So yesterday in the grand ole USA was Thanksgiving. Over here, it was just another Thursday of me washing my hair and having a two hour Spanish seminar. Not much to look forward to and definitely not enough turkey involved. That was until I remembered that Team Starkid would be posting their brand new musical Twisted:The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier which is Wicked meets Aladdin - basically.
The premise is great - take a well known story from our childhood and spin it on its head. It's exactly what Gregory Maguire did with The Wizard of Oz and now our favourite musical theatre company has done it with Aladdin. Not an easy task, one might think. Aladdin is everyone's choice street rat, lovable rogue and Jafar had not one redeeming quality about him in the 1992 Disney classic.
But Starkid does it again, they did it with Voldemort and now they've done it with Jafar. Made a villain into a hero. Made us empathise and relate to the point where you kind of forget the original story and are convinced that Jafar's just misunderstood and Aladdin is a creep that you don't want to bring home to meet your parents.
Twisted lives up to its name with enough twists in the story to keep audiences engaged and re-watching repeatedly. The addition of the romantic interest for Jafar, who incidentally turns out to be the Princess Jasmine's real father, is a human quality which adds sympathy to the character and once again we got to see the wonderful chemistry between Dylan Saunders and Meredith Stepien that we fell in love with in Starship.
Dylan was fantastic, as ever his voice is so pure and untouchable that every lyric sung sounds beautiful. It was so great to see him in a main role, allowing his light to truly shine. Team Starkid favourites Joe Walker, Jaime Lyn Beatty and Lauren Lopez were seen taking more minor roles but once again their talent knew no bounds and even the smallest of parts were played by great comedic actors.
Rachael Soglin as the Princess was a wonderful addition to the cast. I'm normally quite wary of newbies to Starkid, which I think is understandable, but Rachael blends right into the Team with her quirky acting style and beautiful voice. Her over-the-top adolescent is reminiscent of the stubborn Princess Jasmine but with enough humour to separate her from Disney. Her defiance against Aladdin and true heart towards Jafar makes Jasmine a strong, empowering character without the bratty attitude overwhelming her role.
Robert Manion is also a great addition proving there are no small parts only genius actors, who take one liners and make them fantastic. Hoping to see more of this guy in future productions!
I grew completely attached to Jeff Blim after Holy Musical B@man and here again he plays to perfection. His inversion of the pure-hearted, innocent street urchin into kind of a huge stereotypical arsehole was sort of genius, making Aladdin a character we were willing to dislike, particularly with the song 'Take Off Your Clothes' which remains a highlight of the piece. Probably for the wrong reasons.
Starkid has a talent for injecting references and parodies into all its productions - and I don't just mean the part where the Djinn only speaks in film quotes. Almost all the songs - wonderfully written by A.J Holmes (we love you A.J, you are so talented) and Kaley McMahon - were evocative of classic Disney songs of the past. Look out for allusions to A Whole New World, Part of Your World and Belle all tweaked to have that Starkid humour and glamour.
And yet despite each reference and mockery, the songs are still independent and fantastically written, able to stand alone - and stand out - amongst the vivacious stage that is Twisted.
So that's Team Starkid, giving us something to be thankful for no matter where you are on the globe. They may have started out as a group of college kids doing a parody of Harry Potter but now there is magic in every musical they do - parody or otherwise. So I'm gonna take advantage of my free afternoon and indulge in something a little more Twisted... I advise you do the same...
But if not, you can always just imagine you're watching Jeff Blim... not that I'm trying any subliminal messages or anything ;)
Satisfied? I am.
