The New York Musical Theater Festival has some tidbits about an upcoming showing of a musical based on The Last Starfighter. Too bad I’m not really within day-trip distance of New York… this one would tempt me. My nine-year-old son would probably enjoy it, but the trip would be hard on my five-year-old daughter. Oh well… looks like the show has gotten good reviews. (Jason Scott raved geeky raves when he saw it a few years ago.)
From JONATHAN BETUEL’s screenplay for the beloved 1980s sci-fi film comes the cosmically entertaining romantic musical fantasy THE LAST STARFIGHTER. It’s Spring 1983 in a Sierra Nevada trailer park. High school senior Alex Rogan’s hardworking, unrewarded life takes an unexpected turn when he breaks a video game record and is spirited away by the game’s inventor, the alien huckster Centauri, to fight for the Star League in a faraway galaxy. Centauri leaves behind Beta, a body double droid of Alex, to cover Alex’s absence with his mother, brother and beloved girlfriend Maggie while Alex is off fighting the evil Zur and the Ko-dan Armada. Beta’s comic mishaps on Earth with Maggie and the neighbors in the trailer park, and shape-shifting alien assassins in pursuit of Alex on his home turf, alternate with Alex’s heroic starfighter achievements. Alex must reach inside himself to discover his true potential – the universe and his life depend on it!
She’d love that.
Friday I took the kids to see the Stage Right production of Beauty and the Beast, but my daughter was playing on the seats during intermission and slipped and bloodied her lip, so as the second act started I was in the lobby icing her mouth. Then the fire alarm went off (the rumor I heard was too much stage smoke), and I had to charge into the theater against the flow of people in order to retrieve my son. Once people got outside, a huge number of them just stopped on the sidewalk, right in front of the theater, which of course slowed down everyone behind them.
Anyway, we went home and I read three chapters of Gregor the Overlander and put them to bed. Although the sound was awful where we were in the 2nd or 3rd row of the balcony, the show was quite well done. The young performers who were playing the wolf pack really got into it — my son was impressed by a stunt in which the beast flung one of the wolves across the stage. “Be Our Guest” was a bit too crowded for the stage (they could barely fit all the performers on at once), so I was actually more impressed by the complex, mug-clinking dance moves they provided for “Gaston.”
And you can take your daughter, if she’s into Ariel, to see The Little Mermaid the Musical.