#1
Posted: 11/28/06 at 12:59am
A little off-topic, but with all the Disney fans I thought you might be interested.
In short: The show is not-to-be-missed and sets the bar for what I hope will be the standard of Disney theme park shows to come
This show is completely Disney in the very best way. The staging is interesting enough to keep all ages entertained, the original music was delightful and the storyline was well told without being too flat or too emotional. Finding Nemo the Musical is simply the best theme park stage show to be introduced in the US since Festival of Fools all the way back in 1996. Along the way we've had some decent shows (Festival of the Lion King) shows that had potential but missed the mark in various ways (Aladdin, A Musical Spectacular, Animazement) and some real clunkers (Snow White, an Enchanting New Musical, the "improved" Steps in Time) and now we're finally get a quality show with little to complain about. The new songs written for the show are brilliant, very current and almost instantly memorable. The usage of puppets with live actors provides both a human face to the performance as well as giving you the characters you want to see.
There was nothing avant garde in a snooty, condesending way. The show was imaginatively staged in a way that simply took you along on a wonderful journey. The script was also head and shoulders over most park scripts. Instead of talking down to the audience the script was a simple adapatation of dialogue from the movie combined with enough original material to make it feel fresh and new.
Of course, a great show good be ruined with a bad cast and I'm happy to say that this is not the case here by a long shot. The two casts I have seen for this show are among the most talented Cast Members I've ever seen in any Disney theme park production. They deserve every standing ovation they will get (and they're already 2-2 and I can't imagine that will change anytime soon).
Sure there are things I could complain about, such as the puppets
needing to have mouths that open slightly wider to be more expressive and the fact that the sound levels really need work (sometimes it was quite hard to distinguish voices), but really these are nitpicks of what is a show that stands out way above anything I've ever seen in a theme park before.
For those of you who want to see video of the show here's a link:
http://www.laughingplace.com/Lotion-View-317.asp
In short: The show is not-to-be-missed and sets the bar for what I hope will be the standard of Disney theme park shows to come
This show is completely Disney in the very best way. The staging is interesting enough to keep all ages entertained, the original music was delightful and the storyline was well told without being too flat or too emotional. Finding Nemo the Musical is simply the best theme park stage show to be introduced in the US since Festival of Fools all the way back in 1996. Along the way we've had some decent shows (Festival of the Lion King) shows that had potential but missed the mark in various ways (Aladdin, A Musical Spectacular, Animazement) and some real clunkers (Snow White, an Enchanting New Musical, the "improved" Steps in Time) and now we're finally get a quality show with little to complain about. The new songs written for the show are brilliant, very current and almost instantly memorable. The usage of puppets with live actors provides both a human face to the performance as well as giving you the characters you want to see.
There was nothing avant garde in a snooty, condesending way. The show was imaginatively staged in a way that simply took you along on a wonderful journey. The script was also head and shoulders over most park scripts. Instead of talking down to the audience the script was a simple adapatation of dialogue from the movie combined with enough original material to make it feel fresh and new.
Of course, a great show good be ruined with a bad cast and I'm happy to say that this is not the case here by a long shot. The two casts I have seen for this show are among the most talented Cast Members I've ever seen in any Disney theme park production. They deserve every standing ovation they will get (and they're already 2-2 and I can't imagine that will change anytime soon).
Sure there are things I could complain about, such as the puppets
needing to have mouths that open slightly wider to be more expressive and the fact that the sound levels really need work (sometimes it was quite hard to distinguish voices), but really these are nitpicks of what is a show that stands out way above anything I've ever seen in a theme park before.
For those of you who want to see video of the show here's a link:
http://www.laughingplace.com/Lotion-View-317.asp
