circus of the stars, aughties version
June 11, 2008
You know, I hate to say it, but NBC's Celebrity Circus is actually ... kind of fun. Interesting. Entertaining, even. Mind, it does suffer from a severe case of "Who the hell IS that, anyway?" But still, you've got celebrities (of a sort) doing things that no reasonably sane person would do at their stage of life with that little training, and paying the price, too. Stacey Dash had broken ribs (but her performance apparently managed to turn the gay judge straight), Rachel Hunter had herniated discs in her neck and Christopher Knight had a broken arm.
The judges are an interesting motley. Mitch Gaylord is a former Olympic gymnast and actor (if that's quite the right word -- I've seen some of his film work). Aurelia Cats is a circus performer -- contortion and trapeze -- as well as an experienced circus festival competition judge (i.e., the member of the judging panel who actually knows what she's talking about). Louie Spence is a dancer and choreographer, as well as having judged other countries' versions of the show; he's also very very very very gay (believe it or not, this is actually relevant, if not precisely a qualification). The judging appears to be a mix of that from American Idol and that of Dancing with the Stars. Circus has, in fact, completely absorbed the judging model from the first season of "Dancing with the Stars", in which 50% of the score comes from the judges, and 50% comes from the viewers. Presumably, this means that people are simply ranked in order of the total votes received, and also the judges' vote ranking. In theory, this should mean that if you pay attention to the judges' votes, you may be able to tell which people are safe, and which are at risk, at least for the next three weeks. Beyond that, there aren't enough people left to be safe, no matter what the judges do.. Like American Idol, Celebrity Circus at least pretends that the competition has something to do with performance, as well as popularity, barring votes before the broadcast ends, but limiting both phone and online voting to only two hours after the show.
According to various comments through the show, the celebrities will be rotating through the apparatuses week to week. On the one hand, that's understandable -- you don't want the audience to get bored with seeing too much repetition -- but at the same time, I wonder how wise that was. Presumably, the eight weeks of rehearsal was to allow them to rotate training through each apparatus, and then the week before the show, they concentrate on the one for the upcoming broadcast. I would think that spending so little time on each apparatus would make them more prone to injury, as has already happened, and certain apparatuses will aggravate injuries that have already occurred.
I'm beginning to suspect that Joey Fatone is perhaps the wrong host for the series. He's personable and enthusiastic enough, I suppose, but he seems a bit lost some of the time. And he really seems to have no idea how to handle Louie Spence and his sexual innuendoes at the various celebrities; that would be understandable if Louie were aiming his remarks at Joey, but he really doesn't speak to Joey after the introductions. Really, it needs someone with a certain engaging smarm who can give as good as he gets, like, say, Tom Bergeron.
It'll be interesting to see how it goes through the summer.
Posted by iain at 10:22 PM
a brief musical moment
June 10, 2008
Avenue Q played its local swan song matinee at the Cadillac Palace Theater this past Saturday. It's very good, although you really do have to have seen Sesame Street and the Electric Company to quite "get" it -- but having seen it, I now understand why Wicked, despite losing the 2004 Tony Awards to Avenue Q for best book, best score and best musical -- an impressively complete rout, that -- has seriously outlasted it here as a road company. Avenue Q just lasted through its one-month run, while a few blocks away at the Ford Center's Oriental Theater, Wicked -- closing at the end of the year -- went for three years of overtime past the original scheduled run. Wicked is bizarrely depressing yet somehow uplifting, while Avenue Q is a happy bouncy musical about people seeming to overcome that throws a perky yet downbeat ending at you out of nowhere. Funny, and yet a general message of "Life sucks and you just have to give up your dreams for a while and deal like a grown-up (unless you luck into someone with ten million to spare)" just isn't likely to bring in the teenaged girl repeat audience the same way that the (seriously altered from the book) "girl empowerment" message of Wicked will -- or the grownups either, for that matter. And it's easier to accept, or even ignore, the fact that Elphaba doesn't precisely come to a good end because ... well, by god, she got her dream, more or less. She found her purpose. It may have killed her, but she found it. "Go for your dream, whatever the cost" is a much more palatable message than "give up your dream, it costs too much."
In the DVD documentary Show Business, they show the path to Broadway taken by both Wicked and by Avenue Q, as well as the ill-fated Taboo and Caroline, or Change. What they didn't show, and I wish they had because it must have happened, is the increasingly intense discussion between the composers and the producers of Avenue Q, who would have been looking at the final song and thinking, "Are you SURE you want to do this to this weirdly fun musical? Really? REALLY?" Because it really is seriously weird fun, and the moments just before the last song can only be described as Happy Endings Gone Seriously Weird, Yet Still Happy, and then the main character realizes that he hasn't yet found his purpose in life, and the entire cast sings a song that basically says, "Yeah, well, a lot of people never find their purpose, so suck it up and deal and settle like they do." And, well ... that's a freaky weird ending to stick on a show. It leaves you feeling sort of ... "Ha ha ha! Oh, my goodness, that was fun ... and now I never want to think about it again."
Posted by iain at 12:04 AM