Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Thursday 4 December 2014

Distant Melody...

All right.

Whatever else it's virtues, (and they are many,) and it's faults, (they are a few,) Distant Melody re-arranged as a duet between the sweet Wendy and the incomparable Kelli O'Hara as Mr.s Darling was worth the time investment of watching the live Peter Pan.
I love the show, it is special and bittersweet for me for too many reasons, and so far there are things I would change and things I loved about the production, (Christopher Walken is a hoot and a half, how i wish he had recorded this a decade or so ago, but even still!!!!!) but I am most assuredly not hate watching it -- it's a live classic musical on tv in 2014!!!!!

How can I not be happy about that?

(Distant Melody has made me cry since I was four years old, by the way.)

There's... an energy that is the sine qua non in live performances, much different from film or tv presence. In S of M  last year, Carrie Underwood couldn't act a darn but she knew what live performance energy requires, and she provided it.
Not sure, (the far better actress,) Alison Williams, the principal this time around, gets that.

Too bad, because she might have the physical equipment - it's not about vocal competence, it's about understanding that the performance of the songs has to provide the emotional climaxes.

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