Who on Earth put together the team behind this production? It's 10000000 times worse than the Broadway one. It looks like something you'll see at a fair.
Well, it's a stylistic improvement over the Tuacahn Center for the Arts costumes which looked more like Disney theme park costumes than actual theatre costumes, but they're still not any more appealing than the costumes for the Broadway production.
Word is that they had to re-build the set a day before opening due to previous malfunctions. I don't have a link but I have good word from a friend of a friend.
Dreadful...I'm sorry but compared to this, the Broadway production looked MUCH nicer!
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The MUNY, for all it has going for it, is still Summer Stock where the sets and costumes are built in just a week or two. It's a gigantic outdoor stage with absolutely no fly space. The place seat 12,000 (yes, I did place the comma correctly) so the sets are often exaggerated in order to read. If you check out their videos on YouTube, there is a good one of them painting a backdrop for their recent production of Kiss Me, Kate.
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Yeah I don't remember any of the "cool" parts of the Broadway version. It was pretty awful, but this looks dreadful. Just really cartoony and amateur. Ursula's costume looks way too big for him.
There are some shows that seem to inspire brilliant designs from theatres of all sizes and budgets. And LITTLE MERMAID is quickly proving to be the exact opposite.
Sorry to double post... Just found this video that has some footage of the show as well as an interview with some workers at the MUNY. The show definetely looks a lot better from a distance, and the set does not look as tacky. You can tell these sets are made to be seen as a whole and from a distance, not just close ups of sections (which is what they show in the production photos). VIDEO
"There’s nothing quite like the power and the passion of Broadway music. "
Yeah the costumes certainly are terrible, from the waist up, Ursula looks great, but the tentacles? Still, a man in drag is a step in the right direction for the character in my opinion though.
The mermaid costumes aren't much, and the "tails" they had on broadway were much nicer, if only they hadn't had those skirts under them, black or blue tighs would have been much nicer.
Anyway, it is basically large scale summer stock so on the whole it looks ok. It's the performances that count at these kind of things really.
Isn't it kind of baffling that no production of this looks breathtakingly beautiful considering the environment of the show and the amazing source? Somebody's gotta have the imagination to make it amazing!
That said, maybe the show doesn't lend itself to the style that I'm thinking of. For some reason, the show is cartoonier than the cartoon. I think it was a mistake to flesh out the supporting characters by giving them whole songs of their own because the thrust of the story was lost in the muddle. If Ariel had been given another obstacle of some kind they could have fleshed out the main story instead of losing it to the cutesy characters.
Not that Im a fan of the production after seeing the photos, but holy smokes, I'd love to see what some of you people would do with limited time and limited money. The painted sets look fine from far away and I imagine people are there to hear the songs from the movie.
The Little Mermaid is painted into a corner artistically. Whatever choices are made, someone is gonna bitch and think they could do a lot better. Go for it-especially with limited budget. I get people being pissed with the Broadway team who had gads of Disney money and pissed it away, but complaining about the MUNY-oh, please.
This is actually a show that I think would work great for high schools, community theatres and places with limited budgets.
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Every production goes for the garish cartoon feel and every production looks tacky and ugly.
I would love to see someone try something minimalist (but not with actors playing instruments, Mr. Doyle) and darker. The costumes should be more suggestive and less literal.
A bunch of unwieldy and lifeless tentacles hanging off a costume will never look good.
This is the last thing you are leaving the audince with?
The hands over the boobs is not very Disney-like...
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