Shrek here! I will say the photo with the unpainted skin/ ear from the revamp is an audience photo from a stage flub. Unfortunate but not the norm. Also venue prices are not something we control. Some venues charge as little as 30, and some for more than I’d like people to spend. Either way I still appreciate you making it out to see the show, and I hope that some of you guys come and visit us in the swamp! We are working hard out there.
You did an amazing job when I saw the show live, and your portrayal of the character has made it one of my dream roles! (also, sad they cut build a wall because I KNOW you would have crushed it)
I find it funny that they replaced Baby Bear with a teddy bear because they didn't want to hire a child actor, but the funny thing is, is that Baby Bear is usually portrayed by an adult actress in most professional productions.
@@anbu1325same for the puppet Fiona, couldn’t they have just used a smaller actor instead? It’s not like they replaced the singing needed for that song by having the puppets
When the producers said "this is what we intended for the original Broadway production" what they really meant was "the original Broadway production was the Broadway show with the highest budget ever until the Spider-Man musical broke that record, and we would have made so much more money from our investment if we were frugal"
Donkey’s costume being a hoodie, shorts, and hat really got me. My school did Shrek this year, and our costume was a full body suit that changed the actors figure, and was so hot to wear there was secret pockets for ice packs. And it was someone jobs to run back and forth to change out the ice packs. Other then Donkey, our Shrek had a fat suit, face and hands prosthetics, Farquad walked on his knees, we bought another productions Dragon and fixed her up. Our set had 4 huge fake trees on wheels that have the illusion of the character walking and changing locations. I thought it was so crazy how a high school production was better then a professional one
Aha! I was Donkey in shrek the musical in HS and had the exact same costume!! I refused to wear anything but t-shirt and shorts up till 10 minutes before we went on stage!
I appreciate how you don't just rag on the musical and the actors - you actually examine the root cause (the producers/budget) and repeatedly explain for non in-the-know people why this is happening, and that it's NOT the actors' fault. It's too easy to blame the actors but like most things, this is more nuanced than that. I know this is like, a low bar for doing your due diligence, but I appreciate that. And as someone who watched the play at a local community theater, their set design WAS better and they actually did have a dragon puppet and kid Fiona! The only thing I personally remember aging poorly (or just not at all honestly) was some jokes about the wolf being trans (and uses slurs) that were cut post-2018 productions anyway. Anyway, my favorite bit they added in the musical is 1. they made it to Shrek's parents kicked him out as a kid so he had more in common with Fiona, which was very cute, and 2. Lord Farquad was extremely heavily implied to be not attracted to women at all and I'd just using it for a political power play (and then he planned to behead Fiona) which is definitely a cool perspective that I think makes his demise much more satisfying. Also, he would not stop messing with the audience and doing these elaborate fourth wall improvisational sketches. It was great. Highly recommend community theater Shrek.
i saw a community theatre version as well and i think it genuinely could not have been better! our theatre is a part of the local college so people in the drama course act in it and art student make the set and it was fantastic! (my favorite bit was the dragon head, it was like a whole person long and had to be held up by three people controlling the eyes, mouth, and swivel of the neck! and the eyes glowed!)
@@MysterioPerrito I know! My appreciation for that and Farquad from the play is unrelated to the things being reworked. Sorry, I should have clarified that.
My school recently did a Shrek musical. I worked on it behind the scenes and when I tell you it had **SO** much more effort put into it, I mean it. A bunch of high schoolers working for free in school for multiple months vs BROADWAY PRODUCERS and we still did so much better.
Because you aren’t being paid, exactly. Professional theatre is expensive. And a high school set and costumes only have to last a week or so. Yes this tour looks pretty terrible but the school vs professional argument is so bone headed
Build A Wall was a genuinely good song about Shrek reverting back to his old ways after being abandoned by Fiona. Its a shame they got rid of it, it had some of the biggest and most raw emotion in the entire show
It's upsetting that the only reason it was removed is because the title reminds everyone of Trump. The title is honestly just a coincidence. Same goes for Why We Build The Wall from Hadestown, especially since the show debuted on Broadway while he was president. It's obvious the song isn't about Trump, and is beautiful in the context of the shows story.
Yeah I don’t get why this guy thinks removing it was a good thing. It hurts the show more because the raw emotion of shrek being hurt emotionally isn’t heard only seen which isn’t as powerful and the point of musicals is to hear the protagonists emotions thru songs. I love Build a Wall, gives shrek some sad emotion to convey.
@@ohmygodtheykilledkenny4887 _Seriously?!_ That's almost as stupid as the Pokémon episode that got banned from airing on TV in the U.S. after September 2001 because the dub just happened to title it "Tower of Terror!" 🤦♀
There's NO way this is real. They have to be trolling. It's like a bad middle school production of Shrek. Whoever was in charge must've been smoking something STRONG lmao
So, the funniest thing is that: i work at a news station and we got some ads for "Shrek the Musical" coming to our city and i was so confused cause all the spots are just the logo with music over it and the show dates. Which i thought was weird, cause most musicals that are advertised on air have like... clips from the tour to show "hey, this is what the show looks like". I guess i know why theyre marketing it like that now
we watched the 2008 musical in class randomly when i was like, 11 because a nearby school was doing a play for it i CRIED and had to get walked out by a teacher when lord farquad came on because the kid playing him had such terrible makeup and wig design it freaked me out
Similar story here, summer school around 2014 and they took us all to see it, but the person playing Shrek terrified me, his makeup and scream were horrifying. Funny thing is I went on to play Pinocchio for the school musical a few years later and whoever did my makeup I'd argue made it more terrifying than I remember the show being
I remember seeing Shrek the musical at my older cousin's highschool. I was little at the time but I feel like I remember the HIGHSCHOOL production being more polished than some of those costumes. Especially Shrek, the actor for it shaved his head if I remember.
Making Farquaad not short was a big mistake. Completely misses the point of the character. I saw the UK tour of Shrek months ago and they did the same thing to Farquaad there. The rest of the costumes where better though.
Can you believe they made Oompas Loompas Robots in the Wonka Musical as well. Like Broadway is afraid to portray fictional short people in there plays or something it’s so dumb. What’s the point of making a musical off a movie if you change one of the main traits of one of the characters of the source material. Farquaad being short wasn’t meant to offend anyone, it was a parody off of what antagonists normally would look like and hurts his motivation for being king since he was different and being king gave him power over those who picked on him for being different. Also removing the ballad of Farquaad was a mistake gives the antagonist some fleshed out character.
