Anyone going to see Wonderland this week?- Page 3

[kyle4]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 1:38am

i LIKED it... and i say so... RIGHT HERE...

http://thetheaterbuff.typepad.com/the-theater-buff/2011/03/wonderland-first-preview-thoughts.html

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 1:43am

Here we go...

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 2:06am

I have a huge problem with people "updating" a story for modern audiences. We can understand things that don't reference an Iphone or something from "our world." Look at CATS, Phantom, Wicked, etc. - the most successful shows of the past decade - they don't once reference modern culture in an attempt to reel the audience into the story. It's stupid. Like in the the Wiz in California with their "Totto Cam." Stupid. I mean, we're in a parallel universe, but the characters are talking about All State? Makes no sense.

How were the tech elements? Is it a spectacle, or done on the cheap?

[kyle4]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 2:09am

looooooved the TOTO CAM.... and the guy who played TOTO...

night!

[[e-mail]]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 2:54am

I didn't find it as bad as everyone else. I think it's salvageable. There were lots of parts I liked and some parts that made me cringe. I agree with everyone about the soup thing. WTF!!! Also, the last 20 mins seemed like it was rushed. They need to cut out the Lewis Caroll scene (worst part of the show in my opinion) and extend the ending. The jokes weren't amazing but made me smile every once in a while. Even thought this show is supposed to be more sophisticated then the original Alice in Wonderland I think it will do well with a less sophisticated audience meaning Children. And what was up with the sound? The mics at times seemed to cut out.

Kate Shindle is f'ing amazing!!! Definitely the strongest performer in the show. She completely stole the spotlight. I thought the little girl that plays Chloe was adorable. I also liked Darren, Karen and Jose. Janet was fine. Even though she was on stage almost the whole show most of the time she was just standing there. Which was kind of awkward. Given a better role I think she could be great.

I really loved most of the music. Although some songs did fall flat I thought most were great. Plot was confusing at times but still interesting enough. I think with lots of work it has great potential. Just not sure if they have enough time...

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 3:50am

Anyone care to post a song list?

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 4:22am

I can't remember a first preview ever being so close to universally booed on this site. Like, Spider-Man's was generous compared to this.

[philly03]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 4:42am

Wow!!! I was not in attendance tonight, and while with any Frank show you expect the worse, but ... I can't imagine it being worse than what I saw in Tampa this past January.

Seems to me that the Tampa/general audiences appreciate different things than the NY audiences, which is always a gamble. Ie: "Welcome to Wonderland" which I thought was a funny idea.

Some other things strike me weird about these reviews: Dacal/Ritchie have always had chemistry, but the material this past year anyway had 0 moments for them. The two are I mean.. a couple in real life.

The universal opinion is that The Writer/ "I Am My Own Invention" scene needs to be cut, from the first go around but it is still in there.

Also on a different topic, this is one of Wonderland's weakest sets... With DRACULA, the musical the stage was beautiful and doused with special effects... not the case here unless that has also been changed (I can't imagine where the $15 MIL went into besides the half-of-the-time cheesy projections).

[adamgreer]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 6:25am

Did it bother anyone else that the daughter's bedroom apparently had two doors, one of which seemed to have direct access to the street? Grandma kept coming in and out the stage left door, but when Alice and later "Dad" come home, they entered through the stage right door, and mentioned just coming in from outside.

How many apartment in NYC have such a set up?

[philly03]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 6:30am

I don't think it'd be realistic for a child to have such a room, but I did once live in an apartment on wall street that had two doors to the outside, and one was from the main bedroom... literally right next to the main door.

I can't believe they made Karen Mason's character a grandmom... can legitimately say I never saw that happen! I officially cannot wait to see what else has happened to WONDERLAND!

[Kalimba]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 7:14am

"Janet Dacal has neither the voice nor personality to carry the show."

This is exactly what I thought when I heard she was cast in this show.

[massofmen]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 8:14am

frank wildhorn you did it again! COngrats!

[AC126748]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 8:35am

I am seriously considering canceling my plans to see Championship Season tomorrow and seeing this instead.

