See
Lynne's point and laugh thread and
No time for beer slamming in the parking lot from yesterday's discussions.
Okay first of all the city of Richmond has a LOT of work to do if they really want to get people to come back into the city for events. Parking was horrible-no signage to speak of, no traffic control (about 2,000 cars added into the city mix), facilities completely unable to handle even this minimal capacity. I understand how convenient things are these days it is not like I EXPECT it like some people seem to but this was ridiculous. We spent as much time in traffic as we did in the event. The coliseum itself (at least 30 years old) had no indication of where any seating was-we just went into a door and made our way down to our seats (floor-middle section 5th row) through the rest of the crowd. The chairs were an accident waiting to happen-Josie almost fell through twice (and I had my hand on her the entire time) the girl next to us once, and the boy in front of us actually fell through
my boot was luckily in the right spot so his head didn’t hit the concrete floor. The chairs were so close together that there was no place for kids to dance around let alone allowing movement in or out. Really bad.
The show itself has really fantastic.
They played all their own instruments (with the orchestra part piped in but you really don’t notice that) and all the voice was live.
As a means of taking small breaks they (Anthony mostly) read out the signs in the audience, pointed out a group of 10 kids dressed up like the dancers, and they had a very touching moment with a young cancer patient-I think it was part of Make-a-wish or something like that Anthony wore the t-shirt that this little girl Savannah gave him for the rest of the show.
The stage props were kind of old but I mentioned to my wife that they really don’t need to do these shows. They are all filthy rich and this show couldn’t have paid off much more than $100,000 total. They basically do it just so people can come and see these fixtures of their lives in person. One of the funniest moments was when they all got on stage (Sam needs to look into some cardio work) they did a very familiar song and all the adults absolutely BELTED OUT THE WORDS-I think everyone realized how funny it was. There were a few minutes wherein everyone kind of got their head around the fact that they were really standing right there and I mean RIGHT THERE!! Not in an rockstar idol kind of way just an old friend is in town kind of way. Since the window for kids liking the Wiggles is rather small and the fact that they can’t tour enough to go everywhere meant this was probably a once in lifetime kind of thing. Josie took 10 minutes or so to realize that this wasn’t them on TV anymore-that was them right there!!!
The stuff for sale outside was very reasonably priced-$25 for a program and a t-shirt. The program mentions they started out as a couple of teachers picking up extra bucks and that they are very aware of using their material to teach. A very titled woman had an article talking about how the Wiggles construct everything weary of the “hidden curriculum” and promoting pro-social behavior. No violence of any kind, no dangerous activities that kids might emulate. That being said when Murray took center stage to go the “play your guitar with Murray” song he stood there…everything got really quiet….and he played the intro chords to “Stairway to Heaven” with Anthony adding some drums –huge laughter from the adults and a few rebelyells. Very funny.
Really a great show-these guys busted their butts for 90 minutes. It was billed as being the movie that they did but I think they have realized that people want to see the songs they know and the characters so they basically just did that. Very engaging and personable. One of the dancers that is on all the TV shows was still in the group and he seems to have quite the following, when he was introduced there were SCREAMS from the ladies—very interesting ;-) They went off script/had some bloopers which they played up for laughs and you could tell that they really got a kick out of each other.
Highly recommend it if you get the chance.
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