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"I'm like your fairy godmother. Just slutty."
On a whim, during lunch, I took a look at the 5th Avenue Theater's ticket page to see what tickets were available for the musical stage adaptation of The Wedding Singer currently playing. It's pre-Broadway, which seems to be a big big deal in Seattle these days, but since I basically moved here literally a month after Hairspray's Seattle pre-Broadway run, I've been trying to go to these. I dragged Carl to see Princesses when it was here back in August. Princesses isn't on Broadway right now, because while it was a sort of neat premise, the musical itself was pretty weak.
The Wedding Singer does not suffer this problem. Infact, it was really awesome, and I believe it's already scheduled to open in New York in March. I highly suggest you go see it, even if you hated the movie. Well, maybe not if you REALLY hated it. There are several jokes that I didn't think fit in the stage adaptation quite right that they kept from the movie, but eh, for the most part there's a lot of new material and it's very different, with a different flow to it. Also a plus is no fucking Adam Sandler, although a minus is no Drew Barrymore. On the other hand, Stephen Lynch, who I'd never heard of before, is pretty good in the lead role.
I think I'll lj-cut this just so I'm blame-free on spoilers from here on in.
First off, there are a LOT of little details in this show that are just hilarious. For example, Robbie and George's 80's wedding band is called "Simply Wed". At one point in the show, Robbie visits Glenn's company to try to get a job, and one of the stock traders is like "Glenn, we got a call back from that Seattle company about going nationwide," and he says "Bah, Starbucks? Who will ever pay three bucks for a cup of coffee?" and turns around and says "Hey, buy up as much stock as you can in that New Coke product, okay?" When the guys come down to fetch Robbie from his room, they clap twice both to wake him up and to turn the lights on via... the Clapper. Har har.
They took out all of the extraneous family members and boiled it down to basically Robbie, his Grandmother (who basically is the little old lady character, plus his family connection, he lives in her basement), George, Sammy (who's now in his band rather than just working at the place), Holly and Julia, Glenn (Julia's fiance), Linda (Robbie's ex-fiancee). Then there's lots of ensemble.
Various plot elements are changed, but the idea is still the same. Robbie's a wedding singer, who meets Julia on her first day as a waitress at the place he sings. Robbie's engaged to Linda, who stands him up at the altar. Glenn proposes to Julia, but he's a cheating bastard moneygrubbing asshat. Holly is Julia's cousin, a slut who used to date Sammy and decides to go after Robbie... until after Robbie gets out of his depression by helping Julia plan her wedding, Holly realizes Robbie has a thing for Julia. Also, it's reciprocated. Then lots of misunderstandings happen (wouldn't be any fun if I gave those away) and eventually in the end, Robbie chases down Julia and Glenn and stops them from eloping. In the meantime, there's a lot of song and dance. Literally.
The Grandmother character was both funny and cringe-inducing. On the one hand, they thought the line about "I slept with eight men before I got married... that was like two hundred in today's terms!" was obviously not only funny enough to keep it in the show, but funny enough to WRITE A WHOLE FUCKING SONG ABOUT IT (literally). They basically seem to have her character there only for comic relief, and turned her into a sex maniac sort of character. Later on in the show they basically have Grandma and George rapping up on stage as a plot unfurls. It's very... very... very... disturbing, yet amusing, ending in "Word to your grandmother."
Holly had a MUCH bigger role in this than you'd ever expect -- from the beginning when she starts explaining how "Well, Sammy got me an 'I'm With Stupid' shirt, and I realized... I *was* with stupid!" until the end when she's singing a song about how sad she'd be if it turned out she really was in love with Sammy all along and he wasn't around for her, and they both end up wearing the Stupid shirts. Oddly enough, I remember her singing at LEAST two songs that aren't listed in the program. They did mention that they're taking audience feedback and changing the show as they go along, and that if we want to see it a second time it'll only cost $20, and it'll probably be different. So maybe they cut and re-added a number or two.
