Virginia City

My overall impression

DISAPPOINTING – I WANTED TO TEAR MY EYES OUT IN FRUSTRATION!!!

I was excited to go because of the review that had already been posted online. And anyone who knows me will tell you I am the best audience member ever. So I am not panning this without good reason.

It started with some promise and quickly went down hill. Let me spare you the money and time… everyone falls in love and no one in the audience will care.

First of all… the lighting was terrible. There was an entire song that was done in TOTAL darkness… and another song about one characters dead brother that was extremely dark with no emotion whatsoever.

A huge problem in the acting was that I didn’t care at all for any of these characters.

I blame a lot of that on the DIRECTING… which was abysmal (especially when the Director was one of the shows writers? REALLY?) and really non-existent.. which left the actors very little to do in the way of acting. A lot of standing in a straight line and coming DSC to sing out to the sound man… yuck.

And then there was the singing… which was just OK
and was conveyed with no emotion in almost every case and very little in others.

A couple of the costumes had promise but only 2 or 3 characters had a costume change as the days went by and this was disjointed.

No-one but the bartender was able to project so I was forced to sit in the front row and still had trouble hearing.

A HUGE part of the problem was that the entire musical score was pre-recorded… a HUGE disappointment since the composer and director wrote the musical. All of the songs were EXTREMELY SLOW and I wanted to tear my eyes out from frustration! Most of the songs could’ve been shortened by several verses, as well. Extremely frustrating.

Almost as frustrating was one of the characters German accent that kept disappearing. He’s German.. wait now he’s southern… wait, now I don’t care.

Honestly, if this musical was re-worked it may have some promise. If the songs were shortened and were a bit more upbeat and didn’t sound like bored actors singing to a karaoke track…

I can’t believe that the guy who wrote the music didn’t even play live. REALLY? That’s kind of shameful.

The one part that actually had me semi-interested was the ending… when Mark Twain comes out. too little too late