| rev:text
| - Today, I'm gonna talk about a play, about an insecure girl, and an elusive billionaire, which is all about FUCKING, and gets real DIRTY, and KINKY.
Replace "play" with "book" and that's basically the song this play starts out with.
I for one am no fan of Fifty Shades of Grey. From a moral standpoint, it's disturbing. (See: Storyline basically revolves around a BDSM relationship that isn't entirely consensual). From a writer's standpoint, it's so offensively bad that it may as well be a satire in of itself. (See: "Are you ready for this? he mewled, smirking at me like a mother hamster about to eat her three-legged young"). Due to both moral and literary objection, I downright refuse to see the movie. A live parody of it on the other hand? Sounds right up my alley.
The show takes place in the Windows "Showroom" which is more like a larger than average lounge if you ask me. Thankfully, this meant that there wasn't a bad seat in the house. The unfortunate side is that since it's Bally's b-list theater (or so I assume) I guess they feel it's appropriate to treat it as so. The seating consisted of cheap, fold out seats. The show clocks in at 69 minutes (pun intended) and while on one hand I did wish it was longer, at the same time my behind was so uncomfortable I felt a little bit of relief upon the curtain call.
One really funny thing to note is that right before the show started, the speakers were playing "S&M" by Rihanna. Now I don't know if it was a coincidence before the particular showing I went to or not, but it was really fitting, haha (especially seeing that the video for that song pretty much satirizes BDSM anyway).
I was a bit surprised to find out the show was a musical, but it turned out to really help the humorous atmosphere a lot. Everything from the intermissions involving a book club of bored housewives, to the childlike, campy portrayal of Anastasia's insecure and clueless mousiness, to the utterly ridiculous exaggeration of Jose and Kate, right on down to the mock up of Christian Grey, was superbly funny. Speaking of which, the actor who played Christian Grey really did steal the show. The cold and intimidating Grey that people know from the books? He threw it all completely out of the window, he even poked his stomach out when Ana got to the part in her infamous introductory monologue about him where she describes his physique. And to top off his acting, he also had pipes! Which were really shown off in a musical number right after their first sex scene. Granted, hilarious as it was, that particular part was a bit drawn out for my taste, especially since it essentially ended with five minutes of him pointing at people at the audience satirically talking about the kinky things he going to do to them. But taking in the show as a whole, this is a pretty minor peeve.
The funniest bits in the entire thing had to be Kate's phone call to Ana (which got a little bit, well, interactive if you know what I mean), the mockup of the helicopter scene and the end where Ana says, "This is real life, not a book! If this was a book it would be terrible!" The latter part in particular really spoke to me. 69 minutes well spent I must say.
The Final Verdict
Pros:
It's a satire of Fifty Shades of Grey, which is more than enough to make me fall in love with it honestly.
Tongue-in-cheek quirks littered throughout (most notably the 69 minute running time).
Christian Grey! The actor who played him had my sides hurting for days.
Cons:
Christian's musical solo, while side-splitting, could have been cut down a little bit.
The seating in the venue.
Suggestions:
Either provide more comfortable seats in the theater or move to another one. However, this is more Bally's fault then the show's so I'm not gonna dock them stars for that.
Return Factor: 8/10
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