New York's Sony Centre - A Bang for Your Buck

Not far from the Broadway theatre area on 56th Street and Madison Avenue is the Sony Technology Lab which is a fantastic (there I go again) technology and entertainment museum for all ages.

Currently the 3rd and 4th floors are closed due to renovation, but its the second floor that I find the most fun and exciting. Its here you'll find music exhibits, as well as film and video game exhibits and the High Definition Theatre which screens short top quality high definition, high resolution video. Also on the second floor is a variety of activities that explore the world of games, music and digital entertainment, all interactive. Here you can play over-sized Play Station 2 games equipped with large screen projectors. You can build your own computer racing game. You can explore the process of making music and perform in front of a virtual audience. You can learn the key concepts of motion picture production and digital editing. You can even create your own movie trailer. And there's much, much more.

A recent workshop called Mice Dissection explored the guts of computer mice which visitors, with the help of museum staff, were able to take apart to find out how they work from the inside out. The February HD feature is called The Dolphin Story. It takes a close look at dolphins in their natural environment using hd camers attached to a ship's hull. In March the featured HD video will be Colors of HD. Visitors experience the artistic beauty and rich color of HD in two specially produced shorts. Balls features 250,000 multicolored "superballs" bouncing down the streets of San Francisco, and Paint features 70,000 litres of paint, 33 sextuple air cluster bombs, 268 mortars and much more in complete live action.

This is certainly worth your time and it won't cost you one thin dime. Yes, you can spend several hours here for free. So do try to fit it in on your next visit to New York City.

Wedding Singer A Hit

Jonathan Wilkes and Natalie Casey headed a stellar cast at The Palace Theatre to a triumphant production of The Musical version of The Hit Movie The Wedding Singer.Excellent performances from the entire cast meant that we were treated to the best new musical of 2008. Well I think so anyway. If you wish to have a fun night at the theatre then go see this show. there are laughs a plenty and the occasional lump in the throat.Not to mention the occasional moistening of the eyes. Yes its all there including an original score by Matthew Skylar with some very good little pop songs that could stand alone in the charts. I for one would go back to see this show again and again and again. Watch out West End the Wedding Singer Is heading your way,and I recon not just to visit.

Suko's Trivia Quiz - Week Two

Since no one got the correct answer to last week's trivia quiz, I thought I'd make this one a little easier.

Question for week of February 18 - 24:

You've heard Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur sing "Bosom Buddies" on The Matinee. What Broadway musical was that song from?

Last week's answer: The other four Stephen Sondheim musicals that had been made into movies before Sweeney Todd are A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and A Little Night Music for which he wrote both music and lyrics, and West Side Story and Gypsy for which he wrote lyrics only.

In the Heights Previewing on Broadway Gets Five Stars from Audiences

In the Heights, the latest musical to make the transition from off-Broadway to Broadway is a big hit according to preview audiences. It's a panoramic view of three days in the life of Washington Heights, a vibrant and tight-knit Latino community in upper Manhattan. Twenty-seven year old Lin-Manuel Miranda came up with the original concept while in college. He was sick of seeing Latino performers always being cast as West Side Story-type thugs so he wrote his own show, a Latin and hip-hop filled love story to his neighborhood, his heritage and his musical idols. After four years of development, with the help of director Thomas Kail who reworked it and restaged it for a larger audience, it opened off-Broadway to critical acclaim. One year later it has found its home on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Miranda who wrote the music and lyrics for the show, also stars in it as the Dominican narrator who owns a bodega (small grocery store) on the block. It's set in a block or two of his Latino neighborhood and the score was lovingly modeled after his lifelong idols, Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. (When he was a teen, he convinced Stephen Sondheim to attend his high school production of West Side Story.) The music pulses with the hopes and dreams of three generations as they struggle to forge an identity in a neighborhood on the brink of transition. Miranda won the 2007 Obie Award (for off-Broadway shows) for Outstanding Music and Lyrics. The producers, who also brought Rent and Avenue Q to Broadway from off-Broadway (both won the Tony for Best Musical), say they listen for new sounds that will attract fresh audiences and this one has attracted both traditional audiences and non-traditional including a younger and Latino crowd making it a good commercial move for them. Also in it is Broadway veteran Priscilla Lopez who was in the original cast of A Chorus Line for which she won an Obie while it was off-Broadway and was nominated for Tony's for Pippin and Applause and won a Tony in 1980 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine.

