I finally got to go see Summer: The
Donna Summer musical which started previews on Broadway March 28 and
which officially opens April 23. Now keep in mind, what I saw was a
preview show, so there may be some changes before the official opening. And
I would like to invite everyone who goes to the show to please let me know
what (if any) changes you see so we can keep track of them for posterity.
:-) I would also like to explain exactly how I am going to write this
report. I know there are quite a few of you out there who have tickets to
the show (or who will be getting them) and would like to be surprised when
they get to the theater. I also know there are many people out there who
can't just drop everything to come to NY and who would like every detail
they can get. I think I can accommodate both groups of fans. :-)
This page will be a basically spoiler-free run down of my night at the show.
At the end of it, I will give you a link to another page that will have
spoilers galore. It will be up to you if or when you want to click that
link. Fair enough? :-)
Ok ! Here we go! First of all, I admit to being a little nervous about
hearing someone else singing Donna's songs, but it was OK. Wait, I'm
getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning which was walking from
Penn Station to the theater. I was with a couple of friends and we walked up
up 7th Ave. When we made the turn on to 46th (where the theater lives)
we were greeted by that nice big marquee with Donna's name and face that I
know many of you have already seen online. Seeing it in person is so
much more impressive that seeing it in photos. It made everything so
real! I will say that they do have a little more work to do on the outside
of the building though, The vast majority of it was redecorated for Summer,
but if you looked up higher you can still see some remnants from the last
show, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. I'll have to look again when I go
back and see if they fix that. Aside from the marquee, they have painted
some of the solid doors (delivery entrances, etc) with pictures of Donna and
they make great places for fans to stand and take pictures of
themselves or their friends... not that I know anyone who would do such a
thing.... (You can't see it but I have just put on my most innocent
expression. LOL) They also play Donna's music outside so you can
boogie a little while you wait to be let into the theater. While waiting to
get in, we were delighted to see that some of the taxi's driving by had ads
for Summer on their roofs. I imagine as things get rolling, we will
see ads on buses and at the train stations.
I do want to take a second here to offer a warning for people with mobility
issues. Once you get inside the theater, you have to go upstairs to
wait in the lounge until the main theater opens. And then you will take more
stairs (up for the mezzanine or down for the orchestra) to get to your seat.
There are no escalators and I didn't notice elevators, so if stairs are a
problem for you, CALL the theater first and see how you can be accommodated.
Moving on... like I said, once inside they send you to the lounge where you
can buy merchandise or hit the bar. As I write this, I haven't posted
any pictures on the site yet. By the time you read this, I may have
the pictures posted. (My plan is to get this all written first, post it,
then come back and add pics as I can. I have pics for merchandise, the
Playbill pages, etc - and if you are on Facebook you probably saw them there
already.) But let me give you a quick rundown of what was available -
several different shirts for $30-$35, a jacket for $100, a magnet , a
keychain and a shot glass for $10 each, a compact for $15 and a hat for $20.
Before you ask... some or all of this stuff may become available on
Playbill.com at some point. I ignored the bar at first because I am not
a drinker. But then I heard an order for a "MacArthur Park-a-rita".
Well of course as soon as I heard that, I had to get a peek at the drink
menu. Also available were a "She Works Hard For Her Vodka", a "Love To Love
You Bombay", a "Disco Daiquiri", a "Summer Sangria", and a "Disco Inferno."
Don't ask me any of the ingredients - I can't read them in the snapshot I
took. LOL
This is very important to know. The musical runs for about an hour and 45
minutes and there is NO INTERMISSION. So this is the time to use the
restrooms and buy your drinks. (Drinks can be brought to your seat with
you.) Once you are seated, you won't want to miss a minute. (Plus who wants
to climb all those stairs again. LOL)
OK, on to the show. As you know by now, Summer is a musical version of
Donna's life story. (Oops... was that a spoiler? LOL) The
idea is that it's Donna's last concert and it is an occasion for her to look
back on her life. Now I have to make it clear - it's not that Donna knows it
is definitely her last show. Of course we, the audience know that.
What she says is that people say that you should perform every show as if it
is your last because one day, it will be. So if this could be the last
show, then it should be the show of a lifetime and that's how we ease into
the biographical nature of what we are about to see.
Over the course of the evening, Donna is played by three actresses -
LaChanze as the mature "Diva Donna", Ariana DeBose as "Disco Donna" which
covers Donna's late teens up to about the time Donna's kids start going off
to college (more or less), and then Storm Lever as "Duckling Donna"
which is Donna as a young girl. The rest of the cast is a mostly female
ensemble. There are a few men, but quite a few male roles are played by
women. This is explained by Diva Donna when she says that when she was
growing up, women's roles were changing drastically, so they might as well
take it to the next level here.
I should say something about the set too. It's a very simple setup.
Its a big white open space with lots of lights overhead. They use LED
screens for the backdrop - sometimes one huge one with one particular image
on it. The church scenes spring to mind where the screen looks like
the stained glass window of a church. Other times they use 3 or 4 smaller
screens that often show iconic pictures of Donna. There are 3 platforms near
the front of the stage. They are used to elevate one or more of the Donnas
in some numbers and they are also used for some entrances or exits. A Donna
may leave by being lowered below the stage, or she may enter by being raised
up from below stage. And then of course they add set pieces where needed -
some living room furniture when Donna is at home, some desks when she's in
an office, a mixboard and mic when she's in the studio - you get the idea.
