Theatre Review: Children of Eden

[da]

We just came back from seeing the musical Children of Eden put on by the Grebel Student Council.

I love the show; it was composed by Stephen Schwartz (who also did Wicked). It's loosely based on Genesis, with nuance and colour added to form a touching story of people disappointing their parents, falling in love with the wrong kind of people, doubting their roles in life, and so on. I think it makes wonderful overlays on top of those dusty allegories from that book.

We saw this when we lived in Boston, in an excellent production at Emerson College. And I've listened to the soundtrack a million times. This production, unfortunately, had a few problems. Biggest was tuning. I'm somewhat pitch-deaf and I was wincing a bit. There were some good moments, and with my mind's ear, I was also listening to the soundtrack version to make the harmonies work better.

I can't decide whether to recommend seeing this production; but if you like these songs, eh, give it a shot (also showing tomorrow and Saturday). :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GAJ7Gy8Els - Ain't it Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEgm0pBweVs - Title Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKS_jy5zVV4 - Generations

Comments

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

Totally irrelevant -- but do you mean Emerson College? (As far as I can tell there's no Emery College in Boston, and most of the google hits for that name are misspellings of Emory College, the undergraduate arm of Emory University, in Atlanta.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did, thanks. Serves me right for adding that detail just before going to bed!

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

The Community Players did Children of Eden back in...hm, I think it was their 2004 show. It was fabulous.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool.

For whatever reason, TCP hasn't been on my radar at all until well after 2006's Joseph (which I probably would've gone to see!) A friend's wife was in Titanic, which is how I heard of them (rather than seeing any ads, oddly enough).

Hm. They're doing Carousel this May- I put it in my calendar... (*goes off to check schedule for Ernest while I'm thinking of it*)

[quingawaga.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of weird, they do a lot of advertising in New Hamburg, but not a lot of it gets to KW, except when CKCO news does their piece on it during production week. But their shows are always awesome. I haven't worked with them since 2005, though.