Acting on stage seems like a different level of difficulty, too. Actors in live theater don’t have the safety net of a director yelling “CUT!” There are no re-takes, and they almost never need one in the most professional settings.
Right. There’s an element of “risk” to a live performance that, IMO, absolutely adds to the appeal.
I guess you’ve never seen the stage version of Lion King. No foam rubber suits at all. The illusion of the animals is done by masks and puppetry. Really quite amazing. I’ve never seen Beauty, so I can’t speak to that.
Johnny L.A., I grew up with the original cast recording of My Fair Lady, and in that Harrison paused at the “but” just the way you (and I) like it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the movie - any director who kicked out Julie Andrews is subject to my scorn.
Krokodil, the case of Cabaret is interesting. I saw the revival with Joel Grey on Broadway, and the movie, and they are very different beasts. In the play she is a failed singer, not very talented, but you can’t have a star like Liza Minelli in a role like that, so they made her a headliner. I saw the movie first but still prefer the play. Hollywood often messes things up for reasons having nothing to do with art. The movie version of Kiss Me Kate, for example, is terribly bowdlerized.
Um. wow. I’m sorry, but on a site devoted to eliminating ignorance, the OP just threw me for a huge, roller-coaster-sized loop. Are you for real? Are you seriously asking this question? My mind is boggling that anyone could be so ignorant. Sorry if that offends you. Not everyone likes live theatre–that’s true. But it isn’t because of quality. That’s like saying that I don’t buy country CDs because they’re low quality–it’s not, they could be very well produced, I just don’t care for the music. Similarly, music in a genre I like can be crap or of poor quality and not worth my time or money.
But your complaints are not about taste, they’re about inherent level of quality, and I’m sorry but you’re coming across like a buffoon. Whoop-dee-doo. You’ve seen 15 plays in your entire life, one of which had someone in it who had achieved notoriety as being good (but not necessarily in that role, and every performance varies) and you think you can comment credibly on live theatre as a genre?! You live in a small community and think that your local theatre represents the acme of what live theatre can be!? Holy crap.
I don’t even have a rebuttal, because it would be like taking 20 minutes out of my day to argue about global warming with a goat–utterly pointless and futile.
I’m pretty much with the OP. I’m trying to transport myself into an alternative reality, and to me film does the job infinitely better. The actors on a stage can’t even speak in normal tomes of voice during dialogs, because they have to project for the audience. They have to limit the scope of their very movements far more than they would on a movie set – or at least the limits can be far better disguised by a movie.
I see musical performance as different, as musicians are far more free to acknowledge and interact with their audiences than actors following a script.
This reminded me of the Thunderbirds F.A.B. stage show – one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. (The same chap, Andrew Dawson, has also done a stage show of the Three Musketeers – which was also amazing; three actors managing to be all 4 musketeers plus cardinal’s guards at the same time – as well as an excellent piece called space Panorama… that could be described as the Apollo moon landing in mime). 
Maybe it is about taste and audience… but I’m sure professionalism isn’t the sole deciding factor: in 1999 I remember seeing both the then new Midsummer Night’s Dream movie (with Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc) and a semi-pro live performance of the same in Vancouver (Bard on the Beach). The live version was far superior (IMHO), more engaging and immediate, and far more intimate (and bawdy). 
On the flip-side, my wife’s family have long been involved in theater clubs, and I’ve attended amateur productions that have featured some of the most egregious stage performances one is likely to have the misfortune to encounter. :eek:
(But to judge a genre on them wouldn’t be terribly rational).
Roxie: I’m a star!
Boy: And the audience loves her.
Roxie: And I love the audience. And the audience loves me for loving them. And I love the audience for loving me. And we just love each other. That’s because none of us got enough love in our childhood.
Boys: That’s right.
Roxie: And that’s show biz, kid.
I love the relationship between the actor and the audience in the moment. The energy of live theatre can’t be replicated onscreen.
I’d suggest trying some other shows, but part of me thinks if you don’t get it, you’re not going to.
I knew a guy in LA who wondered why anybody would read the book when you could go see the movie version.
The idea that the book could perhaps be better than the movie was beyond his grasp.
Live theater can typically be done on a much smaller budget than Hollywood movies can. Live theater can be tailored to specific audiences much more easily than high budget movies, meaning that you can cover ground that Hollywood has a much harder time addressing. Also, you can make a WHOLE LOT more theater productions than Hollywood movies, which means that once you’ve seen the 5 movies a year that appeal to you, you still have hundreds of live shows to try.
I have seen Beauty, and it’s got some highs and lows. The imagery was fantastic. The costumes were (for the most part) incredible, excluding the character Chip. The sets really stood out, especially the town where Belle sings the song about how she doesn’t fit in, and she wants more. The style they used for the props was very much what you would expect Disney films to look like if they sprang out into the real world. I was impressed!
The added songs were bad, bad, bad, though. They were so embarassingly bad I wanted to crawl into a hole until they were over. They knew they had to add an hour of content to justify selling tickets for 40 bucks, but there just wasn’t another hour of that story to tell. I would have greatly appreciated an abbreviated version of the show that lasted the usual 1.5 to 2 hours the Disney story was told in originally.
Seems like, to the OP, “World Class Actor” = “Movie Actor with Awards”
How often have you seen blooper reels of movies, where the “world class actor” is tripping over his lines, or cracking up over some joke someone made ten minutes earlier, because he just can’t get over how funny it was?
