When the tagline for your musical is "Bringing Ugly Back," you had better be darn sure that your show looks gorgeous or you're just asking for trouble. I don't think anyone's forgotten the "Dance of the Vampires" tagline that went something like "If you think Broadway musicals suck now - just you wait," and how true that turned out to be. Well, I went to "Shrek" tonight hoping that the piles of money Dreamworks has surely poured on the musical would at least mean it would look good. But really, fate is something that really should not be tempted, because boy is the show ugly. Not ugly in the wrongheaded overly pretnetious plexiglass way of "The Little Mermaid." Shrek: The Musical has almost the opposite problem. Instead of the show looking too artsy for its own good, it looks like the designs have a very commercial, overly literal feel to them, like they were plucked out of a theme park show. With the exception of Lord Farquaad, there seemed to me to be very little imagination or thinking outside of the box with the costume design. As for the set, well... it's just plain ugly. Because I enjoyed much of the material, I couldn't help but wish I could see the show as just a staged reading, a la Encores. Because I think there's a pretty good show in there, it's just a big overwhelmed by the underwhelming visuals.
Free from the influence of Tony Kushner, Jeanine Tesori's first post-"Caroline or Change" Broadway score is pretty catchy. The song I assume everyone will leave humming is "Big Bright Beautiful World," especially considering it's both the opening and closing number - with a few odd refrains also peppered throughout. David Lindsay-Abaire's book and lyrics are pretty amusing. The show felt a bit long overall (the little boy next to me was really squirming in the second act - the fact that the story turns more romantic and ballad heavier probably didn't help). In the second act, the fairy tale characters - who we haven't seen since the top of the first act, ranomdly return and sing this big song about being freaks. It came totally of out nowhere, and would be my chocie for first song to go.
The choreography is uneven - there are a couple of scenes where it is inspired, and others where I was left twiddling my thumbs. But far the highlight of the show - where everything - song, choreography, design, performance - melds into one blissful moment of showstopping hilarity, is "What's Up Duloc?" - the song that introduces us to the world of Duloc, realm of Lord Farquaad (if you remember from the movie, the little automated musical puppet show that Shrek and Donkey encounter when they first enter the kingdom - it's an extension of that). Really though, anytime Christophe Sieber's hilarious Farquaad was onstage, the show definitely picked up a notch - both because he's really very funny, and because the way they costume him to make him look short, is a source of endless and endlessly funny sight gags.
As for the rest of the cast, they're all fine. Brian D'Arcy James (Shrek) and Sutton Foster (Fiona) pretty much channel they're animated film counterparts (he has the Scottish accent, and she's just generic princess). The only actor who strays from his source voice-actor is Daniel Breaker, who bizarrely chooses to make Donkey rather flamboyant. It's different from Eddie Murphy, but I'm not sure if it really worked or not. I will say I preferred his songs to his book scenes, though.
Enough rambling now. Overall, I'd say the show is fine - not spectacular, but entertaining enough for what it is (a big commercial musical, based on a hit film). It's not The Lion King or Billy Elliot, but it's not Tarzan or The Little Mermaid either. It needs trimming and some other work (well, it needs a visual overall, but realistically that's never going to happen), and that's what previews are for. I'm curious to see how the show progresses when I see it again in January, if not sooner.
Let's say this for now for the current state of the show - at the curtain call, only a very small number of people gave the show a standing ovation. I'm as anti-standing as the next guy, but I think we all know that when a big tourist musical like "Shrek" isn't getting people to jump to their feet - especially with the economy the way it is - there's work to be done if this thing is going to survive.
That's all for now.
Oh, and really quickly - I went to see the new production of Faust at the Met on Friday. I didn't think it was possible, but it makes Tristan und Isolde look action-packed by comparison. Visual design was... interesting - makes me look forward to the Lepage Ring, anyway. And I left humming "Maria" from "West Side Story" (for some reason the music in the Marguerite scene just really sounded like the title name from the song).