Julia had a beautiful voice, but she wasn't much at all like Drew Barrymore was as the character, I thought. I found nothing wrong with her performance, though.
By the way, Stephen Lynch can sing. I thought I read a review somewhere that said he wasn't very strong at singing or dancing, and I think that's a load of crap. He was really awesome as Robbie, both singing, dancing, acting, all of it. Even better, he gave the Adam Sandler songs from the movie new life in his renditions. Yes, he sings the "Somebody Kill Me" song, and also the "I'll Grow Old With You" song from the end. Both were done amazingly well - the latter one, even, due to the way the scene was blocked, he actually walks down the aisle through the audience playing his guitar and singing.
I am under the impression that a lot of people liked Linda's character. I did not, but that's mostly because she had pretty much two scenes -- in one, she's singing the "reading" of the note that says she's not showing up at the altar, so you have this 80's rock princess singing things like "By now you probably know I'm not at that place / I'm really sorry Robbie, dot dot dot smiley face". (literally, those are the words sung) and crap like "Signed, your pal Linda, with the I dotted by a broken heeeeaaaartttt." Oh, gag me. Her only other scene involved her basically begging Robbie to take her back... by doing a dance number in her underwear and flashing the audience a ton. It just felt pretty tasteless for the show, honestly.
The music in this show goes from brilliant to annoyingly 80's-clone-like -- they couldn't actually use any real music, so George doesn't sing "Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me", Robbie doesn't really sing "Love Stinks", etc, and the overall theme involves a riff that's almost identical to Van Halen's "Jump", but isn't. The brilliant parts involve songs like "Come Out Of The Dumpster", which is a very sweet song from Julia to Robbie, who has been thrown into a dumpster after starting a riot at his first wedding gig after getting stood up. At the very end of it, finally he's out, and so she sings something like "and now that I've got you out here, freed you from the mess / Will you sing at my wedding, Robbie?" and the chord modulates to whatever it is, a 7th or whatever which usually resolves to the 1... and it totally SOUNDS like the following line will be "Yes" or "I guess" and instead he just looks at her and sings in a totally off-key note, "NOOOOOOOOO." So she pushes him back in the dumpster. It's a really good use of deviating from the expected resolution of the music progression.
Also, the lyrics are very good. There's a lot of Sondheim-esque wordplay and crazy rhymes in it (like at one point where Linda says something like "When I went to pack up / I made sure I had a backup / 'cause I'd never want to shack up / with a guy who makes me crack up"). Only problem is I think a few lyrics got delivered badly that were supposed to be funnier than they were.
Oh, um, Glenn. My god, he sounds like Link from Hairspray -- and when I looked it up at intermission, sure enough, that's the last role he played on broadway. Go figure. He was good too, I guess. It's not a particularly complex role.
Actually, seriously, the one problem I think this show might have in the long run is that basically... if you've seen the movie recently at all, some of the jokes will just be annoying and repetitive to you. If not... I heard a lot of people laughing at the jokes from the movie, so maybe they stand on their own. I don't know. I get the distinct impression a lot of people at the theater hadn't actually SEEN the movie, but I think everyone really enjoyed the show.
By the way, if nothing else, go to see the sets. They're to DIE for. I mean, REALLY good. One scene takes place in a revolving restaurant, and they've actually made the stage seem like a revolving restaurant. The night-time sidewalk, the banquet room, the house, everything is really, really, REALLY good.
And even cooler, they projected a game of Pong onto the curtains after intermission!
So, yeah. After seeing the musical I caught the 5 bus home. This is not unusual, except -- this morning, I missed the 5 and drove to my "72nd street Park&Ride" and caught the 358 instead. So, the upshot is, my car is still a mile away on the street. Tomorrow I'll catch the 5 from here to downtown for work, and then I guess I'll take the 358 back to 72nd street and hope my car is still there. I'm pretty sure that street is unzoned because I've left my car there for the day with no trouble before, so hopefully overnight won't be a problem and it won't get broken into or anything.
