| Well, there's no buzz here | |
| Posted by: aleck 06:20 pm EST 02/04/22 | |
| In reply to: Black No More last night - castro 07:33 am EST 02/03/22 | |
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| The fact that not a single person has reacted to your post is pretty damning. Even Flying Over Sunset and Kimberly Akimbo generated more interest. I saw this last week. There is a lot of talent on that stage. But the whole is a mess and the basic premise is cringe-worthy. I think it's out of step to present the option of turning Black people into white people and that Black people would find this so appealing that it literally emptied the population of Harlem. I know it's satire, but this is beyond satire. It's creepy, especially since the one solution to this depopulation was to get rid of the guy who created the process of turning Black into white. Wow, let's make a musical! As far as the music and dancing goes, I thought the songs were pretty good. Most amazing, however, I could understand all the words of the lyrics. Not always easy. At Moulin Rouge, for example, everything is so LOUD that you can't comprehend things. At Harry Potter, the sound is so uneven -- either LOUD or too soft -- and spoken at a fast phony English accent pace that I don't know how anyone can understand it. At Tambo & Bones, the rap section of the production was so LOUD and fast that it was so incompressible that I fell asleep. To its credit, Black No More had a well-balanced sound system and everything was clear. (I love the old story that Cole Porter would sit in the auditorium during rehearsals with a gold whistle in hand. When he couldn't understand the words being performed, he would blow the whistle. Clean up the diction. New York theatre needs someone with a gold whistle because, despite amplification, it's getting worse and worse. And to think that people used to complain about Patti LuPone's lack of consonants.) I also thought that much of the choreography looked fresh and inventive. The sets, however, were pretty cheesy. And, as noted above, what is Lilas White doing in this other than given a few opportunities to show off her caterwauling -- with screeching high notes that elicited applause of approval? Structurally, there seems to be about five different endings that kept the show going on long after it had reached its narrative climax. Make a decision about what this is all about! It's a little unclear. If this makes it to Broadway, I will be flabbergasted. That said, I am the one who saw Cats in London before it came to NY and predicted that it wouldn't even make it to an opening night on Broadway and if it did, it wouldn't run a month. |
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