The Tuesday Morning “Nobody-Asked-Me-To, But-Here-I-Go-Anyway” concert review – Sarah Brightman.

(or, Why I Will Never Be A Professional concert reviewer…)

I will admit right at the outset today that despite the stature of Ms. Brightman, this was one concert both Mrs. That Dan Guy and I were feeling a bit mixed about. There’s no question – she’s a superstar, and when the show was announced, I felt that we should definitely see her performance.

But in the grand scheme of things, Sarah Brightman is a bit…how can I say this…

Out there??

Her swelling and grand New Age music pieces generally leave us indifferent, but her voice, well…wow. She can hit the notes in places where most singers wouldn’t even know where to look. And, she’s most famous for her role in The Phantom Of The Opera, a musical we still can’t get out of our heads, almost 20 years after seeing it staged.

Anyhow, there’s a point here somewhere – we were going into our last concert of the year (on Canadian soil) with some trepidation. And our smaller, crappier camera.

The stage featured a unique trio of large and imposing columns, which turned out to be mobile, but fit together they served as a see-through screen for the projections that displayed there throughout the concert. Very innovative – we've never seen anything like it before.

Now, I did mention that Brightman’s non-theatre catalogue features a lot of New Age-y, over-the-top stuff in the vein of Enya and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. To backdrop that, the projections featured lots of imagery that wouldn’t be at all out of context on a Meatloaf album cover. Dark grottos, ancient structures, and faerie wonderlands. As a matter of fact, you couldn’t help thinking after the first song or two that maybe this was exactly the sort-of stuff that pixies, elves, faeries, gnomes and even hobbits listen to, after a hard day of doing whatever those beings might do. Very mystical stuff.

It was, truth be told, one of the most elaborately staged shows we ever seen, and we have seen many of the major divas – Celine, Cher, Diana, and even Bette’s new Vegas revue – all mild by comparison. There were (throughout the 2-hour show) more special effects than you’d expect out of a Hollywood epic. There was the aforementioned Phantom Of The Opera set, an elaborate Alice In Wonderland sequence, a song with Brightman as Little Red Riding Hood on a bicycle, and the pictured song, where she swung over the crowd like a mesmerizing Southern belle, as rose petals fell over the crowd.

We saw snowfall, and winter settings. We saw Nutcracker soldiers, and Asian influences. There was, and I’m not kidding – a musical in a water setting.

We heard her hit notes that brushed at the rafters, many in languages that may have been human in origin. She’s proficient at singing in several languages.

There were a few highlights, especially the Phantom piece, and a couple of the traditional opera pieces made popular in recent years by similar (but far more restrained) performers. She exceeded both of our expectations, and this show will go down as one tough bird to top.

On a side note, it was about this time of year we saw Phantom in one of the five major cities worldwide, where it had been running. We caught it in L.A. - and while we were there we took side trips out to Pasadena to see another smaller play, and even ventured out to see the beautiful Glory Of Christmas, at the famous Crystal Cathedral in Orange County. It was a magical time, of its own.

It’s about time we get back out to California…

Chow for now!!