Dancing in the Streets
Tonight I saw 'Dancing in the Streets' - a Motown musical. "If you came here to see the 'Woman in White', you are going to be sorely disappointed... there ain't a single white woman in this show." Great line. Shame the narrator used his best gag first. It was downhill from there.
The glamorous female singers as the Supremes and others were the highlight, but I wouldn't have cast a single one of the male performers. One actually seemed to go to sleep during a dancing routine. They were all insanely annoying, smug looking, and highly unwatchable. Stevie Wonder was, frankly, disturbing.
There was no story line holding the musical together (not even a really naff one as in Mamma Mia), and if you're not going to have a story line, the performance needs to be exceptional. Otherwise you are neither at a musical, nor at a concert - but a mediocre halfway house that qualifies as neither.
I thought it might warm up in the second half but my yawning only increased. About halfway through, they predictably enticed us on to our reluctant feet. So it looked like we were all having a good time. But really, there's something about having to be cajouled that isn't quite the same as spontaneously jumping to your feet of your own volition to dance with unbridled enthusiasm.
The most enthusiastic dancers in the audience were definitely the middle-aged women, and watching them go for it was possibly the most entertaining part of the evening. Especially the voluptuous woman a few seats down from me who was the first out of her seat and had clearly taken to heart that saying 'dance as if nobody's watching'. I was just so glad that she wasn't my mother.
So the curtain went down - and came up again. And suddenly the singing and dancing became brilliant. If only it had been like that for more than all of the final 10 minutes.
The glamorous female singers as the Supremes and others were the highlight, but I wouldn't have cast a single one of the male performers. One actually seemed to go to sleep during a dancing routine. They were all insanely annoying, smug looking, and highly unwatchable. Stevie Wonder was, frankly, disturbing.
There was no story line holding the musical together (not even a really naff one as in Mamma Mia), and if you're not going to have a story line, the performance needs to be exceptional. Otherwise you are neither at a musical, nor at a concert - but a mediocre halfway house that qualifies as neither.
I thought it might warm up in the second half but my yawning only increased. About halfway through, they predictably enticed us on to our reluctant feet. So it looked like we were all having a good time. But really, there's something about having to be cajouled that isn't quite the same as spontaneously jumping to your feet of your own volition to dance with unbridled enthusiasm.
The most enthusiastic dancers in the audience were definitely the middle-aged women, and watching them go for it was possibly the most entertaining part of the evening. Especially the voluptuous woman a few seats down from me who was the first out of her seat and had clearly taken to heart that saying 'dance as if nobody's watching'. I was just so glad that she wasn't my mother.
So the curtain went down - and came up again. And suddenly the singing and dancing became brilliant. If only it had been like that for more than all of the final 10 minutes.
posted by Karen Tigar @ 12:25 AM
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