- Carrie Underwood did fine. Singing. Acting? Not so much. It was obvious she wasn't comfortable. Poor thing was outta he league except with The Lonely Goatherd, but she is a country singer. I hope she's proud of herself though for stepping outside of her box and doing something new. Before she does something like it again though, she needs Acting 101.
- I feel bad for Stephen Moyer - all you can see is Bill from True Blood and him going "Sookie!"
- Audra McDonald. I heart her. Seemed to young to be the all knowing Mother Abbess, but at least she could sing.
- Laura Benanti. Show-stealer that one! She was a treat from the Elsa in the movie that's for sure. I loved the catty attitude.
- From the very beginning I was confused, considering I read nothing about this beforehand. Why was Audra singing "My Favorite Things" at the beginning? Well thanks to the super helpful Playbill live tweeting, I quickly found out that it was because this was based on the *stage* version. Cue a much more interested household on our end!
- I thoroughly enjoyed the song "No Way To Stop It" with Christian Borle and Laura Benanti - not in the movie and a "pleasant" surprise of a song despite the subject matter.
- There was ZERO love between Underwood and Moyer. I did a "oh now I'm suppose to believe they fell in love. Okay...".
To sum up - I didn't hate it but I was far from loving it. Not to mention I learned a lot about the stage production, which we're seeing later in 2014 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It's never been a favorite musical of mine, but I appreciated it highly, and this production spent a lot of money, but they missed out on some casting opportunities.
But in the end, my favorite Tweet of the night came from Lin-Manuel Miranda (of In The Heights and Bring It On):
This is what it boils down to in the end. People watched a musical, and if they turned it on just for Underwood, then they saw their first musical production perhaps, and I like to think that we hooked a few new lovers to the theater!
