360 Vegas Reviews - A Musical About Star Wars

Published: March 8, 2023, 5:59 a.m.

b'Long, long ago, in the Miracle Mile Shops far, far, away\\u2026All right, so if you and the listeners haven\\u2019t figured it out yet, I\\u2019m a big dork. In my youth, I enjoyed video games, Star Wars, and installing A/V equipment so much that it\\u2019s a wonder I ever got laid. As I\\u2019ve gotten older, I\\u2019ve shifted my dorky obsessions to things like bourbon and Vegas, but I\\u2019m still a dork. So when it was announced that the show \\u201cA Musical About Star Wars\\u201d was coming to the Miracle Mile Shops, I had to check it out.\\xa0 Over the holidays I grabbed a pair of tickets and we went to see it.\\nSome background on the show: While I had never heard of the show before it was announced that it was coming to Vegas, it has been around for a few years. It premiered off-Broadway in New York back in 2019, and one of the stars of the Vegas version is a co-writer, and he was also part of the original cast. \\xa0Let\\u2019s just get this out of the way: the comparisons to Potted Potter playing at the Horseshoe are inevitable.\\xa0 Both shows are in relatively small venues, with small casts, and cover similarly expansive series with obsessed fan cultures. In A Musical About Star Wars, the cast is small, with only three performers; Potted Potter has two. Unfortunately, one of these shows works better than the other.I think the biggest issue I had with A Musical About Star Wars is how accessible the humor is.\\xa0 In Potted Potter, you didn\\u2019t have to be a big fan of the material to get most of the jokes.\\xa0 Most of the humor in Potted Potter is in the execution, in the journey to try to tell all these stories in 80 minutes.\\xa0 In A Musical About Star Wars, the humor is in the source material.\\xa0 Most of the jokes are about the content of the films, and the result is that only big fans will find a lot of the jokes funny.\\n\\nFor example, there\\u2019s this recurring bit where the two guys in the show speak to each other mimicking some of the alien languages spoken in the movies. They\\u2019re repeating actual dialogue from the movies, and it\\u2019s supposed to be funny, but comes across as so cringy. Watching it, I just end up feeling embarrassed for my fellow Star Wars nerds.\\xa0 Even the subtitle of the show is cringey. The full title of the show is \\u201cA Musical About Star Wars, or Why Star Wars Is The Greatest Thing To Ever Happen In The History Of The Galaxy And Is Much, Much, Better Than Star Trek.\\u201d\\xa0 If you\\u2019re going to make a show that you need to be a huge fan to enjoy, why would you make the characters who are fans in your show so stunningly awkward?\\xa0 They even get nervous about talking to the female character. It\\u2019s just riddled with simple, unfunny nerd cliches.The other issue I had with the show might have more to do with me than the show.\\xa0 So I am somewhat hard of hearing.\\xa0 I watch TV with the subtitles on.\\xa0 It\\u2019s not severe; I spend about half of my work day talking on the phone, and my hearing loss doesn\\u2019t really affect my ability to do my job.\\xa0 You\\u2019ve heard enough of my reviews to know I don\\u2019t really have any issues with this when it comes to Vegas entertainment.\\xa0 But I could not for the life of me hear about three quarters of the dialogue and singing in this show. I think this is probably due to a variety of factors, including my hearing trouble.\\xa0 I think their sound system sucked.\\xa0 You probably don\\u2019t get the best audio quality in the theater at the mall. Wait, actually, it\\u2019s the backup theater at the mall.\\xa0 Through most of the show, you got 2-3 people singing at the same time.\\xa0 They\\u2019re singing the same things, but they are going kind of fast and they aren\\u2019t perfectly in sync. Couple this with the bad sound system and my bad hearing, and I couldn\\u2019t really hear what they were saying.\\xa0 I don\\u2019t think this was just me; I didn\\u2019t hear a lot of people laughing at lines that I was missing.The premise of the show is also similar to Potted Potter.\\xa0 There\\u2019s kind of a show within a show, with the two male cast members trying to get their Star Wars play shown at Comic-con Las Vegas. They need a real, actual, gi'