Big Fun Yesterday.
San Francisco is becoming the place for muscials to do their pre-Broadway opening night runs – tuning the show, adding and deleting songs, all the things that need to be done before a live audience to get things right. We first took advantage of this when Wicked made it’s run there May of 2004 – getting to hear songs that never made it to broadway and see Robert Morse in his only run as the Wizard of Oz (got replaced by Joel Gray for the NY run).
Anyway, I pounced on tickets for Lestat, the musical adaptation of Anne Rice’s vampire stories, and the San Jose Bretschneiders were halfway back in orchestra center last night. This was only the third actual presentation of the show and there were some rough points. They’ve got a bit of work to do before they leave SF. Still we had a great time. If you want to learn more: click here.
Anyway, we got to SF really early and spent some time walking around Union Square in the holiday decorations. Macys had a snow machine going and Debbie went in and bought some really funky sneakers. Dinner at Max’s on Geary and then off to the show.
The music for Lestat is done by Elton John, who’s already earned his chops on successes like Lion King and Aida, but for the first time in collaboration wht Bernie Taupin. While I think the music could have been a bit more biting (lame pun unintended but unexcised) we did enjoy the evening.