Encore

When Jess, my sister, suggested watching a group of adults returning to their old school for a one night-performance of their high-school show, it was music to our ears. The show takes the loose form of a documentary and is entertaining, emotional and somewhat dramatic so of course my family asked for an encore after we’d watched the first one – and then another encore after that!
Annie Get Your Gun
The first episode we watched of the series, which is co-produced by Kristen Bell, was a reprise of an Annie Get Your Gun performance, 21 years after the original show in 1998. The series introduces you to the performers and their lives as well as showing you clips from the original musicals. In this episode: two of the adults, Al and Ameigh, had dated in high school and Ameigh had actually changed the spelling of her name because of Al. Insanely, she didn’t revert back to her old name after they broke up, never moving on from her high-school love and therefore provides great entertainment as she tries to audition for the lead part and get Al to apologise as many times as possible. I found this episode really entertaining as the performers were all surprisingly good and had pretty interesting lives too.
Marks out of 10? The highest score yet – 9.
High School Musical
In this episode a group of adults perform their high school musical, High School Musical,12 years after they first did so in 2007. Troy is played by the least-Troy looking guy ever whilst Gabriella is played by the girl who was meant to play her in 2007 but missed out due to a sporting injury. The girl who stepped in at the last moment was Kayla, my personal favourite of the performers, who was just a massive High School Musical fan and wanted to join in. This episode was fun to watch – they all had really interesting lives - but when it came to actually performing the play they weren’t actually that good apart from the pair who played Ryan and Sharpay, who were great! A thing I really liked about this show is you got to see their family and children’s reactions to the play, as well as all the frantic shouting backstage.
Marks out of 10? 7.5
Annie
The third episode we watched, which I may have enjoyed slightly less as it was the third episode we watched in a row, was a reprise of a 1996 performance of Annie. In this cast was a pair of twins, a Jehovah’s witness who no-one recognised at the initial reunion, an Annie who didn’t want to ruin her already perfect memories of the musical and a Daddy Warbucks played by a cancer survivor who debates shaving his hair for the part. They were also reunited with their high-school drama teacher who didn’t shy away from discussing how bad they were in rehearsals but neither did the director or choreographers! The show actually turned out to be pretty good – Mrs Hannigan was particularly impressive, and overall, Encore was a great series to discover. 
Marks out of 10? 6.5
Mum’s three words of wisdom:
Such great fun, 
The snooze news:
Did Dad fall asleep during Encore? I don’t actually think he did. But who could fall asleep during a musical?
So there you have it! I hope you enjoyed that review of Encore - comment below if you've seen it though I assume you haven't. We would love for you to share your reviews with us at blogontheplusside@gmail.com as we can publish them - regardless of whether we've written about them before. We really hope to hear from you and read your thoughts. Have a safe day everybody and I'll hopefully see you soon! -Rob

Comments

  1. Unknown15 April 2020 at 00:49

    What a great review - this is going on my lockdown watch list! - Sarah Shannon

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous15 April 2020 at 05:08

      Thank you! I hope you get round to watching it, though i'm sure your lockdown watch list is pretty long like mine.

      Delete

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