Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 31

I saw 3D Theatricals’ production of Beauty and the Beast this weekend and really enjoyed it. It was much better than the stripped-down touring version we saw in 2010. Bigger cast, bigger orchestra, more elaborate costumes and sets, and they didn’t cut any of the songs (including the one I kind of wish they had).

Great performances from the leads. Belle was a little more brassy than I’m used to, but it worked. The scenes with her and Maurice at the beginning had a nice geeky-family-hanging-out feel to them. Gaston’s performance actually reminded me a lot of Captain Hammer.

It was interesting to see how they worked around the lack of an understudy for Lumiere. They said he (and the actor playing Chip) had been delayed by a car accident, which may have been one he was involved in, or may have been the multi-car fatal collision and fire that shut down the 5 freeway for the whole day. They pulled an actor from the ensemble who had never rehearsed the part, and while he knew a lot of it, they still had to work around things like the dance steps in “Be Our Guest.” (Belle stepped in and offered to lead.) The regular actor made it there before act two and stepped back into the role.

Incidentally: Chip is a thankless part. You have to sit inside a cart wearing a giant teacup on your head the entire time you’re on stage. Though I’m impressed at what it takes to play Mrs. Potts: You need to hold one arm up the entire time (or else wear a very unbalanced costume on your shoulder, which I can imagine messing up your back), and push that cart around one-handed, with choreography. I hope directors/costumers are willing to adapt the costume for the actress’ dominant hand.

Anyway, it was a good production, and an interesting live-theater snafu. Sadly, I was the only one flu-less enough to go, and it was the last weekend of a short run. One of these days!

Seeing Ragtime on stage is a vastly different experience from listening to it, and not just because it’s live theater. There’s so much context, so many connections, so much subtext that you don’t get from the songs alone. It’s very much a go-home-and-hug-your-kids kind of show.

I’ve been a fan of the music ever since we did a few songs from it in a revue back in college, but I’d never actually seen it until this month, when I caught 3D Theatricals’ production in Redondo Beach.

It’s a big show — forty-six people on stage, according to the director — and they turned in a great performance. The vocal standout, I thought, was the actress playing Mother. The actor playing Coalhouse had a very different voice than the one on the album, but he had physical presence and was able to really convey both his optimism in act one and his rage in act two. The character needs both to work.

Speaking of differences between the production and the cast album, I should note: when you just have the highlights, Father comes off as just kind of clueless. When you have the full songs and the book, he’s a bit of an obstinate jerk.

I found myself struck by the layers of historical interpretation: It’s a modern production of a 15-year-old adaptation of a 40-year-old novel about life in America 100 years ago. And we’re still dealing with the same problems: Institutionalized racism and sexism, exploitation of the working poor, conflict over how to handle immigration. It really hit at the moment when authorities kill a young African-American because they think (wrongly) that she has a gun. You can argue that any historical fiction is as much about the present day as it is about the period it’s set in, and maybe it’s a matter of each era distilling the common themes from the older work, but it was telling (and disheartening) how topical the story still is.

I love this place. They have a great selection of science fiction/fantasy books (I assume the mystery selection is good as well, but since I don’t read mysteries I can’t really judge it), knowledgeable staff that can find or recommend things for you, plus author readings, movie nights, and other events. They get involved with offsite events like book festivals and science fiction/comic conventions as well. They usually get authors to sign a few extra books to sell later. I’ve bought several signed first editions here.

While the Redondo Beach location was open (it closed in 2014), it was my first stop for books in the genres they carry, and a must-visit stop when gift shopping for readers. The San Diego location is still around.

In the 1980s, Little Golden Books released a set of “Little Golden Book Land” books bringing back popular characters like the shy little kitten, the poky little Puppy, Scuffy the tugboat, etc. and putting them all together, apparently as tie-ins to an animated TV special.

As thin as its story was, at least “The Shy Little Kitten” had a positive message for shy children: It’s OK if you’re not as rambunctious and social as everyone else, because you can go off and do interesting things on your own, then come back to the company of others when you’re ready to handle it.

