State of the Art

  Oh, no. I liked the first "Wicked" movie. Was it perfect? No. But GOD they could have screwed it up and they didn't. Nothing will top the Broadway production, but at least the first film felt like a decent reflection. And then came Part 2. I understand why they split this into two movies. According to composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, "Defying Gravity" is SUCH a dramatic act one closer it was difficult to find a way to turn that into the midpoint of an intermission-less film (though who says they couldn't have pulled a "Gone With the Wind" and had an intermission? They paid tribute to films of the 1930's in other ways...) with a scene or song coming right on its silver heels. I get it. But it didn't work.  Surely finding a fix to the "Defy Gravity" problem would have gone over better than the almost disaster that the second film turned into - complete with two new (and wildly unnecessary, if not downright bad) songs, padding o...

OH. MY. GOD. I had no desire to see "Stranger Things: The First Shadow." It felt like another obnoxious cash grab in the "Which IP are we going to adapt for Broadway next?" catalogue. Up next: Netflix's offering. And of all the things to adapt - a retro sci-fi/horror show that was fantastic in it's first season but has gotten progressively worse (with some improvements in season four) leading up to the, as yet still unreleased, fifth season (due to be released imminently). Not a genre "born for the stage" as it were, even in the best of circumstances. And the T.V. show isn't currently in the "best of circumstances." But after seeing "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" (which I reviewed for State of the Art ( https://stateoftheartreview.blogspot.com/2025/10/harry-potter-and-cursed-child-on.html ) I wanted to see what else the brilliant illusion team had up their sleeve. At intermission for "Stranger Things" I texted...

  "The Queen of Versailles" is not a perfect musical. But it is, perhaps, the musical we need. The show is based on the film documentary of the same name, which chronicles Jackie Siegel and her insanely wealthy husband David's building of the "Biggest House in America" which they modeled after, and named "Versailles." The documentary lucked out in being filmed at just the right place and time to document the housing market bubble burst - which coincided with the Siegels being in the middle of construction and losing everything. Their story became a parable about our world and, particularly the U.S.'s hubristic obsession with wealth. The musical, however, lucks out in its own way by being able to chronicle what happened to the Siegels in the ten years (+) since the documentary came out. And what happened after is, in a way, poetic justice on the level of a master storyteller. There couldn't be a more poignant ending if it had been invented by th...