"Shake Your Dragon Tail"

Last night Roan and I went to see Dragon Tales Live! It was at the Community Center Theater. I like the Dragon Tales music, but I could barely stand the plot. Roan seemed to like it. She even stood up and danced a little at the beginning. Then she didn’t want to stand up, but I’d look over and she’d be swaying to the music in her seat.

It wasn’t so horrible, as it was presented more like a real musical (I like musical theater) than some crappy kiddie show. They had pretty decent sets and lighting effects. Zack and Emmy were actually played by children, which was pretty amazing. I’m not sure if the dialogue and singing were live or not. It sort of sounded like it (kind of bad) but I really couldn’t tell for sure. The music was recorded, of course. Last night was opening night and all seats were $12, which was a really good deal. We sat orchestra level row T and they were pretty good seats. This is the same theater I saw Cabaret at a few years ago. I thought it was pretty cool they were doing a kids show. Most of the kids shows seem to be at Arco and “on ice.” I guess the Dragon Tales crowd is more cultured.

The one thing that irked me was the audience taking 20 million flash photos. C’mon people, turn off your fricken flashes if you must take crap-ass picture. Your little point and shoot flash is not going to come close to illuminating the stage. The flash does nothing but irritate people trying to watch the show. They actually had a dark theater with real stage lighting and then there’d be this strobe light effect of all the idiots in the audience taking pictures. Oh well. They pretty much stopped during the second act, at least.

I was hoping they’d have some kids/dragons on wires flying around (these are flying dragons, btw). They didn’t, but they did have the two kid actors ride stuffed dragons that were each on a mechanical arm (pretty well, hidden I only saw the machine once and it wasn’t well lit or anything) that went up and around while they projected cloud-like lights on them. So it looked like they were flying. Wires would have been cool, though.