There’s a little bit more story in this book, but the message?

1. If you’re shy, there’s something wrong with you.
2. You’ll never have any fun.
3. It’s your own fault.
4. You should change yourself to be just like everyone else.

It’s toxic, whether it’s reinforcing shy kids’ own doubts about their self-worth or reinforcing other kids’ tendency to look down on them (now with extra “It’s your own fault” ammunition).

(And while the target three-year-old audience probably won’t mind, the book also suffers from the same problems as the rest of the “Little Golden Book Land” series: Background characters show up for no other reason than to have them show up, and descriptions are turned into names. We never learn the kitten’s name, but I don’t think it’s “Shy Little Kitten.”)

I hate destroying books, but I’m seriously tempted to toss this one in the recycle bin. Putting it in the donation box would be doing a disservice to whoever picks it up.

The first episode of Flash Forward is one of the best-constructed pilot episodes I’ve seen in a long time, especially of an arc-driven series. (I’ve been trying to think of the last show I saw where I didn’t feel like it took the cast or story a few episodes to get up to speed, and all I can come up with is Firefly.) In one hour, it managed to introduce a slew of characters, show the major world-changing event that sets the arc in motion, pose serious questions (both story-wise and philosophically), force characters to change, set up conflicting agendas and points of view, establish a mystery or two, and find a thematic conclusion to the episode that doesn’t feel like it’s just the first hour of a two- or three-hour show.

Most shows would take two hours to do all that, or pick and choose to cram it into one. (They even found time for a car chase.)

One of the things that really impressed me was that, just using one episode’s worth of characters, they showed the beginnings of so many totally different ways of looking at humanity’s glimpse of the future, whether through hope, fear, or simply confusion. From what they said at Comic-Con, one of the ideas is to be able to expand this to theoretically anyone in the world.

The extended preview of upcoming episodes (a flash forward to Flash Forward!) seemed to be making a great effort to say that yes, they’ll be answering questions, and no, you won’t have to wait 3 years to find out what the heck is going on (unlike that other show with Sonya Walger, Dominic Monaghan, and Oceanic Airlines).

There were a couple of moments that I thought were forced, though the only one that really stands out was the immediate juxtaposition of the “we’re being punished” and “this is a gift” reactions.

Adaptation

They did a good job of taking the source material, Robert J. Sawyer’s novel Flashforward (I’m getting really confused as to whether the TV series has a space in the title or not, but the book definitely doesn’t), and making something that’s recognizably the same idea, but telling a new story with it. It has the benefit of all the thought he put into it:

• What are all the consequences of everyone blacking out for two minutes?
• If everyone experiences his or her own future at the same instant, what about people who are asleep at that time?
• How do you determine whether people are seeing different possible futures or the same future?
• How do you determine whether the future can be changed? (It’s a common enough storytelling trope, but how would you scientifically prove it?)

And so on. But they can tell a larger story, with more characters…and still surprise people who read the book. I don’t know whether they plan on using a similar explanation for what caused the event, or whether the TV version will come down on the side of “The future is not set” or “You can’t fight fate” (though I expect it will be the former, for storytelling reasons). And there was a moment a few minutes before the end that just came out of nowhere and left me thinking, “Wait, what???”

The book is definitely worth reading, especially if you like science fiction of the “what would happen if…?” variety, and it looks like it probably won’t spoil much.

Update: Cancelled After One Lackluster Season

I miss it a little, but I miss what it could have been a lot more than I miss what it actually was. The book was fascinating, and the pilot episode was absolutely fantastic, but from there it was a study in missteps and missed opportunity, week after week. At least they built the first season around a one-year main arc, rather than relying on future seasons happening.

I really wish the show hadn’t squandered so much of its potential. The pilot was great, but the series got totally bogged down in the conspiracy plot and “There’s gonna be another blackout!”

(Worth a look: About a year after it was all over, Robert J. Sawyer wrote about what went wrong with the show, from his point of view.)