Whee. Also, um, I've been rewatching episodes of the Gokusen dorama. I think I need to see the drama of Hana Yori Dango next, despite never seeing or caring about the manga/anime. It has Matsumoto Jun and Ogori Shun (the guys who play Sawada and Uchiyama in Gokusen) in it! Whee! Though Gokusen 2 would be good too.
The Wedding Singer does not suffer this problem. Infact, it was really awesome, and I believe it's already scheduled to open in New York in March. I highly suggest you go see it, even if you hated the movie. Well, maybe not if you REALLY hated it. There are several jokes that I didn't think fit in the stage adaptation quite right that they kept from the movie, but eh, for the most part there's a lot of new material and it's very different, with a different flow to it. Also a plus is no fucking Adam Sandler, although a minus is no Drew Barrymore. On the other hand, Stephen Lynch, who I'd never heard of before, is pretty good in the lead role.
I think I'll lj-cut this just so I'm blame-free on spoilers from here on in.
First off, there are a LOT of little details in this show that are just hilarious. For example, Robbie and George's 80's wedding band is called "Simply Wed". At one point in the show, Robbie visits Glenn's company to try to get a job, and one of the stock traders is like "Glenn, we got a call back from that Seattle company about going nationwide," and he says "Bah, Starbucks? Who will ever pay three bucks for a cup of coffee?" and turns around and says "Hey, buy up as much stock as you can in that New Coke product, okay?" When the guys come down to fetch Robbie from his room, they clap twice both to wake him up and to turn the lights on via... the Clapper. Har har.
They took out all of the extraneous family members and boiled it down to basically Robbie, his Grandmother (who basically is the little old lady character, plus his family connection, he lives in her basement), George, Sammy (who's now in his band rather than just working at the place), Holly and Julia, Glenn (Julia's fiance), Linda (Robbie's ex-fiancee). Then there's lots of ensemble.
Various plot elements are changed, but the idea is still the same. Robbie's a wedding singer, who meets Julia on her first day as a waitress at the place he sings. Robbie's engaged to Linda, who stands him up at the altar. Glenn proposes to Julia, but he's a cheating bastard moneygrubbing asshat. Holly is Julia's cousin, a slut who used to date Sammy and decides to go after Robbie... until after Robbie gets out of his depression by helping Julia plan her wedding, Holly realizes Robbie has a thing for Julia. Also, it's reciprocated. Then lots of misunderstandings happen (wouldn't be any fun if I gave those away) and eventually in the end, Robbie chases down Julia and Glenn and stops them from eloping. In the meantime, there's a lot of song and dance. Literally.
The Grandmother character was both funny and cringe-inducing. On the one hand, they thought the line about "I slept with eight men before I got married... that was like two hundred in today's terms!" was obviously not only funny enough to keep it in the show, but funny enough to WRITE A WHOLE FUCKING SONG ABOUT IT (literally). They basically seem to have her character there only for comic relief, and turned her into a sex maniac sort of character. Later on in the show they basically have Grandma and George rapping up on stage as a plot unfurls. It's very... very... very... disturbing, yet amusing, ending in "Word to your grandmother."
Holly had a MUCH bigger role in this than you'd ever expect -- from the beginning when she starts explaining how "Well, Sammy got me an 'I'm With Stupid' shirt, and I realized... I *was* with stupid!" until the end when she's singing a song about how sad she'd be if it turned out she really was in love with Sammy all along and he wasn't around for her, and they both end up wearing the Stupid shirts. Oddly enough, I remember her singing at LEAST two songs that aren't listed in the program. They did mention that they're taking audience feedback and changing the show as they go along, and that if we want to see it a second time it'll only cost $20, and it'll probably be different. So maybe they cut and re-added a number or two.
Julia had a beautiful voice, but she wasn't much at all like Drew Barrymore was as the character, I thought. I found nothing wrong with her performance, though.
