Queen III and I saw a show last night. It's one of my favorite shows currently running on ol' B-way. Well, it WAS. Thing is, they announced last Friday that the lead was leaving on Sunday to go do the London premiere.
So while the rest of the cast was almost the same, they grabbed some generic 30 year old understudy to do the lead.
It felt like they just grabbed the first person who happened to know the lines and threw him in a costume.
While Queen III and the rest of the audience were pretty much delighted, not having seen the original guy do the part, I grew increasingly frustrated as the evening went on.
The guy is supposed to be middle aged. This person looks to be almost MY age. And he just doesn't "get" how to do this role! How come he gets to be understudy??? And these chorus members! I know they can dance or whatever, but one of them has to play a New York apartment super at one point. And MAN did that lisp just yank you right out of the production!
I couldn't stop thinking...why THEM?
Then I listened to the audience. They were talking about how amazing the guy playing the lead was. Then I realized something.
Sure, with a real, experienced actor you're going to get a more polished performance or whatever, but even so, it doesn't matter who you are. Anybody can dress up in your costume and play your part and the audience won't know the difference. They'll even talk about how amazing you were, even if you really weren't.
*sigh*
I think I'm going to need to get on some kind of medication before too much longer. I'm so up and down these days. I don't know. I just don't know.
In other news, Queen III is excited about tomorrow. She's planning on going to the Bronx Zoo, three art museums, Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty (aka "the Statch"), tour the financial district, and finish up with an evening performance of Naked Druid Lesbians from Brooklyn. I suggested she might want to spread those activities out over two days. That didn't go over well. Can she do it?
2 comments:
A monkey could have played that part to riotous acclaim.
You should pull a Steven Speilberg and just show up two hours before the Broadway show, sneak inside, and just start setting up your stuff in a dressing room. Own the place and convince everyone you belong there, and maybe you'll get on stage! No one would know that it wasn't the regular actor.
Oh, and you'd have to kill or at the very least render unconscious the regular actor. Hey, show business is rough.
There's always someone younger and hungrier climbing up the stairs behind you. Isn't that what they say?
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