This. Is. Seriously. Amazing. Seriously. OMG. lol.

I had no intention to review this, it not really being a movie, not even really being a TV movie. Aside from rediscovering the awesome original concept record for this show last year, my childhood obsession with this show had pretty much evaporated long, long ago and I didn’t expect much from a seemingly ridiculously short video version starring Donny Osmond, Joan Collins and Richard Attenborough. After seeing Maria Friedman in “The Woman in White” in May, though, I kinda knew that I’d have to watch this at some point. She plays the narrator and she’s the best narrator ever. I’m officially in love with her, she’s so hilarious, and I now know why she was making me think of Drew Barrymore back in May, it’s mainly the way she uses her eyes, but she also does that talking out of the side of her mouth thing sometimes.

Richard Attenborough is beyond better than I’d expected as Jacob, and Donny Osmond while maybe not as good as Jason Donovan (but I’m biased on that lol) is at least on a par with Philip Schofield and plays the part well despite, like most of the cast, being a little too old.

The best thing about this production is the whole presentation. It’s insanely colourful. I was sitting up with a grin on my face only minutes in as the whole framing device played out – it begins in a school assembly hall with Maria Friedman doing the, “Some folks dream of the wonders they’ll do …” opening and the entranced looks on the kids’ faces seriously bring back some memories. Donny Osmond then enters from the back of the hall and sings “Any Dream Will Do,” the curtains open, and we then enter the kind of 360 degree stage that’s often employed for these TV musicals. It’s still kinda stagey, but all 4 walls exist. Later, the kids (I guess, unable to contain their excitement at the story, I don’t blame them, lol) charge from their school seats onto the stage and there’s a cheap but effective transition of them entering this colourful world and their uniforms becoming colourful t-shirts etc. My heart damn near burst at that point.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it is really really short, less than 80 minutes. I’m pretty sure the stage production I saw was a good 2 hours but I may be wrong. The weird thing is, while they clearly seem to be trying to keep it short, a few bars trimmed here and there, nothing earth-shattering, nothing seems to be missing, the story is told as fluently as ever, and they even stretch a couple of songs out into extended dance routines – “One More Angel In Heaven”, for example, becomes a hoedown, the only part of the show I could’ve done without.

Aah …. I don’t have much else to say, I promise. I’m just seriously buzzed to have been reminded how brilliant this show is, how much I loved it way back when. Tim Rice’s lyrics are absolute perfection (“But if my analysis of the position is right, at the end of the tunnel there’s a glimmer of light; for all of a sudden, indescribable things have shattered the sleep of both peasants and kings.”) and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music leaps with childlike glee from genre to genre without a care in the world. The production designers go nuts with every setpiece – my favourite here is the 20s black-and-white set-up for “Potiphar”. This whole experience left tears in my eyes, first joy, then nostalgia, then the shameless emotion of the finale. And Maria Friedman, I have to say it again, is, I think they say, a hoot.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 2:18 am in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.