Diary – 24 November 2007

I ’ve seen my fair share of films-turned-into-live-shows over the past couple of years. All About My Mother, The Producers, The Sound of Music, Dirty Dancing: I’ve endured or enjoyed them all. Live performance can be the most transformative, exhilarating experience, or it can kill you, drip by drip, clonking metaphor by clonking metaphor, wasted minute by wasted minute. Desperately Seeking Susan, the flick-turned-musical I saw last Tuesday, was like an exclusive audience invitation. To commit hara-kiri. Blondie’s songs, kidnapped and forced into hard labour because Madonna wouldn’t license the original music, butchered by rawk arrangements and a bellowing cast; charmless leads; cheap costumes; tacky tacky tacky. And what is it with musical choreography? Only in musicals does anyone bring their clenched fist slowly down in front of their face in order to show conflict; nowhere else does a wire mesh fence always mean that someone rebellious is going to throw themselves at it and then slump to the floor, distraught.