Go to www.buyraycon.com/sully and use code SULLY to get 20% off + free shipping site wide 0:00 Intro 0:24 Broadway Beginnings 1:26 The Revival 2:46 Sponsor 3:45 The Tour Begins 7:25 The Backlash 8:20 The Revamp 10:56 Outro
Shrek here! I will say the photo with the unpainted skin/ ear from the revamp is an audience photo from a stage flub. Unfortunate but not the norm. Also venue prices are not something we control. Some venues charge as little as 30, and some for more than I’d like people to spend. Either way I still appreciate you making it out to see the show, and I hope that some of you guys come and visit us in the swamp! We are working hard out there.
You did an amazing job when I saw the show live, and your portrayal of the character has made it one of my dream roles! (also, sad they cut build a wall because I KNOW you would have crushed it)
Build A Wall was a genuinely good song about Shrek reverting back to his old ways after being abandoned by Fiona. Its a shame they got rid of it, it had some of the biggest and most raw emotion in the entire show
It's upsetting that the only reason it was removed is because the title reminds everyone of Trump. The title is honestly just a coincidence. Same goes for Why We Build The Wall from Hadestown, especially since the show debuted on Broadway while he was president. It's obvious the song isn't about Trump, and is beautiful in the context of the shows story.
Yeah I don’t get why this guy thinks removing it was a good thing. It hurts the show more because the raw emotion of shrek being hurt emotionally isn’t heard only seen which isn’t as powerful and the point of musicals is to hear the protagonists emotions thru songs. I love Build a Wall, gives shrek some sad emotion to convey.
@@ohmygodtheykilledkenny4887 _Seriously?!_ That's almost as stupid as the Pokémon episode that got banned from airing on TV in the U.S. after September 2001 because the dub just happened to title it "Tower of Terror!" 🤦♀
Donkey’s costume being a hoodie, shorts, and hat really got me. My school did Shrek this year, and our costume was a full body suit that changed the actors figure, and was so hot to wear there was secret pockets for ice packs. And it was someone jobs to run back and forth to change out the ice packs. Other then Donkey, our Shrek had a fat suit, face and hands prosthetics, Farquad walked on his knees, we bought another productions Dragon and fixed her up. Our set had 4 huge fake trees on wheels that have the illusion of the character walking and changing locations. I thought it was so crazy how a high school production was better then a professional one
Aha! I was Donkey in shrek the musical in HS and had the exact same costume!! I refused to wear anything but t-shirt and shorts up till 10 minutes before we went on stage!
I find it funny that they replaced Baby Bear with a teddy bear because they didn't want to hire a child actor, but the funny thing is, is that Baby Bear is usually portrayed by an adult actress in most professional productions.
@@anbu1325same for the puppet Fiona, couldn’t they have just used a smaller actor instead? It’s not like they replaced the singing needed for that song by having the puppets
When the producers said "this is what we intended for the original Broadway production" what they really meant was "the original Broadway production was the Broadway show with the highest budget ever until the Spider-Man musical broke that record, and we would have made so much more money from our investment if we were frugal"
My school recently did a Shrek musical. I worked on it behind the scenes and when I tell you it had **SO** much more effort put into it, I mean it. A bunch of high schoolers working for free in school for multiple months vs BROADWAY PRODUCERS and we still did so much better.
Because you aren’t being paid, exactly. Professional theatre is expensive. And a high school set and costumes only have to last a week or so. Yes this tour looks pretty terrible but the school vs professional argument is so bone headed
I appreciate how you don't just rag on the musical and the actors - you actually examine the root cause (the producers/budget) and repeatedly explain for non in-the-know people why this is happening, and that it's NOT the actors' fault. It's too easy to blame the actors but like most things, this is more nuanced than that. I know this is like, a low bar for doing your due diligence, but I appreciate that. And as someone who watched the play at a local community theater, their set design WAS better and they actually did have a dragon puppet and kid Fiona! The only thing I personally remember aging poorly (or just not at all honestly) was some jokes about the wolf being trans (and uses slurs) that were cut post-2018 productions anyway. Anyway, my favorite bit they added in the musical is 1. they made it to Shrek's parents kicked him out as a kid so he had more in common with Fiona, which was very cute, and 2. Lord Farquad was extremely heavily implied to be not attracted to women at all and I'd just using it for a political power play (and then he planned to behead Fiona) which is definitely a cool perspective that I think makes his demise much more satisfying. Also, he would not stop messing with the audience and doing these elaborate fourth wall improvisational sketches. It was great. Highly recommend community theater Shrek.
i saw a community theatre version as well and i think it genuinely could not have been better! our theatre is a part of the local college so people in the drama course act in it and art student make the set and it was fantastic! (my favorite bit was the dragon head, it was like a whole person long and had to be held up by three people controlling the eyes, mouth, and swivel of the neck! and the eyes glowed!)
