I saw the Mean Girls tour in Toronto last night and it was an interesting experience. I saw the original production in NYC during previews with 100 students that I had brought on a trip and I remember hearing every word, catching every joke, and feeling exhilirated by the fact that everyone with me was loving the show. The tempos and sound design at the show last night made that kind of understanding of what was going on next to impossible - I felt like they were just blowing through everything. This is not a comment on any individual involved - I was sitting right behind the conductor and almost everything in the show was tracked - I watched him give the tempo with a metronome before each tune, and I'm sure these were all decided by the music team as the tour was launching. It feels very different though, and feels like something was lost.
Another observation. The (obivously skilled and talented) conductor of the show was conducting the score from an iPad. Not super unusual, although I would say not yet the norm. But every time there was a dialogue break of any length, the conductor lowered the brigthness on the screen, grabbed the device off the stand, and was texting. There were constant notifications coming up on his screen as he was playing. I really wonder what management would think of this practice by the MD. I wasn't upset or anything, but it was distracting and he was also distracted. There was a scary moment in act 2 when he had to really scramble to make a cue.
Has anyone ever seen this kind of thing before? |