I don’t think he’ll care, he’s probably too busy trying to remind Dreamworks about the Dehydration gun for Megamind Rules season 2 (god I hope that doesn’t happen)
The “reminagining for a modern audience” thing always strikes me as bad. Like you can just say you rewrote it a bit and made it better, saying “for a modern audience” just seems like “how do you do fellow kids”
Lord Farquadd being replaced by some bald dude is like how's this new Musical based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on tour replacing it's small human Oompa-Loompas with ROBOTS. (Not joking)
@@andresmaldonado8935how does it make sense, in Dahls book he goes to Oompa Land that has real people and now that their just robots it leaves glaring plot holes 🕳️. How do the robots know these songs, why did wonka program them to sing songs? Oompa Loompas are people from a fictional island that Dahl created not machines with no personalities.
it looks like an cute elementry school play but an tour production , i feel bad for the actors that worked hard on this , i don't think it's gonna be as sucessful or last long while current national tours that are still running , the non - equity tour missed the mark
Bro my school did a production of shrek a couple weeks before it came close to us and some people as it and thought we did a better job with set design and costumes than the literal Broadway quality show kinda sad if you ask me
I’m happy to see that you are staying how non-Equity does NOT mean the performers are less talented or qualified. So many of us choose not to join for many reasons like wanting to be able to perform more often because we love it and the industry is so saturated. We are definitely still professional! I really appreciate you acknowledging that.
I came here to say the same thing. I play trombone in the pit, and every night I found something new to enjoy. Our costumes and sets were amazing, as were the performers. Community theatre doesn't necessarily equal bad.
I don’t really understand why people don’t like the song “Build a Wall”. I think it’s a fantastic song, that expresses how Shrek is going to give up on all of the things he’s trying to be. He’s going to go back to living his life on the swamp, sad and alone, and he’s coming to terms with it even if he doesn’t want to. The song sounds very nice, and I honestly think that it’s one of the most underrated.
The original run was incredible and i love my dvd of tgat version. This latest redesighn is just tragic. Choices were made and it was a carcrash. If it wasn't broke, don't break it.
Just A fyi, I saw this production a few weeks ago. Shrek, Donkey and the fairy tale characters costumes were all fixed and Shrek’s parents are actually people. Young Shrek and young Fiona’s are still puppets and it’s a bit awkward but whatever I dealt w it. I would rate it a 6.5/10
This musical revival reminds me of the community college production for Seussical the Musical my 4th grade class had to see 10+ years ago. Our teachers hyped us up for the show by showing us clips and pictures from the Broadway show, so the whole class was expecting to see a grand, colorful, high budget spectacle. Instead of all of that, all of the set pieces were made of sloppily-painted plywood and cheap feather boas glued to them, the guy playing the Cat in the Hat was just wearing a black turtleneck, black jeans, and a dollar-store striped hat, Horton the Elephant was just a more overweight man wearing gray sweats and an elephant trunk on his nose, and, most memorably, the Grinch (who only had 5 seconds of stage time) was just a guy with a green t-shirt stretched over his head and arms like a child. The most exciting part of the show was when the spotlight shined on the Cat in the Hat as he violently shaked his ass at the end of the opening number, making all of the kindergarteners in the audience laugh.
Definitely love how you can take someone who doesn't know about the subject matter and explain it in not too much or too little detail, entertaining us at the same time! Go 100k Sully 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Last year I saw the UK Tour of SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical, like with Shrek, the show won Tonys for its costume and set and then had those changed on this tour. The difference is, while the designs were drastically different from the Broadway one (and definitely lower budget), they were still really high quality and kept the same general vibe that the original version had. Honestly, there’s a part of me that prefers the Plankton design from the UK tour just because the sheer camp energy of it really works for the musical’s interpretation of the character.
I worked backstage on a community production of Shrek a few years back, and it was far closer to the original than this one. Dragon, was a dragon, Farquad was - well - Farquad and we had big extravagant sets and projections. When you first showed the remake i was genuinely shocked at what they had done to such an awesome show.
I thought about seeing this when it was touring in Hershey, PA (ngl when I saw the ad I thought it was like a high school/college production not a tour)…thank god I didn’t lmao
I genuinely cannot believe this is real. I cannot believe they looked at this and thought “Yeah let’s put this on tour”. It feels like a fever dream lol
I just don’t understand why they did this considering Shrek was on tour recently in the UK and it was almost identical to the original broadway production. Lord Farquad was also just a normal actor but a relatively small person to keep the short thing going. Was really good.
My sister and I played as Shrek and Dragon in our school production, and we happened to win cheap tickets in a lottery to the show in our hometown. We enjoyed it, mostly based off of nostalgia, but we still had fun. And it was definitely better than our production. 🤷♂️
I had no idea this was the actual show. I honestly thought it was a community theatre production. Now it wasn't incredibly bad. Sure, it's not the 2008 Broadway run. But I had expected one thing and gotten another. My family got tickets from another family member who couldn't attend with his family, so we took it. We didn't have much going on that week. By no means was it terrible, as a first viewing. I can defend the points the Sully brought up. It's a shame they are getting paid less and the whole thing is lower budget. But we got to see it for free and we got some laughs out of it. Plus, we got it before the revamp, so we saw what the producers cheaped out on! I swear the actors REALLY held this thing together. They all did an amazing job despite the hand they were dealt and those conditions they were under. ...But when my sisters high school production of the 1985 CLUE movie is higher quality with its sets, you know they really screwed up the visuals... and they did it on a smaller budget than the Shrek team before the revamp. No crap to everyone who worked on this production of Shrek: They are the main attraction. The sets take a massive backseat (sometimes), but I did not see a single kid in that audience bored. Bravo to the cast! Plus, some of the "cringe" writing for Farquaad actually hooked the audience more (which I did not expect).
Those tour costumes are giving “we have Shrek the Musical at home sweetie” but Shrek the Musical at home *ISN’T* just the ProShot on streaming, it’s that low budget tour.
Yes, that’s an improvement but that is just so unfortunate because I know how amazing the OG Shrek the musical stage production was, you cut out everything that made Shrek the musical so unique and made it into an amateur crap fest like I don’t understand how you got away with that especially if you were charging $120 something per ticket in the front row which is outlandish and may I say a huge slap in the face to the OG Shrek the musical!
Funny i see this video, i keep getting ads for the Shrek the musical tour as it is coming to my home city, Dallas, soon. My Community Theatre also hosted a competition to where they'll take us to see it if we sold enough tickets (we unfortunately did not).
oh my god i remember this, my uncle actualy played donkey in at least the one of the shrek the musical plays because he was donkey`s understudy and the orginal couldnt make it. this brings back mad memorys man.
