Wall of Text
Dralion Spoilers - Don't read ahead if you intend to see this some time in the future.
So I thought I'd do a post/type review for Dralion as I saw the last Perth performance last night. I guess this is some way of me being able to come back further down the track and be able to remember it without too much of the DVD taking it over in my head. As it is, the music is already gone because I'm just too used to the not-live version. I'm on a rather steep downer at the moment. Apparently this is fairly normal if you've been heavily involved in a theater performance and despite having nothing to do with it in a realistic level, I've been emotionally tied to this bloody show for the last couple of weeks. So it's been a decidedly weird emotional rollercoaster in the last couple of days. Anyway.
So we got to the Grand Chapiteau at around 7:35 parking was already difficult to find but as my mother has an Accrod parking permit, we didn't have too much trouble. We walked on through and around to our door and found Eve and Esme (Craig's mother and grandmother) who happened to have seats in the same general area as us. We were also meeting Tanya out there but due to some even worse parking issues, she came in just after we had gone into the tent itself.
So in we went (after the obligatory water purchase) and found our seats. Mum was in 14D and I was in 14E. According to the website, that was meant to be one directly in front of the other but no such luck. Not really a problem though. So we sat and watched people and waited. Along came the first clown act of course and that was quite a bit of fun. Being in the rather good seats, we had quite a bit of near interaction (no direct fortunately!!). Mum loved the clowns but after seeing them twice already, I was a little bit impatient so I chatted with a couple of girls next to me who were curious about the cast and this and that.
The show started with it's usual bang and the intro scene was probably the best out of the three. Yao (fire) was absolutely in his element (excuse the pun) last night. He did fantastically well. I thought that Gaya (earth) seemed rather distracted - her usual grin and energy just didn't seem to be there. Though if you've just finished a show and then head straight into the next one, I'm not too surprised. Oceane (water) was as good as always, her dancing really is a great thing to watch (despite the fact that I'm not fond of the Indian style) and the interaction between her and Yao was stunning.
And of course Azala (air) did her routine fantastically with her beau.
*****Let me explain very quickly that you have each of the Western elements; fire, earth, water and air. They're also symbolised in dance and music quite specifically as Asia, Indigenous Australia/Africa, India and Europe all respectively. The L'ame Forces (as mentioned below) are the symbolic representation of all the combined elements and therefore higher spirits in their own rights. I wouldn't call them gods but they'd be up there. The Little Budda (almost like the non-speaking and reoccurring host of the show [she opens and closes it]) has the power to be a L'ame Force but yearns to be a child and therefore is how she is portrayed*****
The L'ame Forces came in very well also. I think Chad was having some issues with his voice right at the beginning as he missed a few notes that he normally hits without any trouble but Agnus covered quite nicely. Then again if you've been doing the show for 10 years, you'd think she could deal with any inconsistancies with the male lead. But yes, their first entry was great. Also insert a bit of an obligitory 'hee!' from my end. Chad really is amazing :D~
So the first act was the single hand balancing but I was a little disappointed (water). I think we had the not-main girl - their are two who do the act but one of them does it the more often and performs a bit better as she stays on the single hand for the whole act instead of only half. But either way, I must admit, I wasn't really watching. My focus was more on the male L'ame Force (Chad Oliver). His rendition of Stella Errans was good but not great. The song is just too high for him and he had to drop a few notes. That being said, I was probably one of the few people to notice. I mean how many people go three times and learn all the songs...
Third act was the fire bamboo poles. Very good and no mistakes. Like I said, Yao did fantastically well during this whole show and he really got into character. Angry Asian Guy. His occasional grin was cool though, I appreciate actors who can still have fun.
Clowns were next and they were (still) good. One mistake that I found was when he threw the shoe at the 'demon' and the lining didn't come out so he had to use the shoe itself to scare them away. The "audience" gentleman performed excellently. He's a wonderful actor!