@@MysterioPerrito I know! My appreciation for that and Farquad from the play is unrelated to the things being reworked. Sorry, I should have clarified that.
There's NO way this is real. They have to be trolling. It's like a bad middle school production of Shrek. Whoever was in charge must've been smoking something STRONG lmao
So, the funniest thing is that: i work at a news station and we got some ads for "Shrek the Musical" coming to our city and i was so confused cause all the spots are just the logo with music over it and the show dates. Which i thought was weird, cause most musicals that are advertised on air have like... clips from the tour to show "hey, this is what the show looks like". I guess i know why theyre marketing it like that now
we watched the 2008 musical in class randomly when i was like, 11 because a nearby school was doing a play for it i CRIED and had to get walked out by a teacher when lord farquad came on because the kid playing him had such terrible makeup and wig design it freaked me out
Similar story here, summer school around 2014 and they took us all to see it, but the person playing Shrek terrified me, his makeup and scream were horrifying. Funny thing is I went on to play Pinocchio for the school musical a few years later and whoever did my makeup I'd argue made it more terrifying than I remember the show being
I don’t think he’ll care, he’s probably too busy trying to remind Dreamworks about the Dehydration gun for Megamind Rules season 2 (god I hope that doesn’t happen)
Making Farquaad not short was a big mistake. Completely misses the point of the character. I saw the UK tour of Shrek months ago and they did the same thing to Farquaad there. The rest of the costumes where better though.
Can you believe they made Oompas Loompas Robots in the Wonka Musical as well. Like Broadway is afraid to portray fictional short people in there plays or something it’s so dumb. What’s the point of making a musical off a movie if you change one of the main traits of one of the characters of the source material. Farquaad being short wasn’t meant to offend anyone, it was a parody off of what antagonists normally would look like and hurts his motivation for being king since he was different and being king gave him power over those who picked on him for being different. Also removing the ballad of Farquaad was a mistake gives the antagonist some fleshed out character.
I remember seeing Shrek the musical at my older cousin's highschool. I was little at the time but I feel like I remember the HIGHSCHOOL production being more polished than some of those costumes. Especially Shrek, the actor for it shaved his head if I remember.
I came here to say the same thing. I play trombone in the pit, and every night I found something new to enjoy. Our costumes and sets were amazing, as were the performers. Community theatre doesn't necessarily equal bad.
Lord Farquadd being replaced by some bald dude is like how's this new Musical based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on tour replacing it's small human Oompa-Loompas with ROBOTS. (Not joking)
@@andresmaldonado8935how does it make sense, in Dahls book he goes to Oompa Land that has real people and now that their just robots it leaves glaring plot holes 🕳️. How do the robots know these songs, why did wonka program them to sing songs? Oompa Loompas are people from a fictional island that Dahl created not machines with no personalities.
Bro my school did a production of shrek a couple weeks before it came close to us and some people as it and thought we did a better job with set design and costumes than the literal Broadway quality show kinda sad if you ask me
Definitely love how you can take someone who doesn't know about the subject matter and explain it in not too much or too little detail, entertaining us at the same time! Go 100k Sully 🎉🎉🎉🎉
The original run was incredible and i love my dvd of tgat version. This latest redesighn is just tragic. Choices were made and it was a carcrash. If it wasn't broke, don't break it.
I thought about seeing this when it was touring in Hershey, PA (ngl when I saw the ad I thought it was like a high school/college production not a tour)…thank god I didn’t lmao
it looks like an cute elementry school play but an tour production , i feel bad for the actors that worked hard on this , i don't think it's gonna be as sucessful or last long while current national tours that are still running , the non - equity tour missed the mark
Last year I saw the UK Tour of SpongeBob SquarePants The Musical, like with Shrek, the show won Tonys for its costume and set and then had those changed on this tour. The difference is, while the designs were drastically different from the Broadway one (and definitely lower budget), they were still really high quality and kept the same general vibe that the original version had. Honestly, there’s a part of me that prefers the Plankton design from the UK tour just because the sheer camp energy of it really works for the musical’s interpretation of the character.
I’m happy to see that you are staying how non-Equity does NOT mean the performers are less talented or qualified. So many of us choose not to join for many reasons like wanting to be able to perform more often because we love it and the industry is so saturated. We are definitely still professional! I really appreciate you acknowledging that.