By the way, Stephen Lynch can sing. I thought I read a review somewhere that said he wasn't very strong at singing or dancing, and I think that's a load of crap. He was really awesome as Robbie, both singing, dancing, acting, all of it. Even better, he gave the Adam Sandler songs from the movie new life in his renditions. Yes, he sings the "Somebody Kill Me" song, and also the "I'll Grow Old With You" song from the end. Both were done amazingly well - the latter one, even, due to the way the scene was blocked, he actually walks down the aisle through the audience playing his guitar and singing.
I am under the impression that a lot of people liked Linda's character. I did not, but that's mostly because she had pretty much two scenes -- in one, she's singing the "reading" of the note that says she's not showing up at the altar, so you have this 80's rock princess singing things like "By now you probably know I'm not at that place / I'm really sorry Robbie, dot dot dot smiley face". (literally, those are the words sung) and crap like "Signed, your pal Linda, with the I dotted by a broken heeeeaaaartttt." Oh, gag me. Her only other scene involved her basically begging Robbie to take her back... by doing a dance number in her underwear and flashing the audience a ton. It just felt pretty tasteless for the show, honestly.
The music in this show goes from brilliant to annoyingly 80's-clone-like -- they couldn't actually use any real music, so George doesn't sing "Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me", Robbie doesn't really sing "Love Stinks", etc, and the overall theme involves a riff that's almost identical to Van Halen's "Jump", but isn't. The brilliant parts involve songs like "Come Out Of The Dumpster", which is a very sweet song from Julia to Robbie, who has been thrown into a dumpster after starting a riot at his first wedding gig after getting stood up. At the very end of it, finally he's out, and so she sings something like "and now that I've got you out here, freed you from the mess / Will you sing at my wedding, Robbie?" and the chord modulates to whatever it is, a 7th or whatever which usually resolves to the 1... and it totally SOUNDS like the following line will be "Yes" or "I guess" and instead he just looks at her and sings in a totally off-key note, "NOOOOOOOOO." So she pushes him back in the dumpster. It's a really good use of deviating from the expected resolution of the music progression.
Also, the lyrics are very good. There's a lot of Sondheim-esque wordplay and crazy rhymes in it (like at one point where Linda says something like "When I went to pack up / I made sure I had a backup / 'cause I'd never want to shack up / with a guy who makes me crack up"). Only problem is I think a few lyrics got delivered badly that were supposed to be funnier than they were.
Oh, um, Glenn. My god, he sounds like Link from Hairspray -- and when I looked it up at intermission, sure enough, that's the last role he played on broadway. Go figure. He was good too, I guess. It's not a particularly complex role.
Actually, seriously, the one problem I think this show might have in the long run is that basically... if you've seen the movie recently at all, some of the jokes will just be annoying and repetitive to you. If not... I heard a lot of people laughing at the jokes from the movie, so maybe they stand on their own. I don't know. I get the distinct impression a lot of people at the theater hadn't actually SEEN the movie, but I think everyone really enjoyed the show.
By the way, if nothing else, go to see the sets. They're to DIE for. I mean, REALLY good. One scene takes place in a revolving restaurant, and they've actually made the stage seem like a revolving restaurant. The night-time sidewalk, the banquet room, the house, everything is really, really, REALLY good.
And even cooler, they projected a game of Pong onto the curtains after intermission!
So, yeah. After seeing the musical I caught the 5 bus home. This is not unusual, except -- this morning, I missed the 5 and drove to my "72nd street Park&Ride" and caught the 358 instead. So, the upshot is, my car is still a mile away on the street. Tomorrow I'll catch the 5 from here to downtown for work, and then I guess I'll take the 358 back to 72nd street and hope my car is still there. I'm pretty sure that street is unzoned because I've left my car there for the day with no trouble before, so hopefully overnight won't be a problem and it won't get broken into or anything.
Whee. Also, um, I've been rewatching episodes of the Gokusen dorama. I think I need to see the drama of Hana Yori Dango next, despite never seeing or caring about the manga/anime. It has Matsumoto Jun and Ogori Shun (the guys who play Sawada and Uchiyama in Gokusen) in it! Whee! Though Gokusen 2 would be good too.