From there we went onto the juggling. I'm sorry but this guy will never match up to Viktor Kee, but I suppose I shouldn't really compare. He was, in his own right, very good. He had some troubles in the beginning where he dropped the ball three times in a row but he recovered well and that's the sign of a good performer. I found he lacked personality on stage but other than that, he did do very well. The story I generally get from this, or at least I do from the DVD, is that a primitive human has evolved and is given an item from the spirit of air and he (at first) has no idea what it is, and he very carefully touches it before realising it's okay and then he starts quite shyly playing with it. He then gets more and more confidant and then gets right into it.
To begin with, I was surprised at the female L'ame Force doing the juggler's finale vocals but then I considered how damn high that part is and decided fair enough.
After the juggling, we had a bit of a dance routine between the four elements to distract from the background where the Gaya-kids were assembling the trampolines. They do the distraction thing well actually. The use of the fog helps too but it does smell rather bad...
The trampolines were, as always, fantastic. I'll be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with the damn things. Every jump, I'm thinking "oh god, is this going to be the one where they hurt themselves?!" But they didn't and I only saw one mistake which actually had me worried where one of the high jumpers (from the top) miss-timed his tumble and landed face first on the matt but he recovered perfectly and made it look like that's what he was meant to do. So that was primarily fire with one lass of the water persuasion with Oceane featuring on the balcony between the trampolines.
There was another small interlude with the clowns (did I say small?) which went very well with the shirt stealing etc. Like I said, the "audience guy" is a great actor.
This faded into the final act of the first half of the show which was the Aerial Hoop. Now the Aerial Hoop hadn't been done in the first two shows I went to see, nor is it on the DVD. So I was pretty riveted. It was also amazing. If you don't know what the aerial hoop act is, it's a hoop suspended on two ropes which are then connected to a single line that goes up to the roof. The whole thing can move in any direction and they control the height of it from uptop. Very cool. Also, she did the whole bloody thing without a safety line. Never seen anything like it! Unfortunately it took the place of the Double Trapeize which has a fantastic song that I really like. So, unfortunate but worth it to see a 'new' act. The music was grungy/upbeat which I liked and it suited the female performer right to the hilt, the little flirt! It was a fire act, and the synergy between Yao and that little lady was very cute. He's her Lord and Master etc and she's just teasing him with her mynxish and flirtatious ways. Yao actually gets angry with her at one point and she just wiggles her hips at him! Either way, brilliant act and the interaction between the two characters was fantastic.
Down came the big tube (hmm, a giant curtain which goes around the centre stage) and out we went out to meet up with Tanya. Had a look at some very over priced merchandise and mum bought a hotdog without sauce before we wandered around and eventually went back in.
5 minutes later and the music started again and we launched straight into the Ballet on Lights. (Water) Not much to say here, they did everything perfectly but it's just not something that interests me. It's a combination of ballet and acrobatics all on a series of light globes. The female L'ame Force did the vocals here which again isn't usual but sure. And of course, queue costume change from the beautiful white angelic costumes to gold stuff that I just.. don't.. get.
The male L'Ame Force came out near the end for his solo which I thought he did very well. He can do the more lower pitched songs fantastically, but he just has some small issues with the higher ones which is fine, he's a guy damnit. And even then, when he's doing the high ones, he's still damn good. He just doesn't have the Erik Karol (french vocalist, original cast L'ame Force) counter tenor thing going for him.
I think that must be his favourite part of the show. Could see him grin as he was approaching the Dralion Tilt (the circle thing that comes down from the roof that people can stand on). So yes, he attached himself and sung his way up. It was very good. Helped by the fact that I like that song though of course.
Had the Dralion act up next with the little kids walking on large coloured balls. Very well done, nothing more to say really! Although Perth really isn't very demonstrative. I think one of the kids got pissy about that when he did a rather good ..something, I forget off the top of my head.. and didn't get much of a responce. But what can you do. This one was Yao's act. He was actually quite funny interacting with the Dralions with his "whip".