Shrek the Musical is one of my 4 year old’s favorites! We sing along with the soundtrack in the car, and we were so excited last year when we heard that the musical tour was coming to our town. Then I heard it was a non-equity show, and that didn’t sit right with me. After that, I saw photos of the show and heard parts of the story had changed, including songs being cut, and… I just can’t pay those ticket prices for a show that would disappoint my son who has seen the filmed stage production dozens of times. I’m glad that the actors are performing well with the limitations that the productions team has put on them, and I hope that they are treated/paid well for the hard work they have put into it, despite the poor production choices elsewhere.
Glad to see someone reminding folks not to be mad at the actors. I loved the musical since I saw it a decade ago, and when I heard it was touring again I was quietly hoping it'd come somewhere near me. Then the pictures leaked. Then the rest of it leaked. And I just felt awful for the team actually putting the sweat and love into doing the best they could with a really REALLY bad hand. Like, this just sounds like a trainwreck and a half, so for the performers to keep going and doing their best tells me there's a lot of heart still in the swamp.
Blaming the poor actors... DON'T. They are at the mercy of the producers, director, costume designer, set designer, prop master... They have the least power in a production. All they can do is try to rise above the bad decisions of others. Been there... It's the folks behind the scenes to blame for this. Reminds me of the natl tour of Titanic the musical. Looked like a high school production. Actors were great, but they could rise above the [lack] of scenery and cardboard set. And the model of titanic on wheels pulled along a sea of black plastic trash bags.
I saw the show in Wilmington NC, and the actors/actresses did such a phenomenal job that the cosmetics weren’t enough to ruin the show. They did a STELLAR job.
We saw it and were so disappointed. They created a Bad Shrek Jr. Performance. Most of the songs are gone and they have weird reprises. Costumes were terrible. And plot makes no sense anymore.
I saw a production a while ago (wasn’t Broadway or anything, just a small production in some British town) and it was honestly amazing. The Dragon looked wonderful (I think she got the most cheers during the bows), the singing made me want to start singing along too, the acting was hilarious, but in a good way (loved Donkey). I also loved the costumes (they had the Dragon actress wearing this dark pink sparkly jumpsuit and the puppet above her). Which…makes me wonder. The show I saw had a pretty large budget it seemed, but Broadway shows have extremely large ones…so…where did the money go?
4:20 huh. I'd expect that from a high school or community play. But for Broadway? Really? What are people even paying to see the Broadway version for if it doesn't have professional costumes and sets? Edit: apparently this wasn't a Broadway tour. And my silly self just assumed cause I'm not familiar with other companies doing tours but now that I think about it that makes sense
it's not Broadway, it's just an independent production that someone produced to tour on the road. it has no connection to the Broadway production other than the script/score and even that apparently has been changed. Producers send these non-union tours out to small venues all the time. People are only really hearing about this one because of the buzz on how poorly it was produced after they made such a big deal about reworking it for a "new Generation".
Hello theater kid here so I watched this shrek and it was good but horrible and shrek had a full head of hair and I was weirded out by I know it’s today and I was spotting a few things and the actors were AMAZING but the script was not I saw the girls who were playing middle and young Fiona and looked the same age! I may be sounding a little dramatic but the show was SO expensive but the people in the front had to STAND and it was about $189 to be in the front still being dramatic here and they took out some of my favorite songs but overall it was a fun time I got shrek ears and I was happy with everything else 😁
My highschool production was better than this- like so much better (to be fair my school is serious about theater but it shouldn’t be better than a professional show-) it was so fun to work, got me into tech work!
Thing I like about the original broadway production is that they actually recorded it and sold it, to be enjoyed years later, rather than having people watch recordings from people being sneaky in the audience. I have a copy of it that I've had for years, and still watch occasionally. Also, I personally liked the songs they removed. 'Build A Wall' is a well sung song in the original, and does follow the original story from the movie a bit closer.
Producers are getting too comfortable with trying to get around doing Non-union tours so that they can save money and avoid equity guidelines. It’s not just this show either, other touring shows like Peter Pan and Mean Girls are having similar issues
On July 13 I go watch Shrek The Musical on National Tour which is first broadway in Vietnam and it looks much better than anything showed in this video…. The makeup, the costumes are very detailed. They build a big giant dragon puppet/animatronic for the show. The only thing is missing in that show I see is onstage physical set. There only few of them like castle and trees and the stage so big that some big set just looks empty. I did post some video of it at the end.
Sully, I love your work and everything you do, I just gotta say it here: I thought the Actors' Equity logo was a pair of asscheeks for a huge hot second, okay thank you for your time carry on
On some the costumes (emphasis on some), I can definitely see what they were going for; like making the 3 pigs construction workers and baby bear being a teddy bear.
I saw the UK Tour that was on at the same time and read in advance some people thought that looked cheap and where mad the Farquad wasn’t on his knees and they gave Pinocchio’s song to Shrek but it had fixed most of the complaints by my stop of the tour and especially compared to the American tour it was fine. They just had the fairly young looking actor who played Grumpy also played young Fiona, young Shrek and Baby Bear to avoid child actors. My only real compliant would be the giant screen behind them was showing doubles of the same section for about a meter on one of the sees and it was kind of distracting. Edit: also because Farquaad wasn’t short especially by my areas standards I think they had rewrote the “he’s compensating for something” jokes to more explicitly just be small dick jokes but in a way kids might not catch
I wonder what you think of the re-imagined version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast as produced by Disney themselves. Not as bad as this, but cutting songs, speeding up songs, and extending already overly long dance numbers, and scaling down the huge sets, let's say they were all interesting choices.
@@missroyaltea4012 They cut Maurice' song "No Matter What", which deepened the relationship between Belle and her father, and "Maison des Lunes", which basically explained the 'lock up Maurice' plot. They now go straight to capturing Maurice and Belle showing the Beast in the mirror. The song Home was sped up, giving Belle no time to process what was happening. Gaston & Be Our Guest's dance scenes got extended.
@@beyondamsterdam9400 Maison des Lunes get cut frequently from the stage show. I think you have to take the in-park versions with a grain of salt. They are created for a different audience than your traditional theatre goers. they are less concerned about the artistry than they are the spectacle
I’m actually currently in a performance of Shrek the musical playing Farquuad, and I think it’s really interesting how my lame ass 15 year old in literal pool noodles was closer to the OG Broadway performance then the musical was. But hey, I don’t think the people working on the show really could control what the producers gave them.
