Kandie and I went to the Woodlawn Theater to see "The Cure: The Vampire Musical" this evening. After my rip on "Spiderman: Turn off the Fiasco" the other day, one might wonder why I don't feel the same about vampire musicals. Answer: I dunno. I guess because this was a generic vampire story, not particularly about a well developed vampire character. But I digress...
The Woodlawn Theater is in an older building and there is some obvious wear, but I think all in all it has been well maintained. It's a small, intimate venue, without being too small.
The plot of "The Cure" is the usual boy meets vampire-girl, boy and vampire-girl fall in love, bad things happen, how can we be together - we're so different, etc. A sort of Romeo and Juliet. The vampires are portrayed sensually and sexually, which seems to fit the tradition going back to Stoker. The plot was weak, but it's a musical, so that doesn't kill the show.
Generally the music and performances were good. The first act musically was not that exciting to me, though I did think the final songs were quite good - "Forever Burn" and "Too Late" - not sure where one left off and the other began, but they were quite good. Oh - and "Til Now" with Carlee (Alex) and Wright (Sasha) - very good. Actually, the songs between Carlee and Wright were probably the performance high lights of the show for me.
I thought the second act was stronger - with "How We Die", "Hunger/One Minute More", and "New Religion" standing out.
Flying scenes are always fun - but they brought me in mind of what I said about Spiderman. Not really necessary. At least no one got hurt.
One thing I do have to say is that I thought the sound was poorly engineered. It was quite loud - which makes me sound old - but I thought it really distorted the voices of the performers when they were singing - and made their voices sound weaker than they probably were. I'm certainly no sound engineer, but that bothered me throughout.
Much of the lyrics could have been stronger. It's a show about vampires and family and love and all that - but the words didn't move me much. When the performers were on, the lyrics didn't get in the way - much. But they didn't do much to move the show. For example, Carmack as Rypien did a good job of seeming angry and pugnacious, but his lines didn't help him much.
Overall, we enjoyed the show and would recommend it.
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