I would not see it with a fox, I would not watch it in a box, I would not pay to see it here, I would not pay to see it there. I do not like the Grinch Musical, it's a grand rip off and full of bull!
Well, there's scarcely reason to write any more, you've gotten my negativum criticum of the Grinchum. I was bored, it had nothing new to add to the original wonderful story by Dr. Seuss, and both my daughter and I craned restlessly through the whole thing because a woman with a big scarf on her head moved over right in front of us as soon as the house lights went down.
The best part was when my daughter accidently tipped my empty water bottle over during a quiet part and it went rattling down the narrow stairway of the second balcony of the Wang Performance Center, causing an interesting John Cageian spontaneous counterpoint to the arrogant Grinch shaking his booty on the stage below.
Okay, the costumes were fun, the set based on the book illustrations and very two dimensional black and white in character. I thought the Grinch's fingers were way too long and flaccid, the gimmick of having the story told throught the eyes of Max the dog now turned old and grizzled ineffectual, and most of it just hollow entertainment.
The two songs from the original cartoon were exploited to the max, no pun intended. You know, that Dahoo Doray song as well as the "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." I was infinitely relieved that NOTHING from the obnoxious too long film version with Jim Carrey was incorporated into the show. But the book and the cartoon are both short, simple things. Stretching it out to a 78 minute musical with no intermission accomplished exactly what seems to have been the underlying purpose of the whole thing: Make money off of the holiday theatregoers, offer them something different from the Nutcracker, yet a show that the whole family can enjoy.
This phenomenon of taking great books and cartoons and stories and reworking them for the upteenth time into a new movie or show saddens me. People actually pay money and go to these things and LIKE them. Producers and writers and composers actually agree to take old ideas, brush them off a bit, and resubmit them to a nondiscriminating public. Everything old is...old again!
But it did look like they did have some fun overpriced stuff at the concessions stand. I have now decided to definitely boycott the animated film "Horton Hears a Who" that should be coming out in DVD any day now. Jim Carrey again.
Well, time to go eat some green eggs and ham.
