changes to avenue q? (warning there may be spoilers ahead)- Page 2

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 10:19pm

right. it was kind of a throwaway line, but it got a bigger laugh than the new line, if i can recall.

oh, and i forgot, i hated the new beginning to Life Outside..., it just sounded terrible in the sound mix in general, and it's also jarring to the ear. it just doesn't match the tone of the show. at least the Purpose intro didn't distract.

[bwayondabrain]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 10:21pm

i think i like the new one better
but ive never seen it performed, so i cannot judge which is funnier live...
i want to see this badly!
:)

[friedrichVT]

Posted: 9/16/06 at 11:56pm

Brian's joke isn't funny because the character is loser-ish and not a good comedian, just a little character moment....

Posted: 9/17/06 at 12:58am

I'm now interested in seeing this again... a lot of shows find they want to make changes but tend not to because it's too expensive/time-consuming/annoying. Kudos for whoever decided that it was worth the money to spend on improving the show the way the creatives wanted to.

(Don't have much opinions on the changes themselves, it's just nice to see people willing to constantly sharpen)

[Dude99]

Posted: 9/27/06 at 6:24am

I just saw the show in London at the weekend and I noticed a lot of changes - a lot of them illogical to me, being familiar with the original cast recording of Broadway. So much so, that I wrote to Jeff Marx, by email, and got a reply from him more or less straight away.

He very kindly explained the reasoning behind 3 of the changes I had listed. Some of these have made it back into Broadway/Las Vegas too. The main one that you guys in the US would be familiar with, is the cutting of the Wedding Presents dialog at the start of the Money Song. The reason here is that they needed to cut Act II, as they thought it was, quote " a little too long and draggy" , and this piece of dialog was one of the pieces cut, as they deemed it not that funny anyway and it could go. Any other items you noticed in Act II are probably for the same reason.

The other items I had asked Jeff about and which he wrote back about were specific to the London production and were changes made to make it better for a UK audience. I'm not from the UK but had travelled there to see the show, so I didn't like some of the changes, and didn't think they made sense. The 'Polacks' in 'Racist' were changed to 'French', but I didn't think it was necessary or worked, and Gary Coleman's entrance lyrics were changed to remove references to Diff'rent Strokes and money being 'stolen by my folks' .....go figure.

Anyway, I thought it was very nice of him to reply and after all the show belongs to the creative team and they can change it whatever way they like!

[ruthiefan_felix]

Posted: 9/27/06 at 8:28am

This sounds like the changes they did for the London show!

[algy]

Posted: 9/27/06 at 8:34am

They do sound like the way the show is in London - having only seen the London version, I can only comment on differences versus the Cast recording though.

The Polocks change was definately neccessary for London - I had/have no idea who they are and looked it up on the internet. The French are an all purpose English hate figure (Wanna buy an antique French army rifle? Never fired, dropped twice! - being a typical example) so that change made sense.

The Wedding presents exchange thing wouldn't have gone down well in the UK either - it's just socially unacceptable, and registering for weddings is still a new thing here.

I did miss the missing Schadenfreude verse though.