After that, the clowns came out again and one of them "died" which lead into the Spirts scene. This is basically four ladies in white, very whispy dresses on wires who are sedately tossed around and danced with by gents in black. There is fog and as they're in white with some blue lighting, it's all quite eerie. In a not eerie way. It's very pretty though. So that went along very nicely and the male L'ame Force did his solo. Well, solo in the sense that the female only comes in for the harmonies. It was very very good. Probably his second best song of the night. But then, his voice is almost perfectly suited to it and it is a very pretty song. Interestingly enough, this didn't feature any of the elements as it was representative of death to a certain degree.
That lead straight into Aerial Pas Deux (Azala). This has been and still is my favourite scene. The act is absolutely gorgeous and the song, Ballare is even better. This was easilly Chad's best song and I was very very impressed. Often you'll see some very minute pauses and breaks in an act but this was perfectly streamlined and the actors, Azala and her Beau were breathtaking in their whole performance from the sheer personality and emotion to the execution of the ... whatever it's called when their playing and hanging off an extremely long and high ribbon.
I really couldn't find any flaws with any part of this performance, it was wonderful. It was better by far than the performance on the DVD, and that one was great.
Okay, so we trailed off from the Aerial Pas Deux to the hoops done by Gayas kids. This is 2/3/4 metal hoops in various positions above each other and the kids all jump, tumble and leap through them. Very well done, it's the first one I've watched where they didn't make any mistakes. There was a slight one where one of the harder leaps just touched the hoop but it didn't fall and those things aren't actually attached very well to each other. So the fact that it didn't fall means that it was a 99% performance for me.
The female L'ame Force was fantastic to watch in this song as about two thirds through, she comes spinning down from the roof to sing a verse and a chorus of the Aboriginal Jam. She then floats back up and I was watching her watch the kids. I don't know what happened up there but they all started cracking up (you couldn't hear them, I could just see them because of where I was sitting) and then Agnus had some more parts to sing but she stayed up there. She was getting right into it though! I wasn't sure if it was just to get the movement to help her voice jump around to match the jumpy-around-ness of the kids or what. Either way, it was great! At the end, I was still watching her and she was watching the act below her and in the finalle she was bouncing and cheering like the rest of us, it was awesome! She is so happy in her work and it's wonderful to see (even if I probably wasn't meant to see it :p)
Alright so the clowns come back here and do a parody of the whole show which is actually very good and very funny. I quite liked it.
They were chased off by Gaya's kids and out come the massive steel drums for the finale. It starts with the female L'ame Force coming down again singing a part of the intro song, coming to the floor and releasing her safety line as she hits the bottom, synchronised perfectly with the end of her (REALLY) long note and the beginning of the drum solo.
Oh I love those drums.
About a minute later during the drums, the rest of the band starts up with the bagpipes and the electric guitars (a rather good combination actually) and out run the kids with the skipping ropes and the start of the finale song, Kamande.
This isn't my absolutely favourite song, but it's definetly one of my favourites! It's like pure auditory caffeine! I get amazingly hyper just listening to this song it is so good and upbeat and exciting! Anyway. So we have the drums in the back, the female L'Ame Force just in front of them and the male L'Ame force up top on the balcony with the kids in front doing their skipping routine. Only one mistake and that was right at the beginning when they're doing the kneeling pyramid whilst skipping rope. But they did it again and managed so it was great.
So on went the finale and then the most hilarious thing happened which I think I might have been only one of a few people in the audience to get.
Earlier, I mentioned that the Little Budda opens and closes the show. What's meant to happen right at the end of the finale is that the song wraps up in one loud cresendo with big drums etc. About 5 seconds before that cresendo finishes, the lights go dark and focus spot lights on the male L'ame Force up on the balcony. So he's got his arms up and being all majestic and everything and the cresendo hits, all the lights go out for a split second or so and come back on and his arms are down and he's half turned away and then he realises the audience is still in front of him and for a split second you can just see "wtf" written on his face before he tried to pretend that is exactly what's meant to happen!
