#1
Posted: 10/1/05 at 7:30pm
Wow! It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. However, it was quite dull. As many know, Jessica Boevers was out today. Her understudy, Courtney Balan, was pretty good, although she had a hard time staying in tune on some of ther higher-range numbers, like the title song. Chris Hanke is pretty decent, his "f**k, duck, suck" line standing out. Why they cast him when Hispanic actors play his mother and sister I'll never know. The above-all highlight is David Turner's Winston, who looks like a combination of Marilyn Manson and Alan Cumming in Cabaret. He makes the show a lot less dull, even if he's making a skeleton do a kick line. 13 year old Chiara Navarra has a great voice. Too bad that her part doesn't really fit in with the show. And then theres Michael Farina, who has a great time channeling Al Jolsen as Al-God.
The problems are all in the book. It could benefit from a substancial amount of rewrites, just to clarify everything that's going on. One second you're seeing J.T. and Jenny singing a love song to each other, the next, out of nowhere, you see Vera riding her scooter, talking to Al (which, apparently, is what God wants to be called.)
Joe Brooks' score by far is a lot better than a lot of the things we've had to listen to over the past few years. They're mostly slow pop-ballads that you'd hear on lite-fm, but they're memorable. I walked out humming the title song, after hearing it once (I turned the cd off half-way into it.)
The sets (or lack thereof) impressed me. They were all projected images and a few pieces, like the living room and the Heavenly file cabintes with projected faces. I think I saw Michael Jackson's face pass by a few times. Scary stuff. The dancing skeleton projections were a highlight by far, as was the skeleton kick-line, and the hokey J.T. rising from the bed and ascending to Heaven.
Oh, and that big lemon at the end may be saying something about what the critics will think.
Overall, it was worth the $29 (TDF) I paid.
The problems are all in the book. It could benefit from a substancial amount of rewrites, just to clarify everything that's going on. One second you're seeing J.T. and Jenny singing a love song to each other, the next, out of nowhere, you see Vera riding her scooter, talking to Al (which, apparently, is what God wants to be called.)
Joe Brooks' score by far is a lot better than a lot of the things we've had to listen to over the past few years. They're mostly slow pop-ballads that you'd hear on lite-fm, but they're memorable. I walked out humming the title song, after hearing it once (I turned the cd off half-way into it.)
The sets (or lack thereof) impressed me. They were all projected images and a few pieces, like the living room and the Heavenly file cabintes with projected faces. I think I saw Michael Jackson's face pass by a few times. Scary stuff. The dancing skeleton projections were a highlight by far, as was the skeleton kick-line, and the hokey J.T. rising from the bed and ascending to Heaven.
Oh, and that big lemon at the end may be saying something about what the critics will think.
Overall, it was worth the $29 (TDF) I paid.
Updated On: 10/1/05 at 07:30 PM