Oh and one interesting things I liked with the costuming is that usually all
3 Donna's were dressed similarly when they were together. (And yes they are
together onstage fairly often.) All 3 would be in blue but Diva
Donna's outfit might be a more mature pantsuit, while Disco Donna was in a
glittering gown and Duckling Donna would be in a dress suitable for a young
girl.
Now this not your typical bio where you start with something like "I was
born in the log cabin I built with my own hands.... blah blah blah." What
this is, is Diva Donna looking back at her life as a series of "fragments"
to use her words. You see, she never sees the whole picture she just sees
the fragments. Diva Donna handles most of the exposition. She might
say something like "who would have known what one song could do" and then
you'd see Disco Donna re-enacting the recording of Love To Love You. (I
don't consider that a spoiler because I think everybody knows that Love To
Love You would have to be in the show since it was Donna's first big hit.)
Now because we are looking at fragments of Donna's life, things are not
necessarily in chronological order. You might start seeing one thing and
then you might be told that that thing could only have happened because of
something else that happened before. It sounds confusing the way I'm writing
this because I'm trying to keep things on the vague side here. It will make
more sense on the page where I share spoilers - I promise!
Also, all the fragments we are shown are accompanied by one of Donna's
songs. Sometimes the song choice is obvious - like singing Love To Love You
in the scene where they are recording that song. Sometimes the song choice
is not so obvious AND many times the song used was not actually written at
the time the particular event happened. For instance, Duckling Donna
gets to sing some songs that wouldn't even be written until Donna was a
grown woman. It's about the song supporting the story told as opposed
to being a chronological discography. This leads to some very creative
song choices and there is one song in particular that I will never hear the
same way again. It's meaning has been forever changed for me. But....
I am heading to the land of spoilers here, so I better back off.
So the show starts with the center platform rising and it has a turntable on
it with a Casablanca LP spinning on it. (Who among us couldn't recognize
THAT label from a hundred miles away? LOL) The needle drops and
you hear the music for The Queen Is Back. (Yes, I know that song wasn't on
Casablanca but I totally understand why they would use a Casablanca LP
anyway.) The ensemble cones out singing, dancing and then they are
joined by Diva Donna. I should stop and explain that I went into
this show a little nervous about hearing someone else sing Donna's songs.
And with the first bar or two my brain said, "THAT'S NOT DONNA'S VOICE!" But
then I told that part of my brain to shut up and give it a chance. LOL
And you know what - it was OK. It was better than OK actually. Much better.
All 3 Donna's are talented singers and each captured the essence of their
particular Donna. Seriously, by the end of the show, I could have gone up to
LaChanze (if I had the chance) and said "I know you're not the real Donna,
but can I hug you anyway?"
So where were we? Yes, Diva Donna comes out singing The Queen Is Back and at
this point it's just a concert. (This is why I'm not considering this
a spoiler - no plot has happened yet.) The songs ends and Diva Donna
addresses the audience just the same way the real Donna would talk to an
audience at a concert. And actually, in moments like this, the
audience becomes a character in the show as well because let's face it - we
were all screaming and yelling like it was a real concert. :-)
(On a side note - I heard from a guy who is friends with someone in the
production. His friend said the cast was blown away by the audience
response. I'm thinking they were unaware of the boisterous reputation
Donna fans have! LOL) This is where Diva Donna tells us that a
performer should play each show like it's their last. There is also a
wig joke thrown in there - for all you wig fans. Oh and yes, she did
invite us to sing and dance if we want to. She didn't use the real Donna's
exact words, but it was close enough!
Then we move on to I Feel Love. It's still a concert at this point, but we
are gradually moving into it being something more because Diva Donna uses
the song to explain the magical world of dance music. She said that people
didn't think the synthesizer was real music because it was too cold and
robotic. "Well screw them", she said. "This is the future! And our
instrument wasn't just the synthesizer, it was the whole recording studio."
When the song ends, that's when Diva Donna talks about growing up when
women's roles were changing and then that's when we got to meet the other
two Donnas.
From here, I won't mention any more songs (well except Last Dance, because
that's not going to be a spoiler either. You have to have already
figured out it would close the show, right? LOL) I will say that there
is a nice selection of hits and deep cuts. And as far as Donna's life story
goes - the theme is that everything has a price. There is a quote in
there that says, "To whom much is given, much is required." Thus the story
tends to focus more on Donna's personal life and the effects of her
professional life on her as a person. Professional accomplishments are
mentioned, sometimes in passing, sometimes more substantially if the
accomplishment illustrates some point that's trying to be made. (This is
hard to explain without using examples! LOL)
Donna's life is covered from her days as a little girl singing in the family
living room, all the way up to her final illness. There are moments
where you will want to dance and sing, moments where you will laugh, moments
that might surprise you, and of course there are moments where you will cry
- especially if you are a diehard fan who still misses the real Donna.
But they do end on a high note. After all the mountains and valleys of
Donna's life, they take you out with a rousing rendition of Last Dance what
will get you on your feet and cheering!
I was absolutely thrilled with the show and am already making plans to go
back again. And I am really really hoping that they can get a cast
album out soon. I would enjoy that, and I think that those of you who can's
get to Broadway will be interested in hearing how the songs are used.
OK. I am going to upload this now and then start working on the
spoiler-filled show report.
On to Part 2 - but ONLY if you can deal with
spoilers! |