When I know that I am annoying my non-theatre friends because I go on long tirades about shows, performers, composers, and performances, I know I have too much information in my head. This is a passion project of mine to get what I know out in the world, and something I can reference later in life.
When NBC originally announced in 2013 that they would be airing a LIVE broadcast of The Sound of Music, the world side-eyed the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical so hard.
Once the casting got announced (Carrie Underwood, and Vampire Bill in the lead) the world rolled its eyes, and once the broadcast aired, live, as promised, the world laughed. It was a laughable occasion, although it was tremendously important.
Bringing live theatre into the home of millions of people who don't have the means, and maybe not even the desire to explore live entertainment was such a thrill to think about. Hopefully it's creating new theatre lovers, though you would never know it from the hate-filled live-tweeting, and the moment by moment recaps that while hysterical, were pretty defamatory. While i can admit the show had its flaws: Carrie Underwood can't act, Vampire Bill is not very good at…. anything, and it was the first glimpse into the unnerving sound quality that is produced when there isn't a live audience for something that was meant to be live, there was a lot of stuff that was truly wonderful about that evening.
People who never would have had the slightest idea who Audra McDonald, Christian Borle, or Laura Benati was, got a glimpse into their true Broadway Worth talents. They got to see an unmixed sound of raw, talented voices, and how to recover in a performance when something goes wrong. It wasn't perfect, but it was magical.
I think the second time out, in 2014, they were learning, but this one seemed a lot more off. The casting was poor, Allison Williams, while very talented, was a terrible choice for Peter, Christopher Walken was more interested in himself than the production, and some of the production magic was removed when you saw that rigs sometimes go wrong, and camera ops sometimes get the wrong information. Also, whoever picked this show may have forgotten that it's not Disney's Peter Pan, and it is so very boring. Christian Borle (and his biceps) gave the production some substance, as well as the gaggle of professional Broadway dancers including Ryan Steele and Alex Wong.
I was definitely more disappointed with this production. It was trying to hard to throw around its weight in being a big NBC production, and it really missed the mark.
Though, nothing prepared me for what 2015 brought. When they announced they were going to have the Wiz be live, I had mixed emotions. I like the music from that show, but a lot of the dialogue is dated, it would be awesome to see an all-black cast of a musical on a primetime network, but are they going to do an all-black cast? Are they going to half-ass it like they did with Sound of Music? Are they going to try TOO hard like they did with Peter Pan?
There wasn't a lot of history to look back on. As the months rolled by, and they announced casting and I got more and more excited: Mary J Blige, David Alan Grier, Amber Riley, Uzo Aduba, Ne-yo, Elijah Kelley, and also Queen Latifah as the Wiz… which I will get into later in the post, but I really was excited about. Also having an unknown Shanice Williams as the lead I feel was brilliant, and the cherry on the cake was having the original Dorothy, Stephanie Mills, playing Aunt Em. One of the important things about having the Wiz Live on a primetime network like NBC was the visibility and a representation of black actors. I was ready for this show. I feel it could be done. A great mix of respected performers and artists. I was not disappointed. This show had such a wonderful energy, and look to it. I think NBC really hit its stride with this. I hope to see more of this caliber of performances in the future, and I hope it fosters a new generation of performers and theatre lovers alike.
http://milasuniverse.bigcartel.com/product/representation-matters-12x12 "Photo taken by Kamila Powell of her 3 year old daughter as she is inspired by the talents of women who she can identify with. Spreading the message that representation matters."
This brings me to what I am truly dreading, The bandwagon effect has started and other networks are wanting to get on this ratings monster of live musicals, and leave it up to fox to riddle their new big production of “Grease Live!” with stunt casting and poor choices. Let me just rant for a minute here, but first off grease is a poor choice full or so much sexism it hurts my brain. Ladies, listen to men, and make sure you change every aspect of yourself to be liked. Being sexy is far more important than being yourself. Also, and this is the theatre geek in me getting pissed, they are doing a live production of the MOVIE version of this musical. Which irritates me immensely. I truly, honest to god will fight you on this, the music in the stage version is far superior to that of the movie. Let's talk about the casting of this atrocity as well. The only shining jewel in this crap hat is Aaron Tveit, whom I have mentioned many times before. He is a God among men, he made Les Miz the movie bearable, he brought us all to tears in next to normal, he made us all want to disguise ourselves in catch me if you can the musical, he is just perfect. I am assuming he will still be wonderful as Danny Zuko.
But Julianne Hough has never impressed me, even as a dancer, Vanessa Hudgens is still so full of promise but I also feel like she is horribly miscast as Rizzo, and I wonder if this choice was made to really set herself apart from her as Gigi when she lead the revival on Broadway (that really didn't do very well), Kether Donohue, whom I'm really loving on You’re the Worst, is continuously cast as “the fat one” in things, and she's not even fat! The thing that is cracking me up about the casting of Marty and Frenchie is that both Keke Palmer and Carly Rae Jepsen made their Broadway debut in the same role (The Cinderella Revival). Mario Lopez and Ana Gasteyer will be just fine in their respective roles, but once again, they are only lending their names to this production, and then having Jessie J perform an “updated” version of Grease is the Word… well… we’ll see. I am definitely going to watch this, but i doubt that it will be very good at all. I think that they are intentionally make a lot of choices that NBC was choosing to stay away from, and it seems like this will continue to dumb down the general audiences to what to expect from live shows.
