Posted: 9/21/16 at 10:33am
The For the Record: Scorsese show begins preview performances at the Wallis Annenberg in Los Angeles tonight. Anyone going? I would love to see it but am nowhere near L.A. Interested to hear any reports!
Updated On: 9/26/16 at 10:33 AM
Posted: 9/26/16 at 12:01pm
I'll be going Thursday or Friday. Only going because it's a musical and Josh Loyd Young is in the cast.
Posted: 9/27/16 at 3:01pm
Great, please report back! Interested to hear about John Lloyd Young and Carmen Cusack. Beyond that, the cast doesn't have much relevance for me.
Posted: 10/7/16 at 1:34am
How to describe this show? How about: If you dropped a lot of really bad acid while binge-watching Scorsese films, this show might be what you'd vomit up afterwards.
Take a mishmash of songs featured in Scorsese films (from "Sweet Dreams" to "Gimme Shelter", toss in a bunch of random dialogue from Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, et. al., and stage it all on a nightclub set. That's it. There is no plot, no characterization, no coherence, and not even an effective evocation of place (as the songs & dialogue range across several locations & decades). Seriously, you can find more intelligence & cohesion in Mamma Mia....
The cast are excellent singers & performers, but they are wasted in an utterly hopeless vehicle.
I gotta hand it to For the Record: Scorsese, however, for becoming one of the few shows I've walked out on. I left at intermission, as I felt that further exposure to this trainwreck might seriously damage my appreciation of Scorsese's work.
Updated On: 10/7/16 at 01:34 AM
Posted: 10/7/16 at 2:31am
Shepherd, have you seen any of the show in the For The Record series? I have not seen the Scorsese one, but I saw the Zemeckis and Baz Luhrmann versions, and both were fantastic. They're not musicals, it's more of a musical exploration of a director's body of work. Maybe you were just expecting something a little different?
Posted: 10/7/16 at 10:09am
Well as disappointing as that is to hear, it does soothe the sadness I felt for not being able to see this show. Ah well, it's only running another week or so.
Posted: 10/7/16 at 1:01pm
Brave Sir Robin2 said: "Shepherd, have you seen any of the show in the For The Record series? I have not seen the Scorsese one, but I saw the Zemeckis and Baz Luhrmann versions, and both were fantastic. They're not musicals, it's more of a musical exploration of a director's body of work. Maybe you were just expecting something a little different?"
Although I've never seen one of the Rockwell shows, I had a general idea what to expect and was not looking for a traditional musical. Also, just because something works on a teeny cabaret stage doesn't mean it can or should be blown up to theatrical stage proportions or anointed with serious theatrical pretensions.
As for it being a "musical exploration of a director's body of work": I thought I made it clear in my review that one of the reasons I left at intermission was because I felt the piece was actually damaging my appreciation of Scorsese. Since all of the dialogue was from his more extreme setpieces (like Joe Pesci's "Funny How?" or the "Wake up, Henry" scene from Goodfellas), all presented with no variation and no context, they ended up seeming more like parody; not appreciation or exploration. And, just because songs like "Comfortably Numb" or "Sweet Dreams" were used in The Departed, doesn't mean that they have an inherent Scorsese-ness to explore.
By the time Travis, the bartender, took the stage at the end of part one to do the "You talkin' to me?" routine from Taxi Driver, he could just as easily have been reciting Hamlet's soliloquy or "Mary Had a Little Lamb", as it was devoid of any meaning, characterization, or context (other than: And here's another one of Scorsese's Greatest Hits!)
Updated On: 10/7/16 at 01:01 PM
Posted: 10/7/16 at 2:35pm
PepperedShepherd said: "How to describe this show? How about: If you dropped a lot of really bad acid while binge-watching Scorsese films, this show might be what you'd vomit up afterwards.
Take a mishmash of songs featured in Scorsese films (from "Sweet Dreams" to "Gimme Shelter", toss in a bunch of random dialogue from Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino, Wolf of Wall Street, et. al., and stage it all on a nightclub set. That's it. There is no plot, no characterization, no coherence, and not even an effective evocation of place (as the songs & dialogue range across several locations & decades). Seriously, you can find more intelligence & cohesion in Mamma Mia....
The cast are excellent singers & performers, but they are wasted in an utterly hopeless vehicle.
I gotta hand it to For the Record: Scorsese, however, for becoming one of the few shows I've walked out on. I left at intermission, as I felt that further exposure to this trainwreck might seriously damage my appreciation of Scorsese's work.
"
While I would love to see this show, because of Carmen Cusack, this review makes me feel better haha.
Posted: 10/7/16 at 4:59pm
I went in not ever seeing a Scorsese film nor a For The Record show. It was great. I thought of it as a concert. Great vocalists all around. GO for the singing.
Posted: 10/7/16 at 7:14pm
If I didn't live in Ohio, I would still probably go despite that review. Carmen is my absolute favorite.