I believe they’re performing the “TYA” version; which is like a version of the show that cuts out some innuendos and makes the show generally shorter (around 90 minutes.) But like.. why??? The full length is so much better 😭
That was exactly my thought about it when you started to show images of the costumes and sets, that "ya this looks like how my local community theater group might do costumes for a show like this". Cool and creative when they do it and tickets are 20-25 dollars, but for a professional production with actual professional show prices that's just unacceptable. At $100/ticket in massive theaters, there is no reason you can't be elaborate with costumes and have better sets. The one thing I'll excuse is the use of puppets, I'm a fan of puppets and for things like shreks parents and kid Fiona where they show up for 1 minute total of run time, I can get them being puppets an artistic sense (like they are constructs of the past and memories to these characters, not real people) and a practical sense (if you have tosave money of costumes, why douse two other actors in green to be Shreks parents when that prohibits them from basically doing anything else in the remaining 2.5 hours of show)
I literally just did the jr version of this and my last show was yesterday (R.I.P.) and I was a duloc performer. I’m gonna miss it. It was my first time doing musical theatre
I love how they cut Build A Wall because they know the theater-goers aren't intelligent enough to realize the song (that came out almost a decade before the 2016 election) has absolutely no ties to Donald Trump
Just saw it in Las Vegas, and my head was spinning. Along w/ everyone in our group. We were so excited to see the Shrek we had fallen in love with or at least something very close to it. This was something else entirely. It felt like community theatre, except we have community theatre that is better than this. The puppets for Young Shrek and the Young Fiona's and Baby Bear, Farquaad's normal height (which really lost all the humor of the original Farquaad), cutting "Don't Let Me Go," the barebones set (looked like a high school/community theatre set), sound issues (mics cutting out, orchestra sometimes drowning out actors and/or actors mics not loud enough), the dragon costume (such a disappointment - a local children's theatre did Shrek last summer and basically used a variation of the same dragon costume, which works on a smaller stage/theatre, but not in this venue). The only thing I will add, I don't know if the actors are tired, or the negative reviews are getting to them, but some of the the performances were not what we've come to expect for a show that was a Tony winner and for the ticket prices we paid (which were the standard rate for Broadway shows at this venue). Ensemble was overall strong, some really amazing vocals, but sometimes the actors (mainly the Fairy Tale Creatures) did not enunciate or talked too fast, and if someone didn't see/know the original musical, they would not have known what was going on. There was also a point where the crew didn't position Fiona's Tower well (the scene where Shrek climbs through the window) and I could see the crew member behind it throughout the entire scene.
Is young Fiona still a puppet? That was so unsettling! I’m going to this production in a few weeks and was totally expecting the “regular” show that I had seen many years ago. Thank you for an informative video!
I was at the Memphis one😂 I think donkey was hilarious though in the music they did in the background over through the first half so I couldn’t really hear any of the singing actors were one of the problems but I think they really good. The show was good.
I thought the whole thing why Lord Farquaad was short was because he was one of the Seven Dwarfs? Why would they change that if he wasn't even supposed to be human to begin with?
Shrek here! I will say the photo with the unpainted skin/ ear from the revamp is an audience photo from a stage flub. Unfortunate but not the norm. Also venue prices are not something we control. Some venues charge as little as 30, and some for more than I’d like people to spend. Either way I still appreciate you making it out to see the show, and I hope that some of you guys come and visit us in the swamp! We are working hard out there.
I applaud you for your efforts. Keep rocking it :)
Don't listen to that faker. I'm the real Shrek.
Bru he’s the actor playing Shrek on the tour
I've always wanted to see shrek the musical. I'm glad it is back but I hope it comes back full force with pizzazz.
You did an amazing job when I saw the show live, and your portrayal of the character has made it one of my dream roles! (also, sad they cut build a wall because I KNOW you would have crushed it)
I did this musical in highschool and even WE had a giant dragon puppet.
DAMN, what materials were used to make it?
@@JamboreeBlackberry It was like paper machè with a wooden frame or something
@@Weirbdoo That’s sick af
Ours toooooooo!
WE JUST DID IT THIS SUMMER!! we had a giant dragon puppet too (i was in the pit)
Sully: Shrek the Musical is pretty good.
Schaffrillas: YOU WHAT?!
the fact that i heard this in tom's voice lol (he's the fish that yells CHOCOLATE!!! in spongebob)
Uh oh 😭😭😭
😂😂
Haha
I find it funny that they replaced Baby Bear with a teddy bear because they didn't want to hire a child actor, but the funny thing is, is that Baby Bear is usually portrayed by an adult actress in most professional productions.
I was also wondering why they couldn't just find an adult with a smaller frame for that role.
@@anbu1325 less actors, more money. why else?
@@anbu1325same for the puppet Fiona, couldn’t they have just used a smaller actor instead? It’s not like they replaced the singing needed for that song by having the puppets
They could’ve just age him up to like he is in Puss in Boots 2.
Actually baby bear is usually played by the same child actor that plays young Shrek.
When the producers said "this is what we intended for the original Broadway production" what they really meant was "the original Broadway production was the Broadway show with the highest budget ever until the Spider-Man musical broke that record, and we would have made so much more money from our investment if we were frugal"
Shrek poorly musical is 0/10
Donkey’s costume being a hoodie, shorts, and hat really got me. My school did Shrek this year, and our costume was a full body suit that changed the actors figure, and was so hot to wear there was secret pockets for ice packs. And it was someone jobs to run back and forth to change out the ice packs. Other then Donkey, our Shrek had a fat suit, face and hands prosthetics, Farquad walked on his knees, we bought another productions Dragon and fixed her up. Our set had 4 huge fake trees on wheels that have the illusion of the character walking and changing locations. I thought it was so crazy how a high school production was better then a professional one
A high school production is built to last a week and nobody is being paid, that’s how,
@@bigred8432exactly
Aha! I was Donkey in shrek the musical in HS and had the exact same costume!!
I refused to wear anything but t-shirt and shorts up till 10 minutes before we went on stage!
I appreciate how you don't just rag on the musical and the actors - you actually examine the root cause (the producers/budget) and repeatedly explain for non in-the-know people why this is happening, and that it's NOT the actors' fault. It's too easy to blame the actors but like most things, this is more nuanced than that.
I know this is like, a low bar for doing your due diligence, but I appreciate that. And as someone who watched the play at a local community theater, their set design WAS better and they actually did have a dragon puppet and kid Fiona!
The only thing I personally remember aging poorly (or just not at all honestly) was some jokes about the wolf being trans (and uses slurs) that were cut post-2018 productions anyway.
