Dear Vocalisters, I tried to keep an open mind about the show. There were some things better than the original movie musical version and some worse:
Matthew Broderick: Briefly OK.
Frankly, I don't see the bid deal. He seemed to enjoy himself in parts of the show but his lay-back real life personality was not overcome by his acting ability. He was not convincing as a con man.
His singing is OK but that's about it. He had a tight jaw, lacked energy and commitment. His diction was pretty darned good; better than RPs by a mile. He had to reach for the low notes but the highs seemed fairly easy for him. I think he'd be a tenor if he could work up the energy to sing the rep but that's not going to happen. His dancing was very fluid and good.
Kristin Chenowith: Briefly: Exquisite except for the nasality in the lower 2/3rds of her voice.
She has a better instrument than Shirley Jones had but doesn't know how to use it nearly as well. I judge singers performances by what distracts me from the story they're trying to tell. Her nasality frustrated me, I just wanted to pinch her nose because otherwise she has a very lovely voice.
Aside: I sometimes despair that popular tastes will be spoiled by hip- hop and boy band nasality and an ever-so-slight sharp-side singing that the general population will no longer know what good clear singing sounds like. Those groups use nasality to manufacture a blend. If everything's fuzzied up by nasality, you can't really tell that everybody isn't together on their consonants. They also use the nasality to help them match timbre. This disease is rampant in Babershop singing as well but not in the group that sang for this show (more on that later).
I loved her interpretation. She sang her solos with great sensitivity and style and when she let all the air out of her mouth, the sound was glorious!
Barbershop quartet: Briefly: Fantastic!
They had a fine Bass and the Tenor was much better that the guy from the Buffalo Bills of yore (now THAT guy was nasal <shudder>). Their diction was excellent, so much so in fact that I suspect that they were probably from England and not from the US. All the barbershoppers from around here seem to be nasal and have really muddy diction.
Over all, I thought the show was pretty darned good; almost as good as the original. Regards, Les
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