Posted: 6/17/16 at 3:15pm
I saw this show last night with a few of my seniors. They grew up on Spongebob and were head over heels in love with the show.
I have never seen a single episode of Spongebob, but I really enjoyed the humor, and the repeated satirizing of government inefficiencies (we are now at Code Turquoise! We are now at Code Indigo!).
The set was gorgeous and loads of fun to look at, but I longed to looked at the beautiful 1920's-era decorations buried beneath the Spongebob set that extended well into and past the boxes.
There were some catchy songs and my kids loved every one. I was shocked to hear that people didn't like the Act 1 rap number, because that sure caught on with the crowd.
As for Squidworth's tap number......well the tap in Shuffle Along made those look sloppy and far too brief. I dislike when tap is sloppy and everyone's shoes are hitting the stage at different times. It may have been compounded by the Squidworth costume has four pairs of shoes on it, but I was unclear about whether all four shoes were tapping or not. And I saw what he is capable of in Mary Poppins! He could have done a lot more so I hope they flesh out that number.
There was plenty of adult humor in this show and plenty of little kids in the audience (who did not annoy this grumpy old grump in the least) who loved just having Spongebob and his quirky Bikini Bottom onstage.
One interesting thing is that I told my kids to not expect the show to look like the cartoon. I brought up Beauty and the Beast and how the costumes in that show are so literal. After the show, my kids said how I was wrong and the characters all looked just like the cartoon. Obviously they don't, but that means the costume designer did well since Spongebob-raised kids didn't see the difference.
