Wishing Upon A Star

July 13 -- "Fame", The Musical?

I went to see "Fame, the Musical". What a mistake!

I was a huge fan of both the movie and the television show back in the 80’s and bought a ticket to the stage production, which is currently touring the country, under the assumption that it would be based on one of these predecessors.

Afterall, there’s a whole generation out there that hasn’t had the chance to see the original.

I couldn’t have been more wrong! This was one of the poorest excuses for a stage production that I have ever seen! The only resemblance to the originals was the fact that it was set in the School for the Performing Arts.

Using "Fame" as part of the title was essentially a deceitful maneuver to pull in an audience, and totally false advertising.

Now I’ve been accused of being too critical of touring productions, as I’ve often seen the original on Broadway and often find that tours lack the same energy of the New York shows. My loathing of this show has NOTHING to do with this as, thankfully the show has not appeared on Broadway. Nor should it.

Upon first perusal of my Playbill (or the regional equivalent…Stagebill?) I discovered that there would be no characters that I recognized. O.K., so lets check out the songs. Looking for "Out There On MY Own", or "I Sing the Body Electric".. anthems of the original. Not there. The finale is listed as "Fame". We have to wait for the finale to hear it? It’s one of the early songs in the movie that sets the spirit.

Already, I’m not happy. And no action has taken place on the stage yet.

So the show starts. It’s loud, and pretty much unintelligible. I can’t decide if it’s the sound system or just garbled, poorly enunciated singing. If this music is meant to tell you what the general plot of the story is going to be, this isn’t going to help.

Then there’s the choreography. This is not dancing. This is gymnastics. Now I admire the athleticism of these individuals, but head spins and half-gaynors (or whatever they’re called) get old quickly. Give me tap dancing any day, it can even bring me to tears. To me choreography should include some grace and gliding.

I’m even unhappier now. I can barely bring myself to applaud. I only do because I know that no matter how horrible the production, the actors and dancers have worked damned hard. It’s not their fault the material they’re working with totally stinks.

The characters were too numerous, and consequently each was underdeveloped. I just didn’t give a hoot about one of them.

The biggest mystery was the passage of time. There was nothing that let you know a year had passed. If you dozed for even a second and didn’t catch some fleeting piece of dialogue, you’d have no idea they were advancing from freshman to sophomore year. All of a sudden you’d think…"OH they’re OLDER now". It was really irritating.

All of a sudden one of the characters goes through a very contrived situation, and changes in such a way that is totally not believable. I wanted to scream. And you know what? I didn’t even care that any of this happened to her.

Suddenly, it’s OVER! I’m not sure how it happened, and I don’t think it was even resolved sufficiently. But we’re in curtain calls.

Now there have been no splashy production numbers, no great set or costume changes, nothing recognizable to this point.

, All of a sudden there’s a taxi on the stage, they’re singing the song "Fame", lights are flashing, and the cast is dancing all over the car. Essentially re-creating the scene from the movie.

I was disgusted.

There is NOTHING worse than a show that has slogged along for two hours, and suddenly tires to become something spectacular during the curtain call! I wanted to scream. At this point I did stop applauding. This was contrived and insulting to the audience.

So if anyone asks you to go to this show….run screaming in the other direction! Save your money! If you enjoy musical theatre AVOID THIS SHOW!

Get the feeling I didn’t like it?

Geeze I need to go to New York and get a REAL theatre fix!
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