Big Fish Chicago previews

[Younger Brother]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 9:35am

Is anybody going to the first preview of Big Fish in Chicago tomorrow night? There are some pictures of the set model here which look really interesting
here

Posted: 4/1/13 at 6:56pm

I AM

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 7:05pm

That set doesn't look that interesting.

[loudshroom]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 11:55pm

Yep. Row A, first performance tomorrow. Will report afterward.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 12:38am

Not liking that set at all... Hopefully it looks different in person!

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 3:04pm

The movie is on ABC Family tonight! Lol.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 5:53pm

I don't know if those are actually set renderings or not, but I really like them. Might see the show this weekend.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 6:11pm

Wow, two thousand views ... and nobody posting has seen the show yet.

EDIT: Yeah, okay, including me.

Updated On: 4/2/13 at 06:11 PM

[willep]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 6:19pm

Well, I mean, it hasn't even started performances yet...

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 6:21pm

Two thousand views for ...


nothing.

[ggersten]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 7:19pm

Looks like we may be seeing it on Friday night.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 9:41pm

The curtain

[IMG]

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/2/13 at 11:05pm

Sorry to be such a downer, but that just looks so uninspiring. But who knows. Could be amazing.

[ohjustjake]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 12:01am

Found another picture similar to bwayphreak - I searched both twitter and instagram but wasn't able to find anyone talking about the show?

[Phantom4ever]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 12:50am

Just got home from the first preview of Big Fish.

I have never even heard of the movie before my aunt got us tickets for this last night, so I really went into this show without knowing what to expect.

I thought the show lacked the right tone....I couldn't tell if they were going for serious, bittersweet, silly......it seemed to be all over the place in terms of tone.

Norbert seemed miscast. I'm no fan of Matthew Broderick, but I think he would have been so much funnier with the material. And I sat in the 4th row but I couldn't hear a lot of what he said.

Kate Baldwin was a dream. Perfect casting and I enjoyed her performance.

It is worthing noting though that many people around me were crying during certain parts of the show (don't want to give anything away) I fought the urge to turn around and roll my eyes at them (sorry!)

There was some really cool stage tricks, and some that were just.....uninspired? For example, the Dance of the Elephant Butts. It just didn't seem to fit, nothing much was done with it. Same with Carl the Giant. When he and Norbert first started to dance a bit and the music picked up, I thought wow they are going to do some insane stilt-dancing. But no. It was just those few brief steps.

The first few scenes of the show went by too slowly and the story wasn't grabbing me. When the son (forgot the character's name) got grumpy with his dad for giving a speech at his wedding, he came off to me like a spoiled brat. Your biggest problem is that your dad talks too much and tells embellished stories/tall tales? Is your dad an alcoholic who abuses family members? Does he use racial/homophobic/anti-Semetic slurs when he tells these stories? No? He just tells stories and that annoys you? Well then go sit down and let your dad tell the damn stories. That premise just didn't go over well.

[ozone81]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 12:52am

Just got back from the first preview. I have never seen the movie so I don't have much to compare it to but I loved it. The only negative is that it ran almost three hours but I am sure that it will be tweaked a little bit. But unlike the second preview of Cinderella that I saw, I didn't feel like any of the numbers didn't work. Some of them just need to be shortened.

As for the show itself I thought the costumes were great, so was the choreography and the sets. I actually liked the pictures of the sets that were released earlier but they didn't do justice in my opinion to seeing it live. There were a handful of special effects that were executed really well and a lot of fun.

The performers were all top notch. Living in Chicago I had never had a chance to see these performers before but I was very impressed.

The first two songs that I had heard before seeing the show I thought were just okay but seeing them performed with all the action on stage going around made me enjoy them more. Some of the songs worked better than others but I didn't feel like anything didn't work.

For a first preview the show ran very smoothly minus some very small mic issues. I think show is in great shape and intend to see it before the run is over. I haven't seen too many shows in previews before (Addams Family, Kinky Boots and Cinderella) but this was the show I enjoyed the most and had the least improvements needed.

As for merchandise it was out in full force. They had T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, books, dvds, windowcards and mugs.

Sorry for rambling a bit but just my thoughts on an impressive first performance that I think will do better once word of mouth starts building.

[rhumba]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 1:09am

Just Got back from the preview. Will try to post more later but it looked fantastic and was one of the most "together" previews I've seen. It was solid to excellent. Some things need work but I think it has an impressive future. It was very touching and the audience was very invested.

[Younger Brother]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 7:16am

Thanks everyone!

I'm going to be annoying: Anybody have a song list? And how was Krystal Joy Brown (Josephine)

[ozone81]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 8:23am

Song List
Act 1
The God's Honest Truth
This River Between Us
I Know What You Want
Born for the Water
Bigger
Sandra's Wish
Little Lamb from Alabama
Time Stops
Closer to Her
Daffodils

Act 2
Red, White and True
Fight the Dragons
Showdown
I Don't Need a Roof
Start Over
Time Stops (Reprise)
What's Next
How it Ends

The songs I enjoyed the most were The River Between Us, Time Stops, Daffodils, Fight the Dragons and How it Ends.

As for Krystal Joy Brown she doesn't get much of a chance to showcase her skills. She doesn't have any big numbers or solo's. She was fine but I think anyone could do what she was asked to do.

[My Sobriquet]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 9:56am

I saw the first preview of "Big Fish" last night. By intermission, most everyone around me was disappointed by the threadbare book and unimaginative songs & lyrics. I have seen more character depth on your average tv variety show sketch. The son, Will Bloom, comes off as a two dimensional character for most of the show. All he does is complain about his Father's incessant story telling. I started to root against the son at one point. There is so little affection between these two that it makes you think, "Why bother?" (Interesting relationships need a balance of love/hate.) Bobby Steggert does a fine job in the role, which mainly consists of him pacing the stage and complaining. As for the son's French wife (Krystal Joy Brown), she gets about 10 lines or so. Why make her French? It's just thrown in, regardless of what happened in the movie. She's fine, since someone above asked, but she doesn't get to do much.

