weebiloobil

There's a saying that Broadway saved Disney (Ashman/Menken, writing songs to be more like show tunes) and in return Disney saved Broadway (Beauty and the Beast/Lion King musicals generating huge ticket sales). The first few stage adaptations of Disney films really did something different from the film, integrating Disney into the art form rather than just being 'the film on stage'.

Beauty and the Beast's wonderful and dark Rococo costume design, emphasis on the music and massive expansion of the beast's character made a huge and significant difference. It justified the stage show. Similarly, the amazing puppetry and designs of The Lion King make it a fundamentally different experience to the film. Even Mary Poppins (hey kids, turns out the book version of Mary is way different!) and the recent Hunchback of Notre Dame (such a great use of the choir) have a reason to be. But Frozen? It just looks like the film, on stage.

That's not to say it's bad, or even stale. There's some nice work with puppets and some inventive staging of dance numbers. There's even stage magic (the highlight of the show is a mid-number instant costume change) and fabulous projections to give the look of Elsa's powers. But there's no real commitment to any of these devices beyond what's needed to turn the film into a stage show. Give us huge exaggerated costumes like Beauty and the Beast. Really focus on the puppet aspect, or on the projections, or on the Scandinavian style. But focus on something, as otherwise it just looks like an attempt to revive the film and make more money.

There are excellent individual performances - Barks is predictably amazing, and I was enthralled by Dawkes and Kasongo. The set design is great. But all the time watching it I was thinking "oh, this looks just like the film". So why have a stage show then?

Beauty and the Beast is the first stage show I ever saw, and it showed me just what the art form can do. I saw the revamped production in London recently and was shocked how the new photo-realisitic backdrop and streamlined costumes made it look so close to the film, stripping away so much of what made it special, instead looking really 2 dimensional. Frozen didn't quite go that far. But if this trend continues, I'm not sure I'd want to see any more of the stage adaptations.

At one point in this film, a character says "If I never see you again it will be too soon!". The sentiment also applies to this film.

The film follows an aspiring dancer and his complicated family relationship, but somehow manages to include every stereotype of gay cinema, from the best-friend-he-would-love-if-only-he-were-straight ("I'm gay, remember?" he says at one point, because that's just the kind of thing best friends forget about each other) to the closeted family man having it off on the side. There isn't even any suspense to this - most of the main characters are so bluntly drawn in the first 5 minutes that you could fall asleep until the climax, and if you do I envy you. Of course there is a 'twist' - inverted commas because it's so clearly signposted it might as well be London - but by then the oddly distant directing style had drained all engagement from me.

I know that as a genre, LGBT cinema suffers by not having the history and money behind it available to other films, but even compared to some of the ropier stuff out there this is lacking.

The word that best sums up the plot, the directing, the cinematography, is: dull.