With this season at the Pantages being a lot of shows I’ve seen before, I’ve been enjoying seeing how a show connects with me now versus how it connected to me in the past. With many of the repeat shows, they are shows I saw at a different venue and with a different theater group (sometimes community theater versus professional tours) so that is what the focus has been for me when I reflect back on it. But when I’m seeing a show again at the same venue and with the same caliber of performers, I focus on different things.
This week, my group saw “Kinky Boots”.
I saw this show for the first time a little over 4 years ago when it was in my first season that I did at the Pantages. When I saw it the first time, I loved the show and I think I also was still on a high from being so excited that I had season tickets to see more musicals. It really was a great decision for me to get that first season and I know that I was always just so happy that I was seeing anything. There were some shows I liked more than others, but every show was extra magical because I was seeing shows again after not seeing musicals for so long.
And I did enjoy “Kinky Boots” just as much this time as I did 4 years ago. It’s such a fun show and the songs are awesome. I loved this show for so many reasons the first time and I think I loved it for many of those reasons again this time. We were watching the show from the balcony instead of our usual orchestra seats, but being further away from the stage didn’t take away from the show. While I like being able to see the faces clearly of the actors, it’s fun seeing the stage in full when you are further back too.
Out of the 4 of us in our group, 2 of us had seen the show before (my friend Dani was the one who got me in the first time I had season tickets so she saw it then). But the other 2 hadn’t seen the show and I was excited to see their reactions. And I think they loved it just as much as I did. It really is a great show and I think the performers were so talented.
But we all also had a few weird reactions to a few moments in the show. After the Me Too movement and becoming more aware of harassment that I might have brushed off in the past, we all noticed moments in the show that just didn’t sit right with us. I know that shows cannot change with the times and that the writers didn’t mean anything negative or sexist from it, but it was interesting to see how I didn’t notice those moments before. I have become more and more aware of how I have thought things were wrong but normal and now looking back I’ve realized they were not normal and not acceptable. And yes, there is a part of the show that has to be homophobic as lesson to the other characters and that was fine. But there were just little things that I think we all picked up on that just made us think a bit more.
I know that there are so many musicals that I have looked back on and realized that I didn’t think much about a line or an action and now I realize that it is something that I wouldn’t consider acceptable in real life. This is just a sign of how times have changed and not a reflection of what things should be like now. I’m curious to see if I have that feeling about the next few repeat shows I have this season. I have a feeling that I will because there are things I have said out loud when describing the show that made me stop and try to explain why it was that way.
Even with those few moments that made me think or took me by surprise that I didn’t think about it last time, it was still an awesome night out. It was fun that we happened to be there on the opening night of the show for LA (our original tickets were on Oscar Sunday and we didn’t want to be stuck in all the street closures). And sitting up in the balcony was also really fun since that’s not something we do that often. We will have a few more shows in the balcony this season because we have changed the dates of our tickets a few times as well as being seated up there for the add-on shows we did. We are still debating about renewing for next season, but now we are also considering seeing if we can move our tickets to the balcony if we do renew. We’ve had our seats on the side of the orchestra for so long and it might be a fun change to be somewhere new. I guess I’ll have to see what happens if we do decide to do the next season.
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Finding Neverland (or An Unexpected Musical Experience)
Another New Musical (or An Evening Of Golden Tickets)
Another Musical Season (or Enjoying A Repeat Musical)
An Unexpected Musical (or Seeing A Show At A Different Theater)
A Weird Night In Hollywood (or Another Musical In Our Season)
The Last Show Of The Season (or Ending On A High Note)
