The new Guthrie has only been open since 2006 and this is the first time I've been able to go in. I went to the very last show in the old building which (since it was Hamlet) was beyond amazing and I've been looking forward to seeing the new building for quite a while now. When it first opened, it was an instant architectural phenom in the Midwest. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and the coolest part of the entire thing--at least in my estimation--is the enormous cantilevered bridge that sticks out over the Mississippi. You can see it in this stock picture I pulled from the Internets.
On a side note, I don't know how much this piece of real estate cost the theater but I think it's safe to say it was probably a lot. Not many new things get to be built right on the bank of the river these days. This image I found on Google shows just how close it is.
The thing jutting out of the building towards the river is nicknamed the "Endless Bridge" for some reason or another and, along the length of its interior, there are these little mirror-lined windows that frame some crazy views of the Minneapolis skyline. I didn't have time to take pictures of all of them so here's the one that overlooks Gold Medal Park. The white bridge in the background is the replacement for the 35W span that fell in August '07.
Speaking of Gold Medal, the factory is immediately to the left of the outside observation deck on the end of the "endless" bridge. Here it is at sunset.
After my shift in line was over I headed to the Cue restaurant attached to the theater. After all that sitting and reading it was nice to down a martini and some of the best fried crab cakes I've ever had...ever. This is the first meat I've had since going vegetarian in August and I am so glad I didn't waste an occasional meandering away from that diet on something less amazing.
After dinner it was up to our seats in the spotlight balcony at the very, very, very back of the theater (which were surprisingly good). Despite the fact that it was a Tuesday night, the 700-seat proscenium stage theater was packed to the gills. When the tickets went on sale this summer the Guthrie apparently outsold their previous record by a whole lot. It caused such a stir that Variety even reported on it. Here's a pic I snapped at the end of intermission.
It was a decent musical. I'm not a huge fan of the genre (Andrew Lloyd Webber ruined it for everybody) and the main reason I went along was to see a student who is in the cast. Aside from his performance (which was incredible) I just felt myself getting bored with the quality of the art.
The staging, acting, lighting and set were wonderful but the music was somehow lacking and, although I will probably perjure myself in the future when it's a huge hit on Broadway, I think it was the composer's fault. Rachel Portman is the creator in question and I'm not really sure if she got the spirit of the novel. Don't get me wrong because she is an amazing composer (she is the first female composer to win an Academy Award for Best Orginal Score) but if you closed your eyes to listen you just forgot what you were looking at because the music sounded nothing like it should have in order to augment the story. In fact, aside from one short barn dance-ish thing, the score was never reminiscent of the folk music of the historical period the story was set in. (An article in the New York Times about the show confirms it when they use the phrase "largely unfamiliar with the books and television series" to describe her work on the show.)
In other words, while the staging and script and acting breathed of the time and place that the story was set, the music was just another Broadway score. Imagine if the music to Chicago sounded like the music from Wicked (one of the few modern Broadway scores I can stomach). This style of music works in the case of Wicked because the plot is set in another world but, with regards to Little House, there is a very specific cultural-musical thumbprint that has to happen in order to legitimize it all and, unfortunately, it just wasn't there.
That being said it will probably make a kajillion dollars due to the fact that Little House on the Prairie is such a successful brand (and for good reason).
This, however, speaks to how Broadway works and why I rarely enjoy modern musicals. Almost everything that has longevity is completely derivative of everything else. This helps marketability because, when the audience shows up, they essentially already know what to expect. The music (if it's good) is just an extra thing added to what should already be a decent theatrical experience. If the score isn't terrible then people will probably enjoy it. If it is terrible--as in the case of The Phantom of the Opera (which is maybe the most trite thing I've ever heard in terms of both music and a plot so diluted from the source material that it borders on the verge of ridiculous)--then the producers have to pump up the visuals in order to entertain. In this case you get an audience leaving that will probably say things like, "When that huge chandelier fell...that was so cool!" or maybe, as in the case of Les Misérables, "The rotating barricade that split apart and transformed like Optimus Prime...that was so cool!"
So then we have spectacle masquerading as substance. Perhaps if producers invested in pieces of art that didn't require such an enormous technical investment and went towards things that actually had some pathos to begin with (like Baz Luhrman's incredible production of La Bohème on Broadway), they would make money hand over fist and begin to ween theatergoers off of mediocrity.
But now I'm just starting to sound cranky. Oh well.
I just bought the new, eponymous album by Fleet Foxes and it is amazing. If you're a fan of rock bands that use a lot of vocal harmonies you've got to check these guys out. Their first release, the Sun Giant EP, was great and this new one certainly delivers. Of course the cover to the CD is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569) and any band that chooses to represent themselves with a Dutch Renaissance painting and is reminiscent of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young while still managing to sound original are okay with me.
"Oliver James" is probably the most beautiful song on the CD but the 1-2 punch of "White Winter Hymnal" and "Ragged Wood" is pretty good as well.
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