Shrek The Musical

[27lh]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:25am

I am interested in everyone's thoughts on Shrek The Musical. I have a young daughter who wants to go see the show and I have found some pretty good prices online at TicketCity, Stubhub, and Ticketsnow but I am not entirely sure that it is a good show for a child to see. Any thoughts?

[theaterkid1015]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:45am

I found it pretty enjoyable, better than I expected. Some jokes will fly over her head, but it's very visual. There's always something changing and new scenery, so she'd probably still be very entertained.

Unless your daughter is burgeoning theater critic?

[TheCharleston]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:49am

take her. see it.

it's better than MERMAID or POPPINS.

just my opinion, though

[lalarox]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:50am

If you would show your daughter the movie Shrek, then the musical would be fine. It has fun music and colorful characters and an easy to follow story line, but a lot of jokes to keep the adults entertained as well. I don't remember anything that would be inappropriate for children. I would suggest maybe a matinee, though. When I saw an evening performance I noticed a few youngsters falling asleep before the end.

[Pianolin717]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:51am

I'd say go see Poppins! Its so much fun!

[Parks]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 11:57am

She'd be bored in Mary Poppins, I bet. I feel like Mary Poppins is meant more for adults... it's a little slow. See Shrek.

[winston89]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:00pm

I would take her to go see Shrek over Poppins. While I love them both, keep in mind that when Poppins opened in London it was meant for adults and was marketed as such. It was when it came to Broadway people started to take their kids.

Shrek has the same kind of humor that the movies do. If your okay with your child watching the movie then I think that it would be fine for her to go see Shrek.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:00pm

It depends on how old she is. If she's under five years old, I'd say Little Mermaid, but if she's older, I'm sure she'd enjoy Shrek. Unless she's really, really sensitive to 'scary' things-- I know some kids are scared of the way Shrek and some of the other characters look.

[broadwayjim42]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:04pm

Despite the talented cast, I was really disappointed by Shrek. There's lightweight and then there's this show, which is unbelievably slight for something so expensively mounted. That said, the kids in the audience (and it was as full of kids as any show I'd seen) ate it all up. Like the movie, it's a very mild PG...lots of fart humor and the occasional adult joke (tranny mess?) that the kids won't get or care about anyway.

[Theatreboy49]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:06pm

Schmerg if the children are afraid of how Shrek looks I would love to see their faces when Ursala appears in Mermaid. I think Shrek too is the better fit. I think the visual elements will keep your daughter entertained and not only will you get to have a fun time at the theatre but you'd get to see a top notch cast with some great Broadway stars.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:10pm

Schmerg if the children are afraid of how Shrek looks I would love to see their faces when Ursala appears in Mermaid.

That is a good point! And all little kids are different in what they think is scary. When I saw Mermaid, though, all of the little kids at stagedoor really wanted to meet Ursula and were upset when she didn't come out-- I was very surprised. One girl said she liked Ursula better than Ariel because she was 'so pretty.' *Shrug* I thought she was presented as more silly and glamorous than truly scary.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:29pm

A propos of nothing, I saw Shrek last weekend, Saturday night. The audience reaction was reasonably okay, although there were no thunderous ovations. My thought throughout the whole thing was that an enormous amount of money and talent had been wasted on a very trivial property. There must be SOME projects out there that would be far more deserving of the royal treatment that Shrek got.

PS. I will say that the children -- and there were many -- were all well-behaved, although some of them were sleeping by the end. The adults, on the other hand, were a different matter. The number of people who were text-messaging was appalling -- and the bright lights of the phones were extremely distracting. You can't tell me that there's anything so important going on in their lives that they couldn't wait until intermission to read their messages.

[LadyDramaturg2]

Posted: 1/27/09 at 12:38pm

Did anybody ask how old "young daughter" is? I didn't see, but Schmerg said "it depends on how old...if 5 or younger..."

My teen daughter saw it recently, and she is a real critic, boy, -- I thought she was going to come back with a story about "wasted money," based on the user reviews on this board. Instead, she said that she laughed all the way through the show, and (although it's not a great piece of art) she had a good time.

I've also read that smaller children in the audience (I'd say, younger than nine, maybe) get restless, stand up, talk incessantly, don't really attend to the show. So, it's your judgment about how much she loves the movie, the extent she'll be able to "get" what's going on (in terms of the transfer to the stage etc.) --

But if she thinks the movies are funny, she might also find this show fun and entertaining too.

[Please, I know that "teen" and "young" daughter are ages apart, but I give this example because girls often share a different sensibility about things like flatulence jokes, and so, I was surprised that my kid came back with such a positive review. It suggested to me that the show didn't drown itself (or gas itself) in lowbrow humor.]