::Blows on 60-millimetre pitchpipe::

[captainsblog]

What do you do, when you know all the lyrics
But haven't seen the show where they're set?
You know there are puppets,
Resembling Muppets,
But how good can this roadshow get?

You want to hear them say
Their lines just like Broadway,
But still you expect something new (oooh!)

Yet this cast stepped onto
That stage in Toronto
And knew what, exactly, to do!

::gets chased offstage by Oriental Asian-American wife shouting "Get a job!"::

That, for me, was the only doubt going in. I've seen shows before where I knew the Original Soundtrack all forward and back, but I either had no expectations (from, say, a school performance) or the new cast was better than the original, or the new version was a revival or something else different from my memories.  This one, though? Still playing Broadway, and the original performers whose voices I know are not far from that stage if not actually on it.  Could this Kate and this Princeton work as well as their muppety counterparts?

The answer, I'm happy to say, is you betcha:)

Seeing the performances, especially of the main characters (who happen to be about two feet tall with hands up their asses), was the new and wondrous experience for me that trumped knowing all the songs. I've seen Muppet-behind-the-scene videos, which reveal a very different kind of puppetry from what this show presents. In the Henson tradition, the puppeteer is never seen, actually working below stage level in most cases. These puppets are voiced, and animated, by actors holding them out right in front of them, in dark clothes but the most brilliant of stage presences. When Nicky points, his actor (or actress- he usually had two toting him around) points with him. Mouths and emotions, "performer" and "handler," come out as one- although on occasion, one actress wound up voicing two onstage puppets at once while talking to each other. As for the songs, even knowing every word, you're not ready for the blow-away moment coming when a muppet-faced Kate closes out the first act with a number you know that chick in the black dress is really doing the singing but you just don't care.

The soundtrack also doesn't prepare you for some obvious things (the verisimilitude of the puppet sex) , but neither does it tip you off to nice little touches like the overhead TV screens. Not only were they used for various intercuts of Sesame-like cartoons and jokes between and sometimes during numbers, but at the end, when the cast did curtain calls, those screens showed a feed of the guys in the pit performing the closing theme, so their hard work, also, got a much-deserved acknowledgement.

As for it being an out-of-country experience, I found it remarkably faithful to the original, and appreciated by the locals. That's not always the case; The Producers bombed up north because the TO-The-Good audience wasn't mean enough to get a lot of the jokes. On other occasions, they'll insert local-colour references into the script, as was done in Lion King with references to "Honest Ed's" that we didn't get but everybody else did. Here, the lines were all quintessentially Noo Yawk, and everybody seemed to react just as we did. The "Canada" song in the score got no more or less interest than I'd expect it to doon in the States, eh? And the fairly famous reference in the closing number to a certain United Statesian head of government? Got as big a laugh, and as long an applause, as I'd heard it to be getting all over our great nation.  Don't worry, Canada; we'll come up with someone else for you to hate next January that will still scan.

The touring cast- same as the one that played Buffalo earlier this year and is now finishing the circuit- is full of Broadway peeps with fabulous stories that the one of you who cares can read the Playbill for when I send it to her cliki the Wiki with all the names. Anika Larsen is the one major lead change from that list and she was especially awesome as Mainly Kate.

That's about it. I suppose I should include the house staff as part of the cast, since they definitely added to the experience. Tim the Sarcastic Usher who showed us to our seats like it was clearly below his pay grade; Irina the Dyslectic Usher who kept trying to seat people to our left even though their actual seats were in the rows either side of us; and the security people outside who were shooing away the Actual Homeless People who probably would've gotten us to cough up the cash if they'd sung the right song from the score. That, though, was secondary to our thorough enjoyment of the night, which was, after all, our Purpose.

Comments

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

Hee, clever. I think I'll remember, though. (Also, he says I'm too verbose and doesn't read the "blob," as my father calls it.)

[khuckie.livejournal.com]

Cmon Ray! Even I know about Honest Ed's!

Matt's dad was visiting us in Richmond. His dad's friend was there too. We were all sitting around talking and the friend starts telling us about a story he'd read, about this guy Ed Murvish, who he obviously found fascinating, but told the story in the most boring way possible. It went on and on (and on), from his upbringing in Colonial Beach, VA, all the way to his triumph in Toronto. After it had gone on for about 10 minutes, Matt's dad looks at him and says "Does this story have a point?" We'd all been bored to tears by that point, so the question was freaking hilarious.

Since then, Matt asks everyone from Canada that he meets about Ed Murvish. And does this have a point? Nope!

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

That actually makes all kinds of sense.

Honest Ed's kid, David Mirvish, is the impresario who has run most of Toronto's live theater since the previous idiots managed to bankrupt the business in the early 90s. Mirvish Productions runs the Royal Alex, the Princess of Wales, and the Phantom's Phormer Home, the Pantages (another loving rescue job of a long-neglected early-century theatrical house) under some hideous naming-rights name.

And don't worry- you're at your most lovable when you have no point, as opposed to those daytime hours diagnosing things and shit when you do have one.