It was a few years ago that the phenomenon that is “Riverdance”
\ntook the nation by storm. And already, it’s starting to wear out
\nits welcome.<\/p>\n
I say this not because I’m sick of the Irish music – hell, I
\nlove Irish music. And it’s not that I’m sick of the dancers,
\nalthough I know that if I ever tried any of the moves they did,
\npeople would be rushing me to the hospital for a heart attack and
\nbecause I somehow wrapped my legs around my head.<\/p>\n
But when we get to the point of building a Broadway show around
\n“Riverdance,” well, that just seems to be too much of a good thing.
\nAnd as the soundtrack to the show,
\nRiverdance On Broadway<\/i>, proves, some things just shouldn’t
\nbe tampered with, like the formula for Coca-Cola or
\n“Dudley-Do-Right”.<\/p>\n
Musically, there are some incredible pieces on this disc, and
\ncomposer Bill Whelan is to be commended for such pieces as
\n“Firedance” and “The Countess Cathless \/ Women On The Sidhe” which
\nthrow things into overdrive to catch the spirit of the original
\nproduction and keep things sounding fresh.<\/p>\n
But there are two unique problems with
\nRiverdance On Broadway<\/i>. First, no matter how hard this disc
\ntries, it fails to capture the essence of the actual show (which,
\nI’ll admit, I haven’t seen – Broadway is much farther from me than
\nthe Wisconsin border). With the exception of capturing the Irish
\nfeel at times, how do you translate a largely visual extravaganza
\nto compact disc? They’ve been able to do it before, but with this
\nparticular outing, it just falls flat.<\/p>\n
Second, some of the pieces really don’t sound like they fit very
\nwell. Admittedly, I’ve not followed the whole “Riverdance” saga
\nsince Michael Flatley first made it a household name, so I could
\nwell be talking out of my hat at times. But I don’t really see how
\na gospel track such as “Let Freedom Ring” fits in with the Gaelic
\nchants of songs like “Shivna”.<\/p>\n
And for that matter, I really hate to say this, but the truth
\nmust be known – the choral group An\u00fana sounds like they were
\nlifted from “FM 100” Muzak stations. The last time I heard vocal
\nharmonies like that was on the Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Band’s
\nChristmas album – and I don’t mean that to be a compliment. It’s
\nsaccharine sweet to the point of being nauseating.<\/p>\n
I guess what bothers me about
\nRiverdance On Broadway<\/i> is that, judging from the soundtrack,
\nI get the impression that they’re moving away from what the core of
\nthe original “Riverdance” was, and are trying to breathe new life
\ninto the experience in order to keep things fresh. If this is
\nindeed the case, then I’m begging those involved: let it die with
\ndignity. There’s no shame in admitting that something has run its
\ncourse. The shame is trying to keep it propped up unnaturally to
\nmilk another year or so out of it. Sadly, that’s the vibe I’m
\ngetting with
\nRiverdance On Broadway<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5791],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36670","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-original-cast-recording","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36670"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}