Anyway, my favorite bit they added in the musical is 1. they made it to Shrek's parents kicked him out as a kid so he had more in common with Fiona, which was very cute, and 2. Lord Farquad was extremely heavily implied to be not attracted to women at all and I'd just using it for a political power play (and then he planned to behead Fiona) which is definitely a cool perspective that I think makes his demise much more satisfying. Also, he would not stop messing with the audience and doing these elaborate fourth wall improvisational sketches. It was great.
Highly recommend community theater Shrek.
Yeah, the wolf was pretty bad.
i saw a community theatre version as well and i think it genuinely could not have been better! our theatre is a part of the local college so people in the drama course act in it and art student make the set and it was fantastic! (my favorite bit was the dragon head, it was like a whole person long and had to be held up by three people controlling the eyes, mouth, and swivel of the neck! and the eyes glowed!)
About number 1, the original play already had that Shrek getting kicked out as a kid stick so that’s nothing new.
@@MysterioPerrito I know! My appreciation for that and Farquad from the play is unrelated to the things being reworked. Sorry, I should have clarified that.
My school recently did a Shrek musical. I worked on it behind the scenes and when I tell you it had **SO** much more effort put into it, I mean it.
A bunch of high schoolers working for free in school for multiple months vs BROADWAY PRODUCERS and we still did so much better.
SAME! But I was Humpty Dumpty!!!
Sameeee, I was baby bear and I thought it was crazy how there isn’t even an actor for that role in this show
Because you aren’t being paid, exactly. Professional theatre is expensive. And a high school set and costumes only have to last a week or so. Yes this tour looks pretty terrible but the school vs professional argument is so bone headed
Build A Wall was a genuinely good song about Shrek reverting back to his old ways after being abandoned by Fiona. Its a shame they got rid of it, it had some of the biggest and most raw emotion in the entire show
It's upsetting that the only reason it was removed is because the title reminds everyone of Trump. The title is honestly just a coincidence. Same goes for Why We Build The Wall from Hadestown, especially since the show debuted on Broadway while he was president. It's obvious the song isn't about Trump, and is beautiful in the context of the shows story.
Yeah I don’t get why this guy thinks removing it was a good thing. It hurts the show more because the raw emotion of shrek being hurt emotionally isn’t heard only seen which isn’t as powerful and the point of musicals is to hear the protagonists emotions thru songs. I love Build a Wall, gives shrek some sad emotion to convey.
If there wasn’t anything problematic about the song content itself I wish they’d trust the audience to have media literacy.
@@ohmygodtheykilledkenny4887 _Seriously?!_ That's almost as stupid as the Pokémon episode that got banned from airing on TV in the U.S. after September 2001 because the dub just happened to title it "Tower of Terror!" 🤦♀
Yeah, Build a Wall and Who I'd be were always my favorites out of the original soundtrack and it's a shame they removed it
There's NO way this is real. They have to be trolling. It's like a bad middle school production of Shrek. Whoever was in charge must've been smoking something STRONG lmao
I saw it in Toronto and left at intermission. I regret to inform you that it's very VERY real.
@@Discworld-Edge-Witch damn that sucks
The redditor who wrote "A picture is worth a thousand words... Most of them swears" has won my respect.
This musical feels similar to the Willy Wonka experience Glasgow.
OMG NOOO😂
Lmfao yes
Or, to give a more recent example, the Bluey experience in Las Vegas
Or Scamilton
It's a high school production.
So, the funniest thing is that: i work at a news station and we got some ads for "Shrek the Musical" coming to our city and i was so confused cause all the spots are just the logo with music over it and the show dates. Which i thought was weird, cause most musicals that are advertised on air have like... clips from the tour to show "hey, this is what the show looks like".
I guess i know why theyre marketing it like that now
SULLY TALKING ABOUT MUSICALS??? UM, YES PLEASE??
we watched the 2008 musical in class randomly when i was like, 11 because a nearby school was doing a play for it
i CRIED and had to get walked out by a teacher when lord farquad came on because the kid playing him had such terrible makeup and wig design it freaked me out
Similar story here, summer school around 2014 and they took us all to see it, but the person playing Shrek terrified me, his makeup and scream were horrifying. Funny thing is I went on to play Pinocchio for the school musical a few years later and whoever did my makeup I'd argue made it more terrifying than I remember the show being
I remember seeing Shrek the musical at my older cousin's highschool. I was little at the time but I feel like I remember the HIGHSCHOOL production being more polished than some of those costumes. Especially Shrek, the actor for it shaved his head if I remember.
I also went to a high school production of shrek, and similarly, it was way better than this
Making Farquaad not short was a big mistake. Completely misses the point of the character. I saw the UK tour of Shrek months ago and they did the same thing to Farquaad there. The rest of the costumes where better though.
Can you believe they made Oompas Loompas Robots in the Wonka Musical as well. Like Broadway is afraid to portray fictional short people in there plays or something it’s so dumb. What’s the point of making a musical off a movie if you change one of the main traits of one of the characters of the source material. Farquaad being short wasn’t meant to offend anyone, it was a parody off of what antagonists normally would look like and hurts his motivation for being king since he was different and being king gave him power over those who picked on him for being different. Also removing the ballad of Farquaad was a mistake gives the antagonist some fleshed out character.
Oompa Loompas aren’t robots in the musical
I would argue with all my soul that it’s way better than whatever Broadway did with them.
OOMPAS ON BROADWAY WAS SCARY AF AND NOT IN A FUN WAY
nobody tell Schaffrillas what Sully said about Shrek the Musical
I don’t think he’ll care, he’s probably too busy trying to remind Dreamworks about the Dehydration gun for Megamind Rules season 2 (god I hope that doesn’t happen)
"Sutton Foster as Fiona" I... what. Did I just hear that?
Yes you did she was fantastic
Yeah
career highlight
That’s how I discovered her 💀
She was in the original Broadway. She was great (unlike her recent stint as Marion in THE MUSIC MAN)
FYI for any fans, if a producer, director, or writer uses the terms “reimagining, modern audience, or remake” BIG RED FLAG. 🚩
The “reminagining for a modern audience” thing always strikes me as bad. Like you can just say you rewrote it a bit and made it better, saying “for a modern audience” just seems like “how do you do fellow kids”
Lord Farquadd being replaced by some bald dude is like how's this new Musical based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on tour replacing it's small human Oompa-Loompas with ROBOTS. (Not joking)
To be fair, if you think about it robot Oompa-Loompas makes kind of sense, and it wasn’t that bad they looked good
@@andresmaldonado8935 Yeah, and it fits Wonka's wacky mad sceintist vibe perfectly
@@andresmaldonado8935how does it make sense, in Dahls book he goes to Oompa Land that has real people and now that their just robots it leaves glaring plot holes 🕳️. How do the robots know these songs, why did wonka program them to sing songs? Oompa Loompas are people from a fictional island that Dahl created not machines with no personalities.
