Riverdance: Live à l'Arena de Genève

This is the third incarnation of the show Riverdance, and it's the most flat. The director and producer (a husband-and-wife team) keep screwing with the formula, and each time they do, they diminish the show. What got Riverdance its reputation was a simple show that featured the innocence and beauty of Irish Dance. They have decided to glitz it and sex it up and it's markedly less for the efforts. It peaked with the Colin Dunne/Jean Butler era, and has been sliding backward ever since.

For example: the script reads "Tall and straight: this is how my mother taught me; Tall and straight: this is how my father taught me" yet they have the girls slinking about, hips swaying every way but forward when they walk. What happened to the "tall and straight"? Next, this is a show about dance, yet they put long skirts on the girls, completely hiding their steps in the second act, and that's not when they're obscuring their legs with far too much smoke.

And speaking of costumes, it appears that they decided that the acrobatic dancing of the Russians girls is perfect for creating costumes that will expose their (leotarded) derrières as much as possible! (Luscious though they may be!) The original costumes were perfect: Why screw with them?

Additionally, the dancing: This is a show about dancing. The quality of the dancers has dropped dramatically. We're drawn to the feet when they are step dancing, and here it's easy to see missed steps, sloppy footwork, and poor timing. They appear to be hiring dancers more for their looks and bodies, rather than their dancing ability. I'm very thankful that Michael Flatley is not here (the stage would not have been big enough for his ego) but the two principal dancers are very poor substitutes for Colin Dunne and Jean Butler. They electrified the stage every time they were on: Joanne Doyle can't and Brendán de Gallaí was trying far too hard to be a Michael Flatley clone to bother. Neither had the dramatic chops to sell the dances from a dramatic standpoint, either.

Finally, the music is not up to snuff either. The fiddler is not up to the level of Eileen Ivers, and simply didn't engage and electrify the crowd the way Ivers did, and the music no longer has the same energy it did. Noel Eccles still cooks on percussion, though, but I wish they hadn't separated the musicians with so much vertical distance. Also, what's with the in-ear monitors? They weren't necessary for the original musicians, are the new ones so talentless they can't follow time? Get "Riverdance: The New Show" from Radio City Music Hall and be amazed at the dancing. Here you will only be mildly entertained, and a little disappointed. That's a long fall for a show I've enjoyed so much from the original Eurovision incarnation.

..Joe