I genuinely cannot believe this is real. I cannot believe they looked at this and thought “Yeah let’s put this on tour”. It feels like a fever dream lol
I don’t really understand why people don’t like the song “Build a Wall”. I think it’s a fantastic song, that expresses how Shrek is going to give up on all of the things he’s trying to be. He’s going to go back to living his life on the swamp, sad and alone, and he’s coming to terms with it even if he doesn’t want to. The song sounds very nice, and I honestly think that it’s one of the most underrated.
We saw it and were so disappointed. They created a Bad Shrek Jr. Performance. Most of the songs are gone and they have weird reprises. Costumes were terrible. And plot makes no sense anymore.
This musical revival reminds me of the community college production my 4th grade class had to see for Seussical the Musical 10+ years ago. Our teachers hyped us up for the show by showing us clips and pictures from the Broadway show, so the whole class was expecting to see a grand, colorful, high budget spectacle. Instead of all of that, all of the set pieces were made of sloppily-painted plywood and cheap feather boas glued to them, the guy playing the Cat in the Hat was just wearing a black turtleneck, black jeans, and a dollar-store striped hat, Horton the Elephant was just a more overweight man wearing a gray sweats and an elephant trunk on his nose, and, most memorably, the Grinch (who only had 5 seconds of stage time) was just a guy with a green t-shirt stretched over his head and arms like a child. The most exciting part of the show was when the spotlight shined on the Cat in the Hat as he violently shamed his ass at the end of the opening number, making all of the kindergarteners in the audience laugh.
I had no idea this was the actual show. I honestly thought it was a community theatre production. Now it wasn't incredibly bad. Sure, it's not the 2008 Broadway run. But I had expected one thing and gotten another. My family got tickets from another family member who couldn't attend with his family, so we took it. We didn't have much going on that week. By no means was it terrible, as a first viewing. I can defend the points the Sully brought up. It's a shame they are getting paid less and the whole thing is lower budget. But we got to see it for free and we got some laughs out of it. Plus, we got it before the revamp, so we saw what the producers cheaped out on! I swear the actors REALLY held this thing together. They all did an amazing job despite the hand they were dealt and those conditions they were under. ...But when my sisters high school production of the 1985 CLUE movie is higher quality with its sets, you know they really screwed up the visuals... and they did it on a smaller budget than the Shrek team before the revamp. No crap to everyone who worked on this production of Shrek: They are the main attraction. The sets take a massive backseat (sometimes), but I did not see a single kid in that audience bored. Bravo to the cast! Plus, some of the "cringe" writing for Farquaad actually hooked the audience more (which I did not expect).
My sister and I played as Shrek and Dragon in our school production, and we happened to win cheap tickets in a lottery to the show in our hometown. We enjoyed it, mostly based off of nostalgia, but we still had fun. And it was definitely better than our production. 🤷♂️
Just A fyi, I saw this production a few weeks ago. Shrek, Donkey and the fairy tale characters costumes were all fixed and Shrek’s parents are actually people. Young Shrek and young Fiona’s are still puppets and it’s a bit awkward but whatever I dealt w it. I would rate it a 6.5/10
I saw the UK Tour that was on at the same time and read in advance some people thought that looked cheap and where mad the Farquad wasn’t on his knees and they gave Pinocchio’s song to Shrek but it had fixed most of the complaints by my stop of the tour and especially compared to the American tour it was fine. They just had the fairly young looking actor who played Grumpy also played young Fiona, young Shrek and Baby Bear to avoid child actors. My only real compliant would be the giant screen behind them was showing doubles of the same section for about a meter on one of the sees and it was kind of distracting. Edit: also because Farquaad wasn’t short especially by my areas standards I think they had rewrote the “he’s compensating for something” jokes to more explicitly just be small dick jokes but in a way kids might not catch
Was this a different tour than the one that travelled around shortly after the broadway one? I definitely remember seeing the original costumes, including tiny Farquad, in my hometown.
Yes, that’s an improvement but that is just so unfortunate because I know how amazing the OG Shrek the musical stage production was, you cut out everything that made Shrek the musical so unique and made it into an amateur crap fest like I don’t understand how you got away with that especially if you were charging $120 something per ticket in the front row which is outlandish and may I say a huge slap in the face to the OG Shrek the musical!
Sully, I love your work and everything you do, I just gotta say it here: I thought the Actors' Equity logo was a pair of asscheeks for a huge hot second, okay thank you for your time carry on
Glad to see someone reminding folks not to be mad at the actors. I loved the musical since I saw it a decade ago, and when I heard it was touring again I was quietly hoping it'd come somewhere near me. Then the pictures leaked. Then the rest of it leaked. And I just felt awful for the team actually putting the sweat and love into doing the best they could with a really REALLY bad hand. Like, this just sounds like a trainwreck and a half, so for the performers to keep going and doing their best tells me there's a lot of heart still in the swamp.