What was meant to happen however is that when the lights all go out at that cresendo, is that the balcony spins extremely fast (or something) to show the Little Budda who then turns out her little light to signal the end of the show. But of course either someone pranked him or it broke. So yes, I started laughing and I got weird looks XD But honestly, his face was priceless! He started grinning quite oddly too so hey.
After the first cresendo is a bit of a second one where some of the performers all come back out for their first curtain call and they do the cresendo again at which point they spotlighted Chad again and did the lights out thing but when they came on he was still there. He shrugged and started laughing. I was killing myself at this time. I suppose you just had to have either been there and known what was going on, or possibly just be me :P
Mum thought I was a little crazy as did the people next to me but what can you do.
Everyone came out then, we had all the performers on stage who then turned and knelt as the two L'ame Force and the Little Budda came out, and they were followed by the musical team and then for the first time, out came the backstage crew as well. They didn't do that for the all the other shows, so that was pretty nifty.
I think that might have just been one of my favourite parts of the show. Even at the end of the other two shows, all the performers maintained their decorum and their general character face. So the while Agnus would smile and nod a bit and have a bit of a wave, Chad would be rather stern and while he'd wave, it'd be very... Queen Wave Like. This however wasn't anything like that, they all got really into it and every one was smiling and laughing and waving happilly and that, I thought, was awesome.
So the show was loud and proud and damned good.
I'm very sad that I'll not get to see it live again as the DVD just doesn't capture the atmosphere of a live performance. I also think that while Erik Karol was possibly the best technical vocalist for the part of the male L'ame Force, I felt that Chad's performance was more... real and warm, I suppose? Erik gets extremely into his movement and his actions can at times actually detracts attention from the acts themselves... he's kind of in your face and very disdainful at the same time but he is, I suppose, the better technical singer. I just feel that while Chad Oliver can't quite sing the songs in the way they were originally written, he does them... better. He also seems to click better with Agnus who is in herself, a rather warm character.
Lots of typing on my lunch break! And yes, typos. Sorry.
So I thought I'd do a post/type review for Dralion as I saw the last Perth performance last night. I guess this is some way of me being able to come back further down the track and be able to remember it without too much of the DVD taking it over in my head. As it is, the music is already gone because I'm just too used to the not-live version. I'm on a rather steep downer at the moment. Apparently this is fairly normal if you've been heavily involved in a theater performance and despite having nothing to do with it in a realistic level, I've been emotionally tied to this bloody show for the last couple of weeks. So it's been a decidedly weird emotional rollercoaster in the last couple of days. Anyway.
So we got to the Grand Chapiteau at around 7:35 parking was already difficult to find but as my mother has an Accrod parking permit, we didn't have too much trouble. We walked on through and around to our door and found Eve and Esme (Craig's mother and grandmother) who happened to have seats in the same general area as us. We were also meeting Tanya out there but due to some even worse parking issues, she came in just after we had gone into the tent itself.
So in we went (after the obligatory water purchase) and found our seats. Mum was in 14D and I was in 14E. According to the website, that was meant to be one directly in front of the other but no such luck. Not really a problem though. So we sat and watched people and waited. Along came the first clown act of course and that was quite a bit of fun. Being in the rather good seats, we had quite a bit of near interaction (no direct fortunately!!). Mum loved the clowns but after seeing them twice already, I was a little bit impatient so I chatted with a couple of girls next to me who were curious about the cast and this and that.
The show started with it's usual bang and the intro scene was probably the best out of the three. Yao (fire) was absolutely in his element (excuse the pun) last night. He did fantastically well. I thought that Gaya (earth) seemed rather distracted - her usual grin and energy just didn't seem to be there. Though if you've just finished a show and then head straight into the next one, I'm not too surprised. Oceane (water) was as good as always, her dancing really is a great thing to watch (despite the fact that I'm not fond of the Indian style) and the interaction between her and Yao was stunning.
And of course Azala (air) did her routine fantastically with her beau.
