The Thematic Edward

It is amazing what you will pay $160 for these days. On December 5, 2006, I paid that much to view the North American premiere of Edward Scissorhands: The Musical. Normally, I wouldn’t pay that extraordinary amount of money for a theatrical production, but when it comes to theater and women, I tend to pay for a lot more than I intended too.

The main reason I went to Edward Scissorhands was because I have been so enormously hypnotized by the Danny Elfman music for that past 16 years. The music he wrote for the film is one of the rare compositions that transcend its origins, in this case, the film itself. I gather that Mathew Bourne, the creator of this new musical, must have been just as moved by the Elfman music himself, to undertake a musical interpretation of the Tim Burton film.

It is hard to review this production without any bias, because I was already in love with much of its music. Overall, the production was very good and some of the scenes that were staged to Elfman music, particularly the where Edward first sleeps in the daughters bedroom, were very magical. One of the drawbacks of the musical is that it doesn’t have any lyrics or any dialogue of any kind. The show resembles a modern day dance and ballet production and it suffers a bit because the audience needs to be quiet and patient all the way through. In a lyrical show, the audience tension is usually less, because there is more noise and larger obstacles to observe and to assimilate. In a thematic production such as Edward, the audience has only but to watch, and to do it calmly and patiently. No real thinking is needed. But overall, even without its lyrics, my theater outing was well worth it, even if I paid $160, and didn’t even get the girl.

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