My Blog Has Abandonment Issues

Whoa.  Way to abandon a blog for two years sweetie!  That said, though I never stopped going to the theatre it has lessened due to a pesky thing called grad school sadly.  What happened then you may ask?  Well, new job for one which I've been in for about a year. AND occasionally gives me #jobperks such as tickets. 

I LOVE TICKETS.

So I'm wanting to get this going again, and we will have LOTS to talk about in 2016.  

First and foremost: Broadway in Chicago's 2016 Fall Season.  Oh hello.  I'm a subscriber again (or I will be on March 1st).  Yes, yes, Hamilton is on there BUT check out the rest of this line-up....

Photo from Broadway in Chicago

Hamilton

Aladdin

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Bodyguard

What do all these productions have in common?  To the best of my knowledge, they've never been to Chicago. Not to mention I think they're all relatively newer tours of shows. The whole reason I sadly left my perfectly picked out seats with BIC is the lack of rotation (or just plain dumb shows no one wanted to see).  But this? THIS is amazing and I could not be more excited. 

Hamilton - No-brainer. Can't get NYC tickets? Next best thing!

Aladdin - Disney musicals are either really good or really not-so-good. This one that I've heard so much about though I can't wait to see

Hedwig - Saw it with Neil Patrick Harris in NYC. AMAZING show. I can't wait to hear who the traveling Hedwig is. The best 90 minutes in theater.

Curious Incident of the Dog - Loved the book when it first came out and I was a Borders employee. The cast recording sounds great so I'm excited.

Bodyguard - The only one I'm skeptical about but in the end, it should be fun with good music.

What else is upcoming?  Well so far we're going to the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) Semifinals.  That's right.  Just like Pitch Perfect!

ScreenRant.com

Also, Matilda the Musical which I love that cast recording and am very much looking forward to that production.

Matilda the Musical

I'm sure there will be much, much more to come in 2016.  Anything else in the smaller theater world that you're seeing and keep staring longingly at the tickets on the fridge, wishing the day would get here sooner??

  

My quick thoughts on Sound of Music Live

Yes it has aired and re-aired by now, but I'm still mulling it over.  As are many people that are musical theater lovers that we know.  So because everything that there is to be said is said I'll bullet point my main points: 

• 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!