The Girl of the Golden West
Ice Factory 2012
created by Rady&Bloom
August 2, 2012
Collaborators Jeremy Bloom & Brian Rady have elevated the high sentiment of a hundred-year-old melodrama into
a musical rich with feeling. The show's soundscape evokes 1849 California
through atmosphere more than allusion by weaving an electric country
guitar and cowboy-inspired vocal harmonies with synthesizers, dueting
flutes, and low-tech foley-work. The set mirrors this eclectic
modernism with rough-hewn, golden-stained wood suggesting rather
than representing a High Sierra mining camp. But the singers and band
create such a rich sonic experience, they make the visuals
superfluous. In particular, the titular Girl, Catherine Brookman, has
charisma and depth in her chords, which makes plausible and even
pleasurable the preposterous turns of plot. Girl does have its
flaws—in particular, the audio mix favors the instruments over the
vocals to the point of obscuring them. But rough, joyous, and filled
with passion, it offers more pleasure and artistry than a season of
Broadway musicals.
-----
Girl plays at the New Ohio Theater,
closing on August 4. Tickets?
-----
1 comment:
Girl of the Golden West's biggest flaw was that it was a tart of a show run up by Puccini and his tasteless henchman, David Belasco. These two were the forefathers of Disney on Broadway.
I'm sure an experimental version of La Fanciulla was "rich sonic experience" but that travesty should've been left buried.
(I can almost hear a certain mustachioed gentleman saying, "Tell me how your really feel.")
Post a Comment