That one of the stupidest revamp decisions I ever seen besides all the dumb revamping I heard in this video.
Is Broadway scared of depicting short people in there plays or what? Like it’s only a musical no one is gonna take the interpretation literally.
it looks like an cute elementry school play but an tour production , i feel bad for the actors that worked hard on this , i don't think it's gonna be as sucessful or last long while current national tours that are still running , the non - equity tour missed the mark
Fun Fact: Brain D’arcy James plays a Marvel character in the MCU. He played Kate Bishop’s father in the Hawkeye Series
No wonder he looked familiar
“They expected this but instead were met with this:”
Oh my God! A midroll ad!
Bro my school did a production of shrek a couple weeks before it came close to us and some people as it and thought we did a better job with set design and costumes than the literal Broadway quality show kinda sad if you ask me
I’m happy to see that you are staying how non-Equity does NOT mean the performers are less talented or qualified. So many of us choose not to join for many reasons like wanting to be able to perform more often because we love it and the industry is so saturated. We are definitely still professional! I really appreciate you acknowledging that.
My community theater did a better version.
I came here to say the same thing. I play trombone in the pit, and every night I found something new to enjoy. Our costumes and sets were amazing, as were the performers. Community theatre doesn't necessarily equal bad.
I don’t really understand why people don’t like the song “Build a Wall”. I think it’s a fantastic song, that expresses how Shrek is going to give up on all of the things he’s trying to be. He’s going to go back to living his life on the swamp, sad and alone, and he’s coming to terms with it even if he doesn’t want to. The song sounds very nice, and I honestly think that it’s one of the most underrated.
it's actually one of the best songs in the show and frankly one of the best moments
The original run was incredible and i love my dvd of tgat version. This latest redesighn is just tragic. Choices were made and it was a carcrash. If it wasn't broke, don't break it.
Aw hell yeah, I can get both EKT news AND musical theatre drama on the same channel. It's fun seeing my interests overlap with the channels I watch
Just A fyi, I saw this production a few weeks ago. Shrek, Donkey and the fairy tale characters costumes were all fixed and Shrek’s parents are actually people. Young Shrek and young Fiona’s are still puppets and it’s a bit awkward but whatever I dealt w it. I would rate it a 6.5/10
This musical revival reminds me of the community college production for Seussical the Musical my 4th grade class had to see 10+ years ago. Our teachers hyped us up for the show by showing us clips and pictures from the Broadway show, so the whole class was expecting to see a grand, colorful, high budget spectacle. Instead of all of that, all of the set pieces were made of sloppily-painted plywood and cheap feather boas glued to them, the guy playing the Cat in the Hat was just wearing a black turtleneck, black jeans, and a dollar-store striped hat, Horton the Elephant was just a more overweight man wearing gray sweats and an elephant trunk on his nose, and, most memorably, the Grinch (who only had 5 seconds of stage time) was just a guy with a green t-shirt stretched over his head and arms like a child.
The most exciting part of the show was when the spotlight shined on the Cat in the Hat as he violently shaked his ass at the end of the opening number, making all of the kindergarteners in the audience laugh.
Definitely love how you can take someone who doesn't know about the subject matter and explain it in not too much or too little detail, entertaining us at the same time! Go 100k Sully 🎉🎉🎉🎉
The budget production of this revival looks like a high school or college play.
Last year I saw the UK Tour of SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical, like with Shrek, the show won Tonys for its costume and set and then had those changed on this tour. The difference is, while the designs were drastically different from the Broadway one (and definitely lower budget), they were still really high quality and kept the same general vibe that the original version had. Honestly, there’s a part of me that prefers the Plankton design from the UK tour just because the sheer camp energy of it really works for the musical’s interpretation of the character.
Dude! We saw this play about a month ago, and we were very underwhelmed. The music was good, but the vocal mixing, costumes, and sets were not good.
I worked backstage on a community production of Shrek a few years back, and it was far closer to the original than this one. Dragon, was a dragon, Farquad was - well - Farquad and we had big extravagant sets and projections. When you first showed the remake i was genuinely shocked at what they had done to such an awesome show.
Eeeeewwww, paying people less because they don't have a union to fight for them.
I thought about seeing this when it was touring in Hershey, PA (ngl when I saw the ad I thought it was like a high school/college production not a tour)…thank god I didn’t lmao
Didn't the musical come out in 2013 or was that for the dvd
Boraodway original came out in 2008/09. DVD came out in 2013 of original Broadway Musical.
4:38 Piece of irony: when the show did a non-equity tour in 2011, it did have a pair of child actors
yes that production was still the Broadway version with all the same sets, costumes, direction, etc.
I genuinely cannot believe this is real. I cannot believe they looked at this and thought “Yeah let’s put this on tour”. It feels like a fever dream lol
I just did shrek in my school
AND IT WAS STILL BETTER THAN THIS😭
6:16 I NEED TO SEE FOOTAGE OF THIS
It didn’t look like a Shrek musical tour, let alone a school play of it going across town.
That looks nothing like Toddrick Hall's promotion for this show with him in the donkey costume... nor is that him in the hoodie.
I just don’t understand why they did this considering Shrek was on tour recently in the UK and it was almost identical to the original broadway production.
Lord Farquad was also just a normal actor but a relatively small person to keep the short thing going. Was really good.
My high school did this and honestly our staging and costumes were better
Baby Bear No! In high school I played baby bear in our adaptation of Shrek the Musical so to see him cut almost feels personal.
My sister and I played as Shrek and Dragon in our school production, and we happened to win cheap tickets in a lottery to the show in our hometown. We enjoyed it, mostly based off of nostalgia, but we still had fun. And it was definitely better than our production. 🤷♂️
THEY CUT "DONT LET ME GO" That song is hands down one of the best ones!!! Why are they turning it into the Jr version!
I love when revivals do something entirely new, but it doesn’t always work
I had no idea this was the actual show. I honestly thought it was a community theatre production. Now it wasn't incredibly bad. Sure, it's not the 2008 Broadway run. But I had expected one thing and gotten another. My family got tickets from another family member who couldn't attend with his family, so we took it. We didn't have much going on that week. By no means was it terrible, as a first viewing. I can defend the points the Sully brought up. It's a shame they are getting paid less and the whole thing is lower budget. But we got to see it for free and we got some laughs out of it. Plus, we got it before the revamp, so we saw what the producers cheaped out on! I swear the actors REALLY held this thing together. They all did an amazing job despite the hand they were dealt and those conditions they were under.
