What I liked
The start of the show is a hilarious transformation and subversion of the audience’s expectations. The opening song is good enough to be a good song, but also a type of song you’ve heard enough times to know how banal it’s sentiment is. As a parody and trigger for the conflict, it works really well to jettison the story out of the mundane into it’s heady subject matter. The true villain is introduced and lays out his evil schemes with lascivious delight by Benjy LSB. Cheyenne Washington is wonderful as the determined counter to his plot, even jumping between personas as inter-dimensional body possession isn’t just for the bad guys. There’s a well thought story here that sets up a larger arc that will hopefully be explored in Part 2.
What I didn't like
The sound design is good, but a little uneven. I think the backing tracks could have been 10 percent louder and some of the dialogue and lyrics can be missed in the fuzzy PA system, but there’s always limitations in equipment. The story still came through to be understandable enough. And while Cheyenne Washington does have a nice voice, I had a hard time hearing her in the lower octave. If the song was in a mid to higher range key, she could totally belt out the lyrics and shine more. Or she could be closer to the mic to give more gravity to her part.
My overall impression
“Rockopera” is a word that always gets my attention. It goes beyond just telling a story with a series of songs, it evokes a fantastical, other-worldly element, which I think separates itself from a standard musical. The artist means to let their imagination run wild, so it’s a creative challenge to really push the boundaries of narrative. Benjy LSB does this with a solid story line set up in Verse Violent Chorus Part 1 that begins with a fun twist on protest songs and expands into the kind of epic inter-dimensional conflict one expects from a rockopera. It’s imaginative and has a core purpose that reflects our current, turbulent times.
