I was invited to see the Twyla Tharp, Frank Sinatra Dance Spectacular at the Marquis Theater this Thursday and to call it a complete waste of time isn’t fair because we left at intermission. To start with I had less than no interest in seeing a dance show. I hate dancing. In fact i should move to the tiny town from Footloose so I never have to deal with dancing again. I am certainly a Sinatra fan (I prefer later Sinatra when you could here the tar in his lungs rattle with every note) but I am a bigger fan of LIVE singing and dialogue to further the plot of a “musical”. This stupid show which I truthfully can’t even remember the title of, had none of that. You see the point of a musical is getting the characters to a point where they can no longer talk about what is going on onstage, the emotion is so great that they have to sing and dance about it!. Here the dancers come off looking like a bunch of jackass mimes, mugging, and smiling so big the sides of their mouths might crack and bleed. Also the dancing looked pedestrian. It looked like everything I have seen in any production of any community theater show ever done. Is this the right place to say shame on you Twyla Tharp?
Now to be fair to the show i was asleep within the first 5 minutes only to be wakened by the brief bits of lame applause. So i drifted in and out, but what I saw I hated. I’ll tell you what though. The Jersey crowd (who was heavily in attendance) loved every fucking second. They loved it so much that they all talked through the whole thing. Amazed by the free sippy cups you could get at concessions, letting everyone around them know when one of their personal Sinatra favorites was blaring from the speakers, and stinking to high heaven of Brute and GPC’s. I was happy for them, this was a tailor made Broadway show for the stupid and uncultured. Unlike that Jersey Boys which had that pesky plot to pay attention to this was stripped down to the bare essentials of what Broadway has become. A place for special event shows that can be thrown together on the CHEAP! Everything about Come Sing With Me (or whatever its called) looked cheap. The weird lampshades hanging all over the theater, the Christmas lights all over the set, the set, the costumes, the choreography, cheap, cheap, cheap.
I could not help but think what Sinatra would have thought of the flaming bag of shit on that stage. A Broadway show conceived around his music, starring “colored” people and “orientals”, the shock would have killed him again. He would have loved the band, the only thing worth a damn in the whole theater. Finally the finale of Act One happened. And it was the weirdest part yet. I guess the production crew knew there was no actual excitement on stage so they devised a way for the lamp shapes and the ceiling the spastically move up and down thus simulating a finale. When the lights came up I didn’t run out of the theater as I didn’t want to cause a panic. I allowed myself a moment to wake back up, and recycled my Playbill as I left. I was just glad to go home and sit in my backyard and enjoy a well earned glass of cheap sangria and a cigarette. The only thing that Sinatra would have enjoyed about the whole night.
Now to be fair to the show i was asleep within the first 5 minutes only to be wakened by the brief bits of lame applause. So i drifted in and out, but what I saw I hated. I’ll tell you what though. The Jersey crowd (who was heavily in attendance) loved every fucking second. They loved it so much that they all talked through the whole thing. Amazed by the free sippy cups you could get at concessions, letting everyone around them know when one of their personal Sinatra favorites was blaring from the speakers, and stinking to high heaven of Brute and GPC’s. I was happy for them, this was a tailor made Broadway show for the stupid and uncultured. Unlike that Jersey Boys which had that pesky plot to pay attention to this was stripped down to the bare essentials of what Broadway has become. A place for special event shows that can be thrown together on the CHEAP! Everything about Come Sing With Me (or whatever its called) looked cheap. The weird lampshades hanging all over the theater, the Christmas lights all over the set, the set, the costumes, the choreography, cheap, cheap, cheap.
I could not help but think what Sinatra would have thought of the flaming bag of shit on that stage. A Broadway show conceived around his music, starring “colored” people and “orientals”, the shock would have killed him again. He would have loved the band, the only thing worth a damn in the whole theater. Finally the finale of Act One happened. And it was the weirdest part yet. I guess the production crew knew there was no actual excitement on stage so they devised a way for the lamp shapes and the ceiling the spastically move up and down thus simulating a finale. When the lights came up I didn’t run out of the theater as I didn’t want to cause a panic. I allowed myself a moment to wake back up, and recycled my Playbill as I left. I was just glad to go home and sit in my backyard and enjoy a well earned glass of cheap sangria and a cigarette. The only thing that Sinatra would have enjoyed about the whole night.
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