I blink, and it's that time of year again: NBC's live theater broadcast is tonight! This year they're doing a show with which I'm completely unfamiliar: The Wiz.
I have a love/hate relationship with NBC's December theatricals. On the one hand, I love it that live theater is an event on TV, and that the one-time nature of the event means that people need to watch it at the moment. On the other hand, there was some butchering going on the past two years with The Sound of Music and Peter Pan, due almost entirely to celebrity casting. This year's cast looks more promising, and from the previews, the new girl playing Dorothy can sing better than Alison Williams (Peter Pan) and act better than Carrie Underwood (The Sound of Music), so maybe NBC is trying harder to make their yearly play a better overall production.
And if nothing else, Cirque du Soleil is doing the stuntwork, and that's bound to be spectacular.
Once again, we had to buy a TV antenna so we can actually see the thing -- a ridiculous purchase for people who watch broadcast TV literally once a year. Still, it's cheaper than a theater ticket, what?
I know you're all waiting with baited breath, so I'm delighted to report that NBC seems to have found the right formula their third time out. The acting, dancing, singing was all excellent, and I didn't have any nits to pick. However, The Wiz itself wasn't the most musical of musicals. The tunes were unmemorable and unexciting, and the orchestrations didn't serve to make things clearer. (Still, it's nothing to the bizarre unmusicality of 1776, which songs I found almost incomprehensible both live and in the movie.)
ReplyDeleteBut! I applaud NBC for finding trained, talented people this year! And the rising star who played Dorothy, Shanice Williams, was 100% fantastic, a real stand-out even with a stageful of seasoned performers.
Yeah, we enjoyed it even with our glitchy computer tuner. My dancer daughter said it seemed more magical than the Judy Garland movie - there's something amazing about stage magic.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to see it online after the event? (We still have no TV.)
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