377 Days - Blog #20 - or my completely biased reflection of the play I saw/heard/promoted this weekend

This weekend I saw a play.  I heard a play.  I sold tickets for a play.  I spent a lot of time on the periphery of a play and at the same time, right in the middle of it.

So, of course, my opinion of it is colored in a very complex way by my direct involvement.

It nevertheless deserves some of the reflection I offered the productions I visited last weekend.

I remember seeing Aladdin in the theater.  I couldn’t remember when exactly until I found myself looking up trivia lists on Buzzfeed et al to add to the Facebook page.  It came out in the fall of my senior year of high school.  Indeed, if I squint my eyes and put pressure on the memory, I recall that I got the cassette tape for Christmas that year.  I can picture myself pressing rewind on my stereo (that is still in this house) to repeat Friend Like Me or Prince Ali… or whatever song I decided I needed to belt at the top of my lungs instead of doing homework.  

I went on a minor closet hunt to find this cassette merely to have a picture to post here.  Yaye, I found it.  

Oh my God, why do I still have so many cassettes?

That’s when I still liked Disney.  When I loved Disney.  I’m not going to distract you or myself with all the reasons that changed – except that it did – and that in spite of my change of heart to disdain, I never really let go of affection for this music.  I just let it fade into those cloudy memories of the end of high school.

Anyway, I ended up doing publicity (mostly the online variety) and box office for this production.  It has been a haphazard reintroduction to the production side of the theater that I found that same half of my senior year. (Weird.  I just realized that coincidence)  It hasn’t been a hugely involving series of tasks.  I appeared at a few rehearsals.  I made a dozen-ish witty posts on Facebook.   I sit in the lobby for most of the show.  I go downstairs and hang out in the kitchen and visit with the familiar faces of my theater past.  Then I go out and talk some more with those friends… and get ideas.

But all this is tangential to the show.  The show deserves some notice.

This week proved a very… unexpected and weird time to open a production of Aladdin.  I wonder if my reaction to Robin Williams would have been different if Friend Like Me hadn’t been so frequently echoing in my brain of late.  And certainly, it affected these teens – these teens who weren’t even born that senior year when the cartoon premiered on the big screen (some not even before it found its way to DVD) – in a surreality I can only imagine.  They chose to process it by dedicating the show to Mr. Williams and took it upon themselves to start each performance with a nod to My Captain, O Captain.

And the sigh swings back up to a happy memory.  The show is Aladdin, Jr.   Not the full-fledged thing that is currently on Broadway.  So, it is a little short on some of the plot details… but plentiful in the music and dances.  Songs one can sing along to and feel the itch to get up and dance in the aisles along with the ensemble that cartwheels, spins, and parades up the stairs to the stage.

Indeed, this is one of those shows where the ensemble has a lot of work to do… and it seems unfair to lump them all into one description.  There is an elephant.  There is an acrobat.  There are so many different faces playing so many different parts in every scene, carrying various notes, telling so many parts of the fastly moving truncated story that they deserve so much of the credit.  One of those truths I wish I could shout to any theater parent or discouraged auditioner who complains about being ‘part of the chorus.’  In a show like this, it is sooooooooooooooooooo  important.  And it, honestly, looks like the most fun.

But that, of course, isn’t to take away from the other characters in this play.  The narrators fill in between the scene with articulate detail.  Aladdin and Jasmine are sweet and spunky and confident in their place on the stage.  The carpet (yes, there is a part for the carpet) moves in such a way you forget his humanity.  Jafar is perfectly wicked… and it doesn’t matter that it is a young lady with a penciled in beard.  In fact, her command of the stage reminds me of many a Lesley production where a young woman inhabited a role and you lost track of the reality of gender.  And, of course, the genie… is quite genius in his physical acting and comedy.

It’s an hour.  I have to man the box office, so I don’t usually get to sneak in until halfway through.  But I do get to see the kids when they wait for their entrances from the back of the auditorium.  Their enthusiasm is contagious.  Their fun is… so reminiscent of those August evenings and Sunday afternoons in the late 90s.  

I’m glad I came back to be a part of it.

And, if you haven’t wearied of my Facebook posts urging the purchase of tickets (serious, we almost sold out today – a minorly delicious coup considering my efforts, although I do have to give Disney and Robin Williams some credit here), this is a GREAT show to see.  I use fun a lot in these theater reflections.  But isn’t that what you want a night at the theater to be?  Fun?  

Well, this is.  I guarantee it.  You can make reservations online here: http://www.barreplayerstheater.com/reservations.html

And then at the end (because there is no intermission), there are cookies.  Really good, classic you can only find them at Barre Players cookies.