Aladdin

God this show was terrible, and I got my ticket for FREE! I wish I could get the time back. Let me explain:

My friend Diane and I went to the lottery today to try to win. Our dumb luck; we never win anything. The guys behind us were lucky enough to win. I overheard one of the them tell us "We already have tickets in the balcony..." As soon as the names were all called and we were ticketless, I turned to him and said "were you planning on selling the tickets?" to which he replied "we were going to give them to you." There was no catch. They honestly wanted to give them to us. We were overjoyed. Living in NYC so long does make you bitter and you begin to think that  no one is nice anymore. WRONG! (He's from San Antonio, so maybe that explains it) The seats were in the balcony but we didn't care. I figured that fly space would be used heavily in this show so it was going to be big. 

The acting was terrible. There's no other way around it. Jasmine's lines sounded like lines and like she was repeating something she did every day. Aladdin was ok, but his role was overall cheesy. Genie was so over the top. It was very apparent that the writers did not care about any role except Genie and wouldn't you know, it was the only damned thing about the show that was nominated for anything. Iago was turned into a short, scary sounding, annoying Oompa Loompa. We were excited to see Jonathan Freeman (Original Jafar in the movie) play Jafar but wouldn't you know, he was out tonight! Just our luck! As for Abu, he was butchered into 3 smaller roles and they were all Aladdin's friends. They all had 2 dimensional personalities; the boss when Aladdin wasn't around, the Nebbish lover, and the fat one obsessed with food. BORING BORING SNORE!

 Since it's a disney show, they used all the disney tricks. Kick line, tap dancing when unnecessary, and confetti guns at the end of a lackluster song. It was very sad that a show all about magic had virtually none in it. The best part of the whole show was the orchestra. They sounded flawless, though some of the arrangements sounded too "Broadway" and not enough "Aladdin".

 I did appreciate the people who imagined up some of the props. For the most part, nothing really excited me. I think even 10 year old Stina wouldn't be impressed. The tapping was some of the worst tapping I've ever seen on Broadway. There's never a reason to have 10 maxi fords in one number. Diane commented that the regular choreography was also sloppy and just plain bad. One of the chorus girls was pregnant. We could tell from the balcony! The flying carpet technology was neat because I honestly couldn't figure it out. I'm guessing it was a hovercraft that was directed from offstage. I didn't see any wires or arms. Right before they sang "A Whole New World" Aladdin jumped on the carpet and then broke the 4th wall to tell the audience that they were experiencing "technical difficulties", then took a 3 minute break, and when they came back Jasmine asked "Is it safe?" and some random audience member made the biggest laugh, which made the actors break character in laughter.

We sat 3rd row of the balcony and we were far away but we didn't care. Show was not good.