SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-Boo Radley’s Guelph ON (December 3 1999).
Like the previous show, this one is also a shortened set because of technical problems in the recording. We don’t hear the technical problems–the bad songs were just left out. There’s some static on the first song, but otherwise the sound quality is very good.
Dave tells everyone that Harmelodia is coming out on Tuesday. They play a lot of songs from the album and some that are not, like “Used to It” and “Superdifficult” (which would eventually come out on Shooting Stars.
There’s some wonderfully crazy nonsense in “Four Little Songs.” It’s practically Phish-like with the silliness they throw into it, and it ends with a great dig new wave sequence. “Stolen Car” has been getting some great renditions in the last few shows, and this ne is no exception. There’s an excellent solo and an interesting ending which is basically a cappella.
This is another great show that nearly closes out 1999.
I have found real evidence that Boo Radley’s existed as a club as late as 2002, but amazingly there are no pictures of the place. Someone needs to make a book out of small clubs across Canada.
[READ: March 6, 2014] The Light Princess
I had no idea that Tori Amos was involved in a musical. I saw this book at work and was really intrigued. Evidently it has been in the works for many years and was even supposed have been finished in 2012, but these things take time. The book was a little vague about the history of the musical, but after a little searching I discovered that the story is based on a 19th-century Scottish fairytale (see a summary of the Fairy Tale from Wikipedia). This version has music and lyrics by Tori Amos and a book and lyrics by Samuel Adamson. They have morphed the story quite a bit but it definitely retains some of the original elements.
As it turns out those original elements were the things I liked best about it–maybe i should just watch the children’s version of the story that i saw on YouTube. In this version the princess, whose name is now Althea,’ was the only person in her village not to cry when her mother died when she was 6. This makes her lighter than air and she can only remain on the ground if she is tethered. I liked this idea a lot and I was hoping for an interesting fantastical world to enter.
There are two countries which are at war, Althea’s country of Lagobel (which is rich in gold, but has no water) and Sealand (which has water, but no gold)–there is a dangerous Wilderness (full of dragons) that separates the two countries. They are at war for resources (although we know that Lagobel is better because it is Sealand that starts the fight). Sealand attacks Lagobel effectively destroying its military. The King of Sealand believes that by killing Althea (the last in line to the throne), he will have all the gold to himself. So the king sends his son Prince Digby to kill Althea. (There’s a lot more backstory and deaths of family members which sets up this challenge).
But when Digby sees Althea floating in the air, he falls in love with her. This obviously changes his plans about killing her. Of course the King of Sealand is not too happy about this. So there’s a whole plot about damming up a lake and controlling water and whatnot. The lake becomes a home to all that is good in this world. In addition to these environmental concerns, there are some strong feminist elements to the story. And a nice romance as well.
There were some very cool parts to the story, but I had a really hard time primarily with the lyrics of the songs. I know that musicals are not known for their earth shattering lyrics, but these just seemed very poor. Especially coming from someone like Tori Amos whose lyrics are often quite poetic. She co-wrote the lyrics so she shares both the credit and blame. The lyrics seemed especially clunky after yesterday’s play wherein the story was simpler, but the words were more effective.
A major problem with the lyrics is that they really pulled me out of this fantasy land of floating princesses. The two main ways this happened were with the use of the phrase “H2O” as a symbol for water. While it is obviously accurate, it is a terribly clunky way to make a rhyme. And I really have to wonder what world we are in if they are using our chemical symbols but the girl can float. Another similarly weird thing were the allusions to Shakespeare in the songs. There is enough Shaekspeare-like stuff in the story (it turns into a Romeo and Juliet affair) that you shouldn’t be reminding us of Shakespeare even more in the lyrics. Both of these things (but especially that H2o business) happens in numerous songs. There’s also some dialogue which is very “modern” and “slangy” which is certainly funny, but again, it feels like it doesn’t quite know what to do with itself.
Obviously one cannot judge a song by the lyrics alone (although in some sections things were repeated a lot). But i couldn’t even imagine a melody for the songs.
Then I stumbled upon some reviews of the performance (which are incredibly mixed from raves to outright pans) on Playbill. There is also a trailer for the musical here.
The reviews (and the trailer, although it may be too close up to really convey) display that Althea’s magical floating looks amazing. And Rosalie Craig has been singled out for raves in her performance as Althea. She is evidently swung around on wires and hoisted in the air by acrobats–and she sings most of the time that she’s floating around. Pretty cool.
But the music in this clip is really not very compelling.
It’s really not at all fair to criticize a production based on a text version of it, and I totally accept that. Indeed, if the show is as visually stunning as it seems, I likely wouldn’t care about the lyrics at all. So this isn’t a condemnation of the production by any means, it’s just my way of saying that I’m more prepared to be blown away by what I see that what I hear should this ever come to town.
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