Nov 16 2007
The Pirate Queen
As I type this, I’m listening to the cast recording of The Pirate Queen, which closed this past June after only 85 performances. I must say, I’m a bit stumped.
Judging by the cast recording, this musical sounds like a great musical! I”ve listened to the first 12 tracks so far, and it’s got some great stuff. Definitely similar to Wicked and Les Miserables.
With a little help from Wikipedia, I can follow the plot pretty well, I think, and it seems good. The singing is superb.
The critic’s reviews were pretty negative on The Pirate Queen - they seemed to view it as a Les Miserables wannabe. The viewer reviews were mostly positive, but confused. The viewers disagreed sharply. Most viewers praised the dancing. but other user’s said the show was good except for the choreography.
The only things that the viewers seemed to agree on was that Stephanie J Block did well.
Sadly, I don’t guess I’ll ever get to see The Pirate Queen myself…
I got to see Pirate Queen twice while it was in NYC. Yes, the cast was wonderful and the music was great for listening to, but to watch it was boring. The show was too similar to Les Miz (it had a lot of similar tunes and similar staging and similar settings - for example there is a bar scene where a man holds up some paper and puts it in front of his privates when he’s talking about sex). I wouldn’t have minded this, but the characters just didn’t capture my heart. There was no real character development. The only part that really made me tear up was when her boyfriend sings “I’ll be there.” The music was good enough (but not great - I do have the soundtrack), so the show might have survived if the plot had been better written out so the audience can relate to characters and thrives on seeing what happens next. The music was also very synthesized. I also didn’t like the voice of the man who played the bad guy (I can’t remember the name of the character, but it’s the character she is forced to marry). I did like the dancing very much, but wish there had been more of it.
Hmmm…
If the music was good, the dancing was great, the cast was great, and the overall storyline had the potential, seems that the plot could have been improved with some minor work?
I have not yet seen Les Miserables (!), but some of the similarities were glaringly obvious - like the similar music in Boys’ll Be Boys And Master Of The House..
Yes, the show had the potential, especially with such a wonderful cast, but the difference between it and Les Miz is that it failed to capture the heart of the audience. Les Miz held the audience all the way through. It’s never boring and you never want to stop watching it. It can also make you cry. Pirate Queen was boring for the most part and lacked character development. I didn’t feel attached to the characters, I was bored, and the story didn’t hold me. It lacked emotion in the script, even the the actors protrayed plent of emotion. I saw the closing of the show coming. It didn’t do well in Chicago. I didn’t like it in New York. And the second time I saw it they were giving out surveys. I wish the survey had given room for talking about your opinions, then they might have had a chance to change the show for the better. Some shows just don’t make it. Tarzan didn’t do well. It closed early. I saw that coming as well because, while the music was good, the script was choppy and there weren’t very good transitions. Plus, I hated the way they had Clayton in it. He’s hardly in it at all. The movie is much better.
from the video this musical looks interesting and this song sounds good… it’s a pity it closed so quickly