In the next few weeks, the shows at our two wonderful local theaters are Rain: The Beatles Experience and Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town. And before I give you the information about these upcoming shows, I’d like to apologize to the approximately two people who follow my mini theater column for missing the opportunity to review Dreamgirls while it was at the Paramount earlier this month. It was an amazing production and I hope all theater geeks got to see it, but it’s now a past opportunity, so let’s look ahead for now!
First off, at the 5th Avenue Theater, a locally produced production of On the Town has been playing for the past week and will be continuing its run until May 2, so you still have a few weeks to check it out! The director and choreographer team that are bringing us this production were also behind the local productions of West Side Story and Cabaret in past theater seasons. The production is part of the “Seattle Celebrates Bernstein” festival that many major Seattle arts organizations have participated in. Leonard Bernstein is the genius composer behind the Broadway musicals Wonderful Town, Candide, and West Side Story, among others.
On the Town is based on an idea conceived by Jerome Robbins, and the storyline is about three sailors who are on leave for 24 hours in New York City, determined to have as much fun as possible in that time. Need I say any more? Obviously this plot is bound to be a good time, so you may want to check out this show. All information about the production and tickets is available here at the 5th Avenue Theater’s site.
Over the Paramount Theater, Rain: The Beatles Experience will be doing an extremely brief, four show run on the May 7-9 weekend. (For anyone familiar with musical show schedules and wondering why it’s four shows and not five, it’s because there will be no Sunday evening show. The May 9th matinee will be the final show in Seattle.)
Rain is a tribute to the Beatles and all their music, although I would not call it a jukebox musical – or even a Broadway musical. It’s more of a tribute band performance, as the show is really just a concert of Beatles songs performed by people dressing, acting, and talking like the actual Beatles. I can’t vouch for how good the production or the cast may be, although critics have said that they are a wonderful portrayal of the Beatles and “the next best thing” to the real Beatles (via reviews at www.raintribute.com and the Paramount theater website). I don’t know. I have trouble believing any imitation could be quite as good, but if you’re interested in going to see the show, be my guest. All information about Rain, and opportunities for tickets (this was originally an “add-on” show that you had to buy a season package to attend, but individual tickets are now available) are here.
STG logo taken from BroadwayWorld.com.
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