Fastest. Fiddler. Ever.
Well, I'm taking a quick lunch-and-internet break from Half-Blood Prince. I haven't read TOO much of it yet, I was REALLY tired this morning after getting home from picking up the book at 12:30 and reading till about 1:30, so I didn't wake up till after 10 this morning. I'm currently on chapter 6, which I know is a LONG way from where Carla's at right now, but, eh, I think I'll comfortably be halfway through the book by the time I grab dinner and toy shop later.
Speaking of Carla, good time last night. She showed up to Chipotle dressed as Tonks, complete with Weird Sisters t-shirt. I was hoping for pink, spikey hair, but she had shoulder-length purple, which is fine, too. She even talked me into dressing up after the play, I dressed as a wizard dressed as a Muggle. Highly ugly, I'll get a picture up for those who want to see later.
After getting her keys out of her car, we went to one of the two productions of Fiddler, the production in Mounds View.
Well, what can I say, it was fast. It felt like they were assigned to get out of the theatre at a certain time, and had been pushed HARD to do as much. Most of the songs, even the slow songs like Sabbath Prayer and Anatevka, were done more up-tempo than I know/like, and they plowed through a LOT of humor lines without waiting for the laugh to die down.
There were some pros and cons to the show, but, for the most part, our production was better. They had enough males to do a superior To Life, but the assignments that were given to the Russian Dancers were, overall, odd. The Russian Tenor never made another appearance as a soldier, leaving only two soldiers at the end of the show with the constable. And, after introducing Fyedka in the scene previous, he appeared as a bottle dancer. Very off-kilter, in my mind.
Oh, and the bottles were obviously attachedto the hat, as the bottle dancers were looking down a lot.
But, hey, they were men, so that was a good.
Also, they needlessly slapped a beard on Perchik for the bar scene, and he was NOT needed.
But, yeah, better bar scene. Slightly better Fyedka/Chava relationship. Unfortunately, none of their men had any aura about them. Their Motel was shorter than their Tzeitel, and their Perchik, played by Mike Bolton from Office Space, and was played with a lack of authority to the point where he'd have trouble organizing a bake sale, let alone a workers' rally. Fyedka was TALL, and I thought he'd work well, but even as a Russian soldier he was very twitchy and nervous, more of an outsider in the army than a presence that would cause Sasha to back down during their fun with Chava.
Basically they could have taken their Mendel (who I loved), made him Perchik. Made their Perchik their Motel, made their Motel their Mendel, and de-twitched their Fyedka, and it would have been great.
The daughters voices were all very good, but there was no variety to them. They were all natural soprano-sounding voices, which made for an oddly-unison sounding Matchmaker. Other productions that I've seen there's at least enough discrepancy between one voice and another where you can recognize who's singing when, and could pick each voice out during the end of the song.
Their Hodel was played much more giddily than I like, saying insults like "I hear the rabbi who praises himself has a congregation of one" more whistfully and flirtatiously than stinging and sarcastic.
Their Tevye was a tenor, and had this weird tendency to lift the last word of every sentence. His insistence on keeping an accent caused a LOT of problems with emotion.
But the dream worked well briefly. Their Fruma costume was very cool, black with a huge fright wig. When I direct this show one day, I'll take this productions' costume and lighting scheme, my high school's Fruma-on-wheels concept, and Cross' demon dancers.
So, yeah, I know I'm kinda biased, but our production was better. Now I'll go see the Minnetonka production in two weeks and complain about THAT one!
Anyway, I'm currently on chapter 6 of Potter, and I already know two things:
- One of my predictions is true so far.
- I'm gonna have to re-write my whole fucking story.
But otherwise its very good right now....
Speaking of Carla, good time last night. She showed up to Chipotle dressed as Tonks, complete with Weird Sisters t-shirt. I was hoping for pink, spikey hair, but she had shoulder-length purple, which is fine, too. She even talked me into dressing up after the play, I dressed as a wizard dressed as a Muggle. Highly ugly, I'll get a picture up for those who want to see later.
After getting her keys out of her car, we went to one of the two productions of Fiddler, the production in Mounds View.
Well, what can I say, it was fast. It felt like they were assigned to get out of the theatre at a certain time, and had been pushed HARD to do as much. Most of the songs, even the slow songs like Sabbath Prayer and Anatevka, were done more up-tempo than I know/like, and they plowed through a LOT of humor lines without waiting for the laugh to die down.
There were some pros and cons to the show, but, for the most part, our production was better. They had enough males to do a superior To Life, but the assignments that were given to the Russian Dancers were, overall, odd. The Russian Tenor never made another appearance as a soldier, leaving only two soldiers at the end of the show with the constable. And, after introducing Fyedka in the scene previous, he appeared as a bottle dancer. Very off-kilter, in my mind.
Oh, and the bottles were obviously attachedto the hat, as the bottle dancers were looking down a lot.
But, hey, they were men, so that was a good.
Also, they needlessly slapped a beard on Perchik for the bar scene, and he was NOT needed.
But, yeah, better bar scene. Slightly better Fyedka/Chava relationship. Unfortunately, none of their men had any aura about them. Their Motel was shorter than their Tzeitel, and their Perchik, played by Mike Bolton from Office Space, and was played with a lack of authority to the point where he'd have trouble organizing a bake sale, let alone a workers' rally. Fyedka was TALL, and I thought he'd work well, but even as a Russian soldier he was very twitchy and nervous, more of an outsider in the army than a presence that would cause Sasha to back down during their fun with Chava.
Basically they could have taken their Mendel (who I loved), made him Perchik. Made their Perchik their Motel, made their Motel their Mendel, and de-twitched their Fyedka, and it would have been great.
The daughters voices were all very good, but there was no variety to them. They were all natural soprano-sounding voices, which made for an oddly-unison sounding Matchmaker. Other productions that I've seen there's at least enough discrepancy between one voice and another where you can recognize who's singing when, and could pick each voice out during the end of the song.
Their Hodel was played much more giddily than I like, saying insults like "I hear the rabbi who praises himself has a congregation of one" more whistfully and flirtatiously than stinging and sarcastic.
Their Tevye was a tenor, and had this weird tendency to lift the last word of every sentence. His insistence on keeping an accent caused a LOT of problems with emotion.
But the dream worked well briefly. Their Fruma costume was very cool, black with a huge fright wig. When I direct this show one day, I'll take this productions' costume and lighting scheme, my high school's Fruma-on-wheels concept, and Cross' demon dancers.
So, yeah, I know I'm kinda biased, but our production was better. Now I'll go see the Minnetonka production in two weeks and complain about THAT one!
Anyway, I'm currently on chapter 6 of Potter, and I already know two things:
- One of my predictions is true so far.
- I'm gonna have to re-write my whole fucking story.
But otherwise its very good right now....
posted by Bill at 12:01 PM
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