Personally, I had never been in the university theater and it seemed like a lot of the people who attended had not either. I was in the Jonsson Performance Hall before I realized I was in the wrong place. I met a family that wanted to follow me to the theater (honestly I wasn’t quite sure if I was even going the right way…but it all worked out). They were relatives of a performer. It seemed that most of the audience was comprised of family and friends, not to mention several students from a certain music class. Walking in there were plenty of “well this is cool” and “I didn’t know we had this going on”. It wasn’t the biggest theater but it did allow for some interaction between the audience and the performers. The performers went completely unnoticed lining up along the stairs until the mood lights cut on. They were close enough to touch, something that would not have been possible in a larger theater. Jake, the Cannibal King had time to stare down almost every person in the front row and even climb a few stairs away from the stage and get up close and personal with one of the parents sitting on the outside row.
Like most modern musicals side show also concentrates on developing a plot and rounding out its characters. The use of song and dance was not only used as entertainment but also to portray characters and express the mood of the scenes. There was a lot of music styles used, all of which was performed by a small orchestra that surprisingly was stationed on stage, just behind the opened curtains. Before the show began an overture was played as well during the majority of the scene changes. The music was also changed with the emotion. More sentimental periods were generally represented by more lyrical pieces of slower tempos like the pieces Who Will Love Me As I Am? and You Should Be Loved. Violet and Daisy are both very good singers but in the show Buddy says “You know it’s all about Violet” and either the talent of the other singer was mitigated or the stronger vocalist was put on her part because Violet’s character always had a slightly greater impact on the overall tone. Jake’s character, with the exception of You Should Be Loved had a heavier texture than all the other characters to show his anger. Jake flashed the shackles that he was put in at the beginning of the show once again after his solo and the music recapitulated to emphasize that angry demeanor from the introduction. The only texture close to Jake’s was Terry’s. The music helped to bring out the “villain” and “good guy” roles of the two. We heard that Terry’s themes never quite matched Jake’s, and then we saw that Jake was right for being suspicious of Terry and Buddy. Even though The Boss did not have the biggest role his character was essential to the plot of the story, and this necessity was also given a unique musical representation as well.
The closeness to the stage gave a more personal connection to the performers. Every expression was seen, every breath and every word was heard clearly, which made it easier to see that time and work really went into preparing the musical. Yeah, okay, so it wasn’t big time but everybody has to respect effort. That’s why I think the audience responded with appropriate applause after solos and even more applause as the performers ran through each of their roles once more at the end.
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