The Big Broadcast of 1938
Nov. 1st, 2009 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progThe first act was ingenious, wonderful, and perfectly paced. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel has such an affinity for both creating and delivering radio comedy that one is tempted to conclude he was born 70 years too late. The music from Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band was hot, and fit in perfectly as a buffer between the vocal performances. I would have happily sat through another two hours of any material, had it maintained the pace of the first.
Unfortunately, acts II and III - the headline acts, really, involving the War of the Worlds adaptation - needed some seriously fierce editing. I know it's easy for me to say, down here in the audience, but I think it would have been possible to compress them into a single act, or at least into two significantly shorter ones.
Now, there were many strong moments (the scene at the site of the first cylinder landing was particularly memorable, with excellent sound engineering from both Foleys and performers), and the use of the Martian Chorus and the Crazy Sound Dood to represent the Invaders was just wonderful. But: there were many scenes that should have been cut, compressed, or combined, not just to bring the three-hour running time down (not counting intermissions), but to better emphasize the cool stuff.
I would have dropped stuff like the mayor's monologue and at least one of the professor's monologues, and ground more out of the three(!) lengthy doomed-news-reporter sequences. I envision the latter two reporter scenes overlapping or interleaving quite nicely, though I realize that's my film-editing experience talking, and that it would be harder to do on-stage.
I would even consider completely removing all the scenes involving the North End mobsters' club. The moll's introduction would then occur when the professor meets her, letting her mob connections (as well as the mobsters themselves) become revealed as a plot twist later on. I would have found the mobsters' motivations stronger if those characters all showed up as a late-game surprise, fighting side-by-side with the army but also trying to get at each others' backs from the get-go.
But, all this is just me sitting in my comfy chair making sniffing noises about how the great and talented me would have done things, when the fact of the matter is that the PMRP has outdone itself once again with a hell of a show, no matter how much tighter it could stand to be. I'm proud to be able to say I worked with them when they were getting started years ago, and prouder still that they just keep getting better.
derspatchel has such an affinity for both creating and delivering radio comedy that one is tempted to conclude he was born 70 years too late. The music from Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band was hot, and fit in perfectly as a buffer between the vocal performances. I would have happily sat through another two hours of any material, had it maintained the pace of the first.Unfortunately, acts II and III - the headline acts, really, involving the War of the Worlds adaptation - needed some seriously fierce editing. I know it's easy for me to say, down here in the audience, but I think it would have been possible to compress them into a single act, or at least into two significantly shorter ones.
Now, there were many strong moments (the scene at the site of the first cylinder landing was particularly memorable, with excellent sound engineering from both Foleys and performers), and the use of the Martian Chorus and the Crazy Sound Dood to represent the Invaders was just wonderful. But: there were many scenes that should have been cut, compressed, or combined, not just to bring the three-hour running time down (not counting intermissions), but to better emphasize the cool stuff.
I would have dropped stuff like the mayor's monologue and at least one of the professor's monologues, and ground more out of the three(!) lengthy doomed-news-reporter sequences. I envision the latter two reporter scenes overlapping or interleaving quite nicely, though I realize that's my film-editing experience talking, and that it would be harder to do on-stage.
I would even consider completely removing all the scenes involving the North End mobsters' club. The moll's introduction would then occur when the professor meets her, letting her mob connections (as well as the mobsters themselves) become revealed as a plot twist later on. I would have found the mobsters' motivations stronger if those characters all showed up as a late-game surprise, fighting side-by-side with the army but also trying to get at each others' backs from the get-go.
But, all this is just me sitting in my comfy chair making sniffing noises about how the great and talented me would have done things, when the fact of the matter is that the PMRP has outdone itself once again with a hell of a show, no matter how much tighter it could stand to be. I'm proud to be able to say I worked with them when they were getting started years ago, and prouder still that they just keep getting better.
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Date: 2009-11-01 05:47 pm (UTC)I was pretty happy with Act II. My god what a lot of work for the Foley artists; they were damned impressive. While the act was playing out I was very happy with it and it is only in retrospect, that I'd consider maybe some editing would have been effective--and important for keeping total time. down.
Act III, however, really dragged (and perhaps I felt that so strongly at least partly because it was so late, and I was tired) and even if not a lot were to be trimmed, overall I think it would have benefited from just moving faster. On the one hand, that it did move so slowly and started off rather boringly compared to the excitement of Act II gave one some empathy for the weary survivors, but even when more exciting stuff did happen the energy level seemed low and too much was simply narrated. After all the really, really great parts of Act II were those that purported to be happening in real-time, and there was a great deal less of that in Act III. Instead there was a lot of straight exposition that I think came directly from Wells story, and a lot of characters recounting things to provide a background for the events at hand.
But, yes, it was a hell of a show, and I am not at all unhappy that I spent money and over three and a half hours in a theater seat on the event.