick trip down the street to a local pizza joint and Pinkberry (with the new pomegranante topping/yogurt) and it’s time to go inside! The only downside of winning the lottery tickets was that they were to the extreme house left with a halfway decent view of the stage. Oh and a family had acccidentally sat down in our sets an they’re really back in row NN….sigh. But other than that it was incredible! Laura enjoyed the show, even though it got kind of contrived in the 2nd act when she pointed out that all the original characters from Wizard of Oz were directly affected by Elphaba. Good music though!

Oh! Madame Morrible was also the Ghost of Christmas Past in Bill Murray’s Scrooged. Yay celebrity actor’s