Hundred Percent

 
In the past couple years, San Diego has been known to produce Broadway Hit’s from The Old Globe (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) or The La Jolla Playhouse (Jersey Boys). The Old Globe alone is responsible for sending over 20 productions to Broadway and the latest broadway-bound show is The First Wives Club.

With the book by Rupert Holmes and the music by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (the trio who wrote music for the Supremes, Marvin Gaye) and under the choreography by Lisa Stevens and of course the direction by Francesca Zambello, you would think it would have BROADWAY written all over it.

For those who don’t know what The First Wives Club is about, the story is simple really. Four college roomates get together in middle age only to find out they share one unlikely fate: their husbands are leaving them. After finding out this news one of the women played by Victoria Matlock decides to end it all without a word to her friends. As all of this is going on this spurs the “First Wives Club” as the remaining 3 women call themselves, they decide to take matters into their own hands and with the help of a gay friend played by Sam Harris.

I’m going to be completely honest here and say that I wasn’t too impressed with the show. Maybe I was expecting too much but the way the everything was laid out it just seemed like another one of those “musical theatre shows”. Of course, there were a lot of aspects of the show I really enjoyed and having a background in theatre design the show was technically pleasing.

While watching the show, not even 15 minutes into the show you couldn’t help to lose your attention to the characters and pay attention to the annoying sound that was coming from overhead. Yes, I understand there will always be technical difficulties during a show so I’m not too annoyed with that. It’s show biz. After that had gotten fixed I was able to pay attention more to the show and everything that was going on.

Like I’ve mentioned before being that I have theatre design experience I tend to notice the little things that a regular patron of the theatre probably wouldn’t notice or even pay attention too. As the show was going on I noticed that purple was one of the main colors used in the lighting and in the actors costumes. After anazlying it I figured it had to do with the designers choices. Being that purple is suppose to be the color of “power” it would make sense for it to show up throughout the show. Also, I really enjoyed the sets. They designer did a surbub job making it verstial for the actors as well as making it pleasing to watch without seeing a handful of people running in and out bringing sets off and on stage.

Now, as for the leading ladies themselves (Sheryl Lee Ralph,Barbara Walsh,Karen Ziemba) . All three ladies did a marvelous job, however to me it seemed as if they were fighting each other to make themselves sound louder and that made it worse. When it came to harmonizing I wasn’t too impressed. I enjoyed all the songs and all the meanings behind them but the singing didn’t really stick out to me. I hate to say this but the person who stuck out to me throughout the night was Sam Harris playing Duane(the gay friend). His character seemed to be the comic relief and it worked and Mr.Harris didnt an excellent job.

I guess you can say this was another enjoyble show and all I can say to the cast and crew and everyone else involved with the show is “break a leg!” to future shows!