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Gaga for Gaga
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(Read more after the jump) Tonight was just an absolutely incredible experience, a dream come true. I GOT TO SEE LADY GAGA! I am an unabashed "little monster." I don't wear Gaga wigs and costumes but I follow her twitter, I have her albums, I downloaded "Born this Way" the minute it came out, and I also go on youtube and try to download her live renditions. That being said nothing prepared me for the Monster Ball Experience tonight. Lady Gaga isn't just a singer, songwriter, and performer, she's also a woman with an uplifting, gentle message. She might wear skimpy, outlandish clothing, and pepper her concert with some profanities, but the Gaga image is essentially a positive, fan-friendly one. She stopped the show several times to talk about acceptance of gay teens, told the audience to "forget your insecurities," and repeatedly told her adoring fans how the love was returned. It was a 2+ hour lovefest between the Little Monsters and the Mother Monster.
Phoniness, lack of generosity, in a performer is something that can be smelled a mile away, even for highly choreographed shows like Monster Ball. The love and excitement Lady Gaga generates in her "Little Monsters" is not something that can be created by publicity. Lady Gaga gives her all in concert, and her fans give back. It's a wonderful feeling to be able to experience the palpable love, frenzy, excitement. Yes it might be cheesy that she starts off "Telephone" by calling a member of the audience, but since her appreciation of her fans is such a part of her persona, the cheesiness works. Lady Gaga sang for two hours, and until you've experienced all of Madison Square Garden ecstatically screaming the refrain to "Poker Face" or "Bad Romance," you really haven't experienced Gaga. When the audience sings "I'm your biggest fan/I'll follow you until you love me/Papa, paparazzi" the song all of a sudden became a huge expression of love between Gaga and her Little Monsters.
The show started with the propulsive beats of "Dance in the Dark" and ended with anthem renditions of "Bad Romance" and her new single "Born This Way." All of her big hits were there, including an incredible rendition of "Show Me Your Teeth," and she sang two new songs from her new album, the piano ballad "You and I" and of course "Born this Way." The show started with the propulsive beats of "Dance in the Dark" and ended with anthem renditions of "Bad Romance" and her new single "Born This Way," by which time the whole arena was just singing along, screaming, crying. Gaga's singles are all not only insanely catchy but are arena-filling anthems that made me forget, for just a moment, all my insecurities. I believed the Gaga message hook, line, and sinker. But let me stop with the words and let the pictures do the talking.
First, I found a video of "Bad Romance" that kind of captures what it was like:
And as a postscript, as me and my friend were leaving MSG and getting on the 3 train, a woman got on and sat directly across from us. I looked at her for a minute and quickly realized she was Caroline Kennedy, someone I've seen at the ballet and walking around Lincoln Center. She was all alone, and dressed very casually. Obviously she had come from the Gaga concert too -- everyone on the train was at the Gaga concert, it seemed. I poked my friend and he looked at her and suddenly she must have realized that we recognized her, because she smiled at us, waved, said hi. A drunken guy next to us was ranting and she made a funny face. We both got off the subway at 42nd St. and she was still looking at us and said "Getting off too." Finally I worked up the courage to say something to her and I said, "It's great that you support the ballet so much." She seemed surprised that I'd say something so specific and was like "Oh thanks" before me and my friend headed in a direction. But the whole point of the story is -- Caroline Kennedy is a Little Monster too!
Dump truck-turned-piano
Calling some audience member before "Telephone"
A costume change
SHOW ME YOUR TEETH!
The F train
Me and my friend
A real Monster!
"Bad Romance" - a whole arena singing along - incredible
Great pictures. I want to go to tonight's show. Were there a lot of scalpers there? If I'm trying to find cheap tickets, do you think I should wait and go there, or by them now?
Benko as Fanny It's been a busy week. I ended up seeing three shows in a short amount of time: Funny Girl , How I Learned to Drive , and Rigoletto . Two of the shows were wonderful. Of course, it's the not-so-wonderful show I'll focus on the most. I deliberately avoided Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl , but when Beanie came down with covid , I decided to buy a ticket. I'd heard nothing but glowing reviews about Beanie's understudy Julie Benko. The good news: Benko deserves all the accolades. Her voice is AMAZING. No, she doesn't sound anything like Barbra Streisand, but she has a classic Broadway belt. She also has a surprisingly sweet sound when she's not belting. She is a decent dancer and numbers like "His Love Makes Me Beautiful" and "Rat Tat-Tat-Tat" were fun and funny. Her portrayal is on point too -- she mixes naivete and moxie, all in a tiny, pretty package. She has good chemistry with Ramin Karimloo (Nicky). There are other at
One critic wrote about Sarah Bernhardt's portrayal of Fedora: "Sardou's Fedora , the strongest drama written in recent years, with Sarah Bernhardt as the heroine--a character unquestionably suggested by the eccentric French actress's remarkable skill in the simulation of conflicting passions--presents a combination of ingenuity, constructive and dramatic eloquence that is not likely to be equaled on the stage within the knowledge of playgoers now living." Act 2 of Fedora, photo @Ken Howard Last night I saw the Met's new production of Umberto Giordano's Fedora and reread this critic and wondered what got lost in transit between the play (by Victorien Sardou) and the operatic adaptation (libretto by Arturo Colautti). Because the opera comes across as a fun, intermittently entertaining soap opera but nothing more. There's no emotional buy-in for the opera's melodramatic plot. Characters are dropped onstage, and their backstory and motivations are of
It's always tricky reviewing musicals or plays in the early-preview time frame. You realize that many of the acting and directing choices might be adjusted and even completely changed before opening night. saw the Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Camelot on March 15, about one week into previews. So for the purposes of fairness, I'm not going to criticize some of the acting or directing choices that I think need improvement. They could improve ... or not. However, the biggest issue with this revival is something I don't see improving. That would be Aaron Sorkin's new book for the Lerner and Loewe musical. It was so wrong-headed, so ill-conceived, that a few days later I'm still in shock at how bad it was. By the way, as a disclaimer: I love Sorkin's work. I loved The Social Network and To Kill a Mockingbird . I also enjoy Bart Sher's revivals of classic musicals. My Fair Lady was mostly wonderful, South Pacific was all wonderful. This is why the
Great pictures. I want to go to tonight's show. Were there a lot of scalpers there? If I'm trying to find cheap tickets, do you think I should wait and go there, or by them now?
ReplyDeleteGo to stubhub.com and that's the surest way to find scalped tickets.
ReplyDeletethe first monster ball show.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: Try Ticketsinventory.com Always works for me when I need tickets.