*****Let me explain very quickly that you have each of the Western elements; fire, earth, water and air. They're also symbolised in dance and music quite specifically as Asia, Indigenous Australia/Africa, India and Europe all respectively. The L'ame Forces (as mentioned below) are the symbolic representation of all the combined elements and therefore higher spirits in their own rights. I wouldn't call them gods but they'd be up there. The Little Budda (almost like the non-speaking and reoccurring host of the show [she opens and closes it]) has the power to be a L'ame Force but yearns to be a child and therefore is how she is portrayed*****
The L'ame Forces came in very well also. I think Chad was having some issues with his voice right at the beginning as he missed a few notes that he normally hits without any trouble but Agnus covered quite nicely. Then again if you've been doing the show for 10 years, you'd think she could deal with any inconsistancies with the male lead. But yes, their first entry was great. Also insert a bit of an obligitory 'hee!' from my end. Chad really is amazing :D~
So the first act was the single hand balancing but I was a little disappointed (water). I think we had the not-main girl - their are two who do the act but one of them does it the more often and performs a bit better as she stays on the single hand for the whole act instead of only half. But either way, I must admit, I wasn't really watching. My focus was more on the male L'ame Force (Chad Oliver). His rendition of Stella Errans was good but not great. The song is just too high for him and he had to drop a few notes. That being said, I was probably one of the few people to notice. I mean how many people go three times and learn all the songs...
Third act was the fire bamboo poles. Very good and no mistakes. Like I said, Yao did fantastically well during this whole show and he really got into character. Angry Asian Guy. His occasional grin was cool though, I appreciate actors who can still have fun.
Clowns were next and they were (still) good. One mistake that I found was when he threw the shoe at the 'demon' and the lining didn't come out so he had to use the shoe itself to scare them away. The "audience" gentleman performed excellently. He's a wonderful actor!
From there we went onto the juggling. I'm sorry but this guy will never match up to Viktor Kee, but I suppose I shouldn't really compare. He was, in his own right, very good. He had some troubles in the beginning where he dropped the ball three times in a row but he recovered well and that's the sign of a good performer. I found he lacked personality on stage but other than that, he did do very well. The story I generally get from this, or at least I do from the DVD, is that a primitive human has evolved and is given an item from the spirit of air and he (at first) has no idea what it is, and he very carefully touches it before realising it's okay and then he starts quite shyly playing with it. He then gets more and more confidant and then gets right into it.
To begin with, I was surprised at the female L'ame Force doing the juggler's finale vocals but then I considered how damn high that part is and decided fair enough.
After the juggling, we had a bit of a dance routine between the four elements to distract from the background where the Gaya-kids were assembling the trampolines. They do the distraction thing well actually. The use of the fog helps too but it does smell rather bad...
The trampolines were, as always, fantastic. I'll be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with the damn things. Every jump, I'm thinking "oh god, is this going to be the one where they hurt themselves?!" But they didn't and I only saw one mistake which actually had me worried where one of the high jumpers (from the top) miss-timed his tumble and landed face first on the matt but he recovered perfectly and made it look like that's what he was meant to do. So that was primarily fire with one lass of the water persuasion with Oceane featuring on the balcony between the trampolines.
There was another small interlude with the clowns (did I say small?) which went very well with the shirt stealing etc. Like I said, the "audience guy" is a great actor.
This faded into the final act of the first half of the show which was the Aerial Hoop. Now the Aerial Hoop hadn't been done in the first two shows I went to see, nor is it on the DVD. So I was pretty riveted. It was also amazing. If you don't know what the aerial hoop act is, it's a hoop suspended on two ropes which are then connected to a single line that goes up to the roof. The whole thing can move in any direction and they control the height of it from uptop. Very cool. Also, she did the whole bloody thing without a safety line. Never seen anything like it! Unfortunately it took the place of the Double Trapeize which has a fantastic song that I really like. So, unfortunate but worth it to see a 'new' act. The music was grungy/upbeat which I liked and it suited the female performer right to the hilt, the little flirt! It was a fire act, and the synergy between Yao and that little lady was very cute. He's her Lord and Master etc and she's just teasing him with her mynxish and flirtatious ways. Yao actually gets angry with her at one point and she just wiggles her hips at him! Either way, brilliant act and the interaction between the two characters was fantastic.
