by Four years ago, Disney brought Frozen to this event location with wonderful results. Elsa and Anna pulled an audience of zealous young cosplayers. Can Hercules bring in his own sword and salt stands? His journey with Zero-to-Hhero trip won in the 1997 animated film with Gerald Scarfes sharp designs and James Woods’ delicious evil Hades. But Lightning does not hit this stage version twice, although it is a robust genuge Disney vehicle with strong songs and lots of splashes.
His drama under the direction of Casey Nicholaw and a blow from the material – songs! Lights! Action! -That makes it look like a musical for sponsors. The characters are not as divine as 2D, although the sound and optics are always at eye level, the turning set intends to the moving sky and the earth. The costumes of Gregg Barnes and Sky Switser are also heavenly and camp like hell: golden clothes, white Spanx and Hercules in a stitch vest and mini-baked-to-doga at the end.
Luke Brady is an incredible singer when Hercules navigates his journey between gods and humanity with the buddy Phil (Trevor Dion Nicholas). But the title character is more generic, a hunkules that, despite Joey -Shades of friends, is too long for too long (why don’t support themselves in that?). The occupation of Brady is just as strong, but airy in her dialogue. The Hades of the Animation Film was a fabulous creation that licked his head permanently from flames from his underworld. Here Stephen Carlile sees and sounds like a pantomime baddie with kitschy jokes. You want to burn it out every time he delivers his lines.
The big booming songs – including seven new numbers that Alan Menken (music) and David Zippel (texts) wrote – come to sound, and a little soup, like the new addition, will be my day today. They are delivered as quickly as the campaign by an occupation recorded in America. Go, the distance is a beautiful solo from Hercules, but you don’t feel enough emotions from it. The optimistic numbers work better, in particular the repetitions of the gospel truth by the five muses, all power pack singers. So the story has a proudness as if an old stone table had taken the place of a meat and a blood -hard.
The first half culminates in a parade in the NFL style, full of military motifs and swirling batons, all of which lead us outside the old world of history and in unanimous, boring entertainment with podium choreography (from Nicholaw and Tanisha Scott). But in the second half, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Robert Horn’s book is funny, Hercules becomes stupid and his love story with Meg (Mae Ann Jorolan, Cooler Cat with Bradys Golden Retriever) grows in chemistry. Not all rights themselves. The monsters who hire Hercules are certainly great, but seem strangely cozy, as if production is afraid to scare their younger audience.
Perhaps this musical shows the age of the film: it feels like Disney in the old school, his hero is not entirely self -sunk enough (compare it with the brilliant self -parodying Maui of Moana) and serious that is difficult. In the program, Zippel recognizes the mixture of Hercules from Hercules from heart and wit. “Everything comes with a wink,” he says. You wish you a few more wink here.
