Sunday Showtunes

SATURDAY

In the afternoon I saw “THE WOMAN IN WHITE,” the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber disappointment which flopped subsequently.  It is based on a novel about a mysterious woman with a secret and a sinister connection to both a wily Count and a “drawing master” to a beautiful heiress.  Or something like that.  Mostly it was about film projections – The set was a circular wall with several rotation sections on a turntable (sort of reminded me of a white Stonehenge).  A film of backgrounds, trees, rooms, etc. that was the exact length of the show (or timed to “pause” and then start and stop) was continuously projected onto this setting and onto a cyc behind it.  Occasionally set pieces would fly or track in as well.  The film was computer animation (something like “Toy Story” or “Shrek” – realistic but still not real-looking).  We would often “fly” across a meadow to the forest, swoop into a window into a room, and such.  It was a very fluid and cinematic effect -  I found it totally distracting and kind of annoying. 

I have noticed a trend towards projections in the past 10 or 12 years, but this was taking it to the extreme – it was worse than “Lestat” which blatantly showed film on a downstage scrim at times, but only on occasion.  “The Woman in White” was continually acted in front of the projections – more “Rocky Horror Picture Show” than, in my opinion, a legitimate Broadway musical.  The show itself had some nice but completely bland music (through-composed like nearly everything Lloyd-Webber writes) and I thought the story was completely forgettable.  They put a gimmick in it to try to capture buzz – a trained rat crawls across Michael Ball’s arms, from one hand to the other, on cue during a song – but unfortunately this trick had negative word-of-mouth, at least on my “geek list.”   I am not surprised that the show flopped.

KSHO broadcasts to the Mid-Willamette Valley in Western Oregon.
Among the communities served are Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon.