A weekend NYMF-omaniac

[skynyc]

A big weekend of workshop musicals as I attended a whole passel of emerging shows...some of which I hope will bloom more fully and some which should retreat back into their shells.

 

The History of War was a very interesting idea that didn't develop well and became convoluted and heavy-handed.

Manfred's father was killed fighting in a war, presumably the most recent conflict in the middle East. His mother has remarried and for his 6th grade project, he has to write about a world event. He writes The History of War. To do so, he studies the tactics of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Idi Amin and Osama Ben Lauden. (Osama, singing about having to live in caves, has the classic line "I'm a banker in a bunker...and a bit of a spelunker...") Eeek.

 

With each of these personalities getting a song, and interstitials between several of them of two soldiers in different time periods, each preparing to "take that next hill", the show got mired down in preachy sentiment. And the character of young Manfred just becomes angrier and angrier, until he ends up imagining his step-father killed by the historical figures. Or does he kill the man himself in reality. Never really clear.

 

The show ended with "mom" singing about The Body on a Hill. But despite strong performances, for me the show never really began.

 

Fortunately, after a quick dinner break, we settled in for Fellowship...a riotous send-up of The Fellowship of the Ring, with Bilbo Baggins as a send-up of Mel Brooks' 1000 year-old man; Sam Gamgee deeply in love with Frodo, and a blues-singing Balrog, it was a laugh-out-loud ninety minutes.

 

The score was surprisingly sophisticated, (with a couple exceptions), and the cast, mostly from LA, with a myriad of stand-up and sit-com writing experience among them were clearly enjoying themselves as much as the audience.

 

Several very clever spoofs of the epic moments from the film just highlighted how simple and smart satire can be.

 

Show Choir, the Musical has had several incarnations since it first appeared several years before GLEE. I suspect that the popularity of GLEE is what is giving the production team the momentum to keep moving forward, but I was just moving back...to the back of the theater and out into the street at intermission.

 

While the kids in the actual show choir "The Symphonic Sensations" (say that five times fast) were pretty good, the book was really terrible, framed as a True Hollywood Story-type expose of the meteoric rise of the group from it's frist appearance to the director in a dream to their appearance during the half-time of the Super Bowl.

 

With the director being a nelly megalomaniac, the sweet good-natured musical director being a sweet pushover, and the producer being straight from central casting, I didn't stick around to find out "where it all went wrong."

 

Tess, a New Rock Opera has some great potential, but while the woman who played Tess (and is one of the show's co-writers) has a very nice voice, she didn't have the chops to pull of the acting of this central role. The actor's playing the two men in her life, both were in great voice, but Angel, the milquetoast she loves, who rebuffs her upon learning that she had a past, was so bland, it was impossible to discover any chemistry between them. The music is actually pretty good, but I fear the show won't go far unless the author/star can step aside and allow a stronger actress to play the part.

 

And finally tonight was Shine: The Horatio Alger Musical. Again, the book is the problem as the songs were pretty good, and the cast was exceptional. You know going in that it's a rags-to-riches story that will have a happy ending, so the journey is about journey and not the destination. Much of the first act is introducing the many stock characters, and building up shoe-shine boy Dick Hunter's (!) initial success only to have it stripped away by jealous co-workers and a conniving step-father.

 

How Dick manages to overcome these obstacles is the second act, and this is where the book got mired in it's own seriousness. Finally after Dick has been shot but saved by the bullet hitting the Wall Street Prospectuses in his pocket and he declares "Saved by the strength of American Enterprise!" does the book hint at the broad, humorous potential of the tale.

 

Again, the performers were, without exception very talented, and with some tweaks, this would probably do well in a traveling youth theater repertoire.

 

All in all, NYMF has been a lot of fun this year...the caliber being overall much higher than the last two years, or maybe I just picked better shows. At any rate, I still have three to go.

 

Check out NYMF.org if you want to learn more, or see a show; all bargains at $20.