On the Stage

Oooooh yeah! I LOVE this show.

I'm so excited. But the only unfortunate thing is, and I wish I could NOT think this way, but I already know it's not going to be as good as when I saw it last year in Des Moines. I know I SHOULD go into this with a clean slate and judge it for what it's worth, which I will, but I also know how much I LOVED the last cast.

The last cast was Christian Anderson as Jerry, who was both Mark and Roger in RENT at one point so I already knew him coming in and he was GREAT. He's in Avenue Q on Broadway right now.

Trey Ellet was Ethan, who was both Mark and Roger in RENT at one point and Jonathan in TTB and I already knew him, and he was GREAT too.

Then there was Leo Daignault who played Malcolm, one of my favorite characters, and I had never heard of him before but he just blew me away...he was amazing in every way.

The understudy was on for Janette too and she rocked, and the rest of the actors were spot on too and so it was SUCH a good show.

I just don't think this cast will live up to that, and it's not because I've never heard of any of these people before coming to see the show, because I had never heard of Leo and he blew me away.

I just have this thing with musicals...the first time I see a musical is 90% of the time the best cast I'll ever see. It just HAPPENS that way, I honestly don't think it's because it's the first time seeing it live, because I see shows then I see them again and again and that first cast just has the best voices the right characters, they are just the best.

Let's see...it's happened at least with: RENT, The Full Monty, Jesus Christ Superstar and Miss Saigon. I've seen so many shows I'm trying to think of more times when this has happened.

I know there are some it hasn't happened to. In particular Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis. The two times I've seen Phantom *live* I've seen the same Phantom, who was good, but I know there is one in particular, Davis Gaines, that I simply ADORE as the Phantom, but I've never seen him live, and never will, he hasn't been the Phantom since about '93.

With Les Mis, the first time I saw it was good, but then I saw it on Broadway and it wasn't as good, THEN I saw it again here in Des Moines and that was the best cast...the best Jean Valjean (Randall Keith -- the guy who was hand-picked to CLOSE Les Mis on Broadway) and then the best Javert in James Clow who then went on to be in the revival of Assassins on Broadway and then on the cast recording. I can't remember who my first Jean Valjean was right now and it's driving me insane. I'm going to have to go home tonight and look at my playbill.

I could go on in great detail about those ones I saw and then saw again and weren't the best, I could go on about why the original one I saw was the best....but I wont bore you with the details.

To make a short story long and if anyone actually made it all the way through this post, wow, and good for you! I'm excited about seeing The Full Monty this weekend!