I never saw the original but I did recently see the tour, and I thought it was alright, I could tell the actors were doing their best and I do think some of the performances were really good(Fiona in particular )I actually thought some of the minimalist choices were kinda charming but I can see why people would be disappointed knowing how much better the Broadway version was. Although I cannot believe they thought they’d get away with Shrek with hair. That is cursed. Also the puppet Fiona’s need to be burned they are terrifying. Look if they don’t want to hire a child actor which is presumably expensive and restrictive(how many hours they can work and they still need to be schooled) then they should have just hired like a smaller actor or something perhaps? I dunno maybe that would be considered demeaning? But not sure how it’s more demeaning then playing a literal ogre, donkey, pig, fairy, etc.) And they still needed the actual song to be sung so why even bother with the puppets? As for the price in my case what was more an issue at first was the fact that the default top search website for buying tickets was a reseller hiking up the prices. Had to go check the actual venue website and go to the ticket seller they mentioned. I didn’t think the price as awful, was about $80 for orchestra(I’ve paid much more for actual on Broadway shows) but it is a bit pricey I think for what was given. I think $60 would have been more appropriate.
I believe they’re performing the “TYA” version; which is like a version of the show that cuts out some innuendos and makes the show generally shorter (around 90 minutes.) But like.. why??? The full length is so much better 😭
Blaming the poor actors... DON'T. They are at the mercy of the producers, director, costume designer, set designer, prop master... They have the least power in a production. All they can do is try to rise above the bad decisions of others. Been there... It's the folks behind the scenes to blame for this. Reminds me of the natl tour of Titanic the musical. Looked like a high school production. Actors were great, but they could rise above the [lack] of scenery and cardboard set. And the model of titanic on wheels pulled along a sea of black plastic trash bags.
I wonder what you think of the re-imagined version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast as produced by Disney themselves. Not as bad as this, but cutting songs, speeding up songs, and extending already overly long dance numbers, and scaling down the huge sets, let's say they were all interesting choices.
@@missroyaltea4012 They cut Maurice' song "No Matter What", which deepened the relationship between Belle and her father, and "Maison des Lunes", which basically explained the 'lock up Maurice' plot. They now go straight to capturing Maurice and Belle showing the Beast in the mirror. The song Home was sped up, giving Belle no time to process what was happening. Gaston & Be Our Guest's dance scenes got extended.
@@beyondamsterdam9400 Maison des Lunes get cut frequently from the stage show. I think you have to take the in-park versions with a grain of salt. They are created for a different audience than your traditional theatre goers. they are less concerned about the artistry than they are the spectacle
Sounds horribly unfortunate at best. Need to point out though: 1. Shrek may be known for its costumes, but its score and lyric are about 17 times better than they have a right to be and 2. $119 for Orchestra seating is in no world a Broadway ticket fare. (Support your local community theaters! Some-much-of it may suck, but it’ll only set you back about $30.)
My highschool production was better than this- like so much better (to be fair my school is serious about theater but it shouldn’t be better than a professional show-) it was so fun to work, got me into tech work!
Producers are getting too comfortable with trying to get around doing Non-union tours so that they can save money and avoid equity guidelines. It’s not just this show either, other touring shows like Peter Pan and Mean Girls are having similar issues
On some the costumes (emphasis on some), I can definitely see what they were going for; like making the 3 pigs construction workers and baby bear being a teddy bear.
My junior high play had a mayor that we had the actor be on their knees for. The next year we learned that’s the juinor high actually had a budget. Proof that even with a bad budget you can still stay in character.
4:20 huh. I'd expect that from a high school or community play. But for Broadway? Really? What are people even paying to see the Broadway version for if it doesn't have professional costumes and sets? Edit: apparently this wasn't a Broadway tour. And my silly self just assumed cause I'm not familiar with other companies doing tours but now that I think about it that makes sense
it's not Broadway, it's just an independent production that someone produced to tour on the road. it has no connection to the Broadway production other than the script/score and even that apparently has been changed. Producers send these non-union tours out to small venues all the time. People are only really hearing about this one because of the buzz on how poorly it was produced after they made such a big deal about reworking it for a "new Generation".
You know that you now can license it to play shows and go on tours, so the people that do these shows now have nothing to do with the original Broadway show.
Sad to say that I went and saw my community theatre do a showing of Shrek, and from the Broadway pictures, my small town Iowa community theater had better costuming (and all of the songs)
I was Shrek when my local teen theatre did it, and even our costumes and props would put some of these "revival" decisions to shame. I don't mind The Ballad of Farquaad being cut but Build A Wall?? The song illustrating Shrek's reverting to his old ways because he thinks his only two friends betrayed him?? Insanity.
