Hunchback of Notre Dame, November 2019

This should have been posted back in November 2019, but I wasn't posting much in that time period, for whatever reason. Which isn't a knock on this show.

I would have to say that I didn't know much about The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a Broadway show, but I have come to love it as much as just about any other show. Great music, good staging, and an impactful story.

Highlights from the Thursday show and cast:

• Feast of Fools at 31:05
• Rest and Recreation at 34:45, including my Grace getting busted for pickpocketing at 36:00
• God Help the Outcasts, the prettiest song in the show, at 50:25
• Hellfire. Great costumes and effects, at 1:12:00
• Esmerelda and Act I Finale, at 1:16:00 and 1:21:00
• Entr'acte into Act II at 1:24:50
• Esmerelda in Flames at 2:00:00
• Death of Esmerelda at 2:04:50
• Frollo Falls at 2:06:30
• Quasimodo's Lament and Finale at 2:09:00
• Curtain Calls at 2:14:00

The Friday show and cast was equally good, and I would be remiss if I didn't highlight one of my favorite moments of any GVPAA show in the entire time we have been involved and watching them (God Help the Outcasts)...

• Alicia's "God Help the Outcasts" at 49:30.
• Top of the World at 55:45

Grace was a featured dancer and a gypsy in this show. It had a lot of what she likes: dancing, ensemble singing, tumbling, and all that.

Gypsies backstage

Amp's costume team keeps raising the bar, as do the set folks, special effects, makeup, and every other aspect of the show.

Gina, Grace and Julia

Gypsy Grace.

Gypsy Grace and Amp

Frollo in the costume that I dubbed "Darth Frollo". Super cool. I want one to wear around the house. So, apparently, do a bunch of others...

Amp with Nick as "Darth Frollo"

A prosthetics designer helped with some of the gargoyles and "living statues". Saint Aphrodisius was amazing.

Amp with Saint Aphrodisius

Both Esmereldas were amazing. Alicia has the voice of an angel...

Amp with Alicia as "Ghost Esmerelda"

Anyway, enough gushing. I love this show, underrated as it is. I would rank it up there with Les Miserables back in 2014 as my favorite GVPAA show of all time... And that's saying a lot.

Seussical the Musical

Garnet Valley High School Performing Arts Association's spring musical was Seussical the Musical. It ran for four shows from March 5 to March 7. In retrospect, we were lucky to get the show in before the school district shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic on March 13. Many other high schools didn't get their performances in before everything went weird...

Grace was "Thing 1", part of the group of 6 Things that were on stage pretty much anytime the Cat in the Hat was on stage. In other words, most of the show.

Six Things (Thing 1 is mine)

She got to act, goof around, do tumbling runs, and dance. Lots and lots of dancing. In other words, pretty much the perfect show for her.

Cat and Things Chorus Line

Amp is in her seventh (!) year of working on costumes, and this is the third year that she is head of Costumes, and a key member of the core creative team. My pride in watching these shows is hard to describe. So much of the visual impact is because of the work of Amp and her excellent team, and I get to watch my daughter perform. First Julia for 7 shows, and now Grace in her fourth show (High School Musical, Annie, Hunchback of Notre Dame and now this).

Amp's Team's Costumes in all their Glory!

Our GVPAA director has done a great job of creating a community and a supportive atmosphere.

Grace and Horton the Elephant

The kids work ridiculous hours, but (for the most part) love every minute of it.

Grace and Maisey le Bird

The quality of the result shows.

Grace and the Cat in the Hat

And one of the great things about the program is that it is very inclusive, allows everyone to have their moment in the spotlight, but at the same time commands a commitment to excellence. They work hard.

Drama Club Sophomores

Grace's sophomore class is strong. Good actors, good singers and good dancers. Her friend group in drama club, coupled with her friend group in band and chorus, spans all grades, which is a nice thing.

Grace and Admirer

The GVPAA now does a late spring show (the third of the year), rehearsing after the spring musical ends (Seussical), and performing their shows in late May or early June. These shows include alumni, current students, and other community members. This year it was supposed to be The Sound of Music. Sadly, that isn't going to happen...

Grace with Lulu and Addie

Looking forward to next year, there will be The Addams Family in the fall and Newsies in the spring. Let's hope that can actually happen.

