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Today we saw the final performance of Berkeley Playhouse's first ever original musical, Bridges.
It was a two-threaded story, literally split on the stage, with Selma in 1965 to the left, under the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Oakland in 2008 to the right, under the Golden Gate Bridge. The dual storytelling was quite well done, with the stories reflecting each other, with a few songs being tossed back and forth between the two timeframes, and with one character literally bridging them, as a young girl in Selma and an older grandmother in Oakland. You could really tell that this was one of the strengths of the play because when it faded away in the second Act (to focus on the present-day), the show also faded away a bit.
The other strength of the story was its focus on civil rights, in the '60s and '00s. Obviously we had black civil rights in the '60s. That thread continued into the '00s, but it focused more on gay civil rights (and the homophobic Prop 8 that was briefly the law of the land in California). I had some trepidation about the parallel because I was afraid the black evangelical support for Prop 8 would be ignored to preserve the parallelism, but Bridges hit that straight on with the black priest at the heart of the modern day story supporting 8 until he was inundated with revelations about both his family and his past. That sort of thing could be ham-handed, but the play managed to approach it well.
Overall, I felt that Bridges was heartfelt and Important with a capital I. It was good stuff, and I'd recommend it if that weren't the last performance we saw.
With that said, it was also obvious to me how meticulously polished the average Broadway play that we see is. As an original Berkeley Playhouse production this one had the occasional line that was a bit too on the nose and the occasional song that were too superficial, without enough connection to the heart of the play. But they were forgivable flaws in the overall tapestry of the show.
Bridges had good actors too, as is always the case at Berkeley Playhouse. I was astounded that the girl we saw as Annie four and a half years ago is now twice as tall (and I'm astounded that we've been going to the Playhouse for that long). She was great as were the rest of the main actors.
So, go see it. Or not, I guess.
Oh, and after the play ended and after the standing ovation and after the cast took their bows, they brought out the boyfriends of one of the main actors, and he proposed to her. It was certainly a memorable end to the show.
I guess we should go to the final performances more often. (We often go to the next to last one, because we prefer the midday shows, but this one didn't have an evening showing for some reason.)
It was a two-threaded story, literally split on the stage, with Selma in 1965 to the left, under the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Oakland in 2008 to the right, under the Golden Gate Bridge. The dual storytelling was quite well done, with the stories reflecting each other, with a few songs being tossed back and forth between the two timeframes, and with one character literally bridging them, as a young girl in Selma and an older grandmother in Oakland. You could really tell that this was one of the strengths of the play because when it faded away in the second Act (to focus on the present-day), the show also faded away a bit.
The other strength of the story was its focus on civil rights, in the '60s and '00s. Obviously we had black civil rights in the '60s. That thread continued into the '00s, but it focused more on gay civil rights (and the homophobic Prop 8 that was briefly the law of the land in California). I had some trepidation about the parallel because I was afraid the black evangelical support for Prop 8 would be ignored to preserve the parallelism, but Bridges hit that straight on with the black priest at the heart of the modern day story supporting 8 until he was inundated with revelations about both his family and his past. That sort of thing could be ham-handed, but the play managed to approach it well.
Overall, I felt that Bridges was heartfelt and Important with a capital I. It was good stuff, and I'd recommend it if that weren't the last performance we saw.
With that said, it was also obvious to me how meticulously polished the average Broadway play that we see is. As an original Berkeley Playhouse production this one had the occasional line that was a bit too on the nose and the occasional song that were too superficial, without enough connection to the heart of the play. But they were forgivable flaws in the overall tapestry of the show.
Bridges had good actors too, as is always the case at Berkeley Playhouse. I was astounded that the girl we saw as Annie four and a half years ago is now twice as tall (and I'm astounded that we've been going to the Playhouse for that long). She was great as were the rest of the main actors.
So, go see it. Or not, I guess.
Oh, and after the play ended and after the standing ovation and after the cast took their bows, they brought out the boyfriends of one of the main actors, and he proposed to her. It was certainly a memorable end to the show.
I guess we should go to the final performances more often. (We often go to the next to last one, because we prefer the midday shows, but this one didn't have an evening showing for some reason.)