It was announced last week that they will have a $26.50 (13 pounds 25) per ticket lottery two hours prior to each performance for the front row seats. (There is a limit of two tickets per person, tickets must be paid for in cash and you must be present for the drawing. Fair enough.) This is a wonderful idea and gives the demographic population who historically have not been able to enjoy theatre due to financial barriers a chance to see a Broadway show.

(There is a wonderful television commercial showing here in New York which you can view at http://www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay.cfm?colid=23493. (Miranda is the fellow in the red shirt. I think he will be a Broadway force to be reckoned with.)

Suko's Trivia Quiz - Week One

When I went to see Hairspray on Broadway last month I picked up some extra playbills and I thought I'd do a little trivia quiz here on The Matinee's blog and send a Hairspray playbill to the first person to email me with the correct answer each week until I have none left. This is my own quiz, independent of The Matinee or Tameside Radio.

Question for week of February 10 - 17:

How many of the 17 major musicals Stephen Sondheim has been involved in, either writing both lyrics and music or lyrics only, have been made into films? Can you name them?

I know you're thinking it's not worth the effort for a lousy Broadway playbill. Well I just might throw in a little extra surprise as well. So if you're game, send your answer to suko@matineeshow.co.uk. The email with the correct answer and the earliest date and time will be the winner.

Sweeney Todd the Movie: A Close Shave from Johnny Depp

I finally got a chance to see Sweeney Todd last week. If you go back to my blog of October 17 you'll read about my skepticism in Johnny Depp being cast as "the demon barber of Fleet Street" since he is not known as a singer. Of course the doubt I expressed was strictly rhetorical. I am a big fan of both Depp and Burton and really had no doubt in my mind that they could pull it off. And they did in a big way. I mean, really, what's a Tim Burton film without Johnny Depp? (If you're counting, they've done six together. The other five are Edward Scissorhands, The Corpse Bride, Sleepy Hollow, Ed Wood, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) They are the 21st century's Hepburn and Tracy. They rarely miss, if ever. And who could have done justice to this macabre Stephen Sondheim musical better than Tim Burton? It's right up his alley since just about every movie he makes is dark. Even Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had a much gloomier aura than Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory of which it was a remake.

The movie, take away the blood and gore, is a delightful romp. It opens with the bloodiest, goriest credits I have ever seen which handily set the tone for the movie. The opening scene has barber Benjamin Barker (later to be known as Sweeney Todd) on a ship returning to London after spending 15 years in an Australian penal colony for a crime he did not commit. Is it me or has Depp, with the ashy makeup, kind of morphed into Christopher Walken? His voice which is powerful and well enunciated sounds very much like David Bowie. He played the dark, brooding Mr. T, as Mrs. Lovett refers to him, brilliantly. But would we expect anything less from Depp? On the other hand, Helena Bonham Carter who plays Mrs. Lovett, Todd's accomplice in crime who makes the worst meat pies in London, performed well as she usually does and looked the part, but in my opinion overdid the cockney accent making it difficult for me and my friend, Lana, to understand some of the dialogue. It was obvious she got the director's intention, after all she is married to him, but I would have enjoyed it more if I understood what she was saying. However, this may not be a problem for British audiences.

There was a lovely, light-hearted musical number, "By the Sea", where Mrs. Lovett is dreaming about her future together with Todd and the young boy she has taken in as a ward. You know, the husband, children, house with the white picket fence dream. But even though the number was light and colorful with great costumes and seaside scenery, it still had a dark undertone. There was also a touching number by Mrs. Lovett and her ward, Toby, promising each other that nothing's gonna harm them in the song "Not While I'm Around".

I loved the whole Dickensian feeling of the characters, the sets which were like stage sets rather than location shots (save for a few like the seaside scene), the costumes, the makeup, lighting and cinematography. They were all done to perfection.

I have to mention Sacha Baron Cohen as the smarmy Signor Pirelli, a barber with a traveling medicine show, who played the part with hilarious flamboyance. Alan Rickman was perfect as the evil Judge Turpin who was responsible for not only sending the barber to prison, but for treating Todd's wife and daughter horrifically. And Timothy Spall as Beadle, Judge Turpin's evil henchman, looking like he walked straight out of Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" was cloyingly abhorrent.

If you can stomach the blood, I highly recommend it. You can look away like I did, but I warn you, even the sounds of the throats being slashed and the blood gushing is terrifying. In my opinion, it's the best stage to screen adaptation I've ever seen, but if you're the least bit squeamish I suggest you skip it. Instead go see Juno or have a manicure, haircut or shave. Eek!!!!!