...But when my sisters high school production of the 1985 CLUE movie is higher quality with its sets, you know they really screwed up the visuals... and they did it on a smaller budget than the Shrek team before the revamp. No crap to everyone who worked on this production of Shrek: They are the main attraction. The sets take a massive backseat (sometimes), but I did not see a single kid in that audience bored. Bravo to the cast! Plus, some of the "cringe" writing for Farquaad actually hooked the audience more (which I did not expect).
Those tour costumes are giving “we have Shrek the Musical at home sweetie” but Shrek the Musical at home *ISN’T* just the ProShot on streaming, it’s that low budget tour.
Yes, that’s an improvement but that is just so unfortunate because I know how amazing the OG Shrek the musical stage production was, you cut out everything that made Shrek the musical so unique and made it into an amateur crap fest like I don’t understand how you got away with that especially if you were charging $120 something per ticket in the front row which is outlandish and may I say a huge slap in the face to the OG Shrek the musical!
Funny i see this video, i keep getting ads for the Shrek the musical tour as it is coming to my home city, Dallas, soon. My Community Theatre also hosted a competition to where they'll take us to see it if we sold enough tickets (we unfortunately did not).
oh my god i remember this, my uncle actualy played donkey in at least the one of the shrek the musical plays because he was donkey`s understudy and the orginal couldnt make it. this brings back mad memorys man.
and i also remember being disaponted when i relised he wasnt in the play shown on netflix :(
Was the Magic Mirror still in it ? I think they should’ve put it up at a Universal Studios theme park like how AK has Finding Nemo the Musical
the magic Mirror actually got cut right after Broadway. The script was reworked for the 1st National tour and that was one of the few changes
Shrek the Musical is one of my 4 year old’s favorites! We sing along with the soundtrack in the car, and we were so excited last year when we heard that the musical tour was coming to our town. Then I heard it was a non-equity show, and that didn’t sit right with me. After that, I saw photos of the show and heard parts of the story had changed, including songs being cut, and… I just can’t pay those ticket prices for a show that would disappoint my son who has seen the filmed stage production dozens of times.
I’m glad that the actors are performing well with the limitations that the productions team has put on them, and I hope that they are treated/paid well for the hard work they have put into it, despite the poor production choices elsewhere.
Glad to see someone reminding folks not to be mad at the actors. I loved the musical since I saw it a decade ago, and when I heard it was touring again I was quietly hoping it'd come somewhere near me. Then the pictures leaked. Then the rest of it leaked.
And I just felt awful for the team actually putting the sweat and love into doing the best they could with a really REALLY bad hand. Like, this just sounds like a trainwreck and a half, so for the performers to keep going and doing their best tells me there's a lot of heart still in the swamp.
Thank you so much for posting this! I got tickets pretty much just for the giant dragon puppet, the costumes, and short Farquaad. I had no idea 😢
Blaming the poor actors... DON'T. They are at the mercy of the producers, director, costume designer, set designer, prop master... They have the least power in a production. All they can do is try to rise above the bad decisions of others. Been there... It's the folks behind the scenes to blame for this.
Reminds me of the natl tour of Titanic the musical. Looked like a high school production. Actors were great, but they could rise above the [lack] of scenery and cardboard set. And the model of titanic on wheels pulled along a sea of black plastic trash bags.
I saw the show in Wilmington NC, and the actors/actresses did such a phenomenal job that the cosmetics weren’t enough to ruin the show. They did a STELLAR job.
We saw it and were so disappointed. They created a Bad Shrek Jr. Performance. Most of the songs are gone and they have weird reprises. Costumes were terrible. And plot makes no sense anymore.
Oh God, back on the road.
Also, question: why is everyone mad that everyone made fun of him for being short?
I have a blu-ray of the original show. Didn't know there was a revival.
I saw a production a while ago (wasn’t Broadway or anything, just a small production in some British town) and it was honestly amazing. The Dragon looked wonderful (I think she got the most cheers during the bows), the singing made me want to start singing along too, the acting was hilarious, but in a good way (loved Donkey). I also loved the costumes (they had the Dragon actress wearing this dark pink sparkly jumpsuit and the puppet above her).
Which…makes me wonder. The show I saw had a pretty large budget it seemed, but Broadway shows have extremely large ones…so…where did the money go?
4:20 huh. I'd expect that from a high school or community play. But for Broadway? Really?
What are people even paying to see the Broadway version for if it doesn't have professional costumes and sets?
Edit: apparently this wasn't a Broadway tour. And my silly self just assumed cause I'm not familiar with other companies doing tours but now that I think about it that makes sense
it's not Broadway, it's just an independent production that someone produced to tour on the road. it has no connection to the Broadway production other than the script/score and even that apparently has been changed. Producers send these non-union tours out to small venues all the time. People are only really hearing about this one because of the buzz on how poorly it was produced after they made such a big deal about reworking it for a "new Generation".
@@keeter5 Oh dang my bad
Thanks for the clarification
I saw it was touring here.. Saw what they were doing and WOW.... This was horrific. It is like they didn't even try!!!
Hello theater kid here so I watched this shrek and it was good but horrible and shrek had a full head of hair and I was weirded out by I know it’s today and I was spotting a few things and the actors were AMAZING but the script was not I saw the girls who were playing middle and young Fiona and looked the same age! I may be sounding a little dramatic but the show was SO expensive but the people in the front had to STAND and it was about $189 to be in the front still being dramatic here and they took out some of my favorite songs but overall it was a fun time I got shrek ears and I was happy with everything else 😁
My highschool production was better than this- like so much better (to be fair my school is serious about theater but it shouldn’t be better than a professional show-) it was so fun to work, got me into tech work!
Nooooo, they cut “Dont Let Me Go”???? That's like my favorite part 😮
Thing I like about the original broadway production is that they actually recorded it and sold it, to be enjoyed years later, rather than having people watch recordings from people being sneaky in the audience. I have a copy of it that I've had for years, and still watch occasionally.
Also, I personally liked the songs they removed. 'Build A Wall' is a well sung song in the original, and does follow the original story from the movie a bit closer.
Shrek the Musical is one of my favorites it took the original movie and made it better and this THIS… NO
This gives me vibes of the ai Willy Wonka experience in Scotland
1:08 i reccomend watching this if you haven't seen shrek the musical, because it feels like dlc for the first movie in the best way possible
Thanks for posting this! Haha I was totally gonna go see this so I’m glad I’m saving my money😂
I may dislike how the musical concept goes against the point of Shrek but production wise for the original I'm in heaven
Producers are getting too comfortable with trying to get around doing Non-union tours so that they can save money and avoid equity guidelines. It’s not just this show either, other touring shows like Peter Pan and Mean Girls are having similar issues
On July 13 I go watch Shrek The Musical on National Tour which is first broadway in Vietnam and it looks much better than anything showed in this video…. The makeup, the costumes are very detailed. They build a big giant dragon puppet/animatronic for the show. The only thing is missing in that show I see is onstage physical set. There only few of them like castle and trees and the stage so big that some big set just looks empty. I did post some video of it at the end.