The character of the Father, Edward Bloom, is interesting. Norman Leo Butz sings the lead well, but there's not much charisma to this character. Why would anyone want to follow him? Beats me. Kate Baldwin does a wonderful job as Ed's wife, given the material she is given to work with. Such grace!

The use of computer graphics cheapened the experience. No matter how difficult to produce, it comes off looking like the easy way out of putting on live theater, for the most part. The video projection of flowing water, to represent a river, projected onto the bottom front of the stage was distracting. The sets don't ad much, although some are imaginative. Too much computer-generated filler on top of them. They have major sound issues to work out during the previews. The big chorus numbers jump around from a WWII USO-type number to a Western shoot out, which seem arbitrarily thrown in just because it's time for a dance number. Not much choreography here.

Just about as this show tries to lose it's audience with the second act, an amazing turn happens. Without spoiling anything, the ending was amazing and left not a dry eye in the house. I cannot remember the last time I experienced such tearfulness in an audience. Norman Leo Butz meandered around the stage looking lost by the end, but no matter. So, this show received a standing ovation, which is so typical of Chicago audiences when the house is full. We're easy. I remember the movie taking me on a wonderful emotional roller coaster meeting very colorful characters along the way. This is a mediocre show, which has some good bones on which to build, but only wows you in the last 15 minutes.

[PiraguaGuy]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 10:08am

I'm going to have to be the dissenting opinion here and admit that I found the show I saw last night to be pretty dreadful. The team has some serious work to do before this thing comes to Broadway, and I hope it's enough so that they don't embarrass themselves in New York.

Where to start with this? First off, the relationship at its center. We need to CARE about both Edward and Will and thus care that they don't quite get along. Instead, we are given no reason to do so. Norbert Leo Butz, eminently likeable and goofy, just kind of comes off as a jerk here. Neither he nor his son ever express any love for each other, and all Steggert does is scowl at his father and complain about how much he hates him. The first moment of the show is literally Will complaining about his father. It didn't help that Steggert was incredibly stiff and seemed too uptight to be up to the task of carrying the show, but the relationship at the center gave me no reason to care, and thus the end's sentimentality was unearned.

The songs are mostly forgettable. I know it's a cliché to complain that no tunes were hummable, but literally no song had any sort of lasting power or weight. It was often hard to tell where one song ended and the next began, and looking over the song list I'm actually confused as to what a couple of these songs were. "Time Stops," which has been used the most to promote the show thus far, has a pretty melody but some terrible lyrics. Kate Baldwin gets some pretty songs to sing, but her character is woefully underwritten, and so all she gets to do is stand by her husband's bedside and sing about how she will love him no matter what. The character had absolutely no agency or will of her own, which was actually a little reductive and sexist.

There are also some completely egregious songs in the show that I'd describe in more detail if I wasn't fervently hoping they were going to be cut out of town. The "witch" character has been transformed from a creepy, mysterious entity to a brassy, riffing beltress who wears a costume that resembles a giant garbage bag and struts around a stage mumbling her way through "I Know What You Want," a number that needs to set up one of Edward's central mysteries but instead serves as a showcase for Susan Stroman's prop-ography and confuses the plot. "Showdown" is another contender for worst thing in the show - without giving too much away, it is a fantasy sequence in which an argument between Edward and Will transforms into a Wild West showdown. It is messy, confusing, unnecessary and the ensemble wears getups that reminded me of "All-American Prophet" in the silliest of ways. Cut it.

Almost all the production numbers do very little to advance or even acknowledge the story - they mostly seem like opportunities for Susan Stroman to show off. Very few of the songs even seem like they need to be there. The USO number that opens the second act is another example of this - it is overlong, boring, and has little relevance to the plot. It's also confusing as all hell - Norbert is engaging in lackluster stage combat with a masked man? Kate Baldwin is singing the lead? Even the mostly game chorus looked like deer in headlights during this song.

The show boils down to a series of vignettes, but nothing ever really coalesces or comes together. I left incredibly confused as to what the "moral" of the show was or even what the point of it all was - the stories Edward tells his son came off not as parables or evidence of his love, but rather opportunities for Susan Stroman and her team to stage another overlong, overexpensive production number. I can't remember the last time I was so bored by a show packed with so much spectacle - probably because none of it seemed grounded or interesting. Even though this is a "big" show, I wish it was in a smaller house. The whimsy of Edward's tales as well as the central father-son dynamic would play much better in a more intimate space. But the theatre selection is far from the biggest of this show's problems. It is narratively confused, overstuffed in every sense of the word, and I still couldn't tell you what the "point" of it all was. I really wanted this immensely talented cast and crew to succeed, but they have some serious work to do if they don't want to get eviscerated in New York.

P.S. I am 99% sure that Krystal Joy Brown, who plays Will's French wife, has never met an actual French person in her life. I would have cared about her Pepé Le Pew accent more had the show not been riddled with so many other issues.

[newintown]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 10:32am

I didn't know both Steggart and Butz were in this; the only thing that I would find worse would be the addition of Raul Esparza. To me, those three are the most unimaginative, over-acting hams of the contemporary musical stage...

[Tag]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 11:59am

Isn't Norbert a little young to be playing the father character???

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 1:13pm

From what I remember of the film, the majority of the story is tales of the father's past when he was younger.

[Tag]

Posted: 4/3/13 at 1:37pm

I looked it up and the Norbert role was double cast in the film between Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor. So does Norbert play young and old?