From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: Re: MISC: Desert Peach Musical (was Desert Peach)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 18:31:28 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.214646.6640@tc.fluke.COM> moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (The Napoleon of Crime) writes:
>Sorry, I can't be of help.  I had an opportunity to see it; Kathy Li and
>Heidi Wolf and Jerry Boyajian and Jon Singer and Several Others were in town
>that weekend, and Phyllis Rostykus got tickets.  

>[This posting sponsored by Namedroppers Anonymous.]

Tsk... this is what you get for invoking my name, you namedropper, you.  :)

>We did throw a post-opening-night buffet and "Welcome Minions of Dunnett"
>bash at my pad afterwards; my impression was that those who attended had
>mixed feelings.  I leave it to Kathy to give the Thumbs Up review.

Chuckle... great food, Moriarty.  The Dunnett conversations were *most*
intriguing.  Add the ice skating, the dark chocolate with hazelnuts, and 
the Kemper root beer and it was a most marvelous finish to a fun evening.

Hmmm... I'll partially agree with Roger Tang.  Also, being someone that
watched it on Opening Night, there is the slant that there was a lot of
stuff that might not have been worked out at the beginning.  Things like
the overstuffedness of it, that some of the conversations set to the same
theme music got a lot old, some almost embarrassingly bad dance
interludes, the fact that the orchestra wasn't balanced with the singers
(i.e. the music was loud enough to drown out all the bass singers), and I
definitely agree with Roger when he said:

> 	Also, I really was disappointed in Pfirsich. Donna may CALL him a
> stereotype, but she doesn't write him as one in the book. I think to become
> more than an esoteric in-joke, some of the humanity he shows in the comic
> should have come through MUCH more strongly in the musical.

HOWEVER, it was almost worth going *just* to see Doberman in the flesh.

I'll also add that I loved Udo, both his portrayal and his voice.  I
wondered, a little, if they didn't just simplify the comicbook a lot
and put all the humanity into Udo to make it more accessible to someone
who had never read the book?  Not *too* terrible a tradeoff.  The whole
thing *is* pretty much seen through Udo's eyes as opposed to any other
character in the play, and the Peach got less and less stereotypical the
more Udo understood him.  The guy playing Udo even got me to cry near the
end despite all the barriers to the performance at the time.  The voices
were *well* above average for what was essentually a community
production.  I think I heard someone say that quite a few members of the
Seattle Opera were in it.

Some of the duets were utterly delicious.

Though, eventually, some of the trio's where people were 'singing' on top 
of each other, got really irritating.

The lyrics were *impressive* sometimes and funny at others.  There were
some real side splitters for jokes.  And while the main plot and storyline
and some of the characters and the ending were like nothing in the books,
they were self-consistant.

So, both good and bad (you were, right, Moriarty, mostly mixed feelings), 
but, overall, I was glad I went. 
-- 
Phyllis Rostykus    | "... and how you feel can make it real  | - _US_
aka Liralen Li      | Real as anything you've seen            |   Peter
li@Data-IO.com      | Get a life with this dreamer's dream."  |   Gabriel