[Mattbrain]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:00am

Oh dear.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:10am

It has to get better, right? I mean, they rewrote the book very quickly to appeal to a Broadway audience and just had their first live performance. With sets that simple, they can fix it up no problem. It's not like this show is going to close before it opens. At least I hope not. My tickets aren't until a few nights before it opens.

I'm sad to hear they changed the writer to a teacher who wants to write. That's...a bad choice. Really bad. I could understand the Lewis Carroll scene if Janet was playing a writer, even if the scene is as awful as people say. But as a teacher? Come on, now. "Oh, Mr. Carroll, I'm such a fan of your work." "Thanks, you're not even remotely special enough to meet me or draw parallels about our career trajectories, but what they hell? Let's sing." And actually, does the character change mean they eliminated "Worst Day Of My Life?" That song is fantastic in the context of an over-taxed writer fighting between her professional and personal life.

[AC126748]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:13am

Is anyone else hearing the obvious plagiarizing of musical motifs from "One Boy" in "One Knight."

[philly03]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:15am

The only time that Lewis Carroll scene made any sense (where it is in the show) was when Alice was RELATED to Alice Liddell or Lewis Carroll.... which the idea was scraped for the Houston run (yes, they tried to play off Dacal being related to Alice Liddell in the original Tampa run). The casting of Dacal made things interesting for sure, since her predecessors in readings/workshops were the blue eyed, blonde hair Brandi Burkhardt & Lauren Kennedy!

I don't see how her being a teacher has anything to do with the story remotely... The book has always been the problem but the more specific they get to clear up problems, the worse it becomes.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:15am

I'd be really curious to see what the first drafts of this material were because so much of what is on stage right now just defies basic elementary script writing 101 that I find it hard to believe they could have gone through readings, workshops, and two productions in Florida and ended up with whats on stage.

I don't know if its really salvagable at this point - unless they threw out about 2/3 of the story and started over but there are at least things they could do to improve it:

1. Cut about 75 percent of the bad jokes. They are painful. They are cheap rips on anything that the creative team could find to throw in there - most have nothing to do with the story don't have anything to do with Alice in Wonderland (where's the real Lewis Carroll who's puns were masterful when you need him).

2. Introduce conflict immediately. The conflict we have so far is that Alice and her daughter have 'had a bad day' and that Chloe is going to have to eat her grandmother's soup. Alice and Chloe despite all this have a loving relationship and as thus there is absolutely no where for the story to go. Yes its aimed at being a family musical, but the creative team shouldn't be afraid of addressing some real issues - divorice, turning your back on your dreams, not feeling like you are a good parent, not feeling like your mother loves or pays attention to you -- these are issues that fuel adventure stories - and 'quests' for personal discovery, that the musical is desperately reaching for straws to try to capture in the rushed last 20 minutes of the show.

3. Alice needs an "I Want Song." For my money, Chloe needs one (perhaps the same one) as well. Didn't the earlier version of this have Alice chasing after Chloe who stumbles into Wonderland? A duel adventure of mother/daugther in a strange world sounds a lot more compelling than what we've got currently.

4. The Mad Hatter needs a real motive. She apparently doesn't like the Queen of Hearts wants to be Queen of Wonderland and thinks Alice is a threat. It's not playing and the conflict arrives about a song before the end of the first act which is also way too late. Shindle, good as she is, could also be a little scarier - especially if we are to ultimately believe she is the dark side of Alice's alter ego.

5. The romantic interest goes nowhere. Wouldn't it be nice if, indeed, the White Knight is supposed to be something of the alter ego of Alice's estranged husband if we saw something in that Wonderland relationship that was actually illuminating for Alice and insightful into her own marriage?

6. The character songs in the first act should be shortened. They introduce character and do nothing else. Again, the problem of musicalizing Alice in Wonderland - those scenes involving the Cheshire Cat, Catapiller etc have no narrative.

7.The LCD projections look cheap. The entire show looks like a 1990 era video game. If they can't be cutting edge and gorgeous, don't use them.

8. Show don't describe things happening off stage. Happens too much in Act 2. We don't see Alice and her chohorts get captured, we don't see Alice find Chloe - precisely the things that would actually be interesting to experience.

9. The last half hour needs to be totally retooled - its rushed, it feels half hearted - and I have no idea what happened. Did the Mad Hatter melt? I felt like I was seeing a 7 minute youtube condensation of castle scene in the Wizard of Oz.