Down came the big tube (hmm, a giant curtain which goes around the centre stage) and out we went out to meet up with Tanya. Had a look at some very over priced merchandise and mum bought a hotdog without sauce before we wandered around and eventually went back in.
5 minutes later and the music started again and we launched straight into the Ballet on Lights. (Water) Not much to say here, they did everything perfectly but it's just not something that interests me. It's a combination of ballet and acrobatics all on a series of light globes. The female L'ame Force did the vocals here which again isn't usual but sure. And of course, queue costume change from the beautiful white angelic costumes to gold stuff that I just.. don't.. get.
The male L'Ame Force came out near the end for his solo which I thought he did very well. He can do the more lower pitched songs fantastically, but he just has some small issues with the higher ones which is fine, he's a guy damnit. And even then, when he's doing the high ones, he's still damn good. He just doesn't have the Erik Karol (french vocalist, original cast L'ame Force) counter tenor thing going for him.
I think that must be his favourite part of the show. Could see him grin as he was approaching the Dralion Tilt (the circle thing that comes down from the roof that people can stand on). So yes, he attached himself and sung his way up. It was very good. Helped by the fact that I like that song though of course.
Had the Dralion act up next with the little kids walking on large coloured balls. Very well done, nothing more to say really! Although Perth really isn't very demonstrative. I think one of the kids got pissy about that when he did a rather good ..something, I forget off the top of my head.. and didn't get much of a responce. But what can you do. This one was Yao's act. He was actually quite funny interacting with the Dralions with his "whip".
After that, the clowns came out again and one of them "died" which lead into the Spirts scene. This is basically four ladies in white, very whispy dresses on wires who are sedately tossed around and danced with by gents in black. There is fog and as they're in white with some blue lighting, it's all quite eerie. In a not eerie way. It's very pretty though. So that went along very nicely and the male L'ame Force did his solo. Well, solo in the sense that the female only comes in for the harmonies. It was very very good. Probably his second best song of the night. But then, his voice is almost perfectly suited to it and it is a very pretty song. Interestingly enough, this didn't feature any of the elements as it was representative of death to a certain degree.
That lead straight into Aerial Pas Deux (Azala). This has been and still is my favourite scene. The act is absolutely gorgeous and the song, Ballare is even better. This was easilly Chad's best song and I was very very impressed. Often you'll see some very minute pauses and breaks in an act but this was perfectly streamlined and the actors, Azala and her Beau were breathtaking in their whole performance from the sheer personality and emotion to the execution of the ... whatever it's called when their playing and hanging off an extremely long and high ribbon.
I really couldn't find any flaws with any part of this performance, it was wonderful. It was better by far than the performance on the DVD, and that one was great.
Okay, so we trailed off from the Aerial Pas Deux to the hoops done by Gayas kids. This is 2/3/4 metal hoops in various positions above each other and the kids all jump, tumble and leap through them. Very well done, it's the first one I've watched where they didn't make any mistakes. There was a slight one where one of the harder leaps just touched the hoop but it didn't fall and those things aren't actually attached very well to each other. So the fact that it didn't fall means that it was a 99% performance for me.
The female L'ame Force was fantastic to watch in this song as about two thirds through, she comes spinning down from the roof to sing a verse and a chorus of the Aboriginal Jam. She then floats back up and I was watching her watch the kids. I don't know what happened up there but they all started cracking up (you couldn't hear them, I could just see them because of where I was sitting) and then Agnus had some more parts to sing but she stayed up there. She was getting right into it though! I wasn't sure if it was just to get the movement to help her voice jump around to match the jumpy-around-ness of the kids or what. Either way, it was great! At the end, I was still watching her and she was watching the act below her and in the finalle she was bouncing and cheering like the rest of us, it was awesome! She is so happy in her work and it's wonderful to see (even if I probably wasn't meant to see it :p)
Alright so the clowns come back here and do a parody of the whole show which is actually very good and very funny. I quite liked it.
