BWW Blog: Paisley Haddad - 'Falling Slowly' in Love With ONCE and SOMETHING ROTTEN!

Last Saturday I attended the Broadway tour of Once The Musical. I knew that they had won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2012, but I had never really looked into the show. I had expected it to be not my favorite of the Broadway series at The Hanover Theatre, but I had been totally wrong. The music was mesmerizing, and the set was cleverly done. Before the show, they let the audience up on stage to buy their drinks from the bar in the pub set that they had created. Not only did that set double as a pub, but also a music store, a house, a Hoover repair shop and much more. Without large changes of sets, they created these different environments with tables, chairs, and a change of lighting. Sam Cieri and Mackenzie Lesser-Roy were strong leads as Guy and Girl followed by an equally strong cast of characters. The simple staging of the show made the small moments usually missed by the audience, more exposed and made the show more emotional. Kudos to Steven Hoggett, the movement director, for flawlessly using movement to move the show along in an eye catching way. Overall, it was a beautifully written and performed musical, that I would see again if I had the chance and would recommend to friends!

Also, I attended the Broadway tour of Something Rotten in Boston at the Boston Opera House. It was the funniest show I have ever been to! It is especially funny if you could catch all of the Shakespeare references hidden in the dialogue! Rob McClure played a perfect part as Nick Bottom, and it was cute how his wife, Maggie Lakis, played Bea, his onstage wife as well! Adam Pascal and Josh Grisetti were perfect in their roles, but Blake Hammond as Nostradamus was my favorite character! "A Musical" was my favorite number of the show, It was perfect how they ended it with a nod to the classic "A Chorus Line" pose in the straight line with their headshots!

In my own theatre life, I have been working on my character Ursula (Formerly known as the male, Franz) in The Sound Of Music at my school. We open in March, and everything is coming together nicely! Also, in my Elements of Theatre class, we have been studying the LABAN system of acting.

More blogs to come soon!

Check out my Broadway themed Youtube channel, Paisley Haddad, in the meantime!