Fly at La Jolla playhouse

I'm seeing this Saturday March 7! Very excited. I'll report back. They do have some cheaper seats available that I purchased for past productions that literally the last row of the theater. Not sure if they are still offering those. Also not sure about student but I don't believe they have any sort of rush available. I drive down from LA so I splurge for better seats now, if you are able to do so. However, the theater is not that big and there isn't a bad seat in the house.

Caught this last week and I was underwhelmed. Not terrible, but another stale version of a story we've seen a million times. They claim it's from Wendy's perspective, and sure, Peter gets less stage time, but it follows the same trajectory as the original story with very little added. The music is fine, but unmemorable. The flying is cool but it's used A LOT and gets old quickly. I was at the second preview and the show had to be held once for technical difficulties.

Like every other version, Captain Hook's scenes are the most fun and Eric Anderson is excellent. The worst scene, however, is the very first where Anderson doubles as Wendy's dad (because we haven't seen that device used enough). The dialogue is cringe-worthy. Storm Lever is working really hard to make the weak material interesting, but there's only so much she can do. Poor Isabelle McCalla is stuck playing Tinker Bell which has to be the most annoying character ever.

My friend (who is a woman) was annoyed that the production bragged about having an all female ensemble but then made them be.... trees. The male characters (including the pirates and lost boys) are so much more developed and fun. There's a whole undertone/theme of Wendy becoming a woman and it was a missed opportunity to use this all female ensemble to push this theme further. Why can't there be lost girls? Or girl pirates? Gender norms have changed so much and yet creators hesitate to demonstrate so in their work. Having a female director at the helm could have made the difference.

For what it's worth, this is infinitely more entertaining than last year's La Jolla production Diana. Now that was (and probably will be) a chore to sit through.

We saw this Sunday eve and it's pretty much a zero, save for some of the performances. The opening dialogue is truly tone-deaf: "It would be so much fun to be homeless and sleep outdoors". Really, in San Diego where homelessness can't be ignored? And as others have noted, while they've sort of made the story up-to-date, it's still very familiar and truly sags most of the time. But the guy playing Hook is wonderful, as are most of his crew. Peter is forgettable, Wendy is screechy, but Tinkerbell is first-rate. The best effort of the evening goes to the lighting design, but lighting itself does not make a show. Oh, and it's a 'musical', but they disdain conventional musical songwriting in the program, so they ended up with drum beats and 'meh' for songs.