Journal Entry #5: Seeing my good friend Neil

Tuesday, November 19th, 2024. 10:12 AM.

Confidence in my career/choice of major: 78%

Song stuck in my head: The Verge by Bad Moves

                Cam. Cam. These journal entries can't all be good. Bullet points are all I've got today. My neck hurts. Warum!!!!

Excited to see/had questions about:

  • Illusion
  • Practicals I had liked so much - how would they be used
  • What on earth had caused the show to be delayed almost a full hour the previous night, and if it would happen again
  • We had been told the lights would come on and people would be singing and dancing? That intrigued me 
Did I like the show? Ehhhhh...... Did I have a good time? Undoubtedly.

It was nice to see how happy everyone else was! Some big Neil diamond fans in the audience. That's what theatre's all about, baby.


What I liked:
  • In theory, the therapy framing device. It had potential but it wasn't explored nearly enough for my liking
    • Trying to take the pen out of his hand, therapist saying "well that's not what really happened, is it?" Like give us more of Neil being a unreliable narrator
    • The song book to "incorporate" the songs also had legs but was hardly used
  • The second wife actress was awesome. A real triple threat
  • I liked the agent's performance, too. She was very entertaining.
  • MOB BOSS?? Oh yeah
  • I thought the lighting during the songs was very fun. Every song ended with a beat and a quick change of lighting and I thought that was nice to look at
  • Apparently old Neil did a good job of looking like someone who had Parkinson's. I do not know anyone with Parkinson's so I was not aware, but Mordred clocked it right away.
  • I liked the costumes, they were uber fun, EXCEPT for the wife's green 70s dress. Why was it so thin???
  • Sweet Caroline. BA BA BA

What did I not like:
  • Listen I don't HATE jukebox musicals but like. It's crazy difficult to do one well
  • It was a little sanitized in a way that was uninteresting - hello? He cheated on his wife? And had a bunch of kids that were never mentioned by name?
  • It lacks a central theme. It was maybe almost about accepting change? Or like, dealing with depression? About how a person whose only moment of relief from depression came from performing, and what do you do when you can no longer perform? But it took too long to GET to that. Like, it's not a surprise that he can't perform anymore! Just talk about how he copes?
  • I didn't like getting BLINDED for several minutes at a time because of the lights pointed DIRECTLY IN OUR EYES
  • The lights on the audience moments were kind of odd. Obviously they expected more audience interaction. It was a Thursday night show, after all, but still didn't really sing or dance that much. It was kind of stuck in-between being a musical and a concert. The vibe was a little weird. It felt like if a concept album was a musical, but also none of the songs were linked cohesively like they are in a concept album. It was strange


                Takeaways? I bet whether or not I like the show I work on will have an impact on how much I like the tour. If I have to tour with Dear Evan Hansen I'm setting fire to the tour bus.

                The confidence-o-meter is fairly high because I feel like there was nothing onstage that I couldn't accomplish. And also hearing about how wrong everything had gone the night before made me feel better. If they can make mistakes, so can I. And also my best friend Neil Diamond stopped the show and pointed at me and gave me a shout-out so that made me feel pretty good about myself.







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