They were chased off by Gaya's kids and out come the massive steel drums for the finale. It starts with the female L'ame Force coming down again singing a part of the intro song, coming to the floor and releasing her safety line as she hits the bottom, synchronised perfectly with the end of her (REALLY) long note and the beginning of the drum solo.
Oh I love those drums.
About a minute later during the drums, the rest of the band starts up with the bagpipes and the electric guitars (a rather good combination actually) and out run the kids with the skipping ropes and the start of the finale song, Kamande.
This isn't my absolutely favourite song, but it's definetly one of my favourites! It's like pure auditory caffeine! I get amazingly hyper just listening to this song it is so good and upbeat and exciting! Anyway. So we have the drums in the back, the female L'Ame Force just in front of them and the male L'Ame force up top on the balcony with the kids in front doing their skipping routine. Only one mistake and that was right at the beginning when they're doing the kneeling pyramid whilst skipping rope. But they did it again and managed so it was great.
So on went the finale and then the most hilarious thing happened which I think I might have been only one of a few people in the audience to get.
Earlier, I mentioned that the Little Budda opens and closes the show. What's meant to happen right at the end of the finale is that the song wraps up in one loud cresendo with big drums etc. About 5 seconds before that cresendo finishes, the lights go dark and focus spot lights on the male L'ame Force up on the balcony. So he's got his arms up and being all majestic and everything and the cresendo hits, all the lights go out for a split second or so and come back on and his arms are down and he's half turned away and then he realises the audience is still in front of him and for a split second you can just see "wtf" written on his face before he tried to pretend that is exactly what's meant to happen!
What was meant to happen however is that when the lights all go out at that cresendo, is that the balcony spins extremely fast (or something) to show the Little Budda who then turns out her little light to signal the end of the show. But of course either someone pranked him or it broke. So yes, I started laughing and I got weird looks XD But honestly, his face was priceless! He started grinning quite oddly too so hey.
After the first cresendo is a bit of a second one where some of the performers all come back out for their first curtain call and they do the cresendo again at which point they spotlighted Chad again and did the lights out thing but when they came on he was still there. He shrugged and started laughing. I was killing myself at this time. I suppose you just had to have either been there and known what was going on, or possibly just be me :P
Mum thought I was a little crazy as did the people next to me but what can you do.
Everyone came out then, we had all the performers on stage who then turned and knelt as the two L'ame Force and the Little Budda came out, and they were followed by the musical team and then for the first time, out came the backstage crew as well. They didn't do that for the all the other shows, so that was pretty nifty.
I think that might have just been one of my favourite parts of the show. Even at the end of the other two shows, all the performers maintained their decorum and their general character face. So the while Agnus would smile and nod a bit and have a bit of a wave, Chad would be rather stern and while he'd wave, it'd be very... Queen Wave Like. This however wasn't anything like that, they all got really into it and every one was smiling and laughing and waving happilly and that, I thought, was awesome.
So the show was loud and proud and damned good.
I'm very sad that I'll not get to see it live again as the DVD just doesn't capture the atmosphere of a live performance. I also think that while Erik Karol was possibly the best technical vocalist for the part of the male L'ame Force, I felt that Chad's performance was more... real and warm, I suppose? Erik gets extremely into his movement and his actions can at times actually detracts attention from the acts themselves... he's kind of in your face and very disdainful at the same time but he is, I suppose, the better technical singer. I just feel that while Chad Oliver can't quite sing the songs in the way they were originally written, he does them... better. He also seems to click better with Agnus who is in herself, a rather warm character.
Lots of typing on my lunch break! And yes, typos. Sorry.