A True stage actor damn well knows he had better get over it, and STAY in CHARACTER, or he’ll destroy the show. Can you imagine how well you’d enjoy those great movies if they left that crap in?
A mediocre actor can be made to look like a ‘great’ actor, simply by careful editing during post-production. Can’t do that in live theatre.
I like the analogy of live music versus recorded music. Same situations - with recordings the performer can redo the screw-ups, the sound engineer can correct out of tune instruments or out of pitch singers in post-production. Harder to do live (although today’s professional sound engineers can do some pretty amazing things w/live preformances as well)
Opal – personal insults are NOT permitted in this forum. It is possible for different people to have different tastes, different experiences, and different attitudes without being either a “buffoon” or a “goat.” In this forum, we discuss the topic, not the person. You have certainly been around long enough to know better than this behaviour.
As an aside: if you think that an OP was deliberately trolling, then the proper response is to hit REPORT THIS POST and let the moderators deal with it. Members do not accuse other members (or guests) of trolling. That’s up to the moderators to decide.
PS - I’m not suggesting that this post was deliberate trolling, I’m only saying that seems to be Opal’s hidden argument, without actually being explicit, and I want to be sure that others (and newcomers to our site) understand what’s OK and what’s not.
I came here to say just this. A perfect example of seeing a show as a movie and seeing it on stage. I was so blown away by the stage performance it was unreal. I saw it years ago and still get chills remembering how well some of the songs were performed. It was so up close, in your face and emotional. Fantastic x100. The movie is good, but the on stage performance was amazing.
Also to any other live theater lovers out there, if you haven’t seen Bat Boy the Musical yet and get the chance, DO IT!
Because it’s live. Because I look at what I want to see, not what the director and the producer and the film editer decided to show. Because each performance is a little different, and I like the nuances. Because I can go to the stage door and sometimes talk to the people.
I can’t see film actors live, but I’ve seen a bunch of stage actors both on and off-stage. I like the reality better.
I wasn’t suggesting that the OP was trolling, merely incredulous that they thought the question valid, that’s all. And I didn’t say the OP was a goat, just that I felt arguing the point would be as useful as arguing with a goat–just that I didn’t think he was ever going to get the distinction based on what I’ve seen in this thread. I’m sorry if it came across as a personal attack.
There’s nothing to me that’s inherently bad about theater, but I’ve been bored to tears by way too many shows at $35-$75 a pop to really get that psyched about it.
Some cut-rate Baltimore actors doing a 2.5 hour G.B. Shaw play while I sit in a folding chair in a room with spotty air conditioning for $50?
That’s like some kind of fucking sadistic joke. “Let’s see just what kind of suckers will show up for this.”
Or some Broadway musical with costumes and dancing primarily designed to extract dollars from people who spent that morning holding up a “Happy Birthday Grandma” sign outside of “The Today Show”, and who are off to Disney World for their next trip.
They pull it off because live theater gets away with this “it’s culture” loophole.
Seeing the cast standing in the lobby with “collection buckets” after the show doesn’t make me feel connected to them. It reminds me of the guy with the “will work for food” sign I’ll pass on the way home.
Why would anyone ever bother having sex with another person when porn is so readily available?
After a play you can hang outside the stage door and get an autograph. (maybe)
Try doing that at a movie theatre.
Once, here in NYC, I went to ‘You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown’ and when the woman came out and sang “My New Philosphy”, a star was born, right in front of my eyes. (Christine Cheneworth)
Or once after the play Patrick Stewart made an impromtu speech at curtain call and he got ‘in trouble’ for doing it and I was there to see the speech.
The play version of *The Lion King * is so different and so much better than the film that they don’t compare.
Chicago the stage play is about 1000 times sexier than the movie version.
Theatrical nitpick: Kristin Chenoweth. And yes, she’s a huge star.
I once notice someone in the chorus of Carousel (1994 revival) who struck me as so damn talented that I got her name and autograph: Audra Ann McDonald. She became a huge Broadway star.
Theatre people have a saying: TV makes you popular. Movies make you rich. Theatre makes you good. Like it was stated above, you have one chance to do it right. And you have to do the same thing over and over and still do it right.
When I see a movie, my viewing is essentially passive; I will watch what the film’s director or cinematographer want me to watch. If the reaction of a secondary character to a plot development is of interest to me, I can watch that character’s reactions only when the director/cinematographer allow me to do so. In live theater, I watch who I want and what I want, for as long as they are onstage. Two people, sitting side by side in a theatre audience, can see entirely different shows, tailored toward their own specific interests.
Choreography works differently in film and on stage.
Live theatre has an immediacy that film lacks. I once saw a college theatre production of the musical SWEENEY TODD, in a small black box theatre with no stage and seating for about 99. I recently saw the film version of the same show. Johnny Depp was great, but the actor playing Sweeney Todd in the live production was right the fuck in front of me, waving a straight razor all over the place and making eye contact with me, personally. Those two SWEENEY TODD experiences were fundamentally different types of experiences; neither could replace the other.
Comedy is different in live theatre. It’s like a living organism, capable of adapting and growing. In a movie, a joke happens, the audience either laughs or doesn’t, and off you go. In live theatre, the actors can adjust their timing, their delivery, even (in some cases) their lines, to roll with the feedback they’re getting from the audience - oh, you liked the long pause, did you? Let’s see how you like an even longer pause here. I’ve never seen a single moment on film funnier than Nathan Lane greeting two latecomers ten minutes after the opening curtain of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
It’s just different.