This past weekend, theater groups across the world held performances of a special, limited-time event: Musical Theatre International's All Together Now!: A Global Event Celebrating Local Theatre. MTI is a licensing company that holds the rights to many popular musicals (and plenty of unpopular musicals), which means that usually theater companies pay MTI for the right to perform their shows, and for the rental of scripts and music. All Together Now! is a revue that MTI offered for free, with the goal of supporting small theater groups that may have struggled under the pandemic. Multiple groups in the Twin Cities participated in this event, including Cross Community Players. CCP used All Together Now! as their fall fundraiser, but did not charge admission; I appreciate that this event was more accessible for that reason, but it does seem unusual for a fundraiser! In addition to collecting cash donations for their own organization, CCP encouraged audience members to bring donations of food to support a local non-profit. This is also something that feels unusual for a fundraiser, but, after all, why not?
All Together Now! is a revue of songs from musicals for which MTI owns the licensing rights; MTI selected the songs, but each theater group could choose between a couple of options for each spot. Under artistic/music director Robert Ragoonanan, CCP's program included familiar favorites like "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins. As a side note: one of the choices offered by MTI was to perform either "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from Les Miserables or "Tomorrow" from Annie, which strikes me as a very funny pairing.
CCP held two performances (in two locations): one with no mask requirement, and one with masks required for performers and audience members. At the current time, this strikes me as a nice option, since a masked event is more accessible to people with medical concerns. The show I attended was held in a church, where the acoustics did work against the performers sometimes, depending largely on their distance from the microphones. Choreography in the big numbers meant that the bulk of the cast could not be near the microphones, and therefore some of the power of songs like "You Can't Stop the Beat" was lost. The sound technician (not identified in the program) did a great job working within these constraints. Julie Hatlestad, Karly Hennen, Nicki Price, and Joe Voth all provided choreography, with an interesting variety of styles. "Be Our Guest" (from Beauty and the Beast), the opening number, was a particularly entertaining song; "We're All in This Together" (from High School Musical) was another fun dance number. Because of the location, the cast was working with a non-traditional stage, but they used the space well.
Every song in CCP's production was enjoyable. Songs that stood out for me included "This is the Moment" (from Jekyll & Hyde, performed by James Vair), "Children Will Listen" (from Into the Woods, solo performed by Ann Farrell), and "Beautiful City" (from Godspell, performed by Bryan O'Neil). I also really enjoyed the small group work in "The New World" (from Songs for a New World) and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" (from My Fair Lady).
While this didn't affect the show that much, I do wish MTI had put a little effort in on their end to tweak the songs so that they'd fit a little better out of the context of their individual shows. For example, "Take a Chance on Me" is a high-energy song with a lackluster ending, because in Mamma Mia the ending is interrupted. In a revue, there's no interruption–how hard would it have been for MTI to slap on a power chord so the song could have a more energetic ending?
In general, I like full musicals better than revues, but revues have a lot going for them. For one thing, they are relatively easy for a company to put on, and even when not free are a smaller financial investment than a full show–ideal for a fundraiser. For another, audiences do tend to enjoy hearing old favorites! Personally, I also really enjoy seeing some actors that I was familiar with perform in unfamiliar ways; because the songs are out of the context of their shows, there's a lot more wiggle room in a revue in terms of who can sing a song and how they can interpret and present the song.
This past year and a half have been difficult for theaters, and we may be seeing more fundraisers on the horizon. It's important to support local community theater groups so that we can continue to have such a vibrant community theater scene, so of course I would encourage anyone to attend events like this for that reason. But CCP's All Together Now! was also just a lovely way to spend part of my weekend. A win-win.
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