10. Give the little girl more to do. She's great. I actually think if you had to choose one or the other - letting her be the one who falls down the rabbit hole initially, with Alice following later, would actually make most of the 1st act (even as written) a lot more tolerable - because you'd at least see it filtered through the energy of a child. And that would at least remind us of what was endearing about the experience of the book.

[kyle4]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:18am

it is an ENJOYABLE show...

QUITE enjoyable...

http://thetheaterbuff.typepad.com/the-theater-buff/2011/03/wonderland-first-preview-thoughts.html

[philly03]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:25am

Thanks Michael Bennett for the full out review.

The original Tampa concept was:
Chloe overhears her mother (who is late coming home because of a work rooftop party celebrating her) and her father (on the phone) argue and Jack says he's signing the divorce papers. Chloe runs away to Wonderland, leaving Alice a "Alice in Wonderland" book of clues, where the Mad Hatter wants to become Queen. To become Queen one must reach the 8th square... The way for Alice to go home is to become Queen. The Mad Hatter kidnaps Chloe to the Looking Glass world (along with the rest of the gang), where Alice must find herself before she can find her child. She arrives at the 8th Square, and as she is about to be beat by the Mad Hatter, the queen calls reset. She awakes at the rooftop party (in Houston she was "struck by lightning" - no joke), but tells them she's going home, where she is reunited.

^This worked except they felt it focused too much on the Mad Hatter. The divorce just happening works way better than a totally estranged husband.


This past year, Chloe was swept away to Wonderland by the Rabbit, and then the Hatter still kidnaps Chloe but differently, wipes her memory, and then something random happens like Kate Shindle knocking the audience out with her phenomenal "I Will Prevail" and it's over! Very messy... my review of both productions are on this site.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:38am

The first version sounds way more on track to a compelling musical than what ended up on Broadway. I'm assuming this new book at the Marquis is the much rumoured Rupert Holmes / Scott Ellis rewrite, which was a major step in the wrong direction. Throw it out and go back to what was in Tampa. That would be a good first start.

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:51am

I agree that having Chloe go to Wonderland first would be much more effective. Let her be the one to experience those initial introductory character numbers, and then have Alice come chasing after her. It would create dramatic stakes that are literally non-existent. Similarly, as I was saying earlier, they need to give an explanation as to why Alice's marriage and life is so off-track right away, and how that's damaged her relationship with her daughter. If the conflict is just that Alice and Chloe have "had a bad day," what is she fighting for?

One of the biggest things I thought was missing was a very clear separation of perspective between how a child would see this world and how Alice, as a "jaded" adult, experiences it. We're supposed to believe that Alice needs to go through this entire journey to re-connect with her inner child, and yet she's so quick to buy into everything around her from the get-go. Where is her reluctancy to participate in such a ridiculous circumstance?

Although it's a little Wizard of Oz-ish, I also liked how the previous version established most of the primary characters in Wonderland as having real-life counterparts for Alice (The Queen of Hearts and The Mad Hatter were her skeptical book editors, etc.) It doesn't really make sense to have The Mad Hatter represent part of Alice and The White Knight represent her husband, and yet none of the other characters have any correlation to her at all, especially when you have Karen Mason playing two roles with no correlation between them.

The previous incarnation's plot line of having Alice be a successful writer who can't seem to find the balance between her career and her family was the perfect device to solve many of the problems that are now so apparent and disjointed. For such a talented guy, I'm completely baffled as to why Rupert Holmes would change the groundwork of the story in such a dis-effective way.

Updated On: 3/22/11 at 09:51 AM

[newintown]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:55am

Anyone could tell in Tampa in December 2009 that this was so bad there was no way it could be salvaged. And it sounds as though there's no reason no to continue to hold that thought.

The problem with any flop musicals is always the book. And this book didn't have one good thing going for it. Unless they made it an entirely different show, there was no hope.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 9:59am

EVERYTHING is salvageable, guys!! COME ON! Didn't the SPIDER MAN apologists teach you anything?? I can't wait for the changes!

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 3/22/11 at 10:00am

Well it sounds like they did create an entirely new book from Tampa - they just made it even worse than it was.