Aida
We went to see Aida - the Elton John and Tim Rice musical, not the Verdi opera - on Saturday. Yay free tickets! We've been winning an awful lot of those lately.
I really disliked it at first, honestly. The beginning at least was very hackneyed, and the actor who played Radames was terrible. Part of it, at least, was that it truly was Opera in the Tom Lehrer sense - that is to say, we couldn't understand a word of it. I was seriously missing the supertitles. I was also worried about them imposing a subtext of american slavery on a story where it seemed really inappropriate. And the villain was really really hammy.
Even from the very beginning, though, the look of the show was incredible. The sets were actually pretty minimalist, but everything was done with lighting. And it was awesome. There was a silhouette of a pyramid and some palm trees which could be raised to evoke a Nile-wards view or lowered to evoke a desert-wards view. And since it more or less sits there the entire show, when it finally goes away for the last dramatic scene the absolute bleakness is quite powerful. The lighting overall was just really really well done.
The show was bookended by museum scenes, with one of the leads singing from a display case. But she had...trailers, I guess, on her dress, that she ended up using as Isis wings. It was cool. And so help me I couldn't keep my mind off of Stargate.
And then in scene four, there was a Stargate. I kid you not. A tiled ring descended from the ceiling to form part of a bathroom backdrop I guess, with alternating blue and green trapezoidal tiles that lit up at key moments in the number. I actually turned to Joel-Henry at one point and said "Oh no! They're engaging all the chevrons!" We could not stop cracking up. This in turn meant that we had no choice but to interpret the ending as saying that the two leads reincarnated as Daniel Jackson's parents.
The two female leads were great (Aida had an impressively low voice) and they musical adaptation introduced a Comic Servant named Mereb, who was awesome. Seriously, Mereb is the most likeable character in the show, and the tragic hero. And there was this scene with boat that was Narm-tastic. And it managed to get genuinely touching by the end. Despite my initial misgivings, I ended up genuinely liking it. (And the fact that my shift in opinion came at about the point they dropped a Stargate from the ceiling has nothing to do with it at all).
It was also pretty different watching a musical where I did not know the plot at all. I mean, I knew it was Opera, so I had a fair guess that at least one of the leads would die, but I was genuinely surprised by how things ended up going down. A good show, when all is said and done - even if you just go for the lighting effects ;)
***
In unrelated news, my mom is flying in the day after tomorrow, and I've been cleaning house desperately. As usual I have more cross-stitch on my plate than I'm likely to get done in time for christmas (and the wedding thereafter) but we did get out all of our Thanksgiving cards more or less on time, so that's a success.
In the world of fiction, we've started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Man, Patrick Stewart is awesome. Also, Joel-Henry had a bit of an epiphany about Stargate: Atlantis. All of its conflict resolution comes down to Applied Phlebotinum. This is because, I think, in SG-1 the main drive of the show was the interaction between Jack and Daniel. Thus, any given problem would have the Hitting solution vs. the Talking solution. The Science solution, when it came in, would usually either be the tie-breaker between those two or introduced as Take a Third Option. In Atlantis, however, we're missing an avatar for the Talking solution. The main drive of the show is the interaction between Sheppard and McKay, contrasting the Hitting solution with the Hitting, only harder, and With Science! solution...which aren't really in conflict. And so every problem is solved with Applied Phlebotinum, which is just far less interesting to watch.
Exept of course the episode we just watched, where they locked McKay in a small room with a Botanist, and the problem had to be solved by other people climbing through air vents. That was cool.
Oh, and we should be going to the DUMM MONO event this weekend! It's a letterboxing convention (I kid you not) in Middle Of Nowhere Ohio! YAY! Gotta carve my mom a new stamp...
I really disliked it at first, honestly. The beginning at least was very hackneyed, and the actor who played Radames was terrible. Part of it, at least, was that it truly was Opera in the Tom Lehrer sense - that is to say, we couldn't understand a word of it. I was seriously missing the supertitles. I was also worried about them imposing a subtext of american slavery on a story where it seemed really inappropriate. And the villain was really really hammy.
Even from the very beginning, though, the look of the show was incredible. The sets were actually pretty minimalist, but everything was done with lighting. And it was awesome. There was a silhouette of a pyramid and some palm trees which could be raised to evoke a Nile-wards view or lowered to evoke a desert-wards view. And since it more or less sits there the entire show, when it finally goes away for the last dramatic scene the absolute bleakness is quite powerful. The lighting overall was just really really well done.
The show was bookended by museum scenes, with one of the leads singing from a display case. But she had...trailers, I guess, on her dress, that she ended up using as Isis wings. It was cool. And so help me I couldn't keep my mind off of Stargate.
And then in scene four, there was a Stargate. I kid you not. A tiled ring descended from the ceiling to form part of a bathroom backdrop I guess, with alternating blue and green trapezoidal tiles that lit up at key moments in the number. I actually turned to Joel-Henry at one point and said "Oh no! They're engaging all the chevrons!" We could not stop cracking up. This in turn meant that we had no choice but to interpret the ending as saying that the two leads reincarnated as Daniel Jackson's parents.
The two female leads were great (Aida had an impressively low voice) and they musical adaptation introduced a Comic Servant named Mereb, who was awesome. Seriously, Mereb is the most likeable character in the show, and the tragic hero. And there was this scene with boat that was Narm-tastic. And it managed to get genuinely touching by the end. Despite my initial misgivings, I ended up genuinely liking it. (And the fact that my shift in opinion came at about the point they dropped a Stargate from the ceiling has nothing to do with it at all).
It was also pretty different watching a musical where I did not know the plot at all. I mean, I knew it was Opera, so I had a fair guess that at least one of the leads would die, but I was genuinely surprised by how things ended up going down. A good show, when all is said and done - even if you just go for the lighting effects ;)
***
In unrelated news, my mom is flying in the day after tomorrow, and I've been cleaning house desperately. As usual I have more cross-stitch on my plate than I'm likely to get done in time for christmas (and the wedding thereafter) but we did get out all of our Thanksgiving cards more or less on time, so that's a success.
In the world of fiction, we've started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Man, Patrick Stewart is awesome. Also, Joel-Henry had a bit of an epiphany about Stargate: Atlantis. All of its conflict resolution comes down to Applied Phlebotinum. This is because, I think, in SG-1 the main drive of the show was the interaction between Jack and Daniel. Thus, any given problem would have the Hitting solution vs. the Talking solution. The Science solution, when it came in, would usually either be the tie-breaker between those two or introduced as Take a Third Option. In Atlantis, however, we're missing an avatar for the Talking solution. The main drive of the show is the interaction between Sheppard and McKay, contrasting the Hitting solution with the Hitting, only harder, and With Science! solution...which aren't really in conflict. And so every problem is solved with Applied Phlebotinum, which is just far less interesting to watch.
Exept of course the episode we just watched, where they locked McKay in a small room with a Botanist, and the problem had to be solved by other people climbing through air vents. That was cool.
Oh, and we should be going to the DUMM MONO event this weekend! It's a letterboxing convention (I kid you not) in Middle Of Nowhere Ohio! YAY! Gotta carve my mom a new stamp...