Comments for educating alice

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by medinger

medinger — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:09:46 +0000

22 year-old niece and my sister — yep, neither thought much of the music. I was unfamiliar with most of it going in and quite liked it. Pippin player was cute (and even moreso at the Tonys where I saw him close up:). As for War is a Science — couldn’t make out most of it either.

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by marjorie

marjorie — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:03:31 +0000

girl with american girl dolls: heh. kind of a sweet visual.

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by marjorie

marjorie — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:02:31 +0000

and your sister really thought the music was so-so? the only thing i thought was good about the show as written was the music! and i thought it was GREAT. still do.

plus, as you said, OMG andrea martin. and that guy who played pippin was way hotter than the greatest american hero dude with his floppy curls. (or john rubinstein from the original production, with HIS floppy curls). and to be even more shallow, mmm, so many gorgeous underdressed bodies.

on the downside, was kind of shocked at how lazy terrence mann’s performance was and how he was the worst offender diction-wise. he’s a big hame! was paulus afraid to tell him to crisp the hell up vocally? is he just past his prime? i mean, i used to know War is a Science by heart, and it shouldn’t be too hard to bring it all back, but i couldn’t understand anything he was saying. granted, *i* couldn’t articulate anything so challengingly gilbert-n-sullivan patter-y fast, but i sing in my shower. for free. he also just seemed checked-out, and it was still in previews when i saw it — too early to be phoning it in.

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by medinger

medinger — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:00:33 +0000

I was amused when I went alone to How to Succeed with Daniel Radcliff and noticed several solo women, but they were …er…a bit younger than me. Fortunately, they kept the screaming to a minimum. (I forgot to mention that the tourists at Matilda were parties of very dressed up little girls carrying American Girl dolls.)

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by marjorie

marjorie — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:55:48 +0000

the WORST audience experience i’ve had was at Newsies. the audience seemed to be made up entirely of people who knew the various chorus boys from So You THink You Can Dance, which apparently was the source of much of the casting. it was all teenage girls and middle-aged ladies acting like they were at home in front of their TVs, as if (and hell yeah i realize i sound like an insufferable snob here) they’d never left their homes before except maybe to go to a One Direction concert and didn’t know they WEREN’T in front of their tvs, SCREEEEAMING the real names of the dancers and squealing explosively and yammering away, not even whispering, during the dialogue because their faves weren’t on stage, and uhhhhgghghghh SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by medinger

medinger — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:39:25 +0000

I first saw Matilda in London and did notice the diction problem when I saw it here. But as for Pippin I had been told that the music was only so-so by my sister and niece who saw it at the ART and besides that l basically knew it had Fosse-ish dancing and had something to do with Charlemagne.

Tourists. at. Broadway. shows. Yeah. That was the case on my second time at the NYC Matilda. As for Pippin there were shouting Italians behind me. Fortunately they shut up once the show started:)

Comment on Pippin Now and Then by marjorie

marjorie — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:18:56 +0000

truthfully, i liked pippin more than matilda! i realize this is heresy. but i had a hard time HEARING a lot of matilda’s fabulous lyrics, and i think my expectations were simply ratcheted too high. whereas i’d always thought of pippin (a show my brother was the leading player in, in hebrew, at camp ramah in new england!) as HUGELY dopey, a dated exploration of Me Decade narcissism and Life As a Personal Journey, man. great music, IDIOTIC book. (that said, i knew the entire show by heart because the dude from Greatest American Hero, upon whom i had a massive crush, was in the broadway revival when i was a kid…so i got the cast album and was smitten w/the show from afar. i kind of knew it was stupid even then, though.) anyhoo, diane paulus’s production made me reevaluate the show. making the commedia dell’arte (sp?) stuff into nutballs circus stuff not only pumped up the show visually but made pippin’s choice (SPOILER ALERT) to settle for something small make sense more, b/c the glory he’d been seeking earlier looked so much bigger and flashier and ultimately emptier. and the actress who played whassername, pippin’s love interest, TOTALLY created a (very funny, very quirky, far savvier than the text might indicate) character out of whole cloth, and made the sexism of the show seem less as a result. i dunno, it’s prolly simply that when i bought tix i was beyond psyched for matilda and kind of whatevs about pippin — life is all about expectation-management. (at matilda my daughter and i did get to sit next to and chat with a lovely kidbook author/professor and his librarian wife, whereas at pippin i sat next to yammering tourists deafeningly crinkling candy wrappers, so that’s a point to matilda.)

oh, and i did think matilda’s production number at the Tonys ICED every other number in the show except NPH’s opening number. i hope it leads to a ticket-sale-spike despite nto doing that well awards-wise.

Comment on Queen for a Day by Liz Szabla

Liz Szabla — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:43:02 +0000

Congratulations, Monica! The book looks beautiful and I’m looking forward to reading and perusing it.

Comment on Queen for a Day by pjhap

pjhap — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:47:53 +0000

I wonder if we could set something up via US Embassy here, or Peace Corps? US Ambassador is due to change soon, so will be different person in autumn. (I am with British High Commission – spouse) If you are able to donate some, I’m sure we could get them to places where they will be well used. You could email me: pjhap@hotmail.com

Comment on Queen for a Day by medinger

medinger — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:15:44 +0000

I would love for it to be available there (I’ve dedicated it to the people of Sierra Leone). Any suggestion how to make it so? I can certainly send books (once they are available) to those who would get them in the hands of children.