Musical Theatre Extravaganza!

Let me start of this week’s roundup by stating that Idol night is ENDLESSLY more entertaining when I actually know what the hell they are singing!  No offence Mariah Carey!  Sir Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber is quite a chummy and affable Englishman, not afraid to hide his skepticism of song choice, but also enthusiastic about the talent.  He’s my favorite mentor of all time so far.  I would like to have some tea and a biscuit with him.  Plus, I woke up this morning with about 14 different SLALW musical numbers in my head.  So that was fun.  And confusing.

 

Heidi’s American Idol Roundup:

 

Syesha Mercado – I am gracing Syesha with her last name today, because she finally didn’t suck big donkey balls.  She sang a song from one of my favorite musicals ever (Starlight Express! – London! – 1985! – Rollerskates!) and I thought she did well with it.  The downside is that everyone discovered tonight that Syesha is a musical theatre nerd, and not an American Idol.  So it’s a bit of a double edge sword.  I remember seeing an old video of Britney Spears singing something from Oklahoma in a talent show when she was 9 or 10 and my reaction was “Oh!  So Briney Spears has a good voice after all!  For MUSICAL THEATRE!”  And I felt the same way tonight. 

 

Jason Castro – Jason murdered one of the greatest Andrew Lloyd Webber songs of all time.  I’ve never even seen Cats, but I love this song and know it by heart, that’s how iconic it is.  He basically dumbs down the emotion.  Dumbs down the notes.  Dumbs down the power.  And in the end, the whole thing is just dumb.  He was really growing on me, this one.  But now he’s in the bottom of the heap.

 

Brooke White – Talk about murder.  Brooke’s deer in the headlights eyeballs, her faulty start and her intrepid, trembling bones made me hide under a pillow for the first half of this performance.  She chose a crap song, written for the movie version for Madonna of all people.  And Madonna kind of sucked at it in the movie, so I can’t imagine why anyone would choose it.  If you aren’t lying in bed at death’s door, you cannot pull this off.   I. Can’t. Even. Express. In. Words. How. Awful. This. Was.  Sheeeesh!  I am so glad that Simon did not rip her a new one, however, because I couldn’t have taken the sight of Brooke having a full on Mental Breakdown on the Idol stage.  I would have had to watch that horror through my fingers for sure.  So thanks for that, Simon.

David Archuletta –  I was expecting big things from Archuletta tonight.  I had him pegged as taking on Coat of Many Colors from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Or something else about Jesus.  There are a surprising number of them in SLALW’s repitoire.  Instead he went for the soft, girly song from Phantom.  However, he kind of rocked it in an unexpected way.  This was the first night that David made me pay attention in a while and I thought he was awesome.

 

Carly Smithson – HELL YEAH!  Go Carly!  I hope this week shows the return of Mrs. Tatoo Face.  I thought her outfit was spot on, her song choice awesome and her performance was totally worthy of a type of entertainment that appears to be an oxymoron, but is not: Rock Opera!  All I can say about this is HELL YEAH!  Oh, wait, I already said that.  Awesome.

 

David Cook – So David decides to take on the Mother of all SLALW songs (man, I could say that about a lot of his songs, but just go with me here).  Coming from David one would expect some electric guitars rokken it all up and some weird vocal stylings to crap all over the creepy vibe of this song.  However, to try something different (for him),  David decides to sing it pretty straight, and only concentrates on the creepy.  I think this song would actually have benefited from his unique brand of “original” but maybe he couldn’t find an “original” cover to cover.  Is my head spinning around?  Instead all I saw was some skeezy dude totally trying to rufie my drink and, quite frankly, I am NOT into that.  Sorry David.

 

Tonight kind of blew me away with the Awesome factor, and I wish there had been more performers.  I don’t know if it’s because it’s different than “pop” or because most people who want to be on national television and rocket to reality fame* are really musical theatre geeks at heart, and just trying on a new skin.  I think most famous actors fall into this drama geek category as well.  They just get famous and follow someone’s advice and suddenly they are ‘cool’.  Strange.

 

Walk of Shame:  Brooke (I’m sorry, but I can’t watch you lose your soul anymore.  It hurts), Jason and possibly Syesha.