Sully, I love your work and everything you do, I just gotta say it here: I thought the Actors' Equity logo was a pair of asscheeks for a huge hot second, okay thank you for your time carry on
On some the costumes (emphasis on some), I can definitely see what they were going for; like making the 3 pigs construction workers and baby bear being a teddy bear.
I saw the UK Tour that was on at the same time and read in advance some people thought that looked cheap and where mad the Farquad wasn’t on his knees and they gave Pinocchio’s song to Shrek but it had fixed most of the complaints by my stop of the tour and especially compared to the American tour it was fine. They just had the fairly young looking actor who played Grumpy also played young Fiona, young Shrek and Baby Bear to avoid child actors. My only real compliant would be the giant screen behind them was showing doubles of the same section for about a meter on one of the sees and it was kind of distracting.
Edit: also because Farquaad wasn’t short especially by my areas standards I think they had rewrote the “he’s compensating for something” jokes to more explicitly just be small dick jokes but in a way kids might not catch
I wonder what you think of the re-imagined version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast as produced by Disney themselves. Not as bad as this, but cutting songs, speeding up songs, and extending already overly long dance numbers, and scaling down the huge sets, let's say they were all interesting choices.
witch songs did they cut?
@@missroyaltea4012 They cut Maurice' song "No Matter What", which deepened the relationship between Belle and her father, and "Maison des Lunes", which basically explained the 'lock up Maurice' plot. They now go straight to capturing Maurice and Belle showing the Beast in the mirror.
The song Home was sped up, giving Belle no time to process what was happening.
Gaston & Be Our Guest's dance scenes got extended.
@@beyondamsterdam9400 thank you! thoes seem like strange things to change story wise.
No matter what is a dull song and totally slows down the show
@@beyondamsterdam9400 Maison des Lunes get cut frequently from the stage show. I think you have to take the in-park versions with a grain of salt. They are created for a different audience than your traditional theatre goers. they are less concerned about the artistry than they are the spectacle
I’ll have to look into this…hard to believe the one we were a part of was a decade ago 😳
I’m actually currently in a performance of Shrek the musical playing Farquuad, and I think it’s really interesting how my lame ass 15 year old in literal pool noodles was closer to the OG Broadway performance then the musical was. But hey, I don’t think the people working on the show really could control what the producers gave them.
I believe they’re performing the “TYA” version; which is like a version of the show that cuts out some innuendos and makes the show generally shorter (around 90 minutes.) But like.. why??? The full length is so much better 😭
no they are performing a newly reworked version by the authors. It's still a "Full length production" but just shorter
@@keeter5 Ahh, thanks! However they have VERY similar cuts to “TYA” version…
That was exactly my thought about it when you started to show images of the costumes and sets, that "ya this looks like how my local community theater group might do costumes for a show like this". Cool and creative when they do it and tickets are 20-25 dollars, but for a professional production with actual professional show prices that's just unacceptable. At $100/ticket in massive theaters, there is no reason you can't be elaborate with costumes and have better sets. The one thing I'll excuse is the use of puppets, I'm a fan of puppets and for things like shreks parents and kid Fiona where they show up for 1 minute total of run time, I can get them being puppets an artistic sense (like they are constructs of the past and memories to these characters, not real people) and a practical sense (if you have tosave money of costumes, why douse two other actors in green to be Shreks parents when that prohibits them from basically doing anything else in the remaining 2.5 hours of show)
9:05 why are their baby triplets in this? the ones they don’t have until the very end of the third movie?
Because got to make changes that don’t make any logical sense to the original source material…
When you order Shrek the musical from Wish
I saw Shrek in Edinburgh (Scotland) in January, it was pretty much the exact same as it was in 2008 over here
I literally just did the jr version of this and my last show was yesterday (R.I.P.) and I was a duloc performer. I’m gonna miss it. It was my first time doing musical theatre
I love how they cut Build A Wall because they know the theater-goers aren't intelligent enough to realize the song (that came out almost a decade before the 2016 election) has absolutely no ties to Donald Trump
Just saw it in Las Vegas, and my head was spinning. Along w/ everyone in our group. We were so excited to see the Shrek we had fallen in love with or at least something very close to it. This was something else entirely. It felt like community theatre, except we have community theatre that is better than this. The puppets for Young Shrek and the Young Fiona's and Baby Bear, Farquaad's normal height (which really lost all the humor of the original Farquaad), cutting "Don't Let Me Go," the barebones set (looked like a high school/community theatre set), sound issues (mics cutting out, orchestra sometimes drowning out actors and/or actors mics not loud enough), the dragon costume (such a disappointment - a local children's theatre did Shrek last summer and basically used a variation of the same dragon costume, which works on a smaller stage/theatre, but not in this venue). The only thing I will add, I don't know if the actors are tired, or the negative reviews are getting to them, but some of the the performances were not what we've come to expect for a show that was a Tony winner and for the ticket prices we paid (which were the standard rate for Broadway shows at this venue). Ensemble was overall strong, some really amazing vocals, but sometimes the actors (mainly the Fairy Tale Creatures) did not enunciate or talked too fast, and if someone didn't see/know the original musical, they would not have known what was going on. There was also a point where the crew didn't position Fiona's Tower well (the scene where Shrek climbs through the window) and I could see the crew member behind it throughout the entire scene.
did they at least get rid of the t-slur in the new version?
yes they did!
they tore my cotton granny dress and called me a hot and tranny mess 💀💀💀💀
What T Slur
@@MysterioPerrito the trans one 😬
@@coconutl0vrr oh I know which one you mean
Is young Fiona still a puppet? That was so unsettling! I’m going to this production in a few weeks and was totally expecting the “regular” show that I had seen many years ago. Thank you for an informative video!
Ailment? Baldness and height are ailments?
I was at the Memphis one😂 I think donkey was hilarious though in the music they did in the background over through the first half so I couldn’t really hear any of the singing actors were one of the problems but I think they really good. The show was good.
I will not stand for this Build A Wall slander
I thought the whole thing why Lord Farquaad was short was because he was one of the Seven Dwarfs? Why would they change that if he wasn't even supposed to be human to begin with?