Fame: The Musical

I own the awesome original London cast recording and the vocals are phenomenal... This version though, I honestly thought it was a recorded amateur production. Alot of the vocals were flat or just damn painful, the American accents were dodgy, and the choreography was uninspired. Considering how rigorous auditions are for shows these days, I'm amazed how most of the cast got picked.

I don't normally do reviews but dear god this was just not good. Aside from the outstanding Mica Paris..this was just poor. I dont believe it was the actors.singing but the shocking script and with a couple of exceptions the songs were just dodgy. I was.a teen in the 80s and loved the original but this doesnt even compare. I love musicals but this is the first one I have forced myself to warch to the end.

I've never seen the movie, but judging on the other reviews I don't think it would improve the work at all. The story is all over the place, and except for maybe two characters, I have no clue what the motivation behind any of the events in the show are. A lot of the characters are very... dated. Dated is the only word I can use to describe this show. The over abundance of stereotypes completely ruin the enjoyment or any semblance of a decent plot. The terrible sound quality is something I would expect from a bootleg audience filmed cut, not a proshot. Any time the actors do manage to sing on tone, it's barely audible. All being said, I don't know how they managed to stretch 10 minutes of plot into 2 hours.

I love musicals, and I really liked the original movie, but this is a train wreck. I keep reading this production got rave reviews but honestly I cannot see how. It probably reads better live, but honestly the actors are playing caricatures of the characters and they are not grounded in reality. They are all stereotypes and playing just for the jokes. Now, to top it off proshot of it it's terrible. A lot of bad close ups, audio issues and terrible editing made a painful viewing experience for a musical. You miss the big musical numbers in favor of a close of an actor who is out of frame half of the time. It's just a big miss, like the 2009 remake of the movie.

First off...the stage version of this musical is not the same as the original 1980 movie many love except for the setting and theme. It doesn't have any of the songs from the 1980 movie version with the exception of the title song, sang at the end. This appears to be overlooked or misunderstood by some of the other reviewers. This musical stage version more closely follows the updated remake released 20 years after the original.

However...what they do have correct is how amateurish many of the singers and actors are for West End pros. 3 of the male leads seemingly were picked for their looks and not singing or acting ability. One was consistently flat with his over singing and the others over sang and acted. The characters were all caricatures, as it was written, not real people, and the accents problematic. This also makes the show feel very dated.

The musical stage version is not one that is remembered as being memorable to begin with and rides off the coattails of the popularity of the hit movie. This filmed performance from the West End proves that, and will be hard to get through for many musical theater fans like myself.