I'm already curious as to what the Director will pick for Grace's senior year. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Hamilton

Julia's 21st birthday present was her favorite thing - tickets to see a Broadway show. We were able to get 4 tickets for the whole family to see Hamilton at the Forrest Theater in Philadelphia. This is something that we have all been wanting to do for a long time, but had been unable to get tickets in the ongoing ticket lottery for Broadway.

The tickets we got were fantastic (4th row of the balcony, right in the center), and the Forrest Theater is a wonderful old theater in which to see a show.

Hamilton

I won't bother with a lengthy review of the show, as they can be found all over, but I will simply say that it was terrific in every regard. The kids have been playing this soundtrack to death in the car since it came out and got popular, but actually seeing it onstage with the sets and choreography was obviously a whole different experience. Our cast for this touring company was fantastic, especially Edred Utomi as Hamilton, Paul Oakley Stovall as George Washington and Peter Matthew Smith as King George. Bryson Bruce as both Lafayette and Jefferson was also terrific. There really wasn't a weak link in the cast, and we only had one understudy (Tre Frazier as Aaron Burr); he was solid.

Hamilton - Forrest Theater stage

Julia was thrilled (as were all of us). Highly recommended for anyone who likes musical theater (or pop culture phenomena for that matter...).

High School Musical

It's a bittersweet day for me. Garnet Valley's fall musical wrapped today after four shows, including a postponed Thursday night opening performance because of snow and ice that became a Sunday matinee. I watched 3 of the 4 shows, which is about the usual.

Julia did 9 shows, beginning with Les Miserables in the spring of 2014, but her run has ended. Amp has been heavily involved in costumes since the fall of 2014, but this was her first show as the official Head of Costumes, and everything on stage was designed/approved by her. I think it looks great.

This is also Grace's first musical, as she is now in 9th grade. Because of her gymnastics background, she has a role as a cheerleader and featured dancer, and is a featured tumbler.

Grace and gymnastics teammates

The number of hours that go into these shows is huge, but the end result reflects the effort. Before seeing this video, Grace told me that the feedback that they were consistently given was that they weren't doing well enough, and that they had a lot of work to do. This was a consistent theme right up until the end. As I tried to explain to her (after the fact), this was simply the director and all of the staff trying to push them to be the best they can be. Garnet Valley Performing Arts has a longstanding tradition of excellence, and this batch of kids was being pushed to hold up to that standard. Then Grace watched the following linked video with me. Her reaction was "wow, we were pretty good". Yes dear, you were pretty good. Pretty darn good. Because a dedicated group of people pushed you to be the best you could be...

Music for the show is provided by a live band of students and faculty, consisting of drums, guitar, bass and a pair of keyboards.

Lights and effects are provided by another group of dedicated students.

It takes a village, and many of the girls basketball team are...the Garnet Valley girls basketball team.

The Friday night show of the "Gold" cast has been posted on YouTube (linked here), and while the Gold cast is generally thought of as the underclassmen cast, I think the performance is pretty amazing. Go onto YouTube and search "high school musical high school" for comparison. Highlights of this show, with a bias toward scenes my Grace is in, are:

• 15:40 - the cut scene into Wildcat Cheer. At 15:50, the quadruple backflip cheerleader is Grace. This was supposed to be a double or triple, but Grace said "it was opening night and I was feeling it".
• 56:00 - The Audition scene.
• 59:00 - The lead-in to "Stick to the Status Quo", the first act finale (which starts at 1:00:20). Grace has a featured bit at 1:04:05 (the back walkover in the middle).
• 1:16:00 - Grace in Wildcat Cheer reprise.
• 1:39:30 - We're All in This Together.
• 1:42:45- Bop to the Top
• 1:46:00 - Final auditions lead-in.
• 1:49:40 - Breaking Free.
• 1:54:00 - The End.
• 1:56:00 - Finale. We're All In This Together. Grace has another short left-to-right tumbling run at ~1:56:55... After that, she is the third cheerleader from the right, just behind the Ryan Evans character (behind and to the right of him)...
• 1:59:30 - Curtain Call. Look at all the great costumes!
• 2:02:00 - The grand finale.

I can't wait to see the postings of the Garnet (upperclassmen) cast. [edit - GVHSPAA has posted all of the other shows...]

As a postscript, I would note that our production of HSM was highly regarded enough that another large local high school is taking our sets and borrowing a lot of our costumes for a production that they will be staging in the spring of 2019. So be on the lookout for Sharpay and Ryan Evans' costumes, all the girls and boys basketball teams, and the cheerleaders. I guess we will go watch that one. And I guess that means Amp did pretty good, since she is now apparently costuming other school districts as well as our own...

Great job everyone!

Evita, GVHS 2018

GVHS's spring musical was Evita. It was strange, as this is the first one in 4 years that Julia has not been involved in. Amp is still doing the costumes, and if anything is becoming more involved and not less. This is the risk of being a great volunteer I guess...

I am familiar with the show, as we have a couple of different CD versions of it, as well as there having been the Madonna/Antonio Banderas movie version. I would not hesitate to say that it is not one of my favorites. And it was also an interesting choice for the school production, as it is basically a one-role star turn, with a couple of other major (minor?) roles.

Curtain Call

As always, the production was fabulous, and I liked it more than I expected to. We had some very talented seniors in most of the lead roles, and they all did a wonderful job.

As far as the costuming goes, it isn't the best show in terms of opportunity to do great things, but everybody looked exactly as they should, so it was a great success in that regard.

The set was especially well done, with a semi-permanent two level stage with lots of movement and lighting variants.

Show after show, I continue to be amazed by the quality of the productions that the program is able to produce.

Postscript: It was Amp's intention to stop doing costumes when Julia was done with the shows; the two of them riding off into the sunset together... That hasn't happened. She did Evita just now, and has been talked into taking the job of Head of Costumes (as an actual sub-contracted school district employee - including the extensive required background checks, criminal history, FBI fingerprinting etc). She has accepted, and signed on for two years. At least. So instead of a volunteer riding off into the sunset, she's now a sub-contractor helping to run things. Funny the turns life takes.

Grace has expressed some interest in the Drama Club, and for her freshman year has picked an Acting elective taught by the English teacher that runs the Drama Club. Personally, I think she's the Drama Club producer/director who also teaches English rather than vice-versa. Anyway, now Grace might be doing the shows in her first year in high school. And Amp's committed for the near term. So now we're doing High School Musical in the fall and Annie in the spring... Plus the upper class late spring production that hasn't been named yet. Annie is a good classic show, and High School Musical should be a blast. I'm looking forward to it.

Spongebob the Musical

And so, as on many occasions before, Julia's big Christmas present was tickets to see a Broadway show. In this case, Spongebob the Musical.

When we bought the tickets, the show had been shown in previews off Broadway, but hadn't opened yet. Preliminary reviews were good. So tickets in the 12th row were bought and off we went...

Waiting for the Show to Begin

The show was in the Palace Theater, right on Times Square, and when Amp and I were looking at this, we realized that this was the same theater in which we had seen An American in Paris back in the fall of 2015, on an anniversary trip. Our experience with this older theater was that being higher up was like looking down an elevator shaft at the stage. So we used Citibank access codes to buy seats in the 12th row of the floor level. Which turned out to be great seats...

The Band Begins to Play

The show itself was entertaining, with some catchy songs, good performances, and a nice staging. Having at least some familiarity with the world of Spongebob from the cartoon series, it was easy to follow along with the characters and what was going on, in terms of tying things back to the show. If you weren't familiar with the cartoon series, it might have been less fun to watch.

Spongebob!!!

A very obviously kid-oriented show, but we all like it quite a bit. I thought it was worth the money and the day in New York. Julia loved it. Grace liked it. The Broadway community apparently liked it as well, as it would subsequently be nominated for 12 Tony awards, winning only 1. Ethan Slater as Spongebob was especially good, and I thought the casting overall was very good.

Ellen's Stardust Diner

After the show we intended to get back in the car and head out, but as we were leaving the theater, we were all hungry. Grace had not been to Ellen's Stardust Diner previously (the rest of us had), so we decided to wait in the not-overly-long line and have an early dinner before heading home. Grace thought the singing waitstaff was silly and fun, which about sums it up.

Another good Broadway gift for Julia...

Postscript: It was announced on July 8 that the show would close on September 16, after a run of less than a year. Low box office grosses compared to comparable shows are generally believed to be the reason, but the official reason given by the production team was that the Nederlander organization is closing the Palace Theater for renovations, leaving the show homeless. Both, I'm sure, are true. I'm glad we saw it when we did. It was well worth it.