Saturday, April 19, 2014

Strictly Ballroom: the (wish it wasn't a) musical

Yesterday my friend Miss Fairchild and I went too see Strictly Ballroom: The Musical.

The show was glaringly flawed in many ways but I'm pretty sure I've never enjoyed a live show so much in my life (disclaimer: I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show so ymmv)

It was visually ... all the words I can think of to fit here seem too small. It was SO sparkly. SO colourful. Sparkly curtains, sparkly seats. The costumes were, I think, my favourite part.

The flow of the story seemed off too things seemed to happen in an order because they were following the movie, rather than creating a show that flowed smoothly.

The songs, apart from Time After Time (even Love is in the Air was disappointingly underused, only popping out for the bows, basically)... sucked. Unmemorable and/or incomprehensible there is no way I would buy or listen to the soundtrack. I kind of felt like... they should have just used pop songs instead of trying to write their own. Or just not made it a musical at all. That would have been way better.

And yet I loved it. I had so much fun! It's easy for me to sit here and think "oh it would have been so much better if..." but I wasn't involved in making it so... yeah. But even though parts of it sucked I am super glad it exists and that we saw it and I will probably be thinking about how much I enjoyed it and all the amazing costumes and sets for a really long time.

And this morning I've been looking at my list of barely started fan fiction projects in Google Docs, my Veronica Mars essay, my abandoned Read Along project here on this blog, my short lived "... and remembering that something doesn't have to be perfect to be worthwhile. It can be flawed and also enjoyable. Times approximately infinity if I am doing it for fun, on the internet, for free.

On the other hand for a long time I wasn't really starting anything and I think failing to finish things is a way better